Sleep Experts: The Truth About Melatonin, Sex, and Sleep w/ Arianna Huffington & Matt Walker | EP #168

In this episode, recorded at the 2025 Abundance Summit, Matt, Arianna, and Peter discuss the importance of sleep and well-being to extend your healthy lifespan. Recorded on March 12th, 2025 Views are my own thoughts; not Financial, Medical, or Legal Advice. Matthew Walker is a neuroscientist and professor at UC Berkeley, best known for his groundbreaking research on sleep. He is the author of the international bestseller Why We Sleep and has contributed extensively to public understanding of the science of sleep through TED Talks, major media appearances, and academic publications. Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global and co-founder of The Huffington Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize under her leadership. She’s a bestselling author of 15 books, including Thrive and The Sleep Revolution, and has been named to Time’s 100 Most Influential People and Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Powerful Women. Learn more about Exponential Mastery: https://bit.ly/exponentialmastery Learn more about Thrive Global: https://thriveglobal.com/ Learn more about Matt Walker: https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/ Learn more about Abundance360: https://bit.ly/ABUNDANCE360 ____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ Get 15% off OneSkin with the code PETER at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Newsletter _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Sex is great for sleep. Uh, yeah. You're welcome. Um. One of the principal reasons that we have insomnia is because of biological and psychological anxiety and stress. I am just so tired, but I'm so wired, I can't fall asleep or stay asleep.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  The truth is that we are living in tumultuous times. Learning how to move into the eye of the hurricane is absolutely critical for good sleep and for health generally.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  I don't care how much you sleep. I truly don't. What I care about is the consequences of your lack of sleep, not the lack of sleep itself.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  When you wake up in the morning, are you looking forward to your day? Are you experiencing joy in what you're doing? How reactive am I to challenges? Are you empathetic? Are you creative? All these more intangible measures of our life are also things you should not forget to be aware of. That is not just the numbers. It's also how we are experiencing our life.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Now, that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:15Peter Diamandis?

  Time for your questions.

• 1:20Peter Diamandis?

  All right. John, kick us off.

• 1:23Speaker 04

  This is for Ariana. What a lovely woman you are in person. I'm just amazed. And I wanted to ask, why aren't these items taught in schools rather than waiting until somebody's an adult? And then, secondly, how may I help?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Oh, fantastic. I love that you want to help. And there are so many ways. Didn't he say, "How may I help?"

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Because, you know, you're all, as Peter said earlier, in touch with people who may not have the resources that people in this room have. It could be people at schools. It could be employees. It could be nonprofits you work with. Let us know. We have a foundation. We do a lot of nonprofit work. We have like two little slogans. One is health. Is what happens between doctor visits.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  And when people realize that they are empowered, they take control of what they are doing. And the other is very simple, that behavior change is a miracle drug. And we're in control of it, you know. Peter called it being the CEO of your own health. And one of the things I love about Matt is that you are such a wordsmith. You're so eloquent. You know, a lot of scientists have a hard time communicating and reaching people. And Matt has been able to bridge the science with an incredible communication gift. So we can do all that. Would love to work with you and anyone here who wants to reach millions of people who are suffering.

• 3:05Peter Diamandis?

  Thank you. So, so important. Tom.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  Thank you, Peter. Matt, thank you. I've read some of your stuff. I love the drug idea, but I come from the world of nutrition and supplements. And there's controversy about supplements. But any supplements that you've found that add to the drug that could help with all these sleep analytics? Thanks.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a very good question. I think at first, one could cynically say, if there were some Shangri-La of supplement good sleep that promised you the royal sort of night, the drug companies would have been over it, you know, all over it 20 years ago, making billions of dollars from it. The fact that there aren't perhaps tells us something. I would say, though, that right now, one of the principal reasons that we have insomnia is because of biological and psychological anxiety and stress. It is what I would call the tired but wired phenomenon. I am so tired. I am just so tired, but I'm so wired, I can't fall asleep or stay asleep. There, there is evidence for two compounds, phosphatidylserine and also ashwagandha.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Both of those seem to have the ability to tamp down the fight or flight branch of the nervous system and also respectively, lower the amount of cortisol. They haven't been tested in the context of sleep, but they have been tested outside of the context of sleep for both of those indications. So normally, working with clients, we will often try to get them on something like that, around about 300 to 400 milligrams, together with 2 to 3 grams of glycine.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  And that seems to help with circadian rhythm realignment. Other than that, I would say combine that with behavioral interventions. Anything, as I said, that helps distract the mind together with getting the physiology straight with those two supplements is probably not a bad first step. Thank you.

