Pod Insights Change Wired Why most people's sleep sucks and how to fix it. Yes, it's possible to have great sleep every night. About this episode I’m Angela Shurina, master health executive coach, and I’m making the case for sleep as the most underrated high performance tool: it sharpens decisions, steadies emotions, improves workout recovery, reduces cravings, and lowers the risk of burnout that takes high achievers out of the game. We dig into the sleep toolkit using research-backed sleep science and real-world coaching patterns I see in leaders all the time. We call out the beliefs that quietly wreck results, like “I’ll sleep more ...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host. I'm your master health executive coach, sleep nutrition, fitness, feeling, looking, doing your absolute best and most importantly, learning how to implement all of that, all the new habits and knowledge into your life, changing your habits, changing what you do every day, change for personal collective growth and evolution. That's what we are all about here, change wired. So after listening to this podcast episode, you'll always get away with a few strategies
0:52 Speaker 00 and one action step to get better, invest in yourself and to learn how to change towards your potential better and better and better. Today, guys, we are talking about sleep. We are talking about sleep toolkit.
1:12 Speaker 00 It's going to be research-backed advice based on our current understanding of how sleep works and what habits and routines and rituals allows us to consistently, and by consistently, I mean, well, almost every night to have great quality of sleep. So then you can think sharper, make better decisions, feel and look your best, eat well, prevent injuries, don't get sick that often and be crushing your fitness goals.
1:49 Speaker 00 Sleep. You'll understand during this podcast, A, why it's so counterproductive to try to shortcut your sleep, what the research and science says, what you actually undermine when you try to minimize sleep. We'll talk about common beliefs that a lot of high achievers and strivers and leaders have that make them deprioritize their sleep. And by doing so, deprioritizing or shooting in the foot their own objectives. So you can understand that. You can understand how you can be right now self sabotaging
2:31 Speaker 00 without even knowing that, like taking away the quality of sleep that you could be having, but you don't. Because you don't implement certain things consistently that are required for the sleep state to occur. First, maybe let's start from the disempowering, false beliefs that in my work, I notice a lot of leaders, a lot of high achievers. And when I talk to people like in general, people have about sleep. And that's what steals the quality of the sleep that they might have, no matter how many hours they decide to sleep, right? So sleep is about quantity, but even more so about quality.
3:13 Speaker 00 And I always tell to my clients that, okay, you might not always decide to sleep optimal amount of time, but I want you to have the right kind of strategies and tools and habits. So the hours that you choose to sleep, they are as good as they can be. Because if you don't sleep enough hours and your sleep is crappy, it's like double hit to any of your performance, health, sleep, longevity, well being, just feeling good, making great decisions, achieving, recovering well from your achievement, right? You undermine all of these objectives and you don't show up sustainably as your best self for people you love and your.
3:57 Speaker 00 And you're mission and you might think, well, I'm doing my best and I'm achieving quite a lot. But it's not your potential. If you are not at your best, then you're not at your best. If you always shortcut your sleep, but let's talk specifically, what happens? Well, let's maybe start with a couple of false and limiting beliefs. From a lot of leaders, I hear something like that, maybe, you know, not direct quotation. But they mean something along the lines of I'll sleep more when things calm down. And being a high achiever, a striver, it actually means that you'll always find what to do and you'll always be busy. If you ask a high achiever, how are you? Very often you would hear busy.
4:43 Speaker 00 And that's not the state of things for most achievers that they're actually trying to avoid. They love doing stuff, they love being busy. So by definition, when you say I'll sleep more when things come down. It's like saying I'm never gonna sleep more. Well, if you're never gonna sleep more than just say so to yourself. Instead of trying to make excuses or justify that that's just how life is. No, that's how you chose to live your life. The second thing is a lot of people I worked with and people I talked to. I think that sleep, it's a state that's gonna happen when it's meant to. It's kind of like, well, if I'm in bed and I can't fall asleep and my sleep is crappy.
