The Truth About Sleep - And How It Can Save Your Life with Dr. Matthew Walker

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Listen To The Episode

Show Notes

Video - 4 Scientifically Proven Paths To A Perfect Night Sleep

The Sleep Deprivation Epidemic - Why You Should Sleep More

Links and Additional Research

Episode Transcript

Are you tired? If your answer is yes, it would seem relatively straightforward to assume you're not getting enough sleep.

It’s one of the most important things you can possibly do for yourself.

Improve. Your. Sleep.

You’re going to spend a large portion of your like sleeping. And that’s a good thing! Getting more sleep not only allows you to wake up well rested each morning but also prevents disease and can lead to a longer (and happier) life overall.

Did you know that routinely sleeping less than 6 hours a night can increase your risk of cancer by 50%? After just one night of less than 5 hours of sleep Natural Killer Cells (which fight cancer cells) drop by 70%! After just one night!

Sleep isn't just about rest. It's about the body repairing itself, doing maintenance so to speak. Unfortunately, what has been discovered over time (and discussed in this book) is that, if you lose sleep, taking a nap, while it takes the edge off, it doesn't replace the sleep lost during the night.

Our ability to fight disease (including cancer) and obesity may be directly tied to not getting enough restful sleep. Pills don't help either. Yes, they knock you out and make it easier to fall asleep but they lack the restorative power of natural sleep and, in fact, some sleeping pills can increase your risk of cancer.

Knowing this, it must change the way you think about the old saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”… because ironically adopting that mindset will get you there quicker.

Do you find that you wake up feel groggy or angry? Do you reach for the snooze button 1, 2 or even 3 times each morning? Or, do you hop right out of bed ready to tackle the new day?

What about at night? Do you struggle to fall asleep? Tossing and turning seemingly unable to count enough sheep to get to bed. Or, are you out like a light when you pull the covers over yourself?

If you want to literally improve every single aspect of your life and wake up feeling refreshed and rested each and every night this interview is for you.

To get started NOW, download our free guide below and learn 5 super simple and easy ways to maximize your sleep starting tonight!

In this episode we discuss everything you ever wanted to know about sleep. We examine the findings from hundreds of studies across millions of people and pull out the major findings about how vitally important sleep is, the global sleep loss epidemic, the stunning data about sleep and productivity, the simplest and most effective evidence based strategies for getting better sleep and much more with Dr. Matthew Walker. 

Dr. Matthew Walker is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science. He has published over 100 scientific studies and is the author of the book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Which is currently the #1 Amazon Bestseller in Neuroscience . He has been featured on numerous television and radio outlets, including CBS 60 Minutes, National Geographic Channel, NOVA Science, NRP and the BBC.

Show Notes

• Global sleep loss epidemic - the average American sleeps only 6.5 hours per night

• Sleep has slowly been eroded by our society over the last 60 years

• Sleep is vital and essential from an evolutionary standpoint - you can’t just lop off 25% of the necessary sleep you need

• Studies across millions of people show one clear thing - the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life

• If you sleep less, you will be dead sooner, lack of sleep kills your more quickly

• Lack of sleep is a major predictor of “all cause mortality” including cancer, Alzheimers, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, and suicide

• Hard science shows why a lack of sleep is tremendously bad for you

• Sleep has an image problem, we stigmatize sleep and think its lazy and slothful - people wear lack of sleep as a badge of honor to be celebrated

• Less sleep does not equal more productivity

• The 5 clear truths of sleep research and productivity

• Under-slept employees take on less challenging problems

  1. They produce fewer creative solutions

  2. They exert less effort when working in groups (slacking off, social loafing)

  3. They are more likely to lie, cheat, and engage in deviant behavior

  4. The more or less sleep that a CEO has had, the more or less charismatic they will be

• Chronic exhaustion cost most first world nation 2% of the GDP - 411 billion dollars lost each year to a lack of sleep

• The research is very clear that under-slept individuals are not as productive or successful

• The evidence is resoundingly clear - cutting on sleep makes you less productive and less creative and less effective

• After being awake for 21 hours, you’re as cognitively impaired as someone who is legally drunk

• The two principle types of sleep - REM sleep and non-REM sleep

• The different stages of sleep - the 4 stages of REM sleep

• Hard science shows that deep Sleep is critical to clearing toxins out of your brain

• Sleep is like a sewage system for your brain - it cleans all the toxins and debris out of your brain

• The less sleep you have, the higher your probability of getting Alzheimers

• Different cognitive systems in your brain also work during sleep - its like saving files to a hard drive, you have to sleep to get the save button

• The emotional circuits of the brain are changed and modified by sleep - the amygdala (which controls fight or flight) is regulated by the pre-frontal cortex

• Lack of sleep can have a serious negative impact on your emotional health

• Sleep reboots body systems as well - not just the brain

• Deep sleep is one of the best blood pressure medications you can imagine

• Deep sleep regulates insulin levels and blood glucose levels

• Sleep is also essential for the reproductive system

• Sleep boosts testosterone and lack of sleep makes you 10 years older from a testosterone standpoint

• Appetite, weight, food consumption are all regulated by sleep - lack of sleep makes you eat 300-550 more calories per day, and makes you eat more high sugar and high carb foods

• Sleep also has a profound impact on the immune system - one night of 4 hours of sleep will drop natural killer cells (body cancer fight cells) by 70%!