• 4:55Peter Diamandis?

  Amazing. By the way, when you go home and you receive your transcript of the entire summit, your rag, and you put it into your favorite L L M. And you say, summarize what what Matt said I should do for sleep, you'll get an answer. Can't wait for that. All right, Larry.

• 5:16Speaker 06

  Thank you, Peter. This is for Matt. Do you encounter or have you encountered patients that bring up the issue of restless leg syndrome and or neuropathy as it interrupts their sleep?

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Restless leg syndrome, we we see that quite frequently. Restless leg syndrome, for those who want to work, you usually get sort of this creepy crawly feeling in your legs. You have to massage them. It's horrific. Some people get it in the triceps, too. It is one of the most undiagnosed sleep disorders out there, or at least I should say misdiagnosed. You can progressively walk up the medication pathway. You typically start with things like gabapentin or pregabalin. Pregabalin is a bit harder because it will typically make you a bit more groggy the next morning. Next level, you can go up to something like premipexyl, which actually helps tamp down some of the dopamine or modulate some of the dopamine circuits.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  The problem is you've got to be a bit careful because too much can lead you to become reward sensitive and risk taking. So you've got to be really careful with managing the patient. The final step up, because you can become resistant to that over time, is certain opioid like medications. And of course, people are nervous about those. But those are the three tiers right now that typically we progress through to try to pharmacologically help with restless leg syndrome.

• 6:39Peter Diamandis?

  Everybody, I hope you're enjoying this episode. You know, earlier this year, I was joined on stage at the 2025 Abundance Summit by a rock star group of entrepreneurs. CEOs, investors focused on the vision and future for AGI, humanoid robotics, longevity, blockchain, basically the next trillion dollar opportunities. If you weren't at the Abundance Summit, it's not too late. You can watch the entire Abundance Summit online by going to exponentialmastery.com. That's exponentialmastery.com.

• 7:11Speaker 07

  I am from Greece, calling from Greece. Yes, thank you. Thank you. I'm doing very well, I would say, with multiple steps about sleeping, about the movement, about the connections. But I'm struggling a little bit on this year, maybe with unrest between countries. I would say, maybe just to put it a bit simply and light and neutral. It's a bit, it's been a bit hectic these last few months. And I wonder how would you help us navigate a bit maybe during these months? Maybe how to be a bit less stressed, what can happen between markets, between countries?

• 7:51Peter Diamandis?

  Stress around geopolitics.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  You know, that is such an interesting question. I'm so glad you asked it because the truth is that we are living in tumultuous times. And there is so much happening that is unnerving. That learning how to move into the eye of the hurricane is absolutely critical for good sleep and for health generally. So how can we put all these problems?

• 8:18Peter Diamandis?

  There's so much we can't control.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  There's so much we can't control. And there are two things that we highly recommend. And Matt would love to know what you think. One is no doom scrolling at night.

• 8:31Peter Diamandis?

  No doom scrolling, yes.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Pick a time that you stop reading the news. Trust me.

• 8:36Peter Diamandis?

  I stopped reading the news, period. No, you could not pay me enough to watch the evening news.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 8:43Peter Diamandis?

  Or pick up a newspaper, with all apologies to Huffington Post here. I mean, having someone.

• 8:50Peter Diamandis?