5:26 Speaker 00 It means either something is wrong with me or it's not meant to be. Or sometimes short sleepers, what they're called in the literature and in the research. People who wake up after, let's say, five hours of sleep and they are awake, like, I'm not sleepy. I'm, you know, wired and ready to go. Guess what? It's your stress hormones talking and it doesn't mean that you need to sleep less. It just means that your sleep because of how you're wired, of your stress responses, of your routines, etc. Cannot happen for longer periods of time. And it cannot happen because you do or don't do certain things which you learn.
6:07 Speaker 00 About on this podcast. So sleep as a state, it's not something that just gonna happen optimally, no matter what you do. You actually have to follow certain routines and regulate yourself quite well before sleep happens. So you get to get the optimal amount of sleep, which is for most people, seven to nine hours of in uninterrupted, good quality sleep. Right. So sleep state is not just something that happens. And I was also going through some materials preparing for my board exam for master health coaching certification.
6:46 Speaker 00 I was like, I got my certification, but then now I wanna be board certified. So it's additional learning and taking additional exams. And the, the, the, in, in the lectures, pre-recorded lectures, a lecturer was saying that over the past, uh, the two, couple of decades, the amount of short sleepers in the population in general increased. And it's not like we change genetically, it's just the environment and the demands and how wired we are, how stimulated you are, that's what changed. And that's why people sleep less and less, population wide, even though they need the same amount of sleep for optimal health and recovery.
7:31 Speaker 00 Right. It's just something alarming. Something tells you that it's not you who need less sleep just because you get up two hours earlier than your optimal wake time. It's because the way you structure your self-management, self-regulation, how you're wired, how your stress hormones circulate inside of you, how your sleep time is all over the place. But hey, let's, A, first gonna talk about why it is important to prioritize sleep so that you get to achieve more of your goals and live a more beautiful, fulfilling, high-performing, high-achieving, uh, without burnout, uh, life experience. So why it's important and what happens when you consistently sleep six hours or less?
8:16 Speaker 00 And then we're gonna talk about the saboteurs or behaviors that you do consciously or unconsciously that sabotage good quality of sleep you could be having, but you don't because you those things sabotage your sleep. And again, a lot of them you do to yourself. But also, it's a lot has to do with our environment these days. Then we're also gonna talk about a few supplements that seem to be very effective and helpful. But again, remember that routines and certain things you eat or drink, consume are a lot more important than and effective than those supplements. Supplement is like a bandage,
8:58 Speaker 00 right? You cannot heal a wound with a bandage. You can only sort of make it slightly less annoying can help with the healing process. So the same with sleep supplements are like that. And then we're gonna talk briefly about how to implement all of this knowledge that you just learned. So you actually do it and succeed instead of just, you know, listening about that and, and I don't know, trying a couple of things for a couple of days and you're like, ah, it doesn't matter. And then getting back to your stuff and nothing really ever changing quality wise and longevity wise. So first, the negative consequences you might expect when you become a perpetual short sleeper, six hours or less. Forty percent
9:43 Speaker 00 all of I'm telling all of this that I'm telling to you right now is based on research and studies. So forty percent decision quality drop after just one poor night, your ability to think clearly and decide well falls by up to forty percent. Well, and it can go a lot more. It might be less, again, depends on the of like how many nights you didn't sleep well and the rest of your biology and how your brain works. But up to forty percent only after only one night of poor sleep. And by the way, the worst thing about it, it's not like you're gonna notice. No, your brain is the same machine that does the evaluation.
10:23 Speaker 00 So when your decision quality drops, so is your perception of how well you do cognitively. So you will perform worse and you won't even know it. Sixty percent more emotionally reactive. Sleep deprived brains are measurably more reactive to stress and negative input. The opposite of the calm strategic present leaders need to do their best work. And two acts double the burnout risk. Chronic short sleep under six hours more than doubles your burnout risk. Which means that you will be out of order or functioning very minimally for a lot, a lot of time.
