How To Sleep Smarter With Shawn Stevenson

You cannot underestimate the value of an incredible night's sleep. On the rare occasion I awake from 8 hours of dead to the world slumber, everything is better. I am more present, alert and productive. The quality of my interactions with family and friends is significantly enhanced. Colors are brighter. My mood is sunnier. And physically, I feel amazing. So I can't help but wonder: what would my life be like if I could sleep that well every night? Intellectually, we all know sleep is super important. But most — including myself — fail to acknowledge just how crucial sleep is to every aspect of our daily lives. Traditionally, sleep is the first thing I compromise when I get busy. Sleep is for whimps! But I've completely changed my tune on this issue. As I age, achieving optimal sleep quality has become increasingly elusive. And I have become more attuned to the extent to which my day is negatively impacted by sub-optimal sleep. So I have recently committed to experimenting with a number of techniques and strategies (some obvious, some not) to improve what I now understand and appreciate is absolutely essential to living a balanced, healthy and optimally productive life. I'm happy to say it's working. This is a long way of saying that I have been thinking alot about sleep lately. So I'm excited to share this conversation on the subject with sleep expert Shawn Stevenson. A wellness evangelist and host of the Model Health Show podcast, Shawn also recently authored Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to A Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success*. I had a great time on Shawn's podcast about a year ago (click here to listen), so it was fun to explore his compelling personal journey with wellness and dive deep into the subject of sleep. Specific topics include: * Shawn's struggles with health & depression * hitting rock bottom as a catalyst for change * environmental epigenetics * strategies to combat preventable illnesses * the effects of sleep on your daily life * sleep as a force multiplier * the relationship between cortisol & melatonin * the benefits of early morning activities on cortisol levels * sleep & temperature regulation * optimizing cortisol rhythm through light therapy * sex & sleep * the health impact of sleep deprivation * magnesium & melatonin supplements * addressing chronic insomnia Shawn is a great guy with a velvety voice custom made for podcasting. But more importantly, this conversation is packed with practical advice, powerful tools and helpful information that will enhance your appreciation for sleep and just might impact your daily life experience profoundly. So pay attention. Take notes. And enjoy. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  It's not about the amount of sleep that you get. It's about the quality. So making a time on the mattress valid, because people out there and right now sleep for eight hours a night, but they still wake up feeling like a wreck.

• 1:16Rich Roll?

  That's Shawn Stevenson, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:33Rich Roll?

  What's happening, you guys? What's going on? How are you? This is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, the show where each week I sit down with thought leaders, paradigm-breaking minds and personalities across all categories of wellness, health, nutrition, entrepreneurship, creativity, artistry, athleticism, et cetera. Why? To hopefully help you and me access, unleash, unlock our best, most authentic selves. So I appreciate you guys tuning in today. I'm going to do something a little bit different. I know I've talked about this before, but I'm just going completely off script and I'm just going to riff this intro. I know I said, if you're a long time listener, you know

• 2:15Rich Roll?

  that I said this earlier, maybe a couple of months ago, and then I got scared and I went back to scripting my intros and I was listening to one the other day and it felt so like stiff and stilted. And when the theme of your podcast is being real, open, authentic, and honest, it just feels like it strikes a false note. So I'm dispensing with the script today as an experiment. So hopefully this isn't too boring or it doesn't go too much into the weeds, but I just thought, hmm, let's see what happens if I just do this a different way. So today on the show, I got Sean Stevenson. He is the host of a podcast called The Model Health Show. I was a guest on his show quite some time

• 2:58Rich Roll?

  ago. He's a, he's a really cool guy. He's got a new book out. It's called Sleep Smarter. So we're going to talk a lot about sleep today, sleep strategies. He's also got an interesting personal health story that we're going to get into. It's Sunday morning when I'm recording this. By the time you're listening to this on Monday, if you listen to it right away, I'm going to be en route to New York City. I'm speaking at NYU on Tuesday, a panel on vegan athletes along with David Carter, the 300 pound vegan, Dr. Michelle Mc Mackin, both of whom have been guests on this podcast. And it's open to the public. It's right on Washington Square, Washington, yeah, Washington Park, Washington Square Park South, whatever

• 3:43Rich Roll?

  that road is right there. Anyway, you can find out more about the event at richroll.com/appearance. It's a big auditorium. I think it seats like 450 people. I think there's still open spaces. So if you're in New York City and you want to connect and You know, enjoy a really cool event. Please come and see us. I thought I'd give you guys a quick community update. If you're following me on YouTube, you saw my community video. We got the teepee up. Tyler turned 21, my eldest. You know him as the former podcast producer. Him and his girlfriend are moving into a gigantic teepee on our property. That got erected the

• 4:22Rich Roll?

  other day and we celebrated his 21st birthday two nights ago. And it was amazing. We did a formal tea ceremony. We had a small group of about 20 people. We all went around and like honored him. And it was a really kind of beautiful evening of music and, you know, just an intimate experience. And it made me reflect on my own 21st birthday party. It's a stark contrast, contrast of me, you know, doing multiple shots and ultimately projectile vomiting all over the place. And just how much more mature this young man is compared to where I was at his age. And I'm just super proud of him. And I think

• 5:06Rich Roll?

  it's, you know, something that's endemic to a lot of younger people, the millennial generation, at least a lot of the millennials that I've met, much more interested in important things than perhaps my generation was. But if you're interested in kind of getting a little bit of the behind the scenes on how I'm living on a daily basis, you can check me out on Snapchat. I've been doing a lot of stuff there, just kind of sharing snippets of my daily life. My avatar there is I Am Rich Roll, I A M Rich Roll. And also YouTube. I made this promise at the beginning of the year that I was going to do a video a week. And I've sort of fallen off a cliff on that for a couple of reasons. The first and foremost

• 5:51Rich Roll?

  is that it takes a lot of time to edit these videos. Like, I think I spent almost eight hours editing the last one. And for me to find, you know, an opportunity to carve out that much time to make a quality video, it's just, I realize it's not happening. Been filming a lot and I just haven't found a moment to sit down and compile it and put together anything interesting that would be worth sharing. And I think that brings me to one of my major character defects, which is control freakism. I'm trying to do everything myself. Everything from editing this podcast, producing it myself, to shooting all the video and then editing the video myself. And I'm under the, you know, sort

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  of tell myself, yeah, but no one else can do it. Like you're the one who knows your vibe and that's how you're expressing, you know, your point of view creatively, et cetera. But the truth is, you know, if I want to be putting out content on the regular, I need some help, right? So I guess what I'm saying is I'm kind of putting it out there. I'm looking for, I'm looking for people who can perhaps assist me. Wizards in audio engineering, wizards in video editing, technology wizards, et cetera. And I don't know what that looks like right now. I haven't really fully conceptualized my exact needs. I'm just perhaps recognizing on a public level that I could use a little bit of help and putting it out there. So

• 7:17Rich Roll?

  more on that as it develops. All right. So we got to pay a few bills here on the podcast. So why don't we do this? Today's episode is brought to you by... All right. So today's show, Sleep, Sean Stevenson. Sleep is super duper important. We all know this intellectually. On a personal level, sleep is something that I've struggled with. Of course, when I'm training super duper hard, I sleep really well. But when I reduce my training load, or I increase my workload, my professional responsibilities, and the

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  stress that comes with that, my sleep gets compromised. And when my sleep is compromised, the quality of my work product is compromised, the quality of my interactions with the people in my life is compromised. Nothing goes quite...

• 8:13Rich Roll?

  So well when I'm not sleeping well. So this is really personally important to me. And I've had my ups and downs with trying to figure out how to dial in my personal equation so that I can get the most out of my those evening hours. And so this is a really interesting conversation about about those tactics, about those strategies, certain things that we can all do to improve the quality of our evening hours, those sleep time hours, and really leverage sleep as a force multiplier. Sean's a good dude, interesting talk, so let's do this.

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  Sean, man, thanks so much for making the trip all the way out here. I know I live in the hinterland and you schlepped all the way from Hollywood, so I appreciate it.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  It's my pleasure, man. This is exciting.

• 9:07Rich Roll?

  I had so much fun doing your podcast and it's been a long time coming to meet you in person. So it's great to meet you, excited for all the cool stuff that you have going on.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Thank you, man.

• 9:16Rich Roll?

  And it's an exciting time for you, man.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is, man. Like I was saying, like, if this was two years ago, I think I would have been a little bit overwhelmed, but I just feel incredibly ready. I feel prepared for the mission at hand.

• 9:29Rich Roll?

  Right. What is the mission?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  The mission is to help the world sleep better, man. You know, we've gotten into a situation where sleep has become an enemy. And it's actually one of the most fundamental. And here's the thing, you know, if you just get right into it, if it wasn't necessary, we would have evolved out of it a long time ago.

• 9:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  You know, but this is where your body changes. True, you know, we could be, it could be an X-Men situation, you know, where we mutate out of it. But the reality is this where our body changes the most, you know, it's the anabolic state. You know, so we're missing out on a whole lot of juiciness, which, you know, of course we'll talk about today.

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  Right. I want to unpack all of that sleep stuff, of course, that's going to be the focus today. But before we, before we do that, I thought it would be cool to kind of take it back a little bit and hear the, the, the Superman origin story.

• 10:22Rich Roll?

  Where's all this coming from? Like, well, the first question I have is, before we even get into that, I want to know just on a personal level, like, because we're both fellow podcasters in the same space, how the podcast journey has been for you? Like, how did this began? How did you decide to start a podcast? And what has the journey kind of meant to you?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah. Well, my story is, just to kind of give a brief snapshot, I got into the health field out of my own desperation, trying to figure stuff out with my own health, which, when I was 20, I was diagnosed with degenerative bone disease, degenerative disc disease. And basically, you know, I was told that there was no cure, you know, there's nothing I could do about it. And I was experiencing this intense pain every day, just this sciatic nerve pain shooting down my leg.

• 11:09Rich Roll?

  Well, let's dig into that a little bit, because it's, it is interesting how that occurred, right? It happened in track practice, you were like 15, doing sprints.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  That was like the preview, you know, that was the preview of things to come. And so, 15 years old, at this point, I'm, I was the youngest in my class, you know, and so I'm a sophomore. Before football season that year, I ran a 4.5 40-yard dash, which is like NFL time, you know? And I'm just a kid, and so, football season's over, I'm going into track season, and I'm ready to go, like, let's see what I can do. And this was about two weeks into the season, I was doing a 200-meter time trial, and this is just me and the coach. And I'm coming off the curve into the straightaway, and my hip broke. And I didn't know that it was my hip, I just thought I pulled a muscle or something. And me being a hard-headed guy, you know, I kept coming to practice for like, two days before I went and got a scan done. And there was, floating off in space, my, the tip of my iliac crest had broken off.

• 12:03Rich Roll?

  Right, that's like the very kind of top edge of your hip bone.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  You got it, man. And, but nobody stopped to ask the question, you know, how did this kid's hip break? It was just standard of care, ultrasound.

• 12:14Rich Roll?

  Right, it's like, you don't have osteoporosis at age 15, or at least you're not meant to.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Right, and there was no trauma involved, so this is, you know, a lot of elderly people see this situation, but a lot of people think that people fall and break their hip. In reality, they, they break their hip and then they fall, you know, and so this was happening to me. And fast forward to the diagnosis when I'm twenty, finally, you know, I get some feedback, but it was all bad, you know, you know, people say it's all good, it was all bad. And that's that journey led me to, you know, fifty pound weight gain over the course of two and a half years, definitely dipped into some depression and depression has a lot of different faces. So my version of depression was very withdrawn, you know, went into a life of seclusion and mad in video games and really struggling with being embarrassed,

• 13:04Speaker 01

  you know, because I was always like the athlete, you know, and so ultimately it all changed when I decided, funny enough, and this is so simple, Rich, I, and this happened with you, I decided to change, you know, I decided to get well.

• 13:18Rich Roll?

  But backing up from that, the initial diagnosis or the kind of recommendations that you were getting from the various doctors that you were seeing were unanimous in that there was nothing that could be done and your life was, you know, going to be just about taking medication and trying to, you know, deal with the pain, but there was no cure to what ailed you, right?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is what is effectively known as a placebo effect, you know, where you're giving it and people know about a placebo effect and this is sort of a positive injunction from somebody who you trust saying that a positive thing will happen. And so a placebo effect is giving a negative injunction and saying that this bad thing is going to happen or, you know, it's when that situation where, you know, you have one month to live type of thing and people who might have walked into the hospital and now wheelchair bound within twenty-four hours, you know, and so I believed them and my body and my mind, my life was showing it.

• 14:12Rich Roll?

  Right, like this resignation to this fate and a sense of powerlessness.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it becomes learned helplessness because you start to create a self fulfilling prophecy when you truly believe that there's nothing you can do. But luckily, I had this blueprint earlier on in life that I was special, you know, like all of us, really. Feel, you know, if we dig deep down, we all feel that way. And I just remember my grandmother saying that, you know, I was gonna do all these amazing things. I was so talented. And I was just looking at myself, you know, I was holding this pill bottle because I had to take medication just to sleep due to the pain. And I was just like, this is not my life. This is not what I signed up for.

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And that's the night I decided to get well. And I'm a very analytical person for the people who we have crossover with our shows know this, you know? And so it wasn't just the clouds parted and like a unicorn came out with a piece of cake for me, you know? It was like, what, what am I gonna do to make this happen? And so I really embarked on three specific things, which was studying everything that I could about nutrition. Um, really getting involved in exercise and movement in a big way, which that had been taken off the table because, you know, well meaning physicians will tell you, you know, be careful, bed rest, don't do anything. And it's out of number one, there's a legal aspect there too.

• 15:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a lot of CYA involved in that.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So and it's, it's a situation you can understand because a lot of people can mess theirself up, you know? And they don't want that on their hands. But the other side of the, of the situation is your body requires movement in order to heal itself. So if it's an acute situation where, you know, you're just now hurt, of course, take a day or two off and let the inflammation go down. But you need to do what you can.

• 15:50Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  You know, and so at two and a half years, I was way past doing what I can. So I just started what I could, you know? I, I started riding elliptical and then, um, doing some walking. Then I got to jogging again for the first time in over two and a half years, picked up the weights and before you know it, man. Long story short, but the big thing was the nutrition and the recovery, which this was the big sleep component. Um, I lost 28 pounds in six weeks and this pain that I've been experiencing for, man, it's even hard to talk about every single, single waking moment of my life for two and a half years was gone.

• 16:24Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  And nine months later, I ultimately got the scan done showing that I regenerate the tissue. I had two herniated discs that retracted on their own. I grew half an inch in my height that I lost three fourths of an inch in height. And my physician's just like, hey buddy, whatever you're doing, keep doing it.

• 16:38Rich Roll?

  Right. Was it the same doctor who gave you the initial diagnosis?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  This was the fourth doctor.

• 16:43Rich Roll?

  Nothing could be done?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the initial doctor, you know, he was long gone. But, and he was the guy that I asked, does this have anything to do with what I'm eating? And at this time, I mean, I'm crushing like McDonald's and like

• 16:54Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, let's

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 16:56Rich Roll?