  You know, my neural net, I don't want it trained by that. My mom will tell me if there's something going on in the world you need to know about.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely, but this is key. And also, and all notifications that don't come from people you know, not just you know, you love.

• 9:05Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  You only want notifications from people you love. You don't want notifications from the Huffington Post or CNN that are called breaking news, but trust me, ninety-nine point nine percent are not breaking news. So that helps you kind of get into that eye of the hurricane.

• 9:24Peter Diamandis?

  Andrew, great, great question. Let's go to Bert on mic five. Matt, what are you doing when you're traveling across time zones? Peter, you're hopping to Saudi Arabia and two days later you're back. Yes, yes, it's a question for your best tips for jet lag adjustment and all of that. So Matt, you've been developing a new product around that, I think.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, so we are actually creating a, a compound that is going to be designed to protect you against the insufficient sleep that you will face. A lot of companies out there are trying to develop either supplements or drugs that help you sleep more. In truth, I don't care how much you sleep. I truly don't. What I care about is the consequences of your lack of sleep, not the lack of sleep itself. So we're, we're actually about to, we've just raised a round of funding and we are about to start the clinical trial with a new pharmacological suite of compounds that will protect you. But to your question, what can you do now? There's a two-step approach.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Things you do during the flight, things you do after the flight. During the flight, it's the following. As soon as you get on the flight, set all clock faces to the time in the new time zone. At that point, act accordingly. If people in the new time zone are awake, you need to be awake. If they're asleep, you need to try to be asleep. Alcohol and caffeine are not your friends. Try to abstain. The next is try to wake up at least to create ten to twelve hours of sustained wakefulness the following day when you arrive, based on the time you expect to go to sleep. In other words, create enough sleepiness to try to override the lack of sleep drive that you will have when you are in the new time zone.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  The other thing I would say is when you arrive in the new time zone, let's say I fly from SF San Francisco to London, eight hours ahead, I get on the flight at 8pm, I look at my watch, it's not 8pm, it's 4am, London's eight hours ahead, I should be asleep. The next thing I'm going to do is be awake when everyone else is asleep, and asleep when everyone else is awake. Finally, if I really need to up on touchdown in London, I will nap for 15 minutes and I will cut myself off, I can't nap after 1pm, I can have one coffee strategically, then every day I'm in the new time zone, first thing, I can use caffeine in the morning, I need to get 20 minutes of daylight within the first two hours, exercise before midday, eat when everyone else is eating in the new time zone,

• 11:59Speaker 00

  before sleep, one hour before that, I need to take a hot bath or a shower 45 minutes before, three milligrams of melatonin, no less, lights out, mask, and I'm gone.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:13Peter Diamandis?

  Amazing.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  One more, Peter, Peter, one more thing, one more thing, which is, do you really need to go to San Francisco?

• 12:22Peter Diamandis?

  Ah, that's amazing.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  You know, guys, it's like, we need to ask ourselves these questions.

• 12:29Peter Diamandis?

  God bless you, that's amazing.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  You know, the idea that we always think, because we're invited to go to that, or go to that, we gotta go, no. And if you want to live long and live healthy, say no more.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  That was a great demonstration of knowledge versus wisdom.

• 12:49Peter Diamandis?

  Ah.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  And knowing the difference between the two.

• 12:52Peter Diamandis?

  Amazing, amazing. That's why God created Zoom. All right. Real quick, I've been getting the most unusual compliments lately on my skin. Truth is, I use a lotion every morning and every night religiously called OneSkin. It was developed by four PhD women who determined a 10 amino acid sequence that is a senolytic that kills senile cells in your skin. And this literally reverses the age of your skin. And I think it's one of the most incredible products. I use it all the time. If you're interested, check out the show notes. I've asked my team to link to it below. All right, let's get back to the episode.

• 13:31Speaker 08

  I love this panel, but I want to ask you, Matt. I'm a nutritionist naturopath. I use cortisol panels for stress. I use inositol for sleep, great magnesium glycinate, ashwagandha, phosphatilserein. What about using regular melatonin for inflammation, breast cancer, probation every night?