11:06 Speaker 00 If you constantly shortcut your sleep again, six hours of less. And I know quite a lot of my clients who started with five hours or less. Can you imagine? And again, you can't even notice it or evaluate it objectively. But studies and research and tests can. What else sleep makes worse for you? Shooting you in the food with all of your health and performance goals. Poor diet choices. Sleep deprivation drives sugar and calorie cravings by up to forty five percent, making healthy eating far harder. Reduced workout quality and slow recovery. The physical investment you're making in the gym or running doesn't land the way it should.
11:51 Speaker 00 Injury accumulation of tissues, joints, muscle can only repair during deep sleep. And no deep sleep, no good recovery. Immune suppression. You're operating at full output while getting sick more often and taking longer to recover. Which minimizes your good decision quality and the way you can be effective. And again, you probably won't even notice you'll be doing your best, but that best is far from your potential. Emotional reactivity. Harder conversations happen at your worst. Relationships become worse and more difficult and more challenging.
12:35 Speaker 00 You'll feel like everyone is on your case. Not everyone, it's just your brain is different without proper sleep. Worst of all, you're making the short term reactive decisions on autopilot that shape your business and your life. While you're running on a depleted brain.
12:51 Speaker 00 And again, most people assume that sleep is just about quantity, where actually what you truly wanna care about is how to get good quality, which you can't shortcut and do with a pill or some sort of solution that knocks you out, but never actually allows you to have the sleep experience that your body and brain need to recover well, to perform at your best. So we talked about again how a lot of people think that sleep is a luxury and they can't afford it. Well, if you can't afford sleep, it might be a luxury, but then you can't afford your high performance. And if you think you're performing at your highest level, you are wrong.
13:32 Speaker 00 And with cognitive tests, you will be proven or shown so. Another thing is people again think that sleep is just supposed to happen whenever your body start, not the case. There are quite a lot of things that make you not sleep ready, like having inconsistent time sleep, waking and going to bed, like having a lot of stressors and demands and feeling like you can't afford that sleep, living in the emergency mode, like your brain knows when you are in that mode. And results just always playing catch up with your life, fighting fires. You fight fires not because that's the only way it can be,
14:14 Speaker 00 but because you are running in your life in a reactive mode, which usually what happens when you don't sleep enough. Right, and again, not knowing what sabotages your sleep. A lot of people think, well, I know how to sleep. I've been sleeping my whole life. But it's like saying I know how to eat and then majority of population getting obese while thinking that they know how to eat because they did it their whole life. You know, just because I use my computer every day doesn't make me into a computer programmer. And just because you eat every day doesn't make you a nutritionist. So let's talk about practical stuff, like the saboteurs, the behaviors, the routines, the environments that shortcut your sleep, that make your optimal sleep. If not impossible, then very hard.
14:59 Speaker 00 Number one, like number one, I was reviewing the literature for the exam. And number one cause of poor sleep or poor sleep quality, guess what? Guess what? What's number one? Behavior that doesn't let you to sleep well, optimally or for as long as needed? Inconsistent sleep time.
15:21 Speaker 00 Repeating again, so you remember inconsistent sleep time is number one thing that prevents you from getting the sleep you need. And the reason is your brain needs to actually release certain hormones, change your metabolism, change the way your brain nervous system work to prepare you for sleep. And your brain, contrary to popular belief, does not know what time you decide to go to bed today or tomorrow. If your sleep wake time is always, you know, slightly off, your brain does not know how to optimally change your hormones, release melatonin, decrease cortisol, change your
16:03 Speaker 00 nervous system state, change your metabolism so to make you sleepy and align all of the sleep phases so you get optimal recovery and you actually feel sleepy and awake when you wanna feel sleepy and when you wanna feel awake. So number one sleep disruptor is the lack of your consistent sleep schedule, hands down. So that is the habit number one I would start. If you can't commit to seven days of sleep on the same time, you'll be perpetually in the state of what's called social jet lag. There is a reason why they have this term. It's kind of like being in jet lag all the time with slightly off everything. Right?
