#267: Tools and Tips for Better Sleep

In this episode of the podcast, I focus on a topic that has been a lifelong personal struggle: sleep. I've gathered some of the best advice from multiple guests about rest and regeneration. I've found that if you prioritize sleep and recovery, it magnifies everything else in your life -- and to a greater extent than diet or exercise. We discuss recommendations from: Strength coach Charles Poliquin Obstacle course racer Amelia Boone Comedian Mike Birbiglia Dr. Peter Attia Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Soothe.com https://www.soothe.com/, the world's largest on-demand massage service. Because I've been broken so many times, I have body work done at least twice a week -- so I have a high bar for this stuff. I do not accept mediocrity, and I wouldn't expect you to, either. After much personal testing, I can affirm that Soothe delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I was amazed at the quality of service and convenience. Think of it as Uber for massages, available in fifty†cities worldwide. Download the app at Soothe.com, https://www.soothe.com/ and use code TIM to get $20 off each of your first two massages. This podcast is also brought to you by MVMT https://www. MVMTwatches.com/tim. The founders are two college dropouts who wanted to wear fancy watches, but couldn't afford them -- so they decided to scratch their own itch and build a company around high-quality but affordable watches in 2013. They've gone from startup to more than one million watches sold across 160 countries in just a few years -- an awesome success story that makes sense when you check out the product. MVMT offers classic designs, quality construction, and many different modern styles, so you can pick one that suits you. Get 15 percent off your entire purchase with free shipping (and free returns if you're dissatisfied for any reason) by visiting MVMTwatches.com/tim https://www. MVMTwatches.com/tim!

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

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I answer your personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by soothe.com, the largest on-demand massage service in the world. Now, I've been broken so many times. I've had so many injuries from sports. I have bodywork done at least once a week. So I have a very, very high bar for this kind of stuff. A very, very high quality control. And I was very skeptical of something that purported to be the Uber for massages. And I was blown away. I cannot tell you how surprised I was. And continued to be impressed by how high the level of massage therapist and body worker is through Sooth.

• 1:02Tim Ferriss?

  They deliver hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapists to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I've used them in San Francisco. I've used them in Austin. I've used them in New York. I've used them all over. And you can, again, think of it as Uber for massages. It is available in 50 cities worldwide. The process is super simple. You choose the kind of massage you want. Say Swedish, or sport, or deep tissue. You can even opt for couples massage. Then you set the length, the gender, and you request. Next thing you know, Sooth shows up where you want them with everything you need. They bring the massage table, sheets, oil, even music. So you don't have to worry about it. You can unwind and chill.

• 1:45Tim Ferriss?

  Sooth is in 50 cities, including most major US cities. And London, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, Vancouver, and more on the way. So, step number one, download Sooth. That's S-O-O-T-H-E in the iOS App Store or Google Play Store. And use code TIM, T-I-M, to get $20 off of each of your first two massages that you book. So, download Sooth, S-O-O-T-H-E, and then use code TIM.

• 2:17Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by MVMT Watches. That is spelled M-V-M-T. MVMT Watches. I first became aware of this company back in 2014 when they were a brand, brand new baby company because they won first place in Shopify's Build a Business competition. The founders are two college dropouts who wanted to wear fancy watches but had one wee little problem. They couldn't afford fancy watches, so they decided to scratch their own itch. Since then, their high-quality, affordable watches have gone from startup to more than 1 million watches sold across 160 countries. It's an awesome success story and when you check out the product, you'll know why. They offer classic design, quality construction, and many different modern styles.

• 3:01Tim Ferriss?

  So you can really pick one that suits you. You might want to start one, I would suggest, probably appeal to a lot of folks out. There's the classic black silver. So, search "classic black silver." The guys at MVMT have a great offer for listeners of this podcast. They're offering 15% off your entire purchase with free shipping and free returns if you're dissatisfied for any reason and they are very, very famous for their customer support. Just visit MVMTWatches.com/Tim. That's M-V-M-T-Watches.com/Tim. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.

• 3:44Tim Ferriss?

  This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it's my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types, to tease out the habits, routines, tactics that set the extraordinary apart from the average. The objective being to really pull out the details you can apply. Now, after more than 250 conversations, or close to 300 episodes now, you and I start to spot patterns and themes across every possible domain. A lot of the people who are the best at what they do, regardless of where it is, tend to do a lot of the same things, or focus on the same things. So this episode contains some of the best lessons I've learned about sleep recovery and regeneration, where I have really...

• 4:26Tim Ferriss?

  Applied my focus more than almost any other foundational pillar in my life. Why? Because if you get sleep and recovery right, it magnifies everything else incredibly, to a much greater extent than, say, even diet or exercise, I find. So getting sleep and recovery right is critically important. The recommendations that we'll cover include people like strength coach Charles Poliquin, who's trained athletes from 20 different plus sports, including Olympic gold medalists, NFL All-Pro players, Stanley Cup champions, and much more.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  I don't do the four-hour work week, but I like to do the four-and-a-half-hour work day.

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  It also includes tips from Amelia Boone. She's been called the Michael Jordan of obstacle course racing and is the most decorated athlete in what they call OCR.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Maybe I can become a fat-adapted athlete because for longer races, I didn't want to have to rely on gels and foods and stuff like that because after a while, it can be too much on your stomach.

• 5:27Tim Ferriss?

  I then talked to comedian Mike Birbiglia, who has a very particular nighttime ritual that has helped him learn how to sleep after many, many problems.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  The biggest thing is getting off of social media, getting off of Twitter and Facebook.

• 5:43Tim Ferriss?

  And Dr. Peter Attia, one of my favorite docs on the planet, shares his best lessons and takeaways related to rest.

• 5:52Peter Attia?

  At the time, I literally said to my wife, like, "I'm gonna go get a gastric bypass." And she was like, "You are the most ridiculous human being that's ever lived."

• 5:59Tim Ferriss?

  So, without further ado, let's get started. And I will kick it off with a few points of my own. I have been a lifelong insomniac, specifically with onset insomnia. So, certain people have trouble getting to sleep. I'm in that camp, or had been for many, many decades. Other people have trouble staying asleep. I'm not in that camp. But a lot of the recommendations will apply. And there are a few things in the last 12 months in particular that I have reapplied and reevaluated and continued

• 6:36Tim Ferriss?