  You know, let's unpack the background a little bit. I mean, you, you initially, very early on, you were raised by your grandmother, right?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:03Rich Roll?

  And then you went to live with your mom. And that was in kind of sketchier circumstances, right? Bad neighborhoods and, you know, kind of hardscrabble type of existence. And basically a diet that was comprised of, you know, fast food and processed food, right?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, ultimately, yeah. You know, it's, um, you know, a lot of people in this country, you know, because we're in this field, we forget sometimes that so many people are operating from survival, you know, and just eating whatever they can. And there's no distinction between food. It's just if you can eat it, it's food. So I wasn't, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so ultimately, I asked the question, you know, what is my spine actually made of? What are my bones made of? And my template for my eating habits was created early on, just like all of us, you know, and so my grandmother loved me to pieces, but she, you know, she wanted me to be happy while my grandfather was a hunter. You know, and she had her own garden and all this stuff. And so um, I had that around me, but I decided that I want to eat fish sticks and macaroni every day.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  You know, and she let me do that. And it was very difficult for me to eat other things, man. This is real talk. Like, I hardly ever share this story. I didn't eat a salad until I was 25 years old, man. I swear. This is true story.

• 18:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  I tried to eat it once. I would eat broccoli, you know, if it had cheese on it early on, then I evolved out of the cheese. And so, but what happened was I started juicing, you know, to reset my palate. And so this was shortly after coming out of that, that darkness with my, you know, with my spinal condition. And so I started to make green smoothies and juicing, just getting that information into my body because you know that food isn't just food, it's information, you know?

• 18:43Rich Roll?

  But that moment, what, you were 20 when this, when you had this sort of lights, lightbulb moment?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  No, 20 is when the diagnosis hap- diagnosis happened.

• 18:50Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  22 is when I

• 18:52Rich Roll?

  I got you. So from 15 to 20, you're dealing with a situation where you're not even sure what exactly is wrong with you.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  String of injuries, yeah.

• 19:02Rich Roll?

  Then at 20, you get diagnosed with what it actually is, and there's nothing you can do about it. And at 22, you have your fed up, you know?

• 19:11Rich Roll?

  Moment where you're like, I'm done with this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to resolve this on my own. I mean, what, other than pain and, and, you know, just being sort of at that place where you can't tolerate the idea of not doing anything about it. I mean, was there something that occurred that gave you the idea that you could take control of this?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 19:34Rich Roll?

  What motivated that?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. Sometimes, rock bottom is a good place to be, you know, because it's really, it's just up from there. And so, about a week prior, I'd received the last word on whether or not there was a chance that I could get well. Like, this was the, the last, last doctor, the best doctor, who would be able to, you know, all these people were telling me, he's gonna be able to help you, and he said he couldn't help me. So it was either give up, or do something about it. And also, you know, like I mentioned, my grandmother, and I also had a son, you know, I had a young son. And just the fear of not being able to do the things I'm doing with him today, you know, I was like, I'm not gonna be able to

• 20:17Speaker 01

  teach him how to play baseball, and you know, all this stuff. I mean, I was in a bad way, man. I was walking around with a back brace, you know? And so, it was a catalyst for change, you know, your, your environment can be both, you know, it can be something that helps to bring you down, or elevate you, depending on your perspective. And so, I wanted to be everything that I could for my, for my son, and to live up to the potential that my, my grandmother saw in myself, in, in my, in me, and also that I saw in myself as well.

• 20:43Rich Roll?

  And what was the first thing that you did? I mean, did you go online and start researching bone health, or what was the, you know?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  The first thing I did was the lowest hanging fruit, which for guys, it's exercise, you know? So I went to the gym and started to, you know, get on the elliptical and get on the stationary bike, you know, exercise is a low hanging fruit. And I knew I needed to change the way I was eating, because I was, I just ate Papa John's the day before, you know? Shout out to Peyton Manning, Super Bowl, Papa John's. But, the bottom line was, that was what my pilot was set for. So what I started to do was, again, low hanging fruit, I just changed the ingredients, you know, instead of eating a burger McDonald's, I go to Whole Foods and get, you know, pasteurized, blah, blah, blah, sprouted grain buns and organic oven fries and broccoli, you know, and drink water like it was going out of style.

• 21:31Rich Roll?

  So just making small changes that are obvious. Like, everybody knows it's better to eat broccoli than go to McDonald's.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  True, true. So it was those baby steps, but I mean, I'm also, if I get the information, I go full in. You know, and so I don't know if I share this with you. Eventually, just maybe it was about two years into it. I went 100% raw vegan for three entire years.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that. I mean, we talked a little bit about vegan stuff on your show, but I don't recall you mentioning that.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. I mean, I went in and I live in St. Louis. It's cold, man. Cold winters, green smoothies, but I did what I had to do. You know, and it really, again, putting that information into your body really changes you, you know, but early on, it was those small things and that evolved into, yes, changing my course of study in school to biology, kinesiology. But, you know, and I tell people this all the time, who wants to like, what, I want to know what you know. I learned about half of a percent of what I know in school, you know, so I just dove into books, you know, and dove into online research. And started to find stories of people who were in a similar situation who recovered, you know, and one of the biggest questions again was what are my bones made out of? And what comes to mind when you think of bone health? What mineral?

• 22:44Rich Roll?

  Well, calcium.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Exactly, dude. And everybody knows that, but there's like 200 other things involved that are equally as important. You know, magnesium, silica, sulfur bearing amino acids. Like, I wasn't getting any of that stuff, man. And so.

• 22:59Rich Roll?

  Did you have low bone density throughout your entire body or was it localized to your hip region?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  What was so crazy is I came across this book and to answer the question, yes, it was localized for me. But I read this book called Acid and Alkaline, which there's a lot of shaky science as far as that goes. But it just changed my paradigm because I remember learning about that in biology, but it had no relevance to me and my body. And in the book, I believe the author's name was Herman Iara. It's a really old book, really small book. And it said that when your body is deficient in calcium, it will first rob it from your hips and your spine. And I was like, what? He knows me, like he's been following me around.

• 23:40Rich Roll?

  And Well, also, if you're eating a very, if you're eating a very acidic diet, uh, then your body is going to leach calcium out of your bones.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Your body works on, your body works on a hierarchy of needs. So if it needs to clot your blood and needs calcium to do that, your, your hips aren't, aren't as important, as important as keeping you alive. So that's just how the system works.

• 24:02Rich Roll?

  Interesting. So protracting out from that, I would presume that if you did not take the steps to try to mend this on your own, that eventually that bone density issue would have spread out of your hips into the rest of your body.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 24:17Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. And it's quite amazing that through pretty simple stuff, you were able to not only, um, you know, resolve the pain, but actually correct the spine. I mean, it is that Ayurvedic principle of, um, of the body's incredible power and capacity for self-healing when you treat it right. Like the body knows what to do.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:40Rich Roll?

  If you can give it the right information, it will do it on its own.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's too simple, Rich.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  But for me, it was my genetic predisposition, which towards the degeneration of my spine and my hips.

• 24:53Rich Roll?

  Other people in your family that have it?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, and so for other people, their genetic card might be diabetes or heart disease, whatever the case may be. You know, and this is something I actually talk about in the book is uh, understanding, you know, and I know you've talked about this as well, epigenetics. And understand that we all have genes for bad stuff. You know, it's just some of, some of us never, never had them activate. While others of us are living with it constantly. You know, it's really about the environment outside of ourselves and in our bodies that we create that determine whether or not a gene is expressed. It's really that simple.

• 25:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that idea of, well, I'm just genetically predisposed to have this and there's nothing that I can do is now quickly being, I mean, I'm no expert in this area, but is sort of quickly being, uh, superseded by this idea that you can control the expression of these undesirable genes through environment and lifestyle.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was kind of like. For a couple of decades, like the dark ages of science, and that led to a lot of strange decisions, you know, proactive breast surgeries, you know, and just removal of breasts because of a gene, a potential problem being there, even though the person hasn't expressed the disease yet, you know, and this fear that's created around that. But also, it's a fear for surgeries, fear for creation of medications, like if you have this problem with this particular gene, we can create a drug for that. And guess what? We've got like twenty, twenty-five thousand various genes. That's a lot of opportunity for medications. Not trying to create no conspiracy theories here, you know, but it's just understanding that, you know, there's a bigger thing at play here.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  And we all know this intuitively that you, if you, if you get here, and so, by the way, only about five or less percent of us are born with a true dis- discombobulation with our genetic printout. Basically, we're born with a mutation of some sort, you know, and the rest of us get here with pretty good cards to do what we're gonna do. But it's through our lifestyle factors that determine whether or not. So if somebody's like, you know, I'm, I get cancer at thirty, why didn't you have cancer when you were five? You know, it's just a question to ask. Well, probably because you were exposed to carcinogens or genetic program kind of ran its course, and then we get into a conver- conversation about telomeres and things like

• 27:13Speaker 01

  that. You know, but it's really fascinating to think about it, if you think, step back and look at the bigger picture.

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  Have you done the twenty-three and me thing and gotten your gene map and all that?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I have not, man. So many people have been on me.

• 27:24Rich Roll?

  I think you would be a candidate for that. You'd be all over that.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been all over sleep, so, you know, for the past five years, and that's all I've been digging into, you know. I've done a lot of other self-quantifying experimentation as well, which I, I can't wait to talk about this stuff. I'm still doing some testing, you know, and looking at a lot of stuff to do with the gut. And man, in the Kreb cycle and just there's so many cool things that we can monitor now. But man, the more that I learn, the more that I know that we don't know anything, and the more that I know that we just need to do basic stuff. Like, you can get too crazy with the testing, and I'm, I'm currently in that right now, so.

• 28:02Rich Roll?

  Just constantly doing tests on yourself.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's silly.

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  It's hard to just live your life when you're doing that, I think. Taking the quantified self a little bit too far sometimes.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  I know what that's like, but all right, man. So, so you heal yourself. I mean, that must have been an incredibly empowering experience to have. I mean, and that, I assume, rooted you in this life path of making health and wellness kind of your mission, right?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You know, when you have, when you're told that there's something that's incurable, and then you see that thing turned around, you have an extremely powerful presence, you know, and I was able to come from a different place when I was speaking to people, you know, because that was really the birthing of my career when I kind of turned my health around. People at my university, I was still in school at the time, started coming up and asking like, "What did you do?" And I remember this teacher, I was walking out of class, and he stopped me. He was like, "What did you do? You look so healthy." Like it was a problem, you know? And it wasn't like I looked like a guy who lost weight. I looked really healthy, you know? And so I started working with my professors and faculty and students and just kind of,

• 29:09Speaker 01

  taking over my, my university at the time and helping people to get well, helping people to do the things that I was able to do and more. So that got me into, you know, researching diabetes and cancer. And I've got some before and afters with breast cancer scans, for example, on some of the episodes of my show that are just shocking, man. What can happen in one month by transforming your lifestyle, you know? And, you know, ultimately, you know, opening up my practice, working with thousands of people, and then that led to speaking and going all over the place and doing that. And this is where the podcast manifested.

• 29:44Rich Roll?

  Now we're on to, we're going to answer the first question, right?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  So, I was doing this TEDx talk in Las Vegas, and a funny story. So, right before me was the co-founder of Zappos.

• 29:59Rich Roll?

  Ah, Tony Hsieh.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Not Tony Hsieh, it was another guy, I forgot his name. Sorry, guy, if you're listening. And the mayor of Las Vegas was right before me, the mayor at the time. And this guy was like, you know, story to be the mob boss lawyer, you know? And he made this weird law that if anybody did a Movie in Las Vegas, he had to be in it. Very interesting character, right?

• 30:23Rich Roll?

  That's like out of a movie in and of itself.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  He was a movie like figure, you know? And so I did the did the tech talk and actually, um, so this was like two thousand and ten. And so I my, the name of the talk was how chocolate can save the world. And so this is before like everybody's going bananas on on chocolate and cacao and this whole thing. So everybody knows about that now, but afterwards I was coming off stage. And this couple came up to me who ran this really popular online magazine. They were like, uh, we're starting this podcast and we're looking for a face of the podcast. And I was like, uh, okay, sounds cool. What the hell is a podcast? You know, and so that was my initiation into it. And for about almost two years, I did the be well buzz podcast.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  And so I got my feet wet there, you know, making all my mistakes, making it so that the editing takes twice as long as the show itself. And ultimately evolved as I built my own brand and started the model health show, which is my show. And luckily, uh, I was, I was doing a keynote for this chiropractic event. And the MC was a radio producer and she was like, I've got to have you in, got to work with you. So I came in and, um, we just really clicked. I was like, hey, you know, I'm going to start this show. What do you think about doing the show with me? And so that's where my co-host and I connected.

• 31:38Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool. That's cool. And have you always done it in that super swank studio?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  No, at first it was just me and my microphone, you know, and just trying to imagine that I'm talking to people. Cause I was a speaker, you know, and so I was just trying to channel that. But now, yeah, then having the opportunity to be in a studio, a major studio, uh, for major production of, you know, nationwide radio was a huge advantage and a gift and a blessing for sure. But that was the opportunity that I had. We still came out of the gate very strong because I made all the mistakes. You know, so after about a year, the podcast just took off and then we started to do the millions of downloads. And we started with a couple hundred a day, you know?

• 32:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Uh, and then now we're up trying to get to rich roll status.

• 32:26Rich Roll?

  And how long have you been doing video of it? Because that's something, a lot of people have been asking me, oh, you should, you should video the podcast, we're, we're doing a little, I'm going to video, I'm videoing some of it right now. And I'm interested in that, but I'm not sure if that's, I don't know.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Fun fact, you might have been our first video podcast.

• 32:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:44Rich Roll?

  I remember we had some technical stuff.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was because we were trying to figure it out, you know?

• 32:49Rich Roll?

  But has that been good for you? Or do you think that?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Some, here's, here's what I found is that the, the video podcasts that do well are the ones that are with people who are big on YouTube.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  You understand? So like, I, I had on Bob Proctor, I had on Eric Thomas, who's just huge on YouTube. And so automatically when those videos get uploaded with their names, but then we get so many new followers as well.

• 33:15Rich Roll?

  It's a different audience. It's a totally different demographic of people, people that are on YouTube versus people that are listening to podcasts.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, anyway, just something I'm thinking about. All right, well, where does, where does sleep come into the picture? Like, how did you get, how did you latch on to sleep as the thing that you really wanted to focus on and write a book about?

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Again, I'm a very analytical person, so first of all, seeing this in my clinic and seeing people would come in and we had right around an 89% reversal rate success for type 2 diabetes, you know, so helping people to get off, you know, metformin and things like that in conjunction with working with their physician. And so I would get a lot of referrals from physicians in my area and we would just rock in it, man, we're doing so well.

• 33:57Rich Roll?