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think melatonin is, it's got an interesting story with a caveat. Firstly, most people take too much. They're taking five, 10, 20 milligrams. That's what we call a supraphysiological dose. The worry there is like testosterone replacement therapy for males. After you've consistently dosed, maybe a year, year and a half, the testes will shut down their own natural production and it may never return. The worry is the same with melatonin. The second problem with-

• 14:16Peter Diamandis?

  How much should you take?

• 14:17Speaker 00

  So really you're aiming for between one to three milligrams.

• 14:21Speaker 08

  Heinbrüll is right.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  That's, that's right. So that's what we would call a normative physiological dose. There was a study published where they looked at 20 different vendors. Based on what it said on the bottle, actually what, what you were swallowing ranged from 83% less to 464% more than what was stated on the bottle. So it's a bit of a wild west. I would say that melatonin is largely inert as a compound for the most part. My worry also is with the pediatric setting. It's now increasingly used. Melatonin is a bioactive hormone. It's critical for gonadal development. They did a study in juvenile male rats, teenage male rats, and they dosed them with high amounts of melatonin. It stunted testicular growth and caused testicular atrophy.

• 15:07Peter Diamandis?

  Wow.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  If I go into a parent and teacher association meeting one evening and say, stand up on stage, I'd like to start dosing your children with a bioactive hormone. In fact, I'd like you to dose them with about something that's maybe two or three X the natural amount.

• 15:21Peter Diamandis?

  So no sleep aids for kids?

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Right. It will stunt their developmental growth and start doing it every night. Who's with me? So that said, I think there's a cluster of people for whom melatonin does work, but largely melatonin does not help with the generation of sleep. It helps with the timing of the sleep and that's why it's never been really prescribed for insomnia.

• 15:40Peter Diamandis?

  Amazing. Let's go to Jason on Zoom. Jason?

• 15:45Speaker 09

  I'd love to get your take on modafinil. I take it a few times a week and I want to know what kind of negative impact it might have on your sleep.

• 15:53Peter Diamandis?

  Great question, something I use when I go overseas and have to go on stage.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a fantastic question. Modafinil is a wake promoting chemical as well, you know. Right now, we haven't necessarily seen long term studies that have systematically evaluated what taking modafinil would be in terms of brain or body physiology at weekly doses. Most people I know and that we work with take it strategically only under kind of break glass in case of emergency conditions, four or five times a year. I think right now, we don't have any evidence right now that it has marked deleterious effects other than its addictive potential. I would say though, that when you fight biology, you normally lose.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  The way you know you've lost is disease and sickness. That would be my only worry in terms of free lunches. Typically in biology, there aren't any.

• 16:50Peter Diamandis?

  Love it. Jason?

• 16:52Speaker 10

  This question is for Matt. So Matt, I haven't gone to sleep before 12pm probably in the last five years.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  12am or 12pm?

• 17:00Speaker 10

  So midnight.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:02Speaker 10

  So midnight. And I live on aeroplanes, I travel a lot, which has been very disruptive. And something that I've noticed, I ran an experiment on myself to try and understand sleep because everyone said like, how do you survive? How do you get through it? And it's really to try and understand a bit of an argument from you in terms of the timing is... So I found that consistency was more important than the timing.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:27Speaker 10

  So that was the first thing. The second thing was obviously darkness, you needed to create the darkness. And then alcohol and sugar were actually the biggest influences. So it didn't matter, you know, if I had that consistent, but I spiked sugar, messed up my sleep, alcohol messed up my sleep. And then I could have a coffee 30 minutes before bed. So to the coffee metabolism issue, like it doesn't bother me at all. I can sleep straight, straight after that. And then with the data, measuring it through aura and ultra humans and glucose monitors, etc. The data showed that my stress was low, my heart rate forty four to forty five or forty eight, let's say on on rest mode. And even last night, for example, I've travelled from Dubai, so it's a sixteen hour flight.

