Pod Insights Change Wired Sleep, Sweat, and Smart Fuel: some health tweaks that high performers miss. About this episode Want steady energy without complicated biohacks? We walk through the small, overlooked habits that create outsized gains - from underappreciated easy sleep hacks, to nutrition supplements and the science of drinking water. This is practical leverage for high performers who need clarity, energy, cognitive stamina, and mood stability to do their best work. Choose your weakest link and start small. These simple shifts compound fast. If this helped you think differently a...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, your partner in transformation, in change, your executive coach 360, body, mind, work better, and just someone who is truly passionate and dedicated to learning how to unlock and use more of our human potential and by doing so, creating a more extraordinary world, living the most extraordinary lives. Today, guys, we are talking about health update. So, one of the specialties of mine as a coach is health coaching.
0:53 Speaker 00 And I help high-performing individuals, so people who just want to do their best, if not all the time, then as often as possible. And with them, we always work on dialing in their health habits, health systems, because I always say that your health is your charging station. That's where you get your energy for everything else. And when your health is suboptimal and suffers on a regular basis, then it's going to be really hard to, impossible to unlock the best in your mindset and your psychology and as a result of it, in what you do and what you end up creating in your life, in your calling, in your business, in your relationships, in your family.
1:37 Speaker 00 So, health is the foundation. Today, I'm not going to be talking about maybe foundational stuff that, you know, you might hear about. It's not because I don't think it's important, but today I'd like to focus on things that I find with my clients that almost in every case are missing and undervalued and underappreciated. So, those health practices in lifestyle, in nutrition, and also in movement that people don't look deep enough into, end up doing something which doesn't bring the necessary outcome or the desired.
2:23 Speaker 00 The desired outcome and the desired quality that they want. And with just simple tweaks, you will start getting all these additional benefits that don't require a lot of investment on your time or changing a lot of things about your life. But it's all about doing the smaller, underappreciated things, right? So your whole system works so much better without you having to invest a lot of, I don't know, energy, effort, discipline. We're talking about health leverage. And what I see is missing in nutrition, in lifestyle, in movement of high performers and also in everything that has to do with energy creation.
3:07 Speaker 00 And also you'll understand how a lot of times you create problems or suffer unnecessarily because you don't pay attention to those details because you maybe don't think that they are important. Let's start with the foundation of your health, sleep. You know, it's where you recover. It's where your body repairs its DNA. It's where your body builds systems. It's where your brain learns. It's where your brain also works on things like emotional regulation and incorporating your life lessons and experiences into your psychology. So you adapt and move through life easier. Like sleep, the quality of sleep is so fundamental
3:51 Speaker 00 also to your metabolic health, to your inflammation, to your hunger and cravings, to your blood sugar, like everything, freaking everything starts and depends on good quality sleep. And yes, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with sleep and maybe even out of your control, especially if you are dealing with some health issues. But also there are things that are quite easy to fix and you're not fixing them. Again, maybe because you think they're not important, like getting earplugs for the ones that fit your ears, that you can get used to, the ones that are good. Your brain cannot get into really deep stages of sleep if there is some obvious, you know, noise or maybe the door, the dog barking or maybe.
4:33 Speaker 00 The door opens and closes, or maybe somebody you sleep with, they are not very light sleepers in terms of noise. Or, and you might have those micro wake-ups that make you sleep a lot less efficiently. Your brain is always trying to keep you safe. So when you don't sleep well enough, what happens? Well, when you don't sleep, when you always hear some background noise, your brain cannot get into deeper stages of sleep because your brain is trying to keep you safe and a little bit awake in case something happens in your environment. And the quieter you can create or design the environment around you, the easier it is going to be for you to have better quality of sleep.
5:18 Speaker 00 And so earplugs in our environments, like I don't have the, well, actually, the noise where I am right now is quite low all the time. But I spend quite a lot of time in places where the windows were not good enough, or maybe I was by the road and there was traffic, or maybe the walls were not thick enough and I could hear my neighbors that were not necessarily the quietest ones. Like so many situations, or even when I'm on the plane or I travel, it's the same, like I cannot control a lot of that noise. But what I can control is putting earplugs in my ears and creating as much quietness as it's possible. And my sleep improved so much because of this.