  And what's the basic protocol for this reversal?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  First of all, you have to understand everybody's different, you know, like we have some people that I can't even believe they're walking around, you know, 400 plus blood sugar, you know? And then there's people who are just barely in that diabetic range, almost prediabetic. And, but the, the approach is somewhat the same, you know, so it's looking at how extreme their issue is, but number one is education first, you know, but I have to make it fun, you know? And so I break out the blackboard and break it down, like this is exactly, because they don't get that kind of. Treatment or experience with their physician a lot of times, not like they don't care, but just the time factor.

• 34:39Rich Roll?

  And are physicians, in your experience, hip to the fact that it can be reversed at all?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Now.

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  I mean, most, now, even like a couple of years ago, I would think, most of them are just about managing it.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, a couple of years ago, not so much. Things are changing now, like this headlines in the news now, you know, and this, so many stories of people getting off their medications and successfully, you know, being reversed, you know, or, you know, the C word, you know, and they're, they're actually free of the illness. And so, helping them to understand the disease. So, insulin is really driven by a function of what's going on with generally carbohydrate intake slash protein intake and turning on insulin, but just doing it haphazardly. It's not that carbohydrates are bad, or proteins are bad, or any of these macronutrients, but that's just a piece of nutrition, as I know you talk about on your show as well.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  And so, it's really about helping them understand that especially these processed carbohydrates that they tend to be eating are driving this insulin dysregulation. And so, now we need to just kind of flood their body with micronutrient-rich carbohydrates, proteins, fats, you know? And so, it's really kind of that simple, but here's the trick, though, and I'll just tell you straight out, it's the art of getting the person to do it.

• 35:55Rich Roll?

  Right, that's the thing, right? It's not, it's, it's less about the knowledge or the understanding of what to do, it's in the implementation.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Exactly, because I could treat them allopathically, too, and like, you know, here, take this bitter melon, take this, you know, um, Paudiarco tea, you know, and start treating symptoms and, you know, stack conditions in their favor at the same time, but ultimately, if they're not gonna do it, what's the point? So, that's where the real work is for the master practitioner, is making it so that it's approachable and doable for the person.

• 36:24Rich Roll?

  So, what is the super secret to getting people to actually do the right thing?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Dude, this is, and it's so simple, man, and you know this already, it's just caring, you know, it's just being there with the person and saying, I got you, you know, like, we're gonna do this together, I care about you, and getting connected to what matters to them, you know, a lot of people, sometimes, this issue, it could be a result of just pure...

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Lack of education. Sometimes it could be lack of attention. You know, and finding out what that root root cause is. And a lot of times these illnesses, people feel very isolated because you can't see a lot of these things. You know, it's an internal struggle. For me specifically, like the issue with my back, like when I was a kid and somebody would say their back hurts. I'm like, man up, you know, like, what are you talking about? And then I got totally broken down and it doesn't look like anything's wrong with me, except I'm gaining a little weight. You know, maybe I'm pale, you know, not feeling that well, but generally I look fine, like, you know, get on with your life. Not understanding that pain that I'm going through. So making, helping people to feel significant, helping them to feel like they're not alone, helping them to feel like they're connected to something bigger than themselves.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  So, um, just some, uh, this woman's popping to mind and she had two kids, you know? And she was a single mom and she wanted to be there for them, you know? So really finding a creative way to link that up strong, like this is going to take you away from your kids if you don't do this.

• 37:51Rich Roll?

  Right, but you can't live with these people or be around them 24/7. And I would think that cultivating community and accountability, you know, on a daily basis is really going to make the biggest difference in terms of getting them to actually stick to a protocol.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Let's be clear, this is not scalable. All right, it's not scalable, so I would.

• 38:09Rich Roll?

  I mean, how many people can you possibly treat in that way with that level of, you know, empathy?

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was over 10 years clinical practice, man. Every day, you know, and seeing generally about five people a day because I would generally spend about an hour with people. And I would involve my family in it, you know, a lot, pretty much all of my clients would meet my wife. We would go to their house, help them to prepare food, like all this stuff. Like, I can't believe I used to do that, but it was very time intensive, but it was very rewarding. But ultimately it did for sure take its toll on me, you know, because it's a, like a spiritual kind of emptying out and not getting filled up myself.

• 38:48Rich Roll?

  You take on all of their energy. You know what I mean?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  You have to.

• 38:51Rich Roll?

  You have to take on their struggle.

• 39:00Rich Roll?

  I think that every hospital in the country should have a preventative medicine wing and have that wing staffed with not only doctors who are seeing patients and providing the kind of care and information that's required to deal with these chronic lifestyle illnesses, but also have people that can do the outreach, you know, that can either do the visits or create, you know, weekly meetings where these people come in and they can support each other. It's about the follow-up and the accountability because you're talking, you're trying to tell people that they have to change their, they only have to do one thing, they have to change their entire life. You know what I mean?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:40Rich Roll?

  Like, most people aren't going to do that and you can scare them.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:44Rich Roll?

  But I think if you empower them and give them the tools and the resources that will allow them to step into that and feel supported in that regard, then they can make that jump. But I think it, there has to be a strategy and a way to do that that is scalable.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. This is, it's happening now.

• 40:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Because of like, right now, because of you, because of my platform with podcasting, with YouTube videos and, you know, this quote, "new media," there are so many physicians that listen to my show. It's crazy.

• 40:18Rich Roll?

  That's great.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  You know, and I just got a message from this guy, maybe he's listening now, John Kim, and he's been a really avid follower of my show and he just started his residency. And he's just like, you know, he shared his story with his own health recovery for following some of the stuff we talk about. And he's just looking at, looking to share that with the rest of the world, with all of his patients. But it's the system itself is broken, you know, where, working at university, I got the, had the opportunity to work with a lot of nurses. And just seeing the, their before and after, like, year one, before you go into school, for the, you know, doing the, the clinicals and all that stuff, to four years later, and they are beat down. And they haven't even started their job, quote, "job" yet, you know, and the system is just...

• 41:04Speaker 01

  It's broken, man, where we're not taking care of the people who are taking care of us. You know, and but just to kind of take a step back as well. And that's a big component with sleep as well, you know, and seeing that the shift work. Oh, my goodness, man.

• 41:18Rich Roll?

  I never understood that. I never understood that idea of young doctors having to do the 72 hour, you know, on call thing and being exhausted. And there's kind of this perverse pride in how long they can work without sleeping. And you're talking about taking care of sick people. Or you want to be on your game. Like, why, why are we doing this? Why is this system set up like this? Just because it always has been and it's kind of a hazing thing? Like, I don't understand the logic behind it.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  People, there is no logic and people just don't know. Like, when you go to the physician, generally, you're so messed up, you don't care what's going on with them. Just help me. You know, but there's a study done in the Lancet, it was published in the Lancet. It was a study done on physicians and they had them to do a task, right? So they did this task, sleep deprived them for just 24 hours. They came back to do the same task. They made 20% more mistakes.

• 42:08Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  All right, doing the same exact thing, and it took them 14% longer to do the exact same thing. All right, so that speaks to the fact that there's a difference between doing work and being effective, you know, and this can be across the board for if you're an entrepreneur or you're a healthcare provider. People don't want you showing up. They want the best of you, you know, and it really boils down to this whole thing.

• 42:28Rich Roll?

  Especially if you're getting rolled into the operating room.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But again, you, you've talked about this as well, iatrogenesis, you know, being one of the leading causes of, of death in our country, you know, with accidental things happening, you know. But that story, you know, we don't even want to open that book. We just want to help to facilitate healing for everybody involved in the healthcare system, healing the healers. And, you know, what was a catalyst for the book, just to kind of step back on that, was, you know, working my practice, seeing people very successful with, whether it's helping them with, you know, high blood pressure, getting off lisinopril or statins or whatever it was, seeing this incredible success. But then it was like a thorn in my side. There's always this group of people, maybe it's 20% of the people.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  That would not get the result and it would drive me nuts like I would be up late at night ironically before I really understood about sleep. Just worried like what is wrong like what is going on with this person? And so I started to ask deeper questions and really analyzing people's lives a little bit deeper as far as looking at their stress, looking at their. Uh, career, you know, what was their work life like their relationships and their sleep? And when I start to ask you about their sleep, man, it blew my mind. I could not believe that people were operating like that. And as soon as we got their sleep together, it's like the floodgates would open and all of the results that other people were getting and then some in some cases. Would just start happening. And so that was number one, but then also with my show being a good training ground, I was about 50 episodes in.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  And I looked at the analytics for my shows and the three episodes I did on sleep. Were like in the top 10. So I was like, whoa, people want to know about this. And so that was the catalyst for initially writing my first book, which became a number one best seller like. And that was then that brought the attention of all these major publishers to make it into what it is today. So that's where it all came from.

• 44:21Rich Roll?

  Gotcha. Interesting. So let's talk about sleep then.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  All right, let's do it.

• 44:24Rich Roll?

  And, uh, we can talk about it from, I'll just, you know, chime in with my own personal experience with sleep. I mean, clearly, you know. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that when you have a great night's sleep, you feel better and you're more productive and you're more efficient in what you do. Uh, you know, I know that when I wake up, I know immediately upon waking up, whether I had a good night's sleep or not. And when it, when I have had that great night of sleep, I just, I know it's going to be a great day.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  Like everything is different. Every aspect of my day is better from how I interact with. The person behind the cash register.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:01Rich Roll?

  To how I manage, you know, dealing with traffic. To how efficiently I respond to emails or phone calls, whatever, every single thing flows better. My stress level is more reduced, like, you know, it's, it's, it's not even, it's almost not even worth talking about it. So, but the thing is like, I'm 49 now.

• 45:22Rich Roll?

  And I found that sleep is becoming trickier than it used to be. And if I'm training a lot and making sure that I'm getting in, you know, my hours every day working out, then my sleep is pretty balanced and it's pretty good. But being an endurance athlete who is known for doing, you know, a pretty heavy workload, I've acclimated to that load. And now I'm not training for any races. So my workload, my training load is much reduced from what it was in previous years. And so for me to go out and do what for a lot of people would be a pretty heavy load, doesn't really feel like I did that much, right?

• 46:03Rich Roll?

  And so sometimes I feel like I have to go out and kill myself physically to ensure that I get a great night of sleep. And if I don't work out, or if I have a stressful day, or I'm not doing certain things that I know, you know, you're supposed to do to ensure a good night's sleep, I have a restless night of sleep. I wake up, I wake up at three o'clock in the morning and I'll just get up and go to work or do something I know is unhealthy to try to make the most of the hours. But, but I guess the thing that I'm getting at is as I age, I'm much more in tune with the fact that sleep is becoming more of a struggle than it ever used to be. And so maybe that's a good launching off point to talk about all this stuff.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  There's a lot there. So the first thing was, I call sleep a force multiplier. So it makes everything in your life exponentially better, like you just mentioned. But then the other side is when you're sleep deprived, it makes everything exponentially worse. So the reverse of, it's like the reverse flash of everything you said, right? And so it's important to understand that, that wherever you lie on the sleep spectrum is going to make your life a whole lot better or a whole lot not so better. And the second thing is, you pointed out a really interesting phenomenon, which is your body really gets, it loves to find patterns, you know, like with your training. And you have gone. Your whole thing is like you are the brand like ultra, you know?

• 47:26Speaker 01

  And so you've done things with your body that the average human isn't even close to. You know, and so your body is going to get set with a template that's going to respond to that. Mm hmm. You know, and so, um, but what's happening here and number one, so this is the most important fundamental thing is that it's not about the amount of sleep that you get, it's about the quality. You know, so that making that time on the mattress valid because people out there and right now sleep for eight hours a night, but they still wake up feeling like a wreck. Mm hmm. You know, so it's getting the most quality. Their REM state or whatever it is. And so for you, you've probably set your hormone pattern to, you know, there's one we can just talk about really quickly is cortisol. So cortisol has gotten a really bad name in the media lately. You know, it's like cortisol has done everything wrong. Cortisol make me fat.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Cortisol's got me stressed out. Cortisol has, um, gotten rid of my favorite snack at Whole Foods. It's all cortisol's fault, you know? But in reality, cortisol is so important to our survival. It's a regulatory hormone. There's 50, there, there's around 50 hormones that we could talk about. Why is this one singled out as a problem? And this, this hormone actually allows us to kind of to work out, for example. You know, your body's going to secrete more cortisol when you exercise. But your art, art through evolutionary biology, we're supposed to have a normal kind of cortisol rhythm. Like when we're lined up with nature and cortisol is supposed to peak in the morning. We'll just say around 8 a.m. and slowly decline as the day goes on. But if you're up running at night, you know, guess what? Cortisol's up.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  And here's what's so interesting is that cortisol and melatonin have an inverse relationship. So when cortisol's up, melatonin is down. Hmm. Right? And so. You want melatonin high at night, right? Yeah, and it's not that melatonin makes you sleep. It helps you to get that really rejuvenative sleep. You know, it's the get good sleep hormone, not the sleep hormone. And so this is another reason why, again, people can pass out from exhaustion, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're actually recovering and getting those normal sleep cycles. Right.

• 49:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what happens with me is I'll have, I'll, I'll push myself to total exhaustion and then I'll have that great night of sleep. But then it's such a good night of sleep that that night I don't sleep so great.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:34Rich Roll?

  Cause I, I'm almost over rested.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:37Rich Roll?

  You know, and then I, and then the cycle just repeats itself and repeats itself.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Well, you're the perfect candidate to apply the strategies in the book, just to stack.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  Alright, so what are, let's get into the strategies, cause I need help.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Let's do it, let's do it. Um, so, well, since we're talking about exercise, let's go to the low hanging fruit again, especially for us guys, you know, we just do the low hanging fruit one. So there was a study done at Appalachian State University and they took exercises and broke them up into three groups. Group A exercised at 7:00 AM, group B 1:00 PM, and group C exercised at 7:00 PM at night. Group A spent up to 75% more time in the deepest, most rejuvenative stages of sleep.

• 50:13Rich Roll?

  So exercise early in the morning.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  I got that covered.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Now, here, this is, and this is a caveat for everybody. This doesn't mean you need to hit the gym per se. You can train in the afternoon, which I spent the last year until about two months ago, which I've been a morning exerciser, like as long as I can remember, since I've been well. But this last year I trained in the afternoon just to see all the different benefits, because I actually did that for a study in my book. And man, yes, reaction times are faster, strength was greater in the afternoon, because I do a lot of, you know, strength training stuff, you know, so it was really interesting to see that. But I, every morning I still did some activity. It's, the key is doing some activity. Your body has evolved to do activity in the morning because we're not nocturnal creatures.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  So help to encourage that cortisol spike by exercising in the morning. This is the key, is just, just encouraging that normal cortisol rhythm. So get up and do something.

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  Going for a walk, right? It can be just anything, as long as you're moving your body.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Five minutes of jumping on a rebounder, do some Tabata, you know, do some body weight squats and pushups. Do a power yoga session, you know, just do something to get that rhythm going and guarantee that's gonna help you sleep better.

• 51:23Rich Roll?

  Is there a distinction between aerobic exercise versus anaerobic exercise?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  From the research, most of the research is actually done on, on aerobic exercise, showing the benefits. So I'm just gonna put that out there, but I'm a firm believer in both.