  To recommend, there are a few things right off the bat. Number one, a white noise machine of some type, like a Marpac Dome, M A R P A C D O H M device, which some hotels at the higher end have started to include in rooms, specifically because they help sleep so much, in my experience. Then cooling. Temperature is probably the single most important variable in sleep conditions and certainly sleep onset. For me, that means as cold as I can tolerate, often around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, if we want to look at the downstream effects on mental health or stability of

• 7:15Tim Ferriss?

  sleep timing, I recently had a conversation with Ray Dalio, who is the founder of the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Associates. They manage about $160 billion in assets. And he shared with me how his son, who suffers from bipolar disorder, or I should say manic depression, could be labeled in a number of ways, much like yours truly, has found that his symptoms are mitigated tremendously by going to bed by 11:00 PM. I can corroborate this. As a lifelong night owl, my stability tends to be much more under control, much more even keel, when I go to bed by 11:00 PM. And there are a few things that also assist across the board, in my experience.

• 8:00Tim Ferriss?

  And again, not a doctor, don't play one on the internet, but something called N-acetyl cystine, N A C, is how it's often abbreviated, and lithium orotate in very, very, very low doses, so we're talking about five milligrams here, I found to be extremely helpful for sleep and also just general mental well-being. Last, I've experimented with polyphasic sleep, which means fragmenting your sleep into shorter periods with interspersed rest. There are many different formats, the most infamous of which is probably the Uberman protocol, which requires a mere 2.5 hours or so of total rest per day, but you have to take many, many, many, many naps in order for that to function.

• 8:43Tim Ferriss?

  And if you miss one of your naps, woe unto thee, because you- You are going to have at least two days of complete zombie state. So it is not for people with significant others, or social obligations, or ambitions of any type, generally speaking. But Matt Mullenweg, for instance, who is the CEO of Automattic, and is thought of as the lead developer of WordPress, which now powers something like 27, 28% of the entire internet, did the vast majority of his coding in what he would call his most productive year while following polyphasic sleep. I tend to do very well with monophasic sleep, which is normal. What you think of as normal. So eight-hour block of sleep, say, from whatever it is, midnight to 8:00 a.m.

• 9:28Tim Ferriss?

  However, I have found I function best across the board, physically and mentally, if I get around 7.5 hours, and that's very specific, seven and a half hours of sleep at night, and then another one and a half hours, so 90 minutes, which is one ultradian rhythm, around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m., whenever possible. And that reinvigorates me to such an extent. The 90 minutes is very important. 60 does not do it for me, nor does 30. So 90 minutes will allow me to put in, if I so desire, an entire additional equivalent of a work shift, like seven or eight hours without fatigue. It's pretty phenomenal.

• 10:07Tim Ferriss?

  So let's then move on to more tips on sleep and restfulness from other folks that I hope you find extremely valuable, or at least as valuable as I have. Charles Poliquin. Let's start with Charles. Charles @strengthsensay on Twitter has a wealth of knowledge related to training, nutrition, and supplementation. The guy is an encyclopedia. He has authored more than 600 articles and written eight books, including what I believe is his latest, a very short gem entitled "Arm Size and Strength: The Ultimate Guide." And you should check out Charles and his arms, I kid you not. NHL guys ended up listening to him because they saw what he looked like in person.

• 10:48Tim Ferriss?

  When Charles and I had our conversation, I asked him which supplements he uses for improving sleep. And I should also update this by noting that I, in the last few weeks, have been experimenting with something that he produces called Yin Reserve, which includes several different components that he alludes to in this conversation.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Question comes from Daniel Mathews Kazimierzchuk. Difficult Irish name. Which supplements do you currently use for improving sleep? Personally, I'm a big fan of magnesium threonate. I take six capsules at bedtime, mixed with two grams of theanine, T H A N I N E. I will post a page to where to get these ingredients on the website. The next question comes from Marcus Beamer. There are many things you might regret, but what's the thing that comes to mind most often? Well, what would I change if I could do it again? I wish the four-hour week would have been published when I started my career.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  People tell me often, "You are very lucky." I got very lucky by working 20 hours a day for years on end. So when you work that many hours, and that doesn't include the training. So for years, for about eight months out of the year, I would only sleep three hours a night. I would say that's my biggest mistake. I said yes too often, and I should have been concerned more with the quality of the athletes I trained. The problem was is that when I would get hired, I would get the whole national team. Once I established credibility, being consistent with results, when I would negotiate with national team, I would tell national team, "These are the guys I'll pick, these are the guys I will train."

• 12:40Speaker 03

  So it would have saved me time on writing programs, administering programs, monitoring programs, teaching technique, but you need to have a reputation before. So I spent a lot of time doing that. What I've learned over the last few years is that you get known that are jobs you turn down, not the jobs you accept. A few months ago, Ellen Marulis won a gold in Olympic wrestling for women. First time in America it did so. For weeks, I've been asked to do seminars, write books, take on more national team athletes, train foreign teams, and I said no to all one of these requests. Why? Because I'm really...

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Gear not, I don't do the four hour work week, but I like to do the four and a half hour work day. And, you know, one thing I do regularly is I take a week off a month to rest, to read, and I take three months vacation a year. Probably having a child was probably the best thing for me to learn other prioritized things. So I really started to cut back on the amount of work once I had my daughter. But the biggest mistake I've ever done was to work far too much. Now I got guys like Guy Vaynerchuk will say you need to hustle. You do, but you should still favor quality over quantity.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  And if you want to understand the concept better, astronomy suggests you read the one thing and to read the four hour work week. It's just a mental outlook to what you do. The next question is from Jonathan Anderson. Thanks to Charles, I'm now big into omega threes to keep my, you mean remission. Dr. Barry Sears says three to one EPA to DHA.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  And taking that ratio at about a greater expense, is it worth it? Should everyone go on it? Well, Dr. Guignot, unfortunately passed away a few years ago, was probably one of the smartest guys in that topic. What we know is that it's actually better to vary the types of fish. There's an axiom you should respect is that the more you're dealing with inflammation, the higher the EPA ratio to DHA should be. So a lot of brands will sell you a six to one ratio. And that will bring down inflammation better than the three to one ratio, actually. If you're concerned with brain, so let's say if you have ADD, ADHD, borderline personality,

• 15:07Speaker 03

  all the studies on brain disorders show that a high DHA omega three product is better. So usually you want to eight DHA to EPA to one EPA ratio.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  But there's no magical fissure. And the other thing we know not from research is better to take products like Omega 3 Avail from Designs for Health, who has also mixed in D1, D3, sorry, K1 and K2 into the product, because those actually increase absorption. You don't need as much large quantity. And of course, you supplement these important fat soluble vitamins. The next question is from Rowdy Lee. And he asked me, you're not a big fan of foam rolling? Isn't foam rolling a massage? Thing, my beef against foam rolling is that it would be trying to build a bridge