6:01 Speaker 00 I just, now I don't understand how people sleep without earplugs, how you can just rely on the noise around you unless you are in this isolated room and you control your environment 100%, but it's very hard for most people to do it all the time. So, earplugs, underappreciated sleep hack. And there are so many, you know, new ones on the market that actually work, that are comfortable, that reduce the noise to the level that it needs to be reduced. So, check them out. If you're not sure which one to get, ask me. I have a few recommendations that I give to my clients, which worked really beautifully. The second thing is mask, sleeping mask. Like, not the one that kind of like you get on the airplane,
6:46 Speaker 00 but the good one, the cushioned one, that closes all of the, you know, small holes and allow you to be in complete darkness even when your room is not that, even when you hold different lights. You know, some people Get like some tape and close certain lights on either air conditioners or their TVs or other things that are blinking in their environment. I'm like, just get the mask and then no matter where you move and where you are, you can create this black environment, which is needed for good quality sleep. That's in research on real people have been shown to improve sleep, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot, depending on where you're coming from.
7:30 Speaker 00 But mask, buy a mask, it's such an again, underappreciated sleep hack. Buy a mask, buy earplugs and things will start getting better, a lot better when it comes to sleep quality and your sleep quality is your energy for the next day. But not only that, that's again where your body and your brain build muscle, learn things and integrate that knowledge into your brain, where your brain does emotional regulation, where your brain make sure that the next day you have good blood sugar control and your appetite and your recovery are optimal. So all of that is done in sleep. So good quality sleep is such a foundational health routine, which you again can improve with a lot of small hacks.
8:14 Speaker 00 Also, sleep foundational lifestyle, timing of your sleep really matters. You wanna have great quality of sleep, go to bed on the same time, wake up on the same time, like no matter what the time, the more consistent you are, the better your sleep will get. Obviously, sleeping aligned with your chronotype, like whether you're a morning person, a late night person or a regular like middle person who sleeps from, let's say, ten, eleven to six, seven. Stick to the time and your quality of sleep will improve dramatically. Again, that is what research and data shows us these days. Then also things like not drinking alcohol before sleep,
8:55 Speaker 00 do coffee, making sure that your caffeine stops at least eight hours before sleep. Even if you can fall asleep, the quality of your sleep is not gonna be the same. Again, that's what been shown in research on real people. Then late night food, your food should stop two, three hours before your bedtime, at least make your meals here. Maybe if you have like a little snack, it's not gonna affect your digestion that much. Although again, all the health professionals and researchers and sleep scientists recommend that you stop your food two, three hours before bed to.
9:30 Speaker 00 Down regulate your temperature and make sure your blood sugar is optimized for your sleep experience, like many different things. But yes, those are essentials. Timing, alcohol, not having that which crashes sleep for most people. Just because you can get unconscious doesn't mean you're gonna have great quality sleep. Coffee timing and then late night food. And also not training late at night, not having stimulating activities that ramp up your brain and make it so much more difficult to sleep. And also light environment, not looking at blue screens or any kind of bright light. So that's about sleep. Then the next one, we're gonna move
10:11 Speaker 00 to exercise briefly. I'm not gonna be talking about workouts, but I would like to emphasize that exercise is not just for your cardiovascular capacity and your ability to run faster or move, if I don't know, faster, more efficiently, becoming an athlete, or even building muscle, or, you know, bone strength and density. So you don't fall and break a lot of bones when you are older in life and you get injured a lot less. And bones, your bones are also an organ that create different compounds to make your metabolism work in general. Besides all of that, do realize,
10:49 Speaker 00 and when you train, when you exercise, when you do hard things physically, you train your mitochondria. Those are energy producing plants in yourself. They create energy. And the more you train, like obviously overtraining is not great, but when you train consistently and you exercise, you create more mitochondria, better mitochondria. And why you wanna care about that is because they create your energy. And the better they are, the more there are of them that create energy, the more energy you're gonna have then for life and for your health and for recovery and for your
11:27 Speaker 00 creativity and for everything else. So you build that energy capacity when you exercise that you can then use for a lot of things in your life. So that's why people who exercise tend to be a lot more energetic, not just because they somehow have more energy for exercise. No, you literally create more batteries in yourself.
11:50 Speaker 00 When you train, when you exercise and that allows you to have more energy than that, you can invest into different things in your life. So that is not often talked about, exercise. And I feel like a lot of people really need to understand that. But besides that, exercise is a natural anti-inflammatory, painkiller, mood booster. It helps your cells to take the garbage out of yourself into your bloodstream. And so it's further eliminated out of your body. And then, you know, natural detoxification happens and you get a lot less possibility of getting all kinds of negative health consequences.