• 51:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 51:38Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, I was just curious, like if you, if you, if your early morning workout was, you know, hitting the gym and doing heavy lifting versus going for a run, does that have an impact on cortisol?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  It does, absolutely, yeah, absolutely it does. And then plus with that, you're gonna get the benefits of increased secretion of growth hormone as well, which that's one of the big players with sleep is the secretion of human growth hormone, you know, that you get. And this is right in the range-

• 52:06Rich Roll?

  That's how you recover overnight.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is in the range too, and this is another tip is, so, exercise in the morning is one tip, we gotta come back to this though, it's another important caveat. Another one is getting what's known as this quote money time sleep. So it's said is that timing your sleep is like timing an investment. If you invest in something at the wrong time a lot, you're gonna get pain. If you invest even a little bit at the right time, you're gonna get some reward. And so this money time window is, according to the research, between 10 a.m. and 2, I'm sorry, 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. at night, alright? 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.

• 52:38Rich Roll?

  To get your best, that's, that's the window to get your most restful sleep.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. And why is that? Is because melatonin is gonna be potentially at its peak, and so is the secretion of human growth hormone, and also reparative enzymes that are released in the body. And so your body's actually doing that, um, when it starts to get dark outside for repairing you, you know, to secrete all these reparative hormones and reparative enzymes to do processes. So what will happen though, is if you ignore that, because you know, we might be driving home from work at 6, 7 o'clock at night, and you're like, I'm gonna get, you're yawning, like I'm gonna get to sleep early tonight, and then you get home and you start doing stuff, watching Netflix, what, you know, getting on the laptop, lap dance, you know, browsing through the internet, and next thing you know, it's 12 o'clock and you're like, I'm just not sleepy. You know, that's called the energy second wind.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  And all of us have had this happen before, and what happened was, all of those reparative functions that were gonna be used to heal you while you're asleep are now effectively helping to keep you awake. Right? It's a waste of energy. But also, I wanna make it clear that- That is not cut in stone, that this 10:00 PM to 2:00 AM. It depends on the time of year, it depends on how far you are from the equator, there's all a kind of other different factors. Bottom line, if you get to bed within a couple hours of it getting dark outside, you're gonna get more benefit.

• 53:54Rich Roll?

  Basically, just being in tune with your natural circadian rhythms of the planet.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  You said it, man. You said it. Again, it's just too simple.

• 54:03Rich Roll?

  And what is the scientific term for the most restful phase of sleep? Is it your REM state? Is that what you're trying to get into?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  So, REM sleep, so there's, depending on which expert you talk to, is four to five different stages of sleep. I really just focus on the two main stages that people know about. So, REM sleep is rapid eye movement sleep. This is where you're getting your dream on, alright? And then non-REM sleep, or deep sleep, is where you're getting the most anabolic phase of sleep. So, there's a lot of function going on with REM sleep. One of them is memory processing. So, this is where our experiences, for even everybody listening right now, this gets converted into short-term memory, something more solid. And then, possibility for long-term memory. But if you're not getting high-quality REM sleep, you're not gonna really process and make this a solid part of who you are. Like, our thoughts and the information we pick up actually does become a part of our brain, like a physical structure.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  And it's so important for people to understand that, and they get myelinated, and, you know, they actually become something real. So, that's one of the functions there. And also, just kind of, and people ask me about dreams, since I've been doing all this research on sleep, and the greatest theory that we have, we still don't know, let's be clear about that. But the greatest theory that seems to have the most to back it up is that this is a subconscious processing of situations and emotions. And so, people think like, you know, my dream is trying to tell me something, you know, like, my sister's pregnant, or whatever, I dreamed about fishes. No, these are movies that your own amazing, crazy mind is making up, you know? So, that dream is you, you know?

• 55:39Speaker 01

  If you're dreaming like I'm flying with Captain Jack Sparrow, and, you know, Shaquille O'Neal, that's your crazy mind making this stuff up. But somehow, you're trying to process subconscious data and make sense of it all, so.

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  The complexity of the subconscious mind is baffling.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Wow, yeah.

• 55:55Rich Roll?

  I mean, just... To kind of, you know, give an analogy on that, think about when you have a dream and you're having a conversation with somebody in your dream and you're waiting for them to respond to some question that you asked them and you don't know what they're going to tell you and then they answer it and you're surprised, but that's your brain telling you that, like that's how fractured and complex that is. It's crazy.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:19Rich Roll?

  Right? I can't imagine we've even tapped the surface of really understanding how all that works.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Again, the more you dig into this, the more you realize how much we don't know. And you realize this is going to be an eternal thing with humans trying to figure out how we work and why we're here, you know? But just to go back to, I don't want to forget this, there is some benefit to exercising in the evening, but the early evening, you need time for your core body temperature to come back down. This is another reason that your sleep can be disturbed, is that your core body temperature is elevated. So I cited several studies showing that if your core body, because, so what happens is, we'll just say around 9:00 PM, your body goes through a process of thermo regulation where it lowers your core body temperature to facilitate the best environment for sleep, right? And we

• 57:06Speaker 01

  all know how it feels when you're hot, when you're sleeping, it just doesn't feel good, you know? And so, that's one of the things to understand. You want to make sure, so basically give yourself about four hours for your core body temperature to come back down, unless you want to go ahead and do the superhero thing and take a cold shower.

• 57:23Rich Roll?

  Get into an ice bath.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  You know, or whatever, you know? Then you could help to bring it down, but other than that, just make sure you get a four hour window before you go to bed.

• 57:32Rich Roll?

  I run really hot, just physically, like in Ayurveda, I would be pitta pitta.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Me too, same thing.

• 57:39Rich Roll?

  And, and I have this thing with my wife, like she, she's Vata, so she likes.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Mine too.

• 57:46Rich Roll?

  So, maybe you're having this same debate or battle that I'm having, but she likes the bedroom fairly warm and she gets cold really easily, but I'm always boiling hot. So she'll be under all these covers and I'm sleeping on top of the covers and I'm like, it's boiling in here and she's like, I'm freezing. And so- I love a cold bedroom.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:08Rich Roll?

  And the quality of my sleep is 10x when the room is cold. But my wife can't really do it that way. Like she doesn't. So we have this thing and, and it's tricky, you know, like I want to sleep in the same bed with my wife, but I need to feel good too. I need to make sure that I'm getting a good night's sleep. And, and as I age and this issue is really becoming more, you know, kind of a thing for me. I'm trying to figure out how to address this. And, and one, one of the things that I've been doing is I sleep outdoors. I sleep, we have a flat roof on our house that's right off our master bedroom. And, uh, you know, it's really warm out right now, even though it's February, it's really warm in Los Angeles. And I've been sleeping on the roof, like not in a tent. I have a tent too.

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  I'm going to break out the tent, but I just pulled a mattress out on the roof and I've been sleeping on the roof. And I've been sleeping amazing.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Holy moly.

• 58:58Rich Roll?

  And it gets cold, you know, it goes down into 40s at night, but I just have a bunch of blankets.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  And I'll even wear, wear like a beanie on my head. And I have a great night of sleep.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're all there with you right now.

• 59:08Rich Roll?

  What is going on?

• 59:09Speaker 01

  We're all in the, in the pseudo tent with you right now, man. That's so awesome, man. Um, so what's happening? And by the way, so just a really quick solution. Oh, I gotta share this, man. Shocking, this was shocking. I just did an episode of my show talking about sleep and relationships. And my goodness, the research was just so sobering. So right now, one in four couples don't even sleep in the same bedroom. And that number's growing rapidly. It's like 10 times more than it was like a hundred years ago. So one of the big solutions for that temperature thing, well, first of all, it's really about having conversations without it being in the heat of the problem.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Because when our sleep is interrupted, when you're, when you're sleep deprived, your best friend can look like your worst enemy.

• 59:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  You know?

• 59:56Rich Roll?

  And we've had like bickering over this.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, look.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  So now we, we have good communication over it because she understands. I understand where she's coming from. She understands where I'm coming from. It's not an intimacy issue. It's a completely different issue.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there, there was actually, there's a four week study done and they followed couples. It was a relationship study and they found that whenever couples would have a poor night of sleep the night before, there was like, um, 14% greater chance of them having a conflict the next day and not getting resolved. And what's happening in UC Berkeley looked at this and they did some brain imaging scans. And so the amygdala is like lit up, right? When you're sleep deprived and the parts of your brain, the prefrontal cortex is cold. Right? That part of your brain is kind of shutting down. That's the more human evolved part of your brain. So you're going to be less likely. And it's a part of your brain responsible for decision making, distinguishing between right and wrong, social control.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  And even we can start to say things like compassion even, you know, kind of higher order functions. Whereas animals can have empathy and sympathy. But being able to say, I understand how you feel. So to perspective take, it's going way down because the amygdala is all about survival of self. So all it cares about is itself. And a lot of those tired arguments, we don't even remember what they're about. Like if you ask five days later, like, what was the problem? You don't even remember because it's usually over nothing. And so that situation with the, um, the cold bedroom in particular.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Kelly Starrett, you know, Dr. Kelly Starrett?

• 1:01:24Rich Roll?

  I've never met him personally, but I know who he is. Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  He's top three smartest people I've ever talked to. Right? This guy is just like a Jedi when it comes to being able to see what's going on with the bodies by looking at you. And he sleeps with the chili pad. Alright, so he actually has this chili pad on his side of the bed. Because even with the room being cold and his wife getting uncomfortable, it still wasn't enough for him. Because he runs really hot and he's like, that was his.

• 1:01:50Rich Roll?

  That's how he solved it. That's interesting. What is a chili pad?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  So it's just, it's something that you could lay down on your, on your existing mattress, on your side of the bed, and just helps to keep you cool.

• 1:01:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Really simple.

• 1:02:00Rich Roll?

  I should, uh, can you just buy that somewhere on Amazon or whatever?

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Go to, go to Dr. Google.

• 1:02:04Rich Roll?

  Alright.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  You know, and ask for the chili pad.

• 1:02:06Rich Roll?

  Is that, so how, how have you resolved this with your marriage?

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  So my wife is actually from Kenya. Alright, so it's all about heat, you know? So even coming here, she, she doesn't like cold at all. Right? And so it was just, uh, because I would rather, honestly, I would rather have the room at like 60 when I go to sleep.

• 1:02:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  So it's a compromise. So we keep it at like 69, 70. And I make sure, and I'm, I'm a warm body person. So I'm just like, use me, you know? So she snuggles up with me and she's warm within a couple of minutes, you know, and so. And that's what I actually put in the books, the different sleeping positions for couples and that kind of thing as well. So that's been, it's, it's, it's worked for us thus far.

• 1:02:47Rich Roll?

  All right. So we covered, uh, exercise, exercising in the morning. We talked about different core body temperature issues. What are some of the other strategies?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, let me give one more low hanging fruit, then we can get into some more, some deeper stuff. Uh, this, and this again, Captain Obvious here is to make sure you get some sunlight during the day. All right. And so what the research found was that this helps encourage that normal cortisol rhythm we talked about. But was also, uh, found in the research is that by getting some early morning sunlight, so we're talking about between like six and eight AM is the most beneficial as far as. Optimizing your cortisol rhythm, it actually helped to lower your cortisol at night. All right. So this is the huge takeaway headline for the show. A good night of sleep starts the moment that you wake up in the morning. All right. So making sure that you're getting that great, high quality sleep is going to help to set your circadian timing.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  And make sure that your cortisol is going down at night by you getting sunlight during the day. And this opens up a whole can of worms, even talking about sunlight exposure. Um, because it also depends on what time of year it is with the UVA and UVB.

• 1:03:52Rich Roll?

  Right. And how, how do you differentiate from people that live, you know, in the Bahamas or Hawaii versus people that live, you know, in Alaska?

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:01Rich Roll?

  Especially in the wintertime, the lack of sunlight and all of that. I'm sure that has a profound impact.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely, man. And there are certain parts of the world where, you know, with that minimal sunlight and there's, there's a lot more seasonal affective disorder. AKA sad. And so some of the treatments are using light boxes.

• 1:04:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  And now they have like light buds for your ears and visors and things like that.

• 1:04:23Rich Roll?

  Light buds for your ears?

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Rich Roll?

  What are the, what is that? I've never heard of that.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Ben Green, do you know Ben Greenfield?

• 1:04:28Rich Roll?

  I know Ben.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:04:29Rich Roll?

  Well, he's always got crazy.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Yes. So he's the one who put me on to, to the ear buds that shoot light into your ear. And this actually, so what's so interesting about the human body is that we have photoreceptors. Everywhere. So it's not just our eyes. Our skin actually has photoreceptors that pick up light. And they send information to our brain that, hey, it's daytime, produce more cortisol, produce more serotonin, more daytime hormones. Those things all set the template for our sleep at night. So serotonin gets converted into melatonin. So sun exposure. Instant upgrade in serotonin, it's gonna help you sleep better at night. Cortisol, translation with this relationship with melatonin. You know, so pretty much anywhere you're exposing intense light. And the benefit with the thing in your ears is really simple.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  It's that it would look pretty weird if you're walking around with the visor that's shooting a blue light, you know, down the street, whereas people are on the airplane. That's what Ben usually use it for, like when he's traveling is around people who stick those bad boys in.

• 1:05:28Rich Roll?

  Or if you're changing time zones or something like that, I would imagine that might be helpful. Do they actually, can you listen to music too? Or are they just shoot light?

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  No, I think I asked him the same question or he just told, told me. But yeah, it's just light.

• 1:05:40Rich Roll?

  But you, I mean, what time of day would you use that? You would only wanna use those in the early part of the day, right?

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. This could be, again, when you're changing time zones or you're on a flight and you're just not able to get that sun exposure. Or maybe you're in a cubicle dungeon because of your job, you know? And so these are all things that can be effective. So, but the bottom line is none of these fancy gadgets are as effective as just getting some high quality sunlight. You know, as much as you can. And this doesn't mean, so let me give this little caveat. So through glass, we can illuminate the room and get it through our optical nerves. And that's, that's the most important during the winter time, when it can be a little bit harder to get sun exposure. But if you're sitting by the window, letting the sun directly hit your skin, that might not be a good idea. Because UVA and UVB, UVB helps to balance it.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  But UVB is the one that helps to essentially convert your cholesterol into vitamin D. All right, this is the most beneficial for our health. UVA is the one for photoaging, potential cancer issues. And UVB doesn't make it through glass very effectively. UVA, boom, right through.

• 1:06:47Rich Roll?

  So you have to go outside.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, ideally. I mean, maybe a couple of minutes is okay, but you just gotta be careful with that.

• 1:06:52Rich Roll?

  Is there an optimal time window in terms of the, you know, extent of exposure? I mean, is there like a sweet spot, like five minutes versus an hour?