• 16:08Speaker 03

  one pebble at a time. It takes far too long. So this is a thing as a principle of training economy. I mean, Tim is big on that, whether you for our body or any of his books. It's like you have to have maximum return, least amount of time. So people waste tremendous amount of time foam rolling. The amount of time they waste on foam rolling could be trying to get flexible could be done in a good 20 minute active release session or Rolfing technique or the Voila method. There's a lot of stuff out there that exists to get rid of adhesions and improve range of motion.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  So, and let's say if you have a good active release practitioner and you're foam rolling because you have a tight shoulder, if the guy does a good job, and let's say you're the worst case scenario, you're about as flexible as a crowbar, within five treatments, you'll have 100% range of motion. And if you're a complete certified idiot, you will still maintain those gains for six weeks. So, six months, I'm sorry. So in my opinion, to go see a very good soft tissue practitioner and invest the time and money into that will save you all these countless hours of foam rolling because you will have the results and it'll be more permanent if you see a soft tissue therapist.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  The next question is from Morgan Brown. If you only had to pick one important factor between sleep, food, and exercise, which would you pick and/or how would you prioritize them? Well, Morgan, that's asking me for optimal health. Should I prioritize my liver, or my heart, or my brain, or my adrenals, or my kidney? All of those are important. If you don't have a brain, well, forget. You don't have a heart, forget. If you don't have a liver, you're not going to live very long. So you can't prioritize so much. Let's say if we look at prisoners at Club Fed, they can sleep as much as they want. Is this sleep restful? Probably not, because maybe your roommate wants to kill you.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  The food, food is prison food, so it's not the greatest, but they do have plenty of opportunity to exercise, and they have weight rooms. So in that case, you could argue people can get a good physique, and if you look at the book of J.L. Armstrong by Josh Bryant, some pretty good physiques were built behind bars. But then again, you say to the guys, we'll make you safe, and then we'll give you calio foods. All these guys will grow a lot. I'm not sure taxpayers would agree with that thing, but you can't prioritize them. You can't say, I'm just going to sleep to muscle growth, or I'm just going to exercise to muscle growth, or I'm just going to eat to muscle growth. You need all three.

• 19:01Tim Ferriss?

  Next up is Amelia Boone, who you can find on Instagram, A R Boone 11, A R B O O N E 11, or I think she's just Amelia Boone on Twitter. Amelia has more than 50 podium finishes in obstacle horse racing and is widely considered the most decorated in the sport. And I'll give you just a few examples of her finishes. In the 2012 World's Toughest Mudder Competition, which lasts 24 hours, she finished second overall out of 1,000-plus competitors. Keep in mind that those competitors are probably 80, 90% male. All right, so second overall. This was ahead of every... A single competitor, except for one male, who ended up winning the whole thing,

• 19:46Tim Ferriss?

  and he beat her by a mere eight minutes. She won the 2004 World's Toughest Mudder, eight weeks after knee surgery. She's a beast, in the best way possible. Amelia is also a three-time finisher of the so-called "death race," which, not surprisingly, has been discontinued. The name tells you all you need to know. And she dabbles in ultra-running in her spare time. She's also a full-time attorney at Apple, by the way. And as someone who pushes her body to the limits, she's learned the importance of rest and how to make the most of it.

• 20:21Tim Ferriss?

  What is your nutritional look like?

• 20:24Tim Ferriss?

  And, were you serious earlier when I asked you about breakfast? All right, what was your answer? We were doing a sound check, and I asked her what she had for breakfast. What was your answer?

• 20:36Speaker 04

  Pop-tarts.

• 20:37Tim Ferriss?

  Pop-tarts?

• 20:40Speaker 04

  No, that's actually, so the pop-tarts has become kind of this, like, running joke in the obstacle racing community with me, because when I won the Spartan Race World Championships in 2013, I was so far ahead. I was like 20, 30 minutes ahead of the next woman, and the race director yells at me. He goes, "Millie, what'd you have for breakfast this morning?" And I'm like, "Pop-tarts." And I actually did randomly that day, because they're a really good source of easy, easily digestible carbs.

• 21:07Tim Ferriss?

  Millie? Is that what you said? Or did you say your full name?

• 21:10Speaker 04

  She said, "Sorry," said Amelia.

• 21:12Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, okay, got it.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Sometimes I can't say my own name. And so it kind of became this thing that, like, I would just, like, pre-race ritual, that it would be like a good luck thing to, like, have a pop-tart, because I'm a soup, I'm a really big person into superstition. And it's kind of grown from there. And now I see, like, I was at, I was at a race the other weekend, and like, everyone around me was eating pop-tarts. And I'm like, what have I started? Like what? And then everyone like posts these pictures on Instagram of them eating Pop Tarts and like they tag me in it. And I'm like, oh my God, I've created a monster.

• 21:53Tim Ferriss?

  This actually could be an incredible opportunity for you to do whatever you want, because I remember watching Pumping Iron and Arnold Schwarzenegger is talking about the guys who'd come up to him and ask him for advice and he'd give them the wrong advices. And he would like tell them to go into the shower at the gym and like scream while they're posing. So you could, you could actually, you could pull an incredible April Fool's joke, but announce it a year later, after everyone has already embraced it.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  I know. So now I'm like, okay, well, what's the next thing? Like, what's the, you know?

• 22:22Tim Ferriss?

  What other superstitions do you have?

• 22:24Speaker 04

  Um.

• 22:25Tim Ferriss?

  Not limited to racing necessarily.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I'm one of those people that, so it's the same, like, I will wear the same sports bra. Like, so we race pretty much in like sports bra and like compression shorts, because you want as little clothing to like hold down the mud as possible. So I'll wear the same, you know, if I did well in a race, like I'll wear the same outfit for like the next race. And especially the same headband. And then if I don't do well, then that one gets discarded, you know? And so it's, it's that kind of like your typical sports stuff. I actually have, this is kind of embarrassing, but a small little stuffed dog that travels with me to all

• 23:09Speaker 04

  races. And because I'm typically by myself in really cheap, sketchy hotels, because these races are like in the middle of nowhere. So it's like my little guard dog.

• 23:20Tim Ferriss?

  How big is the stuffed dog?

• 23:22Speaker 04

  Oh, it like fits in the palm of your hand.

• 23:25Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you get that?

• 23:27Speaker 04

  It was given to me as a gift.

• 23:29Tim Ferriss?

  As a protection, as a guardian?