12:32 Speaker 00 So exercise, and again, anti-painkiller, anti-inflammatory, it modulates your immune system, meaning it makes your immune system work better, not too much, not really still just the right amount. That's what the right amount of exercise does for you. With the right amount of sleep and recovery, you become this more energetic machine who also experiences less pain, less inflammation, better moods and more energy, more energy. That's what you think when you think about exercise. So if you're struggling with tiredness and fatigue, contrary to popular belief, you don't need to do less, you actually need to get out there and start doing hard things physically on a regular basis.
13:16 Speaker 00 And hard things, by the way, guys, are relative. I'm not saying you go become an athlete. What I'm saying is do challenging things for you, whatever your level is, and do that consistently. Besides exercise, the next one, we're gonna switch to nutrition, specifically three points. Underappreciated nutritive compounds that a lot of people skip because you think they're not important and you can just go without them, fine. And then at some point, you start accumulating certain diseases and health problems and you think, you know, or aging, maybe not, maybe you're just not doing the basic stuff.
14:00 Speaker 00 Like they did this observational research on people who take multivitamin. And those were adults, I think 60 plus, and one group was taking multivitamin, just regular multivitamin, nothing special. I think it was two or three years and that the group wasn't. And so the one that was had better cognitive capacity, memory, their overall health was better, all cause mortality, like all of the things were better statistically, significant and across the whole group. So for example, taking your multivitamin every day till the rest of your life is quite a good insurance policy of having a less cognitive performance and health problems.
14:43 Speaker 00 So that's what I do for all of my clients. I recommend, suggest taking a multivitamin. Then we have things like magnesium and D three. Even if you live in a climate with a lot of sun, as we age, our capacity to absorb and then use that vitamin D diminishes. So taking a supplement, it's very hard to actually overshoot it unless you decide to take like mega doses on a regular basis. So taking a multivitamin, a lot of it is not going to be absorbed. And then taking additional D three actually works quite well. And alongside with then taking magnesium and making sure you get enough calcium, which
15:25 Speaker 00 is only in sufficient amount. I'm talking about calcium in dairy products or things like soft bones of fish. If you consistently eat canned fish, like maybe sardines like I do. So calcium is very important, not just for your bones, also it's an electrolyte which helps to contract your muscles and your heart is a muscle and your stomach is a muscle and helps to conduct or transmit impulses between your nerve cells. So to think better, it is also important for relaxation of muscles and nerves. So if you want to recover better, those, you know, calcium specifically is important
16:07 Speaker 00 and you need about one gram of it, which is if you take yogurt, then you're probably going to get about maybe quarter of that in a really big cup like. Two to three hundred milliliters for milk, you know, if it's blood-based milk, it might be fortified, but you need to check. So calcium is one of those things that I see my clients not getting and because, again, they might not be recovering well or get muscle spasm or down the road, they might be more prone to injury or, you know, you're gonna start getting some dental problems or like so many things or even digestion problems. Your calcium isn't actually needed for your digestion to work properly as well.
16:50 Speaker 00 So calcium, I find in my clients that there is underconsumption because they hear, oh, I shouldn't be eating dairy and then they don't know where they're getting their calcium. Like, well, if you're not eating it, your body's not getting it. I can tell you that much by looking at your food diary. Then magnesium, something also to take for now until the rest of your life. Magnesium is needed every time your cells create energy and energy is the currency of life. So taking your magnesium, your D3, your calcium on a regular basis is really, really good idea along with your multivitamin and along with your omega threes. And omega threes insufficient amounts.
17:33 Speaker 00 A lot of people would just buy any cheapest omega threes and they think that's good. For most people, it's far away from good. The recommended amount these days is two to four grams. I always say at least one grams for essential nutrition. And to give you an idea, an average or cheaper omega three supplement, not only the quality is not going to be really great in a lot of cases, but also you would get like two hundred to maybe maximum three hundred milligrams when you need at least, at the freaking very least, one thousand. So getting the right kind of omega threes for your health, for your heart health,
18:15 Speaker 00 for your arteries, for your inflammation, for your immune system, for your brain. Brain needs those omega threes to think better, to perform better, to protect yourself from all its rich activities. So omega threes can one of those things that is underappreciated. And people think also with supplement they get it, but they actually don't. I just recently had to talk to my parents a little bit more about that. So luckily where they are, they can get a lot of fatty fish really cheaply. So I recommend it to eat it daily as a snack. So omega threes. And now a couple of more things, electrolytes and fiber.