• 18:11Speaker 10

  Put the Friends headset, I thought maybe the data was incorrect from my previous stuff. Twelve P M sleep, six A M, one and a half hours deep sleep. So what's going on with me that's different to, I don't know, what data says typically?

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I I don't know if there is anything different going on. I think these measures of things like stress, they're a decent first proxy, but they don't go into the cell and they don't go into the organ systems of the body. So if I were you, I would be doing, let's say, blood panels and I would really want to know, can I convince myself that the schedule that I've just described comes with absent deleterious effects on my biology? At that point, then I would say, that's fantastic. And you would want to do the within-subject design, where you are stable and you're sleeping. Try to find, you know, four or five, for you maybe, try to say a two-week period where you're stable.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Do blood panel work after that two weeks of good, solid sleep? Use that as your reference. Step and repeat when you are in intense travel and ask yourself the hard biological question, do I see any detriments? If not, then I would say you may be one of those people who has incredible resilience. All I know is, based on the data, and this is no slight, the number of people who can survive on at least less than seven hours of sleep without showing any impairment on all of our measures, rounded to a whole number and expressed as a percent of the population, is zero.

• 19:42Speaker 10

  Interesting. I like the biological, I think it's good.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, I I just want to add, you know, you mentioned the proxy for stress. I don't think we should minimize the fact that a great proxy is joy. Like, when you wake up in the morning, are you looking forward to your day? Are you experiencing joy in what you're doing? Are you reactive? I mean, my barometers are not just my order ring, trust me, I track all that. But it's also, how reactive am I to challenges? You know, we all have challenges every day. How am I handling it? Sometimes, when I've had a really good night's sleep, I know that I can say, bring it on, I'll handle that. Are you empathetic? Are you creative?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  All these more intangible measures of our life are also things you should not forget to be aware of. That is not just the numbers, it's also how we are experiencing our life.

• 20:44Peter Diamandis?

  Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. Company's called Fountain Life. And it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And, you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time. But because we never look, we don't find out.

• 21:26Peter Diamandis?

  So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the US today, and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full-body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI-enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, DEXA scan, a GRAEL blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. Hundred fifty gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning. When it's solvable, you're gonna find out eventually. Might as well find out when you can take action. Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics.

• 22:10Peter Diamandis?

  We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life, and we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com/peter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller, Life Force, we had 30,000 people who reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountainlife.com/peter, we'll put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is, for me, one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends.

• 22:51Peter Diamandis?

  It's a chance to really add decades on to our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com/peter. It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. Got a little time left. I'm gonna go to Slido. How does sex activity positively or negatively impact sleep quality and routine?

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, sex is great for sleep. We know that sex, as long as it, you're welcome. Sex does impact sleep beneficially. Sex, and mentioning no particular gender here to pay attention to, sex, as long as it accomplishes orgasm, results in about a 70 to 73% improvement in subjective sleep quality. If you don't have a partner, all is not lost. It turns out that self-simulation can get you about 50% of the way there. So in terms of sleep credit, some have argued that you're making money hand over fist there. So both are, look, if you're gonna play some music, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go that direction.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  I would also note that, by the way, for every one hour of sleep that a woman gets in addition to her norm, her interest in being physically intimate with her partner increases by 14%. Now, the libido drugs out there, things like Valisi, they can increase libido by about 24%, but you can get more than 50% of the way there with just an extra hour of sleep. So yeah, I'm sure probably if there are any...

• 24:24Peter Diamandis?

  How long are you guys here today? Are you here through lunch?

• 24:27Speaker 00

  All day and almost all of the night.

• 24:30Peter Diamandis?

  Okay. Give it up for these guys. They're going to be here. Find them. Let's give it up for Arianna and Matt Walker. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm going to be releasing all of the talks, all the keynotes from the Abundance Summit exclusively on exponentialmastery.com. You can get on-demand access there. Go to exponentialmastery.com.

• 25:06Speaker 11

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