• 23:32Speaker 04

  As a guard dog. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's just, it's, it's silly. It's silly stuff like that.

• 23:40Tim Ferriss?

  Outside of Pop Tarts?

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. What do I actually eat?

• 23:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. What is, what is your, let's just say your four weeks out from a race?

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:51Tim Ferriss?

  What is your, what does a day of food look like for you?

• 23:54Speaker 04

  It's hard to say. Honestly, like I it's one of those things I've struggled with that I've I've tried every like I tried to do paleo. I tried to be like, maybe I can become a fat adapted athlete because for longer races, I didn't want to have to like rely on gels.

• 24:08Tim Ferriss?

  Gels.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  And stuff like that because after a while it can it can be too much on your stomach. But I just never.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  I'm never going to be the paradigm of good eating of like and and I couldn't couldn't stick with like, you know, the whole like, you know, trying to I couldn't go far enough into like the fat adaptation. Like, I was just miserable. I like ice cream way too much.

• 24:36Tim Ferriss?

  Somewhat chondra indicated for ketosis and fat adaption.

• 24:39Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 24:41Tim Ferriss?

  Much to my chagrin.

• 24:42Speaker 04

  At a certain point, I think I realized I'm like, you know, I'm I'm performing well. I'm winning races. So why change if it gets to the point where I'm not doing well?

• 24:53Tim Ferriss?

  Performing.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  Then then I'll take another look at my diet and and switch it. But at this point, it's like, I run so much. I put in so much, you know, time that I'm like, whatever, I enjoy food and I'll eat kind of whatever I want.

• 25:08Tim Ferriss?

  If we were to look at, say, the world's toughest runner.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:12Tim Ferriss?

  What do your routines look like? You said you're a creature of habit, as am I. The hours before the competition, let's just say, like, the day of. What are your routines?

• 25:25Speaker 04

  So I always get up like super early before. Well, I get up super early in general every morning.

• 25:32Tim Ferriss?

  What's super early?

• 25:33Speaker 04

  So my alarm typically goes off like right around 4am.

• 25:39Tim Ferriss?

  That's why you didn't flinch when I was we were talking about Jaco Willink, the SEAL commander. I'm like, and he wakes up at four. Zero response. I'm like, oh, another one. Here we are.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, like 4am. And so actually, on race days, it's almost like I sleep in a little bit.

• 26:01Tim Ferriss?

  When do, when do the races start typically?

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Um, they generally will start, World's Top of the Month is a little bit different. That one starts at two in the afternoon now, but um, like just a regular obstacle race would generally be like seven thirty is the starting time.

• 26:15Tim Ferriss?

  So that starts at two PM. So let's use that example. You wake up at four.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. Then I drive myself crazy for the next however many hours twiddling my thumbs.

• 26:24Tim Ferriss?

  What, what other type of uh, body prep uh, or mental prep do you do?

• 26:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I generally use um, the distraction technique. So I try to not think about really, because I can sit there and make myself miserable over and over, like, like picturing the race or whatever. But I find it helpful, actually, um, I actually do a lot of work in the mornings before races. Um, so I'll catch up on emails. Um, I'll do things from like my attorney life. Um, and um, then in terms of like body prep, I, you know, I do a lot of like foam rolling, mobility, things like that. Um, the older I get, the more I realize like I can't just like jump out of bed in the morning and like, you know, be spry as a chicken. So.

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  You're thirty-two. Is that right? Thirty-two?

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Thirty-two, yeah.

• 27:14Tim Ferriss?

  Thirty-two. So I would imagine you still have a couple of good years left in you, but the.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  Sometimes it feels a lot worse though, let me tell you.

• 27:22Tim Ferriss?

  The mobility work that you do, what, what, what does that, what does that actually look like in, in detail?

• 27:28Speaker 04

  Um, so I generally carry like an arsenal of every single like from a golf ball, a lacrosse ball, a softball, a foam roller. Um, and so I'm really focused on loosening up hips, loosening up hamstrings. Um, and every single different little torture device has, you know, it's the golf ball is for the foot. Um, the lacrosse ball works well on the glutes, you know, the softball is great for the hamstrings. Um, so I'm just, you know, getting the muscles kind of warmed up and loosened and prepped. Um, and um, I do, I actually, from a lot of various nagging injuries that I've always had, I have like

• 28:08Speaker 04

  little physical therapy routines that I always do too, you know, like to get your glutes activated and, and things like that.

• 28:16Tim Ferriss?

  What type of movements do you do for glute activation?

• 28:19Speaker 04

  Uh, there's this fantastic exercise called Jane Fonda's that if anybody's ever been.

• 28:23Tim Ferriss?

  Are these for like glute mean?

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, yeah, glute mean. Where you're sitting there and you're like, man, I should really have leg warmers on right now.

• 28:30Tim Ferriss?

  So you're talking about, is this like the bent leg, sort of the reverse thigh master?

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Pretty much, yeah. It's the reverse thigh master.

• 28:39Tim Ferriss?

  On your side?

• 28:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like variation, like doing fire hydrants like that too, you know, like a dog lifting his legs. There's all super sexy things that people like, like if you, if you do them in a gym, people are like, oh God, there's that girl.

• 28:54Tim Ferriss?

  I tell you, I think that you probably get more attention doing fire hydrants than I do, at least unless I'm in a gym in the Castro, which it might be a similar experience. And do you use any other modalities for prep? Do you use any STEM? Do you use anything like that pre-race or is that set aside for other, other purposes?

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Pre-race, not so much, no. That's more like recovery, like recovery, all like compression boots and STEM.

• 29:24Tim Ferriss?

  Now, are compression boots the compression socks or these actual boots?

• 29:29Speaker 04

  The boots that inflate, you know, and like the air pressure chambers that, you know, like, kind of like flush out, supposedly flush out lactic acid. So.

• 29:42Tim Ferriss?

  That's, and that's post-race?

• 29:43Speaker 04

  That would be post-race, yeah.

• 29:45Tim Ferriss?

  So, well, let's talk about post-race then. So in terms of facilitating recovery, so you finished the race?

• 29:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:51Tim Ferriss?

  And is it true that you have not slept for days on end after races? Or is that an exaggeration?