18:59 Speaker 00 Now hydration and drinking enough water, you probably heard about it, that it is important and every single cell in your body needs hydration or water and other liquids where yourself, your body can find water. It's very important for your cognitive performance, for your health, for every single function in your body, in brain. You need water for health, for performance, for everything. You are a water run creature, guys. If you're not getting enough and not getting that 500 milliliters of water or as much as you possibly can do first thing in the morning, you're not doing it right.
19:38 Speaker 00 But what is underappreciated is not getting enough electrolytes with it. A lot of people don't know that in order for your body to use water efficiently, effectively, it's not enough to just drink water. You also need enough electrolytes, those salts, mineral salts like sodium or which is found in salt, like magnesium, like calcium, like potassium, to absorb that water into your bloodstream from your gut, where it usually gets when you drink it. And then from your bloodstream to get it into yourself, so it doesn't just pass.
20:19 Speaker 00 Passes through and you go pink unlimited amount and very frequently. But instead, your body actually absorbs it and uses it. So in order for that to happen, you need your electrolytes. And those are found, yes, in salt. That's why it is recommended to get some salt with your water in the morning. But also it's good to have some potassium, which takes the water out of your blood into your cells, where a lot of it is needed, right? To get the junk out and to make everything work properly, all the processes. So electrolytes. To my clients, I always recommend start your morning with electrolytes in your water,
20:58 Speaker 00 either unflavored, that sodium, potassium and magnesium, which a lot of electrolytes drinks would have. But either unflavored or with some natural flavor, with some maybe even natural sweetener like stevia, which doesn't seem to have any negative effect whatsoever. Just making it more pleasant to drink your water. Like, I hate plain, plain water. So I get all the electrolyte drinks I can without sugar, added sugar. But, but you wanna understand that water is not enough if you aren't getting those electrolytes. During the day, you usually would get those from your food, especially if you eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. But in the morning, might be worth it to put some electrolytes.
21:42 Speaker 00 So you don't just pee effectively, but you actually use that water effectively. Especially if you exercise in the morning, your body uses to contract the muscles, to transmit electricity through your nerves, so you can move effectively and efficiently. And then when you start working, for example, cognitively, your body uses those electrolytes and water to, for your nerves to communicate. So you can actually think effectively, right? So water is not enough. Electrolytes, that is another thing that a lot of my clients don't really think about.
22:14 Speaker 00 And when they start thinking about it and using it, they're like, oh my god, I did not know I could function and feel that well. The right kind of hydration is really powerful. And then fiber, fiber, fiber, fiber. Some people think that it is just to go to the bathroom effectively, which is also a good thing in it on its own. But no, fiber that comes with fruit and vegetables does a lot more than that. People who eat a lot of things with fiber, like fruit and vegetables, beans, whole grain, cholesterol seem to go down and be very manageable.
22:54 Speaker 00 It is also thought that fiber helps you to remove excessive stuff from certain minerals and vitamins, but also junk and the excess hormones and stuff that your body doesn't want in your food. So a lot of stuff is absorbed in that fibrous stuff and is taken out of your system, going through this natural detoxification process, which makes your whole health, your elimination process, yes, a lot better. But then again, with the fibrous foods, you also get vitamins and minerals. And that's if you eat, if we're talking about fruit and vegetables,
23:36 Speaker 00 that water that are inside of the cells of the plant that seems to be very beneficial to your health. So your cholesterol go down, your hormones seems to stabilize, your hunger is more balanced because stuff moves slower through your digestive system. Also, your blood sugar, one of the key aspects of your metabolic health, gets a lot more regular when you on a regular basis eat stuff with fiber. So your blood sugar doesn't spike, even though you might have, let's say, more carbohydrates. But if it's from fiber-rich foods, that doesn't produce that blood sugar spike because your body has to break through the fibers and then absorb gradually those.