16:47 Speaker 00 Then let's talk about evening saboteurs or behaviors and routines and environments that can sabotage your sleep through different mechanisms. Bright light overhead after dark suppresses melatonin, which makes you sleepy, makes you fall asleep and prepare your whole biology for sleep. Screen exposure with no blue light protection, meaning there are apps, there is night mode on different phones and your computer, also your TV screen might not have that blue light protection. So either blue light protecting glasses or again certain night mode, certain apps or just don't use screens an hour before bed.
17:32 Speaker 00 Eating within two, three hours before bed will change your metabolism, not in a favorable for your sleep way. Alcohol within six hours of sleep will change and destroy quite a lot of significant quality of your sleep. No wind down transition. Your brain needs routine. You are not a computer who just shuts down. You need about like, I don't know, one hour, thirty minutes. When you dim the light, when you take the shower, where you put the things off, when you shut down everything, you need to wind down. Like if I were to compare you a computer, you are a computer who needs thirty minutes to run shutting down sequence.
18:13 Speaker 00 Think about it that way and put on your calendar or put alarm on where thirty minutes before your sleeping time, you need to start winding down. Irregular bedtime, we talked about irregularity, then morning and daytime saboteurs. No morning sunlight, which is needed to actually bump up your cortisol. So in fourteen to sixteen hours, your melatonin can gradually rise and you can fall asleep, fall asleep, feel sleepy and have beautiful sleep experience, right? So morning light is very actually important. So you can use different light panels, which are not as great as getting outside for ten
18:54 Speaker 00 minutes at least, but also a good helper. Irregular waking times will also contribute to you not being as sharp and ready to go. And that means then by the time it's night, you're also not going to be that sleepy and ready to sleep. Caffeine too late, ideally, like ideal, ideally, you would stop your caffeine twelve hours before bed or at least, at the very least, like by one, two P M or eight to ten hours. Even though they say that half life of caffeine in your body is twelve hours. So by the time twelve hours passed, it's like there is still some caffeine. So the, and you might fall asleep, but your sleep architecture is just not going to be the same.
19:38 Speaker 00 And if you don't believe me, try day with caffeine, without caffeine. Track it with some device and see how it's gonna change your sleep quality. Okay, no physical movement. If you are sedentary, don't get your steps, don't train, especially first part of the day. You're gonna like sitting, that's gonna be detrimental to your sleep quality. So, physical activity does matter. The more active people are, especially in the first part of the day, the easier it is to fall asleep at night. High stress evenings, when you bump up your cortisol, your dopamine with some stimulants and stimulating work or activities. It's gonna take longer, or if you do hard workout, less than two, three hours before bed.
20:23 Speaker 00 It's gonna be harder for your body and brain to shut down. So, that's why it's really good to be super active physically. And otherwise, in the morning, in the afternoon, and then start winding down in the evening. And then wrong sleep environment, dark, cool and quiet, dark, cool and quiet, remember guys? And for most of you, that means getting yourself a good sleep mask, getting yourself uh earplugs that you can sleep with comfortably. It takes some time to adjust, but then you should be like a game changer for the quietness in your sleep. Cool, yes, when you're hot, it's very hard for your body to have optimal sleep experience.
21:08 Speaker 00 It is recommended to take a hot shower, so then the body can cool itself down. And the drop in temperature will actually be super beneficial for you to feel sleepy, fall asleep and have better sleep experience.
21:21 Speaker 00 So, that is it, guys. If you need to re-listen to that again, please do.