• 29:57Speaker 04

  No, it is true. So any long race that I've done, like World's Health is matter is a 24 hour race. I've done other races that are longer, 48, that are 60 hours. And I feel like it's, I can't sleep afterwards. And you feel like you should be able to, you're like, wow, I was just up for three days straight, running around in the woods, but my mind, your body is so physically exhausted, but my mind is still on so much, like on overdrive that I just, I can't. So, I mean, for instance, this year, after World's Health is matter, we all, there was a group of us staying in a house, sat around, we're drinking beers, watching football game. And I was like, man, I should like really be getting drunk right now

• 30:42Speaker 04

  or something like that, because like I'm drinking, I've been running around in a wet suit all night long. I'm like, I don't feel anything, like I don't feel any effects of the booze or anything like that. I was like, it just must be this adrenaline still pumping through me.

• 30:55Tim Ferriss?

  Did other people have the same similar experience? Or is that unique to you?

• 31:00Speaker 04

  I think, no, because everyone else just kind of passed out and went to bed.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  So I was like, hey, guys, let's say, okay, everyone's asleep right now. Cool.

• 31:11Tim Ferriss?

  And when you cross the finish line, as such, you're done. What type of recovery starts? What are the, what are the actions that you take in the hours following the race?

• 31:23Speaker 04

  So I think one of the most important things that people should do that they don't is you have to stay moving. People want to finish a race, and especially a long one, and just like lay on a couch or go to sleep. It is the worst thing you can do because you're going to wake up and like not be able to move anything. So I generally try and stay walking. I try and stay active. You know, I will hop again on like a foam roller or something like that and try. You don't want to be too aggressive afterwards. Like, you're not going to like hop on a softball and roll out your glutes because like that's going to hurt really bad.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  But then just, just try and stay active. And that is in like the next day, too, you know, like gentle movement and things like that.

• 32:09Tim Ferriss?

  Do you, are you a proponent of ice, ice baths, anything like that or not?

• 32:15Speaker 04

  If I can, so, I mean, I'm not a scientist, whatever. I, all I know is what works for me. People have different opinions. If I can get into an ice bath, I will, but it needs to be like immediately. So there have been races where there's like a lake right next to me. And I'm like, if it's cold enough, then I'll just go jump in the lake and kind of use that as an ice bath. But if you're waiting like four or five hours, I don't really think it's going to end up helping you in the end.

• 32:43Tim Ferriss?

  And I want you to correct me if I'm wrong. 2012, World's toughest mudder. How did you place?

• 32:51Speaker 04

  I won for females, but I was second overall in 2012.

• 32:56Tim Ferriss?

  Second place overall?

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:58Tim Ferriss?

  How did that feel?

• 33:00Speaker 04

  So it was a really interesting race.

• 33:03Tim Ferriss?

  How many competitors?

• 33:04Speaker 04

  This was again, there were about 1,200 people, I believe, is generally every year. So there are about 1,200 people. It was once, this one, they moved it to November, so it was supposedly a tiny bit warmer, but actually it wasn't. It was actually colder in 2012 than it was in 2011. And I guess I didn't realize, I knew I was winning for women. And at this point, we were about 24 hours or getting close to the end. And I was about 80 some odd miles in. And as on the last lap, they're like, okay, well, you've won for women, but the guy that's winning is like nine minutes ahead of you. So we're on this last lap, you know, going, we'll end up with 90 miles.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  And there are all these people from Tough Mudder headquarters and like all these competitors just like yelling at me, willing me to go on because all they want me to do is to win overall, you know? And you're so tired at that point and like so kind of delirious that I guess I didn't even realize like the import of that situation of like how massive that would have been. Cause I was just like, leave me alone. I hurt, I'm tired.

• 34:18Tim Ferriss?

  I hear you.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  I'm freezing. Like I'm covered in like 10 like millimeters of neoprene, like I'm just, you know? And I'm like, I get it. I'm trying to move faster, my body won't let me. But yeah, so I ended up finishing about nine minutes behind the male overall winner. And yeah, so it was pretty, it didn't really hit me until like a day or two later where I was like, oh, I was that close. Oh, okay.

• 34:47Tim Ferriss?

  Mike Birbiglia, at Birbigs, B I R B I G S on Twitter, say hi, is one of my favorite comedians, certainly one of the best known and busiest comedians in the world, both behind and in front of the camera. His standup blends elements of theater, film, storytelling and comedy. The guy just seems unstoppable. He's been very deliberate. In studying a lot of crafts and tying them together, which I find fascinating. It's reflected in a lot of his successes. So sold out tours as a solo act, New York Times bestselling books, off Broadway shows, feature film, TV, the whole nine. I asked Mike about his nighttime rituals and he in fact is famous for very, very severe sleepwalking disorders.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  I find the Fitbit was helpful for me. Because it tracks my sleep and so it tells me this thing about my sleep, which

• 35:46Tim Ferriss?

  Tells you how much you were walking the night before.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  No, it's true. It's true. I mean, it tells me, not only, I don't know if you know about this, it not only tells you,

• 35:55Speaker 05

  you know, how you, you know, how long you slept, but it tells you the quality of sleep during, you know, in other words, like it tells you, you know, you slept technically for eight hours, but you, you know, you were awake for an hour of that. So it's actually quite helpful.

• 36:11Tim Ferriss?

  I like it. And so you use it primarily for your sleep then?

• 36:15Speaker 05

  For my sleep. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like the steps thing. I like trying to get to 10,000 steps a day. That's helpful. But for the sleep, I mean, because you got to remember, like, I've slept over at hospitals, you know, countless times for sleep studies because I have REM behavior disorder. And it's like $3,000 per visit to, I mean, obviously, you know, some of it's insurance, but some of it I have to pay. And I mean, this thing basically does a sleep study and it costs a hundred bucks.

• 36:44Tim Ferriss?

  What, what, what type of nighttime rituals do you have? I mean, you mentioned easing in instead of crashing into the wall.

• 36:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:52Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular kind of wind down or evening rituals?

• 36:56Speaker 05

  I try to do, there, there's actually a good podcast called, not to be mistaken with Sleepwalk with me, there's a good podcast called Sleep With Me.

• 37:09Tim Ferriss?

  I could go a lot of directions, okay?

• 37:11Speaker 05

  Yes, and it's this guy named, I think he calls himself Scooter, and he-

• 37:17Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds trustworthy.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  And he, and he, uh, he has like this really uncanny skill of talking in circles and slow and circling back to the first topic and then the next topic and then another thing and then a digression and the next thing you know, you're asleep. I mean, it's, it's pretty fascinating what he does.

• 37:43Tim Ferriss?