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  It just, it depends so much on your complexion, the time of year, the time of day. You know, it just really depends. It's just really about being smart, not being afraid of the sun. First, that's the bigger issue is what's happened in the media. And the sun allows us to have life on the planet, you know? But now it's super bad, we gotta wear like SPF 3900, you know, bulletproof lotion, you know, to go outside. So it's gotten a little bit ridiculous. The sun is actually your friend. But you have to respect it, you know, again, like our ancestors didn't have glass windows, you know, and and greenhouses or whatever that they're hanging out in, they were

• 1:07:39Rich Roll?

  They didn't have sunscreen either.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. And now we've seen like a hundred percent, uh, I'm sorry, a hundred times increase in skin cancer from just a few decades ago. It's just gotten crazy. And but, you know, you already know this, like a lot of those um conventional suntan lotions have carcinogens in them, you know, which is crazy.

• 1:08:01Rich Roll?

  I may be like a pariah uh in this, but I I don't use sunscreen.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Me neither.

• 1:08:08Rich Roll?

  You don't?

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08:09Rich Roll?

  Well, you're you're a pretty dark complected guy.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  I've got a little protection, but I can get burnt.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  I can, I can.

• 1:08:15Rich Roll?

  I don't burn easily, but you know, I'm out working out in the sun.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Rich Roll?

  And I'm just, I just don't like putting those chemical lotions on my body.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Rich Roll?

  And, you know, I'm not that, I'm not super fair complected, and this is not something that I'm any expert in, but.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  It helps, you know, the melanin, you know, but um it's basically built in sun sun protection or sunscreen in a way. And but the darker you are, the more sunlight you actually need, because your body has a buffer against it, you know. And so paying attention to those small things, but just easier, also just easing your way into sun exposure, because your body will adapt to it.

• 1:08:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  As well. So, yeah, those are the low hanging fruit. So now we can get into some more of the.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  We're gonna get geeky now, I'm like, I'm how to like really dial it up. Like, what are the, what are the things, what are the biggest mistakes that that people make, you know, well intentioned people make in terms of their relationship with sleep? I mean, I would imagine there's more low hanging fruit, like having your laptop, you know, in bed and things like that, that we all kind of know it's probably not a good idea to watch a movie right before you go to sleep or something like that.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this is, this is the one that I would bring to the table later, you know, because it's a pain point for a lot of people. Our technology, like a lot of people, their phone is their best friend. You know, like they literally kiss their phone goodnight instead of their spouse and like sit it down next to them every night before they go to sleep, you know? And it's awesome, like I love my iPhone, I love my Mac, it's enabled me to connect with so many people and write my book, you know? But we have to keep this in perspective, you know? This has only been possible for the last few decades.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  And we've got, and this is like literally a page in a, you know, a 50,000 page book, you know, of humanity at this level, you know, being a homo sapien. And so what we found is that this light exposure at night, and I think a lot of your listeners already know this, our devices are kicking out this blue spectrum of light that's especially troublesome. What Harvard found out was that it's not just exposure to light at night, it's the color and the lux. So how intense the light is and the color. So they did color a study with green light versus red light, and they found that the red light exposure wasn't, I'm sorry, it was green light and blue light. Let me take that back. The red light was the best, but they didn't use that in the study.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  But they found that the green light was like three times less intrusive on causing your body to secrete cortisol. And Rinzel or Polytechnic did a study and they found that two hours of iPad use before bed suppresses melatonin. You know, so again, you can pass out, that doesn't mean you're gonna get that great sleep.

• 1:11:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  So now we get into that place of like taking our toys away, and I don't, I'm not into that, you know? So number one hacks, using those blue blocking glasses, lights, glasses that actually black out.

• 1:11:13Rich Roll?

  So you can watch your, you can watch your movie in bed as long as you're wearing these.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  I'm not saying it's the best idea, but it helps.

• 1:11:19Rich Roll?

  I get what you're saying, no?

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  You know, it helps. And also with our devices, getting apps like Flux, F dot L U X, that pulls out that troublesome spectrum and basically cools off your screen automatically based on your time zone.

• 1:11:30Rich Roll?

  Oh wow, that's cool, I've never heard of that.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Rich Roll?

  So it just automatically changes the color temperature of the...

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  It's a super easy app and it does it automatically based on your time zone, based on the time of year. It's F dot L U X and anybody can get that on your. Right, I'll put a link in the show notes. It's a sweet app. I've been using it for a couple of years. Uh, but also then outside of that would be the, and by the way, you gotta make sure that they're actually the blue blocking glasses and there's a difference. Um, so, and one of the things also with daytime light exposure, which go back really quickly, through our eyes, you know, so if you're wearing sunglasses just for the sake of fashion, you're missing out on something that again, that's gonna help you sleep better at night. And if they're not blue blocking, blue blocking shades, it's actually opening up your pupil and allowing even more of the harmful U V A light to get into your eyes and you can cause what's known as

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  sunburn of the eye and a lot of uh, extreme snow athletes and people who ski a lot know about that. You know, so you gotta actually. I thought any good sunglasses took care of that. Uh-uh, no man. They've got actually, and just check with the manufacturer, you know, to make sure that they're actually blocking out that spectrum of light. So, what I found in the research, Rich, is, and this is, we know this already, is that we're addicted. You know, we're addicted to our devices and we're getting like a little bit of a dopamine hit. You know, because, and what dopamine is, it, we've, and science thought for a while that it was about satisfaction and pleasure. Pleasure is a better word. But it's not about that. Dopamine is about seeking. Okay, so when you have this dopamine hit, it makes you seek for the pleasure.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  And the internet is perfect for that, you know, so if anybody out there is like, you know what? I'm just gonna check my Twitter for a minute. I'm just gonna check Instagram for a minute. I'm just gonna check Facebook for a minute. And then thirty minutes later, you've been sucked into the internet black hole. Click leads to another click and then you gotta see this. Because it's constant seeking, but here's the other side of it, is the internet, the internet also gives you instant gratification. So you get a little opioid hit every time you find something. So you're scrolling, I wanna see what's the next thing on my Instagram feed. And you keep finding more stuff. So the internet is perfect for addiction. You know, so, real talk, the only way to really move beyond this for the average person is you have to implement something that's of equal or greater value.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  You know, and start to do it gracefully, you know, you don't necessarily want to go cold turkey with this. And so this could be, man, it's really tough, man, because we've got all these Facebook friends, what about your real friends? Your family, you know, your loved one, your spouse, and connecting with them instead of being on your device before you go to bed. Creating real harmonious relationships. And another great idea is have sex, you know, and actually I'd have a chapter about that too. That orgasm has been clinically proven, which you know this again, and just the expert is just affirming what we already know. Well, every dude knows this. Yeah, exactly. And I, I think about the movie, um, The Avengers, the last movie, and Tony Stark, you know, the Iron Man character, um, he's having issues sleeping.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  And so I was writing the book then, I was like, oh, this is interesting. I wonder how he's gonna deal with this. Only time he got some sleep was when he got some Pepper, you know, which was his lady, his love interest, you know, so Pepper and him hooked up and he fell asleep, but then he had a crazy nightmare, almost killed Pepper. So, but bottom line is, it's the all in the media that, especially for guys, but women and men, we release a cocktail of chemicals, a cocktail of hormones when we have an orgasm, uh, one of those being oxytocin. And so oxytocin is known as the cuddle hormone or the love hormone, and women do oxytocin really well, especially just even being around other women and connecting and talking, you know, uh, girl talk. And guys, not so much.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  We, we do get some oxytocin when we hug, when we're in close proximity with people that we care about, but women do it a lot better. For us, we get much more of a kick when we have orgasm. And another one is prolactin. This is a big one. And so it, that word even says lactation, so that's related to, uh, milk production. And so both women and men have a secretion of prolactin. And what's been so, what's been fascinating is that, uh, what they found was that, and I don't recommend laboratory animal studies, but they injected animals with prolactin and they immediately become sleepy. All right. And so here's what's so crazy is that men secrete four times more prolactin when they have orgasm with their mate than when they have it by themselves. Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  All right, so this is why guys have a tendency to be known to want to go to sleep, whereas if it's through masturbation, they're probably just gonna go get a bowl of cereal. Right, interesting. You know?

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  Prolactin, who knew, right?

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, crazy stuff, man. And that's just a couple of them. I mean, we've got vasopressin, we've got norepinephrine, which is seen as kind of a stress hormone in a way. But it actually helps to regulate your sleep cycles. In particular, it helps to regulate and get normal REM sleep. And we talked about how important that is. All that is happening through orgasm. So yet another reason for everybody to get a little closer and, you know, get off your device and, you know.

• 1:16:37Rich Roll?

  Right, well, if your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your wife or husband or whoever is out of town and you're laying in bed and you're tempted to pull up the Netflix, is there any study that shows the difference between reading a book versus watching a movie and what that impact is?

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  This is, I've never looked at that directly. It's just kind of Captain Obvious, you know? If you're reading, if you're reading a book and here, I actually did look into some of this as far as what's going on in the brain when you read. Because I was, I don't know if you've ever had this experience. I was, for a time, I thought that reading fiction was not productive, you know? And so I stopped doing that. And I just like, all about nutrition research, biology, marketing, you know, just all this stuff, this data, you know? And when I started to read fiction again, it really helped me to, number one, sleep better. And also, I became a lot more creative, you know, which was so fascinating to see.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  And so what's happening in, parents worldwide know that reading the kid the book before bed kind of helps that whole process. You're literally turning off that analytical side of your brain, right? And you're getting in more of the creative side of your brain.

• 1:17:52Rich Roll?

  The imagination.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:17:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I, I can only read fiction at night. I can't read nonfiction at night. I just, I don't, for whatever reason, like, that's always been my practice. And I sleep better, you know, like, look, I mean, everybody knows this. If you, if you read a good book at night, you're going to sleep better than if you're watching a movie. And just, just think of the sound design itself. If you're watching an action movie and there's explosions and... You know, loud noises and you're dozing off, you're gonna wake up every time, you know, something happens.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and again, it's not that I don't do that. It's rare now, but we think, we think of watching TV as something that's very laxadaisical, very laid back and I'm not doing anything, right? Yeah, it's very passive activity, but nothing can be further from the truth as far as what's going on with your brain. There are parts of your brain that are lighting up like crazy based on watching that. If you're laying in bed watching television, you're creating, this is also another strategy is creating a sleep sanctuary, you know, an environment because humans, again, were always looking for patterns. Your body's always looking for patterns and cycles like we talked about earlier. And so when you go into your bedroom, if you're known to work in your bedroom, watch television in there, parts of your brain, neurons that fire together, wire together.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  They're automatically gonna start clicking on like, hey, it's time to be up, you know? So get that stuff out of your sleeping environment at least. And couples who have a television in their bedroom, according to the research, it was an Italian study, have 50% less sex. And of course, there're gonna be those anomalies who are like, hey, that's not true. Well, yes, you know, you do it whether, you know, if the, if there was an earthquake going on, you know? But the bottom line is, right, but for a lot of people, they know this. And so a lot of people, like especially guys, are gonna hear this and they're going right now, they pause the podcast to get the TV out of the bedroom, but it's a distraction, you know? And again, it creates that neuroassociation of television time, disconnecting from my partner, disconnecting from life.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  And we all can escape into a good movie. I just saw, driving in today, I saw this big billboard for like Fast and Furious theme park, something at the theme park. I'm like, oh, that's awesome, you know? I think Vin Diesel's is awesome, but I'm not gonna be the guy who's doing that on a consistent basis, you know? Everything needs to have its place. So, but if you are, here are the hacks for watching a movie late. Make sure you're rocking those glasses. Try and do it a little bit earlier so you can give yourself maybe an hour or so to let your brain and your nervous system and your endocrine system switch gears, but. A really grave mistake is being on the device and going right to sleep.

• 1:20:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we got rid of the TV in the bedroom forever ago and then we got rid of TV altogether. So we don't even have it in the house. But it's not about the villainy of the device. It's about your relationship to the advice, to the device and having healthy boundaries around it and understanding the impact of all of these things on our mental wellbeing. Not just our sleep, but every aspect of how we navigate our day.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You just said it. You just said it.

• 1:21:01Rich Roll?

  All right. So what else? Let's talk about the impact of, of food on sleep.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  When to eat. And I have a really bad habit of eating at night, late at night.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Hey, check this out. So.

• 1:21:13Rich Roll?

  And I know it's not good, but I'll like pass out if I have a lot of food right before I go to bed.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  This is, this is fascinating. Check this out. So there was a study done and what was found was that a person of normal, you know, BMI, body fat percentage, body weight, when they eat a meal anytime, and whenever you eat a meal, you're going to get about a 5% increase in your cortisol level. And that's normal. It's because eating is a sort of a hormetic stressor, sort of a stressful event because there's a lot of intense action of like trying to make that into you and also making sure you're not putting anything in there that can take you out. All right. So it makes sense. Okay. Well, what's crazy is that somebody who is overweight, when they eat a meal, and this

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  is just really shocking, when somebody's overweight and they eat a meal, they're getting about a 51% increase in cortisol. All right.

• 1:22:07Rich Roll?

  So versus five for a normal person.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Yes. And so eating late at night, if you're overweight, guess what? Again, cortisol and melatonin, guess what's going to happen? Cortisol spike, melatonin's going to crash. All right. So this is where the concept has validity of not eating late at night if you want to lose weight. You're not trying to lose weight, man. You don't got to worry about it. When I was at my leanest, you know, doing all this experimentation crazy stuff, 4.7% body fat, I was eating late every single night, right before bed, eating some whole grain cereal and a banana, you know, every night. And my body, I was super lean at that time. So it's not about that as far as, you know, what's going on with changing your, your body fat or anything like that. But your sleep, however. It can definitely be impacted by eating late at night.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Maybe one of the issues is what are you eating? So if you're eating something that can keep your blood sugar stable, it's all good. All right. But if you're eating something that's gonna generate a glycogen spike, or I'm sorry, glucose spike, and then a crash, that crash can pull you out of your normal stages of sleep.

• 1:23:09Rich Roll?

  Right, so eating cake versus eating.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Honey bun.

• 1:23:13Rich Roll?

  You know.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  A zinger.

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  Right, eating a bowl of beans or something like that, right?

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Even better, I would say, to eat something higher fat. Right? Fats are like, you're taking like, you're, would you say your metabolism like a fire?

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  Some simple carbohydrates, or even some more complex carbohydrates can be like putting some papers onto that fire. And it's gonna spark really bright for just a second, but it's gonna fade away really quickly. Eating fats is sort of like putting a nice big log onto your fire, your metabolic fire, just kind of burns a lot more steady. So, you know, eating some guacamole, you know, with some veggies or, you know, some nuts, something like that before bed. That's probably a much better go-to.

• 1:23:53Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. What about when you just gorge at night and you just pass out because all your blood is in your gut? How bad is that?

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Hey, it happens.

• 1:24:02Rich Roll?

  I'm not saying I've never done that.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  I know I have. I know I have. But again, there's that difference between passing out and actually getting deep rejuvenative sleep. You know?

• 1:24:12Rich Roll?