21:30 Speaker 00 But also, let me share with you a few tips here on the implementation side of things. And once you decide what habit to start with to optimize your sleep. A, don't start all of them, you'll do nothing. Start with consistent sleep time for like two weeks. Just go to bed and wake up at the same time, plus minus twenty minutes. That alone will be a game changer. Well, don't drink alcohol as well close to bedtime. That, that is a real killer to any of your sleep efforts. But then what can help you to implement all of these sleep protocols? Know your why, understand why you're committed to sleep. Not just like I'm gonna make it happen when I have time. No, why you're committed?
22:15 Speaker 00 Block it out in your calendar, just like my best clients do. From, I don't know, for me, it's eight thirty to four thirty, I'm out. I, there is nothing happening in my head, in my calendar. Whenever I find myself doing something, even at eight thirty, I'm like, okay, that is shut down, shut down sequence right now. I try to be done by eight, but when I can't, like at eight thirty, cut off.
22:42 Speaker 00 The second one, again, fixed sleep and wake time. That is your number one priority. Block against sleep, like a board meeting on your calendar. Build up a wind down protocol, thirty minutes, you know, close the day, dim the light, take a shower, signal sleep to your brain. In the morning, get outside, get active, even if it for five minutes, it's gonna be a game changer for your sleep at night. And then start small, start small, guys, start small. Start with one thing. That is the most effective way to coach people to change their behavior. Start with one thing, track it, dial it in, commit to it,
23:25 Speaker 00 make it into a habit, and only then, if you're able to do that, add things on top of that. So that is it. Oh, I also promised to you a short list of supplements that actually work and are beneficial and have a biological understood way of acting, helping you to facilitate sleep. Again, it is not what is gonna make your sleep the best it can be. Those are helpers. The main stuff you already learned, starting with consistent sleep-wake time.
24:01 Speaker 00 So magnesium glycinate, three, four hundred milligrams before bed, somewhere around like sixty minutes before bed. Alphianine, which is a compound found in green tea, I think in any tea, but especially in green tea. One, two hundred milligrams before bed, you also can take it with that magnesium. Tart cherry juice, thirty milliliters concentrate diluted, it's a natural source of melatonin, if you didn't know that. Which helps to feel sleepy, not to, actually, it's not a sleeping pill. Avoiding, well, avoiding large meals, not so much on the supplement side, but that is something you consume.
24:41 Speaker 00 And then six hour alcohol rule, no alcohol rule, and caffeine cut off at least, very least, eight to ten hours before bed. But again, alphianine, magnesium, apigenine, which is extract from chamomile, you know chamomile tea, still really good. Chamomile extract or supplement with that might be more potent. So magnesium, alphianine, apigenine, and get to bed on time, guys, get to bed on time. So that is, this is the end of your sleep toolkit. And I hope that now you have everything there is to know at the moment to maximize your sleep quality.
25:26 Speaker 00 Now you also understand how not getting the sleep that you need and you want is not just luxury. It's not just sleeping in, it's not just more rest. You literally create more injuries, sickness, stupid decision making and emotional reactivity. And less energy and poor eating habits and gaining weight and losing muscle, you make all of that.
25:53 Speaker 00 You add all of that onto your plate, trying to deal with life challenges and achieving things. So remember all of that when you decide to shortcut your sleep. Treat sleep is the investment necessary. It's like a fuel for being your best, for showing up as your best consistently, for year after year after year. So other people, your vision can rely on you. That's what sleep is. Sleep not for yourself, but for others. Because only then can you be your best and others can rely on you consistently. So that is my sleep pitch. Now you have the toolkit.
26:39 Speaker 00 If you have any questions, my Instagram handle Angela Brain Body Coach, Angela Brain Body Coach, all one word. What else? Don't forget to share this podcast episode with a few people who might think that sleep, like, you know, I think that you do when you're dead, you're gonna be dead like faster and with more suffering. And who also might not know all these finer details that are needed to happen for your sleep to actually be possible. Right? So share this podcast episode, rate, review, ask questions. And for the love of God and human potential, go to bed on time. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep growing.
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