  I'll have to try that.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that, that's what, that's what we're looking into. And then, um, and then I try to write in my journal and then honestly, the biggest thing is, is, is getting off of social media. It's, you know, getting, getting off of Twitter and Facebook. I think, you know, in relationship to what we were talking about earlier of like, I was saying the thing about Oliver Stone, that he, he joined the army and became, that's how he became self-reliant and how ultimately like everything in your life that you do leads to who you are and what you're able to accomplish. Um, I think that social media is weirdly the exception to that. I think that social media is like this weird kind of looking in the mirror all

• 38:26Speaker 05

  the time, um, thing that is, it's, it's not helpful for, for being productive or, or learning. I, I don't, I, I mean, I, I, I don't know if that's true, but that, that's been my feeling lately.

• 38:43Tim Ferriss?

  I think the, the dose makes the poison, certainly. I mean, I think there's, there's a point where you're like, oh, this Tylenol is helping my headache and then, oh, I, my stomach lining just fell out of my ass or-

• 38:54Speaker 05

  That's a dream.

• 38:55Tim Ferriss?

  And I think-

• 38:57Speaker 05

  That's something that happened?

• 38:59Tim Ferriss?

  No, I mean, that, that hasn't actually literally happened to me, but there's, there's definitely a, a point where, you know, things in excess become their opposite.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  Aish.

• 39:10Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, what is the, on the flip side, uh, the first kind of sixty to a hundred and twenty minutes of your day look like? I mean, are there any particular rituals that you have in the morning?

• 39:22Speaker 05

  It's a little bit like memento every day. Um-

• 39:26Tim Ferriss?

  Inject, injecting your wife with insulin over and over again?

• 39:30Speaker 05

  Just like a lot of times if I'm not focused, um, I will kind of wander and, and you know, it's all until I have coffee, forget about it. I'm a heavy coffee drinker and, um, and if I'm on a pro- basically if I'm on a project, if I'm shooting a movie, I have a complete and exact plan for the next day. And if I'm writing a movie, like I said, I, I've looked and put notes next to my bed. You're Mike, wake up, go, go to the coffee shop and write. Um, I think that when I don't have a routine, I'm a mess and I'm not productive and it's not, it's not helpful. Um, so that, so that's what I'd say. It's inconsistent. The other thing is I travel.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  I mean, what the thank God for jokes show, I toured a hundred cities in a year. And so it's, it's very hard to have rituals when you're going to a hundred cities in a year.

• 40:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I wonder if it makes the value of the rituals even greater if you are able to maintain some semblance of routine when touring. I don't know. I've never done that. Do you have, do you have a favorite venue in the entire United States? If you had to pick one?

• 40:41Speaker 05

  Oh gosh, there's so many. I mean, the Upper Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, it feels like home because I've been on that stage a lot and the Comedy Cellar in New York feels similarly. Um, I think that in terms of like a pound for pound venue, I think the Chicago Theater is probably your best concert venue in America. Chicago Theater seats about 3,000 people and yet as a performer, you feel like you're talking to people in your living room. And as an audience member, it feels like you're just, you know, you're just, you're just watching, you know, someone not in your living room, but sort of, you know, and it feels intimate.

• 41:21Tim Ferriss?

  So you are, you're a collector of good advice. What is the worst advice that you hear or see being given out often? And that could be in any domain. It could be comedy, could be writing, could be movies, could be completely unrelated, anything?

• 41:35Speaker 05

  It's all about.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  You know, it's all about getting your dream, pursuing your dream. Like, I feel like there's something, I, I, I don't know what the exact advice is that drives me crazy, but I think that there's a cultural thing right now that it, it is kind of irksome, which is that, that people feel like they're, like, I, I, I read it recently in the New York Times where someone said, um, I'm forgetting her name who wrote this, but she said, if I had advice for college students, it would be, don't ask, what do I want to be when I grow up? Ask, how can I help? Or how can I change the world? Or how can I make, be

• 42:22Speaker 05

  of service to other people? And I think that, that the, the kind of like, just kind of be whatever you want to be is, is perhaps to be reconsidered by how can I be of service when I'm on the earth for such a short amount of time?

• 42:44Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so way back in episode 50, seems like 100 years ago, or yesterday, depending on my frame of mind, I introduced you to Dr. Peter Attia, who on Twitter is at Peter Attia, A-T-T-I-A-M-D. So at Peter Attia M-D on the Twitters. Peter is an ultra endurance athlete. He would say former, I was never an athlete, but he, he swam 25 mile plus races. So I would consider him an endurance athlete. He's a compulsive self experimenter, which is part of why we get along so well, and one of the most fascinating human beings I know. If you want to hear a hilarious story, by the way, look up Peter Attia, Jet Fuel

• 43:24Tim Ferriss?

  Ferris, and you can listen to an audio snippet of the first time that he consumed experimental synthetic ketones in his kitchen. It is a hilarious story. Anyway.

• 43:37Tim Ferriss?

  Peter earned his M.D. from Stanford University and holds a Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He resided at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a general surgeon, then conducted research at the National Cancer Institute under Dr. Steve Rosenberg, where Peter focused on the regulatory, excuse me, the role of regulatory T-cells in cancer regression and other immune-based therapies for cancer. Given his expertise in nearly all things health, I asked Peter to explain some of what he's most excited about as it relates to recovery.

• 44:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's possible to try to optimize health to the point where it's in your best interest to just kind of sit in the metal box and absolve yourself of interacting with anything in life. And I think that you maximize your performance at the same time. So what are some of your obsessions in that realm at the moment, or interests?

• 44:41Peter Attia?

  Well, growing up, Tim, you know, I grew up in Canada. And so obviously hockey was sort of the most important sport for any good Canadian kid growing up. But actually, pretty early on, around the age of 13, my interests actually shifted towards boxing and martial arts. And that became really the focus of my life. And, you know, I never really did it in moderation. So even in high school, I was sort of training six hours a day, very, very hard, even though in amateur boxing, it's only three rounds. I was always thinking about, you know, the next step, which was being a professional. And of course, at the time, that's, you know, 12 rounds of boxing. So everything I did was geared towards, you know, I had to run 10 to 15 miles in the morning, not just four. I had to jump rope for 30 minutes, not just 15, and had to spend this many hours sparring

• 45:25Peter Attia?

  each day. And so my foray into the, you know, my care about the body's performance always came through the lens of performance, right? So it was, how does, you know, what I, how does the way I train, or how does the way I eat, impact my performance initially in a boxing ring? Now, at the time, it was highly crude, right? In fact, I suffered from the issue that I'm sure a lot of 14-year-old boys suffered from, which we'd all kill to have that problem again, which is I actually couldn't gain weight, right? I mean, I was, you know, I started my career at 127 pounds. By the time I was 16, I was a solid middleweight, which was 160 pounds. But as you, as you may know from, from your experience, most people live 10 pounds above

• 46:09Peter Attia?

  their weight class and then come down to it. Right. But, you know, I was only 4% body fat. So I actually lived and fought at about 158 pounds. And to, to keep that weight on, I would eat about 6,000 to 7,000 calories a day. Uh, just to give you an example of lunch, right? Because it was the one meal I can really remember. It was an entire loaf of bread, which is 14 pieces of bread. So that was seven sandwiches, um, with a two-liter jug of orange juice and a, uh, I would, and then at the cafeteria, I would buy a plate of french fries and like some other nastiness. And like, that was lunch every day in high school.