  So if you're doing that, are you, you're preventing yourself from actually accessing that, that optimal.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Sleep state. And your body is going to be using a lot, I mean, to turn food into you, and all that energy that's supposed to be used to repair your brain, to assimilate basic nutrition through the day, to get rid of metabolic waste, which we need to talk about. Your body has to do all those processes. If it has to send so much of its energy to try, try to digest food, that you just, you know, went, went ham on, you know? Um, it's gonna, it's gonna hurt you. It's gonna take away from all those other processes. So this detoxification thing is huge, man. So you know about the lymphatic system? Which is your body's extracellular fluid? And this is essentially how your body's moving metabolic waste out of your system.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  You know, your big detoxification organs, like your skin, it's gonna help to push through your skin, uh, your colon, your, your kidneys are another important elimination channel. But your lymphatic system is that extracellular fluid. You have four times more lymph than you have blood. All right? So it's a big deal. Now here's the issue when it comes to your brain. There's a blood brain barrier. So lymphatic system doesn't go there. It literally goes up to like your neck and that's it. And so there's something called the glymphatic system. And this is a little shout out to the glial cells in your brain that modulate and control the basic lymphatic system of the brain. And what's been discovered is that, and so your brain is doing so, we're talking about

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  millions upon millions of processes every second, right? There's a lot of cell growth, a lot of metabolic waste products that are produced and your, and your brain has to get rid of that stuff and get it out of your body because it's taking up space. So it's been discovered is that your glymphatic system is 10 times more active when you're sleeping. Okay, 10 times more active. And your brain cells actually shrink about 60% to open up channels even further to get rid of waste. What they've discovered is that Alzheimer's appears to be a disease where your brain is lacking the ability to remove those wastes. Hmm, interesting. Crazy stuff, man. Yeah, that's crazy. Just speaking to the fact, again, we have to make sure we're optimizing our sleep because we're accelerating our aging.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Another thing, and since we're here in California, University of California found this out that sleep deprivation is one of the biggest triggers for the accelerated loss of your telomere length. Oh, that's interesting. So we're talking about accelerating your aging. You know, it's not just something that, oh, this is, you know, I know I'm tired, I know I'm lacking sleep. You're literally shortening the time you're gonna be. Yeah, it's proactively aging you. Yeah. Interesting. And we know that there's a lot of things that can turn that around. We know about telomerase, for example, can add length back on to your telomeres. There's so much there that can be done, but you don't want to accelerate it, you know? So just a couple of little extra things for people to be aware of.

• 1:27:06Rich Roll?

  What happens when, what happens metabolically, biologically, when you're extremely sleep deprived? Let's say you've pulled two all-nighters in a row, or, you know, like, literally, you know, at that level of like insanity, like when you haven't slept, like, it is weird that we haven't been able to figure out a way to sidestep sleep and, and take care of ourselves and opt out of it, but we haven't. And it is true, like, that's the one thing, like, actually, you, like, you'll go clinically insane.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:38Rich Roll?

  Where they do these studies, I'm sure you've read all these, right? Where they literally wake people up every time they're about to go into REM state, they wake them up, and then they, they just turn into crazy people.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:27:49Rich Roll?

  They're sleeping, but they're never accessing that state, and over a protracted period of time, they turn into raving lunatics.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, it's scary, man, it's scary. A guy comes to mind that I came across, he was trying to set the Guinness World Record, I think he had gotten to like, I don't remember, this was a couple of years ago, nine days or something like that.

• 1:28:09Rich Roll?

  Without sleeping at all?

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he ended up going crazy, you know, he, he lost it, he ended up in a, in a home. So it's not something to, to play with, but what's going on? So, man, there's this term that's becoming popular now called sleep debt, right? And I'll be very clear with this, a little bit of debt is okay, like, you, your body is very generous in recovering from that, but once you start to build up that sleep debt, it's like being in debt to, I mentioned the, the mob lawyer, you know, like, to the mob, like Cousin Vinny, you know, like, it's gonna be difficult for you to be able to pay that back. So we wanna

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  avoid those long-term stretches of being sleep deprived. And it's not just even about that, it's... There was a study done with nurses, for example. And, and you know, I mentioned this earlier, but there's about a 50% greater risk of breast cancer for wo- for women who work overnight than the nurses in this particular study. Right? 50% greater risk of breast cancer. All right? And the World Health Organization also has said that shift work is a class 2A carcinogen. All right? So they've come out and said that. And why is this? Look, dude, this is another crazy thing is that melatonin could quite possibly be our most powerful endogenous anti-cancer hormone that we produce. All right? So if you, again, you're out of sync with nature, you're not going to be producing that

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  properly. And so, one of the issues in the study was that it wasn't just women who continuously work overnight, but even wo- women who do it a couple of times a week and then get back on to a normal cycle. Just that interruption continuously was enough to have their numbers almost as bad as people who just work overnight, period. So what I'm really pushing for is changing the system. You know, we, if it, if your job requires you to be up at night because you love it and you want to be of service, that's one story. But if you're just saying like, you know what? It's the only time I can work. It's the only job that I can get. I promise you, there's another job. You know? But if this is something about service and you're doing this thing that you love, we've got to find a better way.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  And one of those options is, and I'm pushing for this, you know, with kind of what I'm doing right now, because our firefighters, our police officers, if you look at the statistics with their disease rates from being sleep deprived, it's crazy. And of course, what this thing about the decision-making and how many lives are lost, you know, especially through just accidents, you know? And our healthcare professionals of, a lot of that's based on seniority. You know? Right out of the gate. But how about instead of somebody working for five years on the graveyard shift, how about everybody gets a stint of it? You know, maybe it's a month long and that's just kind of rotated. Because if you've got 11 months for your body to fix itself, to pay back that sleep debt,

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  you're straight. Through, versus a month of just continuous sleep deprivation. Well, not sleep deprivation, but not being on your normal sleep cycle.

• 1:31:08Rich Roll?

  Right. Off of, off of your balanced approach.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  Well, I think before you can even, I, I agree with you. I think that the, systemically, we need a lot of changes, but I think in order to... Even get into the conversation about changing the system, you gotta change the the conversation and the psychology around sleep.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:27Rich Roll?

  And, you know, we all know that, that there is this kind of cultural, what's the word for it? I'm sleep deprived, I can't.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Hey, hey, hey.

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  You know, imprimatur around, or, or kind of, there's this, this sort of false pride that goes with not sleeping, like, I'm working, you know, I'm, I'm hitting it hard, you know, like, I'm a hustle, I'm hustling, you know, 24/7 and all of that, like, I don't need sleep, and I'm up, I'm up this early, and I stay up this late, and I'm getting more done than you, and if you wanna, like, succeed, you gotta get on my page.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:04Rich Roll?

  Right? And that's a broken idea.

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  There's a hashtag, no sleep.

• 1:32:07Rich Roll?

  And the science doesn't support it, anyway.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just like, you know, hustle your face off until, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead paradigm.

• 1:32:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  But, no, you'll just be dead, you know? That kind of talk is just gonna accelerate the day that that's gonna happen.

• 1:32:20Rich Roll?

  But the idea behind that is that you're more productive because you're, you're working harder and you're foregoing sleep to get more done, but over, and you may, during that 24-hour period, you may get more done because you didn't sleep, but if you look at your year, how much did you get done? Because you have to pay that debt off.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  Right? So you're either gonna oversleep the next day, or you're not gonna be productive the next day. So I think, in terms of long-term productivity and your ability to continue to do what you do, that you're so passionate about, if you prioritize sleep, you'll end up being

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:32:54Rich Roll?

  more effective.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:32:55Rich Roll?

  And I think, but I think the thing is, is that, it's like, it's that idea of, well, if I'm not suffering and I'm not in pain, then I'm not, then I'm not working hard enough, and I'm not getting enough done, and it's changing that mentality and that idea to get people to understand that you don't have to suffer. Actually, if you're, if you're in a flow, like, if you're doing it, if you're well-rested and you're focused and you're efficient, you don't have to be in pain, you don't have to inflict that pain on yourself.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  And that's, that's a broken equation. That doesn't mean that you're more productive or more efficient.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Here's a rogue idea. You can love yourself well. You know, you can love yourself healthy. You don't have to suffer and struggle to be healthy. And a lot of people have that idea. Like, if it doesn't hurt, then it's not good for me. If it's not hard and painful, it's not good for me.

• 1:33:45Rich Roll?

  Or I didn't, or I'm not working, I'm not pushing myself hard enough.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's such thing is called working smart as well. Working hard is undoubtedly a facet of being very successful in life. But again, it was clear earlier, there's a difference between being effective and just doing stuff, you know, working. Cause a lot of people mistake, I'm working, I'm getting stuff done with being effective. They gotta spend a lot of time cleaning up problems and also making a lot of mistakes along the way, of course, and then being able to clean those up. But it's gonna take you longer ultimately. And you're not showing up as your best self. What if, what if you actually have your best self showing up and the ideas and again?

• 1:34:26Rich Roll?

  Like every day.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Every day. We talked about the prefrontal cortex being responsible for problem solving, right? You don't have as much access to that part of your brain if you're sleep deprived. Just 24 hours sleep deprivation is gonna take away about 6% of glucose reaching your brain. And 14 to 12% of that is from your prefrontal cortex. So that part of your brain is starving, right? So you're getting dumber, right? Just by the second. And also, it's evolutionary thrust for us to get glucose back to your brain. So guess what you're gonna do? Cookies, cake, honey buns, zingers, chips? If you've ever had carbohydrates in your life, your brain knows I can get sources of glucose back to my brain very quickly. And why is that?

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  This is because if this was, you know, through our evolution, through, you know, just say a couple hundred years ago, if your, if your brain isn't optimized and working at its highest potential, this could mean you can't procure your food, you can't avoid danger, you can't seek shelter because you're not as sharp, you can die. So this is why you have this willpower versus your biology. Like, I'm gonna eat great food, I'm gonna follow what Rich Roll's telling me to do, I'm gonna exercise every day, then all of a sudden. You've got yellow fingertips, you know, yellow-orange cheesy-poo fingertips. Because you just crushed that bag of Doritos, right? And you, and then you're just like mad at yourself and the guilt sets in. You know, and so, and it's really because you put yourself in a position, and a lot of people

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  don't know this, it's because you're sleep deprived that you would even go for that in the first place. Your willpower can't stand up against your biology long-term, period.

• 1:36:01Rich Roll?

  Did you come across anything in doing all this research for this book where you found something completely counterintuitive or that really surprised you that you didn't expect?

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Man, there's so many things. And I was actually gonna share something from the nutrition aspect that it did surprise me. It did surprise me. And so, this was actually in the book, and it was a crazy study that was looking at, it was kinda weird, fecal samples from people before, during, and after bouts of jet lag from a 10-hour flight. And this was finding out how your bacteria actually affects your sleep, okay? And your health overall. And so, the jet lag participants showed an increase in a type of bacteria known to be more prevalent in people with obesity and diabetes when they're jet lagged. Okay, so their bacteria literally kinda changed guards, alright?

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  And those levels dropped back to normal once their normal sleep cycle got back on track. And so, that took me into researching what's going on with your gastrointestinal tract. And so, when you're sleeping, there's like a changing of the guard that happens to basically clean up all of the stuff from the day, right?

• 1:37:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  The cleanup crew comes in.

• 1:37:13Rich Roll?

  So, jet lag is really a stand-in just for sleep deprivation, right?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:37:17Rich Roll?

  And basically what you're saying is, is that sleep deprivation impacts the quality of your microbiome.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And this is, again, this can be happening on a daily basis for people. And they're wondering why, because, man, a lot of, a lot of your life is a result of what's going on in your gut. You know, about 95% of your serotonin is located in your gut, you know, and this is that feel-good hormone. And serotonin gets converted to melatonin. Check this out, dude. Did you know, so, melatonin, pineal gland, alright?

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  That's not the whole story, man. So this is another, this is another surprising thing, actually. A large chunk. So you can have a pineal ectomy, like they can go and take that gland out, and you can still retain your levels of melatonin in your body because it's also stored in your belly. Crazy pants, right?

• 1:38:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would, I would not have known that.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like your body has this really amazing system that's connected intimately to what's going on in your gut. And it's really regulating what's going on with your sleep, your ability to modulate your body fat percentage, all this stuff by what's happening in your belly. So there are certain sleep nutrients that I talk about in the book. Um, and this is again, it's just like eating real food and these are like precursors to a lot of other things. You know, so we need to be very aware of that and also helping to support the microbiome in our gut. So eating prebiotics. Not just taking like probiotic supplements, which are cool, but you know, eating foods that are probiotics, but also prebiotics.

• 1:38:47Rich Roll?

  Right. Basically high fiber foods.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Yes, pretty much. Pretty, pretty simple, you know, so Jerusalem, Jerusalem artichokes is one. Um, onions, garlic, these are prebiotics as well. So, um, any type of, uh, you know, sprouted stuff. You know, things that have that life. Um, broccoli, broccoli sprouts is another one. You know, so those are prebiotic things that your body can help to, help those pre, probiotics to flourish. You can't just take probiotic pills and expect them to do their job.

• 1:39:20Rich Roll?

  Right. So for people that are listening that are unclear on that, we all know about probiotics populating your gut with these cultures of bacteria, but it's kind of a Band-Aid solution. Really what you should be doing is focusing on prebiotics, which are the foods that will actually propagate your gut.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:39Rich Roll?

  Uh, with the, with the microorganisms that are healthy for you.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:43Rich Roll?

  Right? So it's much more powerful to focus on that than taking a prebiotics, uh, probiotic supplement.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you could take them to your, to you become a probiotic, which I love the, I'm a very big student of lexicon, you know, just like breaking down like. Probiotic means for life. Antibiotic means against life, literally, you know? And I know that I took many rounds of antibiotics when I was a kid. You know, just imagine that damage is done to your microbiome. And so, so many people, especially your audience and my audience as well, are very aware of this and have been proactive in helping to create a healthy belly, you know? But it's so deep, the story, that we're just now starting to understand how powerful it is, even in relationships with sleep. So, there's also your vagus nerve, you know?

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  And so, the vagus nerve is essentially linking your gut to your brain. But what research has found is that about 90% of that data is going from your brain, I'm sorry, from your gut to your brain. So, your belly's telling your brain what to do, a lot.

• 1:40:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's studies on that. They've done studies on cravings with chocolate and things like that. And, you know, taking cultures of microbiome, microbiome cultures from people or animals that crave a certain food and putting them into the guts of other people that don't and seeing how those cravings change. It's amazing. I mean, essentially, the message is the quality of your microbiome impacts, it sort of hijacks your nervous system and sends signals to your brain about what to eat, what to do, and how you feel and all that. It's amazing.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  It is, man. It's a

• 1:41:26Rich Roll?

  And they're just beginning to understand. I mean, so, yeah, I really want to, um, do you know these, uh, these professors at Stanford, the Sonnenbergs? They're doing a lot of research on the microbiome. I'm trying to track them down to get them on the podcast.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  That would be sweet, man. You know, speaking of the gut and the vagus nerve, Kelly Starrett again. And he was, because he read the first, uh, the first book and he was like, if there's one more point that I could add, because it was 21 strategies and I shuffled them around to make them 21 still. But he was like, talking about body work, in particular gut smashing, to help encourage The parasympathetic activation, which is your rest and digest system.