24:22 Speaker 00 Natural, you know, sometimes sugars, sometimes starches, other types of carbohydrates and fruit and vegetables. So your metabolism gets healthier, your cravings and hunger get more balanced, your hormonal balance, your gut health, obviously, there is more and more information about how your gut bacteria is so essential for everything health related, from your mental health to of your inflammation responses to just gut bacteria, they're like trillion of cells and they eat fiber and they produce a whole host of things, even things like serotonin and dopamine, which makes your mood go up and your motivation go up
25:02 Speaker 00 and make things work better in your whole body. So fiber and when you eat things with fiber, it's just so much more powerful than people think about it, like, oh, it helps me to get regular. It's a lot more than that. If, and, and yes, sometimes I recommend fiber supplements to my clients, but most importantly, I recommend eating a lot of fruit and vegetables, also beans considered to be somewhere towards more fruit and vegetables, because you also get all the vitamins and minerals with that and all the other compounds that we don't even know everything about. What is recommended about of food, things
25:42 Speaker 00 like fruit and vegetables per day to get of more than enough fiber and a lot of vitamins and minerals, all the things that you need. So what is recommended is about eight hundred grams fruit and vegetables. And then people say, well, it's a lot. Well, actually, an average apple is about one hundred fifty grams. You eat three apples and it's already four hundred fifty grams of fruit and vegetables. And then maybe for dinner, you eat two to three hundred grams of vegetables, which is actually not that much. If you skip all the, you know, like fast carbohydrates and stuff that you should be eating less of. What happens when you start eating those eight hundred grams of fruit and vegetables is that
26:25 Speaker 00 You start having less space for junk, which is or just processed food, which is really good for you. So eat more of that and you by default eat less of everything else. So fill up your fruit plate with fruit and vegetables. So again, three apples already four hundred fifty and average banana is one hundred twenty grams or so. Two hundred grams of vegetables is literally nothing, like when you look at at the plate. One word of caution, most of the salads and things like spinach, they are amazing for you, but they don't have a lot of fiber. In order to get an average amount of fiber from spinach, you have to eat like a whole bag of it, you know, one, I think about two hundred grams of
27:11 Speaker 00 actual spinach to get the fiber, because it just has so much water in it, just like most greens. So greens are not that great for fiber, but things like beans are champions in fiber content, obviously, you know, whole grains, like the ones, the grains that you can see, rice, by the way, a lot of people don't know that. Very little fiber, one cup of rice is one hundred grams of cooked rice is about one gram of fiber. Whereas compared to fruit and vegetables per one hundred grams or about three point five ounces, you have five to six on average. Now, there are some fruits that are richer, some are a little bit less, but rice compared to that, very poor in fiber. I'm talking about white rice.
27:55 Speaker 00 Beans, a cup is sometimes fifteen, sixteen grams of fiber. Compare that to rice when it's one, so it's fifteen to one, right? So lentils and beans are super high in fiber. Again, fruit of about five, six grams per one hundred grams, you eat an apple and you already like seven to eight grams. You need thirty grams at least per day, but if you eat your five, eight hundred grams of fruit, vegetables and maybe some beans there, you're gonna be overshooting forty easily. And you're gonna be a lot less hungry, a lot more energetic, a lot having a lot less blood sugar spikes and dips, and that means consistent energy throughout the day.
28:39 Speaker 00 But yes, fiber, like for a lot of my clients, we might coach different things, but it's like through the whole year, we might be also trying to get to that amount of fiber. But simply, it's because not a habit for a lot of people, but once you get used to it, you're like, how could I live without it? And again, it's not that much, three apples and you already are more than half towards your goal. And that's it for today, guys. We talked about underappreciated, undervalued your health routine, specifics and hacks and habits that are just undervalued,
29:21 Speaker 00 but have such a profound effect on the quality of your health and energy and performance, right? Sleep, earplugs and masks, besides all the other stuff. Exercise, it's for energy, not just, you know, to, to get muscles. Among other things, like better mood, less pain, less inflammation, better working immune system. Then we have nutrition, electrolytes, hydration is not just about water, vitamin D3, magnesium, calcium, the right kind of omega threes, multivitamin. Look into those if you're interested in long-term health, less diseases and feeling better every single day.
30:06 Speaker 00 And then fiber, eight hundred grams of fruit and vegetables to not just be regular, but also improve almost every aspect of your health, especially through your gut bacteria, which are more than your cells in your body and they affect every single thing in your health and your performance. So guys, which one is the weakest? That is the question. Start there with one habit, with one action. Build systems to make it easy, to make it automatic. Reward yourself with feeling that you are. Investing in yourself every time you do that habit and you are on the way to your
30:50 Speaker 00 most high performing self you can possibly be. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening. If you found value in this episode and you can't wait to share, please do share with at least one other person so we could reach more ears around the world. And thank you guys. Till next time, get your electrolytes, get your mask and earplugs and keep growing and eat some apples there as well.
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