• 46:50Peter Attia?

  And yet, you know, I had a 27-inch waist and, you know, no fat on me. Uh, in part, not just because I was exercising six hours a day, I think more importantly because we're very metabolically different when we're 14-year-old boys than when we're 40-year-old boys. Um, so if you fast forward, uh, I don't know how many years, um, you know, athletic stuff has always been important to me. The sport has shifted, you know? Um, it went, you know, by the time I was in my early twenties, the obsession switched away from, um, boxing into other things and, and, um, more recently in my thirties, it, the obsession became swimming, ultra, ultra-long distance swimming. How long is ultra-long distance swimming? Yeah, it's kind of a fuzzy definition.

• 47:33Peter Attia?

  I think most people define ultra-long as anything over 16 miles. Um, but I think that's somewhat arbitrary. It's sort of like one of those things like, you know it when you see it, right? Like, hey, is this, is this one mile? Pornography? Yeah, exactly right. Is this one mile swim across the river ultra-long? Not really. Is that 25-mile swim long? Yeah, that's ultra-long. What's the longest swim that you've done?

• 47:56Peter Attia?

  About 25 miles.

• 47:58Tim Ferriss?

  That is a long swim.

• 48:00Peter Attia?

  So in my 30s, when, and this is now a different chapter in my life, obviously I'm not in high school, I'm, you know, I think it's time I'm working at McKinsey and Company in San Francisco. I'm still managing to spend an average of four hours, three to four hours every day swimming, because you, it's not linear, like I spend, you know, eight hours a day on the weekends, and then maybe only an hour and a half to two hours a day, Monday through Friday, but I'm obviously, you know, burning a lot of matches, and yet, interestingly, my weight is getting higher and higher and higher, and I went from sort of being, you know, 170

• 48:38Peter Attia?

  pounds to 205 pounds, and the composition of that weight wasn't a, you know, wasn't what I wanted, right? It wasn't like I was gaining all this muscle, I mean, I was getting fat, and the blood tests showed that I was basically pre-diabetic. So, all of a sudden, the dietary strategy-

• 48:56Tim Ferriss?

  What were the indicators that you looked at?

• 48:59Peter Attia?

  You do something called an oral glucose tolerance test, which is, you, they dry your blood, and then you drink this horrible nasty drink of glucose, and then they measure your insulin and glucose levels an hour later, and then again, two hours later.

• 49:11Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 49:12Peter Attia?

  Coupled with other standard blood tests, like your triglycerides, and something called a hemoglobin A1C, which measures the amount of blood sugar that's basically sticking to your red blood cells.

• 49:23Tim Ferriss?

  Is it fair to say hemoglobin A1C is sort of a running three-month average of your fasting glucose, or is that completely scientifically un-

• 49:31Peter Attia?

  No, it's, it's actually pretty close. It's not fasting, it's a three-month, it's basically a three-month running average of your aggregate glucose level.

• 49:37Tim Ferriss?

  Aggregate glucose, got it. Okay, cool.

• 49:40Peter Attia?

  Yep, yep. So, so, so anyway, basically, all of these tests were pointing in the wrong direction. I had something called metabolic syndrome, and-

• 49:50Peter Attia?

  Again, I think there's a lot of people that find themselves in that situation. I, you know, to your question about what's the personal motivation, I think what pissed me off was, and I remember saying this to my wife, I said, you know, what pisses me off is I'm working too hard to be in this situation, right? Like, it's one thing if you're sitting on the couch, eating Doritos all day long, but my diet was actually much cleaner as a 35-year-old than that French fry sandwich eating kid in high school. Obviously, it still wasn't the right diet, but the point is, I was busting my ass to be fit and healthy and watch what I eat and, you know, frankly, I just got aggravated beyond words. And, you know, I mean, I, we joke about it now, but at the time, I literally said to

• 50:33Peter Attia?

  my wife, like, I'm gonna go get a gastric bypass. And she was like, you are the most ridiculous human being that's ever lived. I mean, we're gonna literally have to talk about our marriage if that's what you're considering at the, at the weight of 205 pounds. I actually did go and see the top bariatrician in the city of San Diego. And it's kind of a weird story because even though I was like, obviously overweight, I was the thinnest person in the waiting room by a long shot, right? And it sort of put in perspective, like, Peter, you think you've got problems. I mean, these people each weigh 400 pounds. And when I went up, when it was my turn to go and see the doctor, the nurse took me up to the scale and weighed me. And like, we got on the scale and I'm like 210 and she's like, oh, this is fantastic.

• 51:18Peter Attia?

  Like, are you here for follow-up? And I'm like, uh, no, I'm here for, and so, you know, it was just, it was just, it was a real eye-opening experience, Tim, because frankly, throughout my entire medical training, which was in surgery, and then again, in surgical oncology, which is cancer surgery, I had never paid attention to this problem, never. You know, if it didn't have to do with cancer, if it didn't have to do with hepatic biliary surgery, I didn't care.

• 51:47Tim Ferriss?

  You know, orthorexia is used as a derogatory term, but I think you're very meticulous in in your own testing and perhaps even separate from Nusi, but you've introduced me to quite a few interesting tools or concepts. For instance, the idea of synthetic ketones. And maybe you could just comment on that as a taster for people, although taste might not be the way to put it. You can explain that. But this was this was an eye opener for me. And I remember hanging out with you having dinner not too long ago where you specked out the the chemical structure of, I guess it was beta hydroxybutyrate and

• 52:31Tim Ferriss?

  a number of other ketone, I guess it'd be salts, right? Or am I?

• 52:36Peter Attia?

  No, they could. They're actually salts or esters.

• 52:38Tim Ferriss?

  Or esters, right? But what what are synthetic ketones and why might people care about them?

• 52:44Peter Attia?