• 1:42:10Rich Roll?

  So what do you mean gut smashing?

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  All right, so this is basically massaging the vagus nerve. We're just getting in there on what's called like a prince, you know, a princess ball. Those little balls you might see in the bin at, you know, Walmart or something. And making sure that it's got a little give in it. And you basically get down on the floor on that bad boy and roll around on it. And work on that musculature in your abdominal region. And wow, it works. It does work. It's like a little parasympathetic hack.

• 1:42:37Rich Roll?

  You lay on your belly with the ball underneath you and roll, roll back and forth on that?

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  And if you find, and this is according to Kelly, again, top three smartest person I've talked to. New York Times bestselling author, Supple Leopard, you know, um, super smart guy. But um, yeah, you just get down there. If you find a, a spot that's a little bit, you know, you know, that spot. Like if you're working with a foam roller, for example, and you just hang out there when you find that, that spot. Um, so it's, it's shown to be effective. And then that got me into looking at body work overall. There's so much data and we know this, like sometimes even get a massage, we'll fall asleep right on the table. You know, because you're activating these pathways for uh, more positive sleep hormones. And a deactivation of stress hormones, just from that.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Also acupressure, you know, so there's um, one is the uh, it's a, it's a spot right below the palm of your hand. On the outside of your wrist. And this spot on your body, if you, it was been found that if you um, with acupressure, you just pinch this spot. And so they manipulated this in the study and they found that there was a greater uh, urine show up or I'm sorry. Urine deposit of melatonin, which is basically saying that your body's producing more of it. Right? So crazy stuff, man.

• 1:43:57Rich Roll?

  So literally what you're saying is when you're getting ready for bed, just press on that region?

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  Could work in the study. They were manipulating it all night long. So basically they hooked somebody up to uh, so they can measure their brainwaves and all that good stuff too. But the metabolites, that was the word. So um, melatonin metabolites were showing. Up more in their urine. Urine. From manipulating that spot, you know, so there's little points on your body that can change things. Obviously massage, self massage. So one of the practices that I that I do is um I just sit for a while, maybe five minutes and I'll roll my foot around on a tennis ball before bed. And just kind of work on that and you know, put some pressure down on it. And yeah, I mean, again, these are those little things that just stack conditions for a better night's sleep. Right, interesting. Um, what else? Put on your PJs.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness, yes. How about like blackout curtains? Let's talk about pajamas. Alright. So we talked about earlier. Footy PJs? If we, we gotta mind our core body temperature. You know, there was a study done and they um they put on these, basically these cold suits that just lower the person's body temp by one degree without lowering their core body temperature. And they found that they had a radical increase in their level of deep sleep during the night, just from being one degree cooler. Alright, so you gotta be careful with what you're wearing to bed and also the restriction. Alright, so I don't know, do you know about the dress to kill Sidney Ross Singer? Mm hmm.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Wow, their research is crazy, him and his wife. And this was done, this Harvard study, right? And they found that women who wear bras habitually have this radical increase in incidence of breast cancer. And this is kind of, once you think about it, it makes sense because you're cutting off the lymphatic system. You know, and so ladies and us guys too, uh for you know, socks and tight underwear and things like that. But uh for for the ladies, when you're taking off your bra and you see that indentation on your shoulders and your back and under your breasts and that's a clear cut indication of uh restriction of your lymphatic flow. That's not good. That's like squeezing a water hose, you know, it could potentially bust.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  So we need to be mindful of that. And I'm not saying this is like the throw your bra away podcast. This is more so just be aware of it and use your time at at night in particular to go bra free. And for guys, we don't want to heat up the the jewels as much as well, you know, so. Basically, what you're saying is sleep naked. That's a good option.

• 1:46:31Rich Roll?

  Is this where we're going?

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  That's a good option and you could actually secrete more oxytocin just by being close to your partner. But then there's just you wear loose fitting clothes, you know, where some, you know, some girls can wear, you know, boy shorts, a T-shirt, things like that. It's really a simple and also socks. For people who get cold, a great solution for your wife is of course to make sure she's wearing some nice warm socks because our pen just tend to get cold faster. But make sure that they're like wool, you know, like a more of a soft fitting sock, not something squeezing. Like if you peel your sock off and you can see the Nike sign on your leg. That's not, that's not that good.

• 1:47:08Rich Roll?

  That's just like the bra.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So just things to be aware of. So make sure what you're wearing, what you're wearing to bed does matter. So make sure that, you know, you're doing something smart there as well.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  I've become very sensitive to light and so I wear like an eye mask now when I sleep and that seems to, you know, be helpful to me.

• 1:47:29Rich Roll?

  And the other thing is I've, I've experimented with white noise in earbuds to sleep. And the problem with this, all of these things are helpful to me, but then I become dependent on them.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:42Rich Roll?

  You know, and it's like, if I can't find my eye mask at night, then I'm like, ah, and then I, then I feel like naked or like I'm not going to be able to fall asleep.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  It's so funny. I remember the first time I seen an eye mask was my grandmother. And I'm just like.

• 1:47:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it used to be like an old people thing, but now it's kind of come back.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  An older lady thing, you know, mommy dearest type thing, you know? But yeah, now there are a lot of people, especially a lot of guys now, um, who are rocking the eye mask. And that's, that's a, it's an advantage, you know, but again, your skin has photoreceptors. So if you're sleeping in a room that, you know, your neighbor's porch light or the street lights are beaming into your room. There's internal lights in your bedroom, you know, maybe from your alarm clock, from a computer screen, whatever. Like even that light, this right here from your MacBook that's charging. And if it were, if we're dark in here, we can read a book by that light. Like it's pretty strong, you know, and so. We want to take the approach and that's what I recommend and this was the number one

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  thing that I saw the biggest example of changing my sleep was getting my room blacked out. So getting some blackout curtains. They don't cost, I mean, there's some that cost a lot, but they don't cost that much. And get your room as dark as possible. And this is again, this is how we evolved sleeping in darkness. You might see on a movie, you know, I just, I don't know why, my 15 year old son was watching The Ridiculous Six. It's Adam Sandler movie.

• 1:49:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, on Netflix.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Oh my, it was the most ridiculous, it was The Ridiculous Six. And so, you know, they're all sleeping, but there's like a campfire, whatever. That's not a typical thing, you know, like you're attracting potential problems by having the fire, you know, so he's like, a sabado. He's doing like the, making the fire, whatever, and it was a big issue for people in our, in our thinking that, you know, our ancestors were sleeping with lights. We don't really stop to think about, wait a minute, they were sleeping in complete darkness because they didn't have electronic devices or nightlights. But now today we do. And so, there was one study that I cited that found that people who sleep in a completely

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  lit room at night had like a 60% increase in incidence of being nearsighted. All right. And then for people who slept with a nightlight, and this was a study done on kids, I was like 30% increase incident. And then people who slept, slept in complete darkness was like 6% of the, of the kids in the study group. So the numbers are crazy. Those aren't the exact numbers.

• 1:50:18Rich Roll?

  That's weird, like, how does that impact your eyesight with your eyes closed? Just because the photoreceptors in your eyes are getting stimulated all night long?

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  I don't think that this study was looking at all of the factors. There's so many other things that could be an issue. It could be the parents, you know, they can't see at night. So, you know what I'm saying? It's just like, it could be a genetic predisposition. So, there's a lot of other factors to look at, but I just thought it was interesting enough to just note like, wow, that's a really interesting correlation that if you sleep with a, your, your room completely lit up, you're gonna have a higher chance of not being able to, to see. So, crazy stuff like that, but bottom line, get some blackout curtains. I promise you, you'll thank me. And I'm even bringing up the thing about the nightlights because you know there are people out there that are scared of the dark, right?

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  I rem- this is a messed up story, but um when I was a kid, I had my bro- my little brother was, he was an infant, so he's, I'm five years older than him. So he had to be maybe six months old, so I was about five. My mother and stepfather took us to the drive-in and I was supposed to sit in the backseat and not watch. They went to see Freddy Krueger, man. Can you believe this? The original Nightmare on Elm Street.

• 1:51:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  That bothered me for years, right? Poor parenting alert. Yes, absolutely, you know, but um and I never shared it. I never talked about that, but that really bothered me. So I was kind of scared, you know? And um there's a lot of like Instagram memes out there about, you know, people being scared of the dark, like when you're washing your eye, you know, your face when you're in the shower and just like you gotta try to do it really quickly, you know? So there's a lot of people that are scared, but this is a disconnection from from us, you know, like we come from darkness, you know, we come from that. It's a part of who we are. You know, so it's my encouragement to people to work on that because it is something, you know, to be at one and to not live in a a hostile universe, as Einstein would say, you know?

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  And to cultivate a relationship with the dark because it's that yin and yang thing, you know, it's like that balance. We need both. So if you are an adult who's scared of the dark, I understand, I I um identify with you. I have compassion. But please understand um watching, keeping the TV on while you're going to sleep, it's it's harming your sleep big time. So we have to work on moving beyond that. So for you, you might do 20 of the things in the book and that's awesome, but the biggest thing that's hurting you might be that addiction to light at night.

• 1:52:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. When I'm when I'm in a hotel room. Because hotel rooms, you can always blackout completely.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:00Rich Roll?

  Like, I always wake up, I don't really need to set an alarm, like I just wake up early, no matter what. But when you're in a hotel room and it gets completely pitch black like that, that's the only time where I worry about oversleeping. Because I'll just go, I'll have a deep sleep because of the darkness.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:53:15Rich Roll?

  It really is.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  You just said it, man.

• 1:53:17Rich Roll?

  Profound.

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  That's, that's what happened for me, and a lot of people have that experience when they go on vacation or whatever. Or they travel, they sleep better, and then when they get home, their sleep sucks. You know, I've had many people tell me this, working in my clinic. And they're just like, I don't know what it is, you know, I've got all this routine, but it's, a lot of times, it's getting the room dark. You know, it's really as simple as that.

• 1:53:39Rich Roll?

  All right, we gotta wrap it up in a minute here, but what have we not covered yet?

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I mean, there's so many.

• 1:53:45Rich Roll?

  Tons, right.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's so many.

• 1:53:47Rich Roll?

  But what, I mean, if somebody's listening to this and they're, they're struggling with sleep, or they have some kind of persistent insomnia, or maybe it's just even mild issues with getting a sound night of sleep, you know, what are the top level kind of things that people can look into and, and work on that we haven't already covered?

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  Awesome. One thing that jumps right to mind is utilizing magnesium. All right, so there was a study done, 100% of the people in the study had, that were, you know, diagnosed with chronic sleep problems, which AKA is insomnia, 100% of them were magnesium deficient. And what was found clinically is that, once the magnesium levels were, um, were treated and elevated, their sleep improved.

• 1:54:26Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  All right, so, but here's the issue. Taking an internal magnesium supplement, because magnesium kind of pulls more water to your bowels, it's gonna cause, uh, disaster pants, right? You can end up with diarrhea, all right? And so, your limit of getting your levels up might not be able to get treated that way. Magnesium sulfate, AKA Epsom salt, like a lot of people know that that's supposed to help you to heal sore muscles, relax you, get better sleep. That's one step in the right direction, but topical magnesium. And there's something that I use called Ease Magnesium. I've been using for three years.

• 1:55:02Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  It is phenomenal, man. Like, I just did a test group of, I think it was 11 or 12 women, and one of them had like some chronic anxiety. And I didn't, they just took the program. I have a 14-day makeover in the book, and they just did that. And she was like, as soon as she started using the magnesium, it just changed the game for her, you know?

• 1:55:21Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. Yeah, I've never, I've never heard of that topical application, but we use the Calm product.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:27Rich Roll?

  You know, so, you know, we drink it at night or put it in warm water.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went crazy on the Calm.

• 1:55:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  For a while back in the day, but it would, you know, again, the, the bowel issue could be a problem.

• 1:55:38Rich Roll?

  Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't have, I don't have a problem with it.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  I push it. Well,

• 1:55:42Rich Roll?

  How much?

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  How you push with the sports and the running, I push with nutrition, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:55:47Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, so you're just, you're putting like four times the amount.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, it's like, it recommends two teaspoons, you know? So maybe I'll use like one heaping tablespoon or something like that. So topical, so why does this work? Well, hormone creams, for example, what you put in your skin is in your body. But I know people out there have used probably some magnesium. They might see some magnesium oil or something, and it'll flake up on their skin. It might be like a tester at Whole Foods or something. That's not all bioavailable. You're not getting a lot of that. So this is basically 99.999% bioavailable, and your body will only use as much as it can. And instantly, man, like, you feel a sense of, of calm, better sleep. For some people, ATP, you know, the energy currency of the body,

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  it's actually MG ATP, what we're operating on. So magnesium is combined with ATP, right? People don't hear about that. So it's important in your production of energy and creation of you actually experiencing energy as a human being. Magnesium is super important, but the issue is that it's a stress buffer. You know, it's anti-stress, basically, mineral. So, and we're exposed to so much craziness, so it gets zapped from our body very quickly, so we need a continuous supply. So getting your magnesium levels up can help a lot. Topical magnesium, Ease Magnesium, and yeah, I mean, you can put a link in the, in the show notes, and it's in the book, of course. So that's one. On the other side of the problematic nutrition, melatonin supplement.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  The research is getting pretty murky on this, man.

• 1:57:23Rich Roll?

  There was a period like 15, 20 years ago, maybe, or maybe not even that long ago, where everybody was taking, like that was, if you were flying, if you were gonna change time zones, like you had to take your melatonin. And then it kind of, I didn't hear so much about it anymore.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  A lot of favor, a little bit.

• 1:57:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, what does the science say?

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  So, first of all, we talked a lot about it. Melatonin's a hormone, man. Just because you can get it at a natural food store.

• 1:57:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it just doesn't sound like a good idea, because you're messing with your body's own, you know, internal regulatory system.

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  This is exactly what the studies are showing. So, what happens is, and there was one study I saw in the book, was that people who were taking melatonin supplement, and by the way, it's usually much more what's coming in a supplement than what your body actually needs or produces on its own. Not, it didn't suppress melatonin production, it suppressed or downregulated your body's receptor sites for melatonin. So basically, overuse of melatonin supplementation will eliminate your body's ability to use melatonin, which is scary. So, we have to be aware of that. And this is one of the things that, you know, a lot of people will, natural pill popping, they'll go right to the melatonin and create, you know, crazy dreams, all the way to, you

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  know, really crazy, uh, interrupted sleep patterns, further and further addiction, because it does work for some people to help to keep them asleep. Again, that doesn't mean they're getting natural sleep cycles. So, here's what we do. Very simple. We start with what's natural first, you know, time-tested, clinically-proven things, herbal type stuff. So, chamomile tea is the softest thing to go with, research to back it up, kava kava, little, moderate, you know, um, studies to back it up. Then we can get a little bit stronger with valerian, alright? That's a, it's a known sedative, you know? But then, we can get into more of the isolated chemicals that are precursors to melatonin. So, things like 5-HTP, uh, L-tryptophan.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  So, this allows your body to actually still do a step to produce melatonin, you know? And 5-HTP is, that's pretty solid stuff.

• 1:59:24Rich Roll?

  So, you would take that in supplement form?

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  Exactly. But start natural first. And again, following all of the strategies in the book, you probably won't even need this portion. But a lot of people, even when they come into my clinic, if it was, you know, it's like, how can I have more energy? Or what can I do to improve my sleep? What can I take? What can I take? You know, it's everybody's question. And we need to stop looking at things like that and look at what's the underlying cause.

• 1:59:49Rich Roll?

  Just knee jerk medicate.

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, do you know the stats on how many people are on sleep medication?

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:59:56Rich Roll?

  It's crazy, right?

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  It's it's it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable and it's ju- and it's still growing. This is why this work is so important to me, uh, to help to change the conversation because, man, uh, Dr. Sarah Godfrey wrote the foreword for the book and she mentioned it. So I kind of didn't go down that road talking about the pharmaceutical angle. Um, but man, it is scary, man. And what's happening is radical increase in mortality rate. Just taking like 20 sleeping pills a year can.

• 2:00:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I saw that in your book and there's no indication that it's actually improving. It's it's not, it's not giving you sleep quality.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's the thing.

• 2:00:35Rich Roll?

  Which is the one thing that you're, you're, that's why you're taking it and you're not getting that.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  Because in our society, we've been taught that it's the time on the mattress. It's not the quality of sleep and how you actually feel. And the big issue overall, Rich, with how we've got this crazy battle with sleep is that

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  we don't understand that we're getting so many benefits that we don't have to work for. Like in our society where it's like you have to work hard and you've got to do more to get the result. Sleep is where you do nothing.

• 2:01:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's amazing. You know, as an athlete, you're always trying to figure out how to recover more quickly, recover more effectively. And there are just endless conversations around the nutrition aspect of that or the training aspect of that. But far and away, the most profound way to expedite your recovery is to have an amazing night of sleep.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:28Rich Roll?

  That trumps all.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 2:01:30Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  And then some.

• 2:01:31Rich Roll?

  But we don't, we're not really talking, well, we're talking about it now.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 2:01:36Rich Roll?

  We should be talking about that more.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:38Rich Roll?

  Uh, the final question I have for you is.

• 2:01:42Rich Roll?

  Is what, what is going on with people that have chronic insomnia? You know, there are those people that just can't sleep and they've been dealing with this for their whole lives or, you know, for the better part of their adulthood that just struggle tremendously. I mean, is, are these steps and tools and resources and the program in your book, does it address that? Or are there some people that have some kind of, you know, chronic medical condition that there, that there's no known sort of solution for?

• 2:02:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's rare. Again, that's rare. If we're talking about a genetic program that's gone haywire, you know, from early on, that's rare. It's generally what I've found is that there's a triggering event in most cases. And so it's kind of digging around and finding out.

• 2:02:28Rich Roll?

  Psychologically?

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And so for a lot of people, it's like, oh, I slept well when I was a kid, but then when I got to high school or when I got to college or when, you know, my, my husband went away for the military or, you know, all these different stories that I've heard that were a catalyst for that feeling and being disconnected from a normal sleep cycle. So what's going on there? There's a number of things, man. I mean, we could do a whole nother show talking about it, but it could be a simple, you know, I, I share one story. There was a guy who came in from France. He was a new student at the university I was working with and he wanted to get in shape and he was, he just ran. That was his thing. He was a runner. And then he would also, also run at night most times, you know, in the evening.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  And so basically I just did an overhaul and he, it came out, he looked like it too, man. He was so pale. You remember that movie Powder? He looked like that guy.

• 2:03:21Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's super white.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  And so he was like so pale and he wanted to get stronger. He wanted to get healthy. And after doing the, you know, a deeper introspection and with myself and find out, you know, I need to start asking these questions. I found out he sleeps less than four hours a night and it's just been that way for years. So we did an overhaul on his lifestyle factors. Number one, I stopped him from running for a little while to help to, you know, get a circadian timing back on track. And we changed the way that he was eating. And at the time, you know, I was really into raw foods. So we pulled back on things that can be more kind of inflammatory, a lot of dense foods that have a lot of hormones in them. And.

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  What we did was just a really short, intense, um, superset weightlifting in the, in the early part of the morning. All right. So, and then we sprinkled in a couple of other things, you know, the supplementation, like I mentioned earlier, with some of the softer things. And a week later, he came to see me and he was like, I don't know what you did. I slept like a baby, you know, and he slept for eight hours.

• 2:04:26Rich Roll?

  How long did that take?

• 2:04:28Speaker 01

  He, he said it was, he said it was two days later after we met.

• 2:04:31Rich Roll?

  Two days later, he went from sleeping four hours to eight?

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:34Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  And man, his body changed like crazy, man, over the upcoming months and seeing him at the university. It changed his life once he got to sleep together, you know, but his story is different, you know, and also, but it was really the catalyst. Like I got in there and I let him know that that wasn't okay. So a lot of people, they just, they just go on about their life and they don't really make a big deal out of it.

• 2:04:57Rich Roll?

  Are there people though, that can function, you know?

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  Everybody can function.

• 2:05:00Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, but I mean, not just adequately, but function well.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  At a high level.

• 2:05:05Rich Roll?

  You know, four or five hours of sleep. Cause you, you hear it every day, right? People are like, ah, I sleep four hours. I'm great, you know?

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  They're not showing up as their best self, period. I mean, we have to be honest about that. It's, it's just not, that's not how we're wired up. You know, you can absolutely crush like there, you know, a friend of ours, Gary Vaynerchuk, he, you know, he kind of got by on that no sleep.

• 2:05:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well Gary V is, yeah, I mean, he prides himself on that.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:05:30Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? It's go, go, go all the time. I mean, and, and I look at that and it's inspirational, but I'm also thinking.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 2:05:37Rich Roll?

  How balanced is this guy's life? Like is he gonna flame out? Like?

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  I talked to him, like sitting right next to me. I was asking, so what's the deal, man? He's like, hey, man, I'm now I'm playing, I'm looking at playing the long game. Cause he was doing that with his business, but now he's doing that with his health. He's like, people don't know, man, I'm still getting like seven hours of sleep, you know? And he hired his trainer to stay on him. Like he brings his trainer with him everywhere now. Because like, I know what I won't do. Like I'm not gonna work out unless somebody's like pushing me and telling me to do it. Like, hey, get up and do it, Gary. Um, but another person, another model in our sphere, Shailene Johnson, you know, like she's somebody who's like. You know, we can have it all, you know, and putting a priority on her health, her family is her big thing. And her business is crushing, you know, like she's crushed it 10 times over.

• 2:06:25Speaker 01

  You know, so we can do all of this stuff. It's really about, it's not about managing time. First of all, like, that's an illusion, like time's just gonna happen, you know, you can manage yourself within time. And if you're just scheduling, I even put it on your schedule, like this is my sleep time. Like if you schedule in your sleep that this is the time you're gonna get sleep, I promise you, those hours that you're awake, you're gonna crush life, you're gonna do so much better in everything because it's a force multiplier.

• 2:06:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and time is a fluid concept, you know, I think, the more I think about it, uh, the more I'm really convinced that time is much more expansive than how we define it and understand it because when you're sort of in the flow of what you do, or you're taking care of yourself, or you're sleeping well and, and you're checking all the boxes, you get everything done that you need to get done and then some, even if on paper and on your schedule or your calendar, it doesn't look like it's going to make sense.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just said it, man.

• 2:07:25Rich Roll?

  There's a weird equation that takes place and it requires a little faith and trust, but that's been my experience.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh my goodness, and you know, just even going back to people dealing with insomnia,

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  something that can't be negated is the fact that, I mean, we have so much stuff going on today, you know, that we didn't have before, we didn't have a few decades ago. So we have this concept called inner chatter, you know, so a lot of people, and there's this great quote that says, "My bed is this wonderful place that I go to remember everything that I was supposed to do." Right? And so it's just like, brain on, it's got all these windows open. How do we consolidate? How do we close those windows down or just minimize them so we can go to sleep? You know, and just open up the most important, which is sleep time, you know, so this is another issue with insomnia is just having all of this constant stimulation and inner chatter.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  Um, and I talk about these different issues too, so it could be an issue with um, just hormone imbalance, period, you know, people, you know, your hormones can be broken in a way. And so somebody's estrogen can be off and influencing what's going on with, you know, progesterone and this balance. Uh, could be an issue obviously with cortisol, it could be an issue with. This crazy P word, which is parasites, you know, so which are some parasitic, parasitic infections can be nocturnal, you know, so some of these creatures are nocturnal. So it's so many different factors that could be taking place, you know, some people waking up at the same exact time every night, and I know that's speaking to some people.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  It could just be that your hormone rhythm that we talked about, and you're getting a secretion of cortisol at the wrong time. And so here are some things that you can do to help to try to reset that, you know, it's really that simple, you know, getting up early and doing some exercise, getting some sunlight, making sure that at night we're not stimulating, overstimulating ourself, you know, eating good sleep nutrition through the day, making sure that we're having intimate connection, you know, love, doing some self massage, doing some partner massage, getting professional massage, being careful with another, whole another subject is with alcohol and the timing of alcohol, not against alcohol at all, but the timing of things, you know, stack the conditions in your favor, and that's what

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  it's really about, you know, because your body knows how to fix this stuff, it can sort it out, just like we talked about with, you know, healing a chronic condition with, maybe it's your heart or your blood sugar, whatever the case may be, the same thing with your sleep, it's really about stacking the conditions and understanding you're a unique phenomenon, and your quote insomnia is different from the next person, but it's, I think the first step is not identifying yourself with that label, you know, that I'm an insomniac, and just say, you know, I have, I have some issues with sleep that I'm working to fix right now, you know, to start to break that, that bond.

• 2:10:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and changing the mindset and the approach from this idea that you get ready for bed when you're getting ready for bed, as opposed to getting ready for bed when you wake up in the morning and being mindful of the decisions that you make throughout the day to set yourself up to have a good night's sleep.

• 2:10:42Speaker 01

  Yes, said perfectly.

• 2:10:44Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Thanks for talking to me.

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  Hey, man, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

• 2:10:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it was great. I learned a lot, and, you know, this is an area that I need, that I need work on, so this was really great, and I appreciate it, man. I'm excited for the book. It's called Sleep Smarter. It's coming out March 15th.

• 2:11:00Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 2:11:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. You excited?

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  I'm beyond excited, man. Beyond excited.

• 2:11:05Rich Roll?

  How long are you in LA for?

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  I'm here for two days, so the next two days after today.

• 2:11:12Rich Roll?

  What else are you doing here?

• 2:11:13Speaker 01

  Headed to San Diego to hang out with Shailene Johnson on the way and then my buddy Pat Flynn. Gonna hang out with him a little bit.

• 2:11:21Rich Roll?

  All the podcasters.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  I know, right? We're like this little weird family.

• 2:11:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  You know, it's awesome.

• 2:11:27Rich Roll?

  Well, good. I'm glad there's good weather for you out here.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  Oh, man. This is night and day. I literally was shoveling snow yesterday, so now I'm out here sweating, which is crazy.

• 2:11:37Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Well, I'll put a link up to pick up the book on, in the show notes, of course. And if people want to connect with you and dig on you, the best way to do that, first and foremost, is check out your podcast, The Model Health Show. If they want to learn more about you, it is the Sean Model.

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  The Model Health Show.

• 2:11:58Rich Roll?

  The Model Health Show.

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  We changed everything, yeah. That was the old one. So, yeah, TheModelHealthShow.com. And we do, like you said, we do videos of the podcast, so you can hang out in the studio with us.

• 2:12:08Rich Roll?

  So you're on YouTube with all of that as well. And you're easy to find on Twitter and Facebook. What's the Twitter?

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  @SeanModel. S-H-A-W-N Model. One word.

• 2:12:18Rich Roll?

  All right. Anything else coming up?

• 2:12:20Speaker 01

  That's it, man.

• 2:12:21Rich Roll?

  All about the book, right?

• 2:12:22Speaker 01

  It's all about sleep smarter and getting the word out and helping the people that you care about, you know, to start sleeping better, too, so we all can show up better for each other. And our health and our happiness and our success is going to improve exponentially because of that. So it's exciting, man.

• 2:12:39Rich Roll?

  Cool. Great talking to you, man.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  Thanks, Rich.

• 2:12:42Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:12:53Rich Roll?

  All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that. Don't forget to check out the show notes at richroll.com on the episode page for this episode to help take your education, your infotainment beyond the earbuds. Plant Power Tuscany, this is our retreat in Italy in May. I said it last week, we're officially sold out. However, a couple of people dropped out, a couple of spots opened up. We're going to the waitlist on that. I'm not sure if they've been filled yet or not. I don't think so. So if you're dying to go, you might want to reach out to our producer Mel and see if there's still some opportunity there. You can reach her through the website, ourplantpowerworld.com.

• 2:13:37Rich Roll?

  You can click on email and that'll go directly to Mel. Also, we're going to have a second retreat in the same location in October. Dates and details are still pending, but I'll let you know as soon as we know what's up with that. Couple announcements, Julie and I just launched our new online video course with Mind Body Green. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Conscious Relationships, all about how to have a deep, intimate relationship with your partner, how to attract a soulmate, how to cultivate true lasting intimacy, and even how to have an awesome fight, which is very important, right? Proud of this course. You can find a link in the show notes or go to mindbodygreen.com, click on video courses on the upper left-hand side of the homepage, and you'll find my course sitting alongside

• 2:14:22Rich Roll?

  my other two courses, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and The Art of Living with Purpose. Really enjoyed making these courses and I think they're beneficial, so check those out. If you haven't already, subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com/richroll. Also Snapchat, doing a lot of stuff there, having fun, sharing videos of kind of what I'm doing throughout the day. It's I Am Rich Roll. IAM Rich Roll on Snapchat. For all your Plant Power and RRP schwag and merch needs, visit richroll.com. We've got signed copies of Finding Ultra and The Plant Power Way. We've got cool, groovy t-shirts and tech running tees. We have nutrition products. We have sticker packs.

• 2:15:05Rich Roll?

  We have fine art prints, all kinds of cool stuff. Also, sign up to my newsletter if you want to be on the in on upcoming deals and announcements and stuff related to the podcast and appearances. And please keep sending in your questions for future Q and A. Podcast info at richroll.com. Thanks so much to Shawn Patterson for all his help on the graphics on this episode, Chris Swan for production assistance. Theme music was done by Anna Lima. That's my boys' band, and thank you so much. That's it, you guys. I'm going to be coming at you from New York City, most likely, next time. And I hope you enjoyed this program, and I look forward to bringing you great, new content.

• 2:15:49Rich Roll?

  How did I do on the unscripted intro and outro? Was this okay? Should I script it next time? Should I keep it loose? Let me know. Peace. Plants.