  Well, I think to explain it, I probably have to spend a minute explaining what ketones are biologically or what we call endogenous ketones. So if you think back to what our ancestors were doing up until, you know, a few hundred years ago, or certainly a few thousand years ago, you know, we were basically often going 24 hours or longer without food. And that was just the nature of how things worked, right? And when you're in the hunter gather mindset, that that's your life. Now, the human body is only really evolved to store a finite amount of glucose. And there's only two places we store glucose. One is in the liver, one is in the muscles. And it's only that stash in the liver that's accessible by the brain, because the glucose that gets stored in the muscle can't leave the muscle.

• 53:29Peter Attia?

  It circulates within the muscle. So we have this organ, the brain, which, you know, weighs maybe 2% of our overall body weight, but probably accounts for 20% of our body's metabolic demand. And on top of that, it ordinarily functions exclusively on glucose. And so you have this problem, which is you have an organism that is wildly dependent on glucose, and we can only store a fraction of what we need. We can only store about one day's worth.

• 53:56Tim Ferriss?

  About 400, 400 grams, like 1600 calories?

• 53:59Peter Attia?

  It really depends on the size of the person. But yeah, that's, that's probably about right for average. And remember, most of that, by the way, is not accessible to the whole body. Right. Yeah, so, so the, the trick that we evolved was, um, rather than make glucose out of protein, which is a pretty easy thing to do, the problem with that is if you want to make glucose out of protein, you have to break down muscle. And the last thing you want to do when you're out there trying to find your next meal is lose muscle at, at the expense of getting glucose for your brain. So what if there was a way we could get the brain to use fat? Right? That's, that's the problem that needed to be solved. And the solution was a beautiful one, right? Which is we can break down fat, of which even the leanest hunter gatherer

• 54:42Peter Attia?

  had days and days, if not months of fat on their body. What if you could break that fat down in the liver into another type of molecule distinct from glucose that the brain specifically could actually utilize as fuel? And that's where ketones enter. And so what, what our bodies do when prolonged fasting occurs, and by prolonged, I really mean it even begins at 24 hours of fasting, is we start breaking down our own sources of fat. We start making this thing you referred to, beta hydroxybutyrate, that, not to get too geeky on it, but beta hydroxybutyrate and another member of that family called acetoacetate, they exist in an equilibrium. And these things get shuttled into the Krebs cycle, which I think your

• 55:24Peter Attia?

  readers, your readers will be familiar with. Um, and it basically becomes another substrate for making ATP. And so all of a sudden, and George Cahill, who is sort of a luminary in this field, passed away a few years ago, but George Cahill is one of the, sort of the, the leading godfathers in metabolism at Harvard University. Um, he did some legendary experiments, um, in the 50s and 60s where they, you know, they had subjects that they would starve for seven to 14 days and just measure glucose levels and ketone levels. And you'd think that after 14 days of not eating, a person would be, you know, mentally foggy, not well. And it turned out it was just the opposite, right? After a couple day lull, and you know this personally, Tim, because you've done these long fasts. Right. After a couple of days of hell, it's actually the reverse, right? You feel amazing.

• 56:09Peter Attia?

  Yeah, you feel unbelievable. And, and what Cahill showed was, you know, what fraction of the brain's energy was coming from those ketones. So, okay, so that's relevant, that's starving. But look, outside of the odd, you know, let's do a one week a year fast sort of thing, how does that play into something beyond that? Well, the other way you can achieve ketosis, though not to the same extreme, Is through something called nutritional ketosis, which is restricting the one dietary component primarily that restricts ketone formation and keeping at a minimum the other one that also restricts it. And those are carbohydrates and proteins respectively. And so if you eat a diet that has very little carbohydrate in it and only a modest amount

• 56:51Peter Attia?

  of protein, and the rest of it, of course, made up from fat, you can also generate ketones. Now, to your question, it turns out that you can drink, or you know, consume in some fashion, but they're all typically liquid, you can drink these ketone molecules directly. And that's what we call these exogenous or supplemental ketones. And they come in multiple different forms. They basically exist in as a beta hydroxybutyrate ester, a beta hydroxybutyrate salt, and an acetoacetate diester. And I've tried all of these things and I can safely say-

• 57:28Tim Ferriss?

  Why don't you tell people, why don't you recount your first experience consuming-

• 57:32Peter Attia?

  So the first, the first one I tried was the beta hydroxybutyrate ester, which a very good friend of mine sent me. And I had been told these things taste horrible. That I had talked to two people who had consumed those before. And these are stoic dudes. Like these aren't, you know, this isn't like a six-year-old kid, right? This is like stoic military dudes who said, oh, man, that's the worst tasting stuff on earth. And, and so I knew that, but I think that piece of information was sort of like fleeting in the excitement when the box came. And so I tear open the box. And also, there was a note in there that explained a somewhat palatable cocktail that you could like, you know, mix

• 58:15Peter Attia?

  that like how you could mix this with 10 other things. And I just disregarded that. And I just took out like the 50 milliliter flask and I chugged it. And I remember it was like six in the morning because my wife was still sleeping. And, you know, all these thoughts go through your mind. So first of all, you drink it and it tasted like, like how I imagine jet fuel or diesel would taste. You know, if you've ever smelled distillate, it's this horrible odor and you can sort of imagine what it would taste like. This is what it tasted like. And so my first thought was, goddamn, like, what if I go blind? Like, what if there's like methanol in here? Like, what did I just do? And then my next thought was just, oh my god, you're gagging. I mean, you're really gagging.

• 58:58Peter Attia?

  And now, if you puke this stuff up, you're gonna have to lick up your puke and this stuff. I mean, it's just gonna be a disaster, right? And so, I'm like retching and gagging and like trying not to wake up the family and trying not to like spew my ketone esters all over the kitchen. And it took like 20 minutes for me to get out and do my bike ride, which was the whole purpose of that experiment.

• 59:22Tim Ferriss?

  Must have been a record setter.

• 59:24Peter Attia?

  Oh god, it was, um, those things are unbearable.

• 59:33Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there you have it kiddos. I hope you found these tips as helpful as I did and that your sleep benefits from them. If there are other topics, other themes you'd like me to piece together by going back into all of my episodes and trying to find specific patterns, please let me know on Twitter, @Tferris. That is Twitter, I don't know why I'm doing that this episode, but I like it. Twitter.com/TFerris, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Or you can leave comments on the blog post associated with this podcast. You can find show notes for this one and every other podcast I've done at tim.blog/podcast.

• 1:00:17Tim Ferriss?

  And until next time, as always, thank you for listening. And, oh yes, mina sae.

• 1:00:28Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my

• 1:01:08Tim Ferriss?

  close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 1:01:31Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:02:14Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:02:52Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:03:32Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04:15Tim Ferriss?

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