• The link between lack of sleep and cancer the WHO recently classified night shift work as a probable carcinogen

• Sleeping 5 hours per night makes you 200-300% more likely to catch a cold than someone sleeping 8 hours a night

• There is not a SYSTEM or PROCESS in the body/brain that is not impacted by sleep

• The most striking omission in the health literature today is that sleep is not at the center of the health conversation

• 3 key ways sleep improves your learning

• Is it wise to pull an all nighter? What does the research say?

• The “memory inbox of the brain” (hippocampus) and how sleep is vital to creating and storing memories

• Sleep is vital both BEFORE learning and AFTER learning to store and save new memories and solidify them into the architecture of the brain

• Sleep replays information and strengthens memories

• Sleep provides a 3x advantage to problem solving compared to an equivalent period being awake

• "The 6 Unpopular Tactics for Getting Enough Sleep"

• Carve out enough time and make sleep a priority - carve out an 8 hour window to sleep every night

  1. This is the #1 thing to do - regularity is KEY - go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, no matter what

     1. Sleeping in late creates “social jetlag” which has serious negative consequences - regularity of sleep is key

  2. Keep the temperature cool - keep your bedroom 68 degrees - your body needs to drop its core temperature 2-3 degrees to fall asleep

  3. You can hack this by taking a hot bath before bed

  4. DARKNESS is key to producing melatonin. Phones, screens, blue light etc trick the brain into thinking its day time and shut off melatonin production

  5. Reading on a tablet 1 hour before bed shifts your melatonin production 3 hours later!

     1. Use blackout shades

     2. No screens 1 hour before bed

  6. Do NOT stay in bed if you’ve been in bed longer than 20 minutes. You brain is a very associative machine - being awake in bed trains the brain that it’s OK to be awake in bed. Get up, go to a different room, read a book in dim light, no screens, no eating. And only when you feel sleep return to bed, and you will re-learn the key association between making the bed about sleep

  7. Some people don’t like this idea.

     1. Meditation is a great way to get yourself to fall back asleep. The studies are very clear, very well done that meditation can help improve sleep.

  8. No caffeine after noon and avoid alcohol in the evenings.

  9. Caffein prevents deep sleep

     1. Alcohol fragments your sleep and makes your wake up much more, leaving with un-restorative sleep

     2. Alcohol blocks dreams and REM sleep

• Sedation is NOT sleep. Knocking out your cortex is not natural sleep.

• You could be A FAR BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF mentally, cognitively, physiology if you just got more sleep

• Current sleeping pills are “sedative hypnotics” that do NOT productive naturalistic sleep, and do not get the benefits of sleep

• Sleeping pills have a far higher risk of death, cancer, infection

• CBTI - cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is just as effective as sleeping pills in the short term, but much more effective long term

• Melatonin can be a useful tool to time the onset of sleep

• Does napping work?

• There is no such thing as the sleep bank - you can’t accumulate a debt and then hope to cash in on the weekend - sleep doesn’t work like that

• Napping can prevent you from falling asleep and staying asleep! Be careful!

• How does GABA impact your sleep?

• Sleep is a remarkably complex neurochemical ballet

The Sleep Deprivation Epidemic: Why You Should Sleep More 

Do you ever pull an all-nighter to cram for a test, but still fail? Maybe you work 60-hour weeks but feel like you’re getting nowhere. Unfortunately, developed nations are suffering from a sleep deprivation epidemic, but science can help us see the reasons for getting a good eight hours every night.

 A common saying you hear is, “You can sleep when you’re dead!” But recent sleep studies have shown us that less sleep means our lifespans shorten and our quality of life will decrease too. Unfortunately, our society pushes us to sleep less and work more, so we need help shifting our social perspective.

It turns out, that our relatively recent attempt to shorten the amount of sleep we get runs into a lot of problems against the million-year-old necessity that mother nature has put in place. The 20-25% decrease we’ve imposed on ourselves has led to an increased likelihood of developing every major disease that kills us in the developed world.

Elucidating Sleep Science

“I think part of the problem, perhaps, is that the science of sleep is actually not being adequately communicated to the public and I think it’s people like myself who are to blame.” – Dr. Matthew Walker 

Dr. Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, and author of Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. His belief is that sleep science is not understood by the public, which was part of his motivation for writing Why We Sleep.

Many people appear to be proud of how little they sleep. However, the list of problems linked to a lack of sleep include Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder, and suicide, among other mental health conditions. With this information in hand, it’s necessary to remove the stigma on getting a sufficient amount of sleep (about eight hours).

Dr. Walker set out to write a book of reasons why you should sleep, rather than rules. He addresses the relationship between sleep and productivity, citing laboratory and workplace studies that have provided him with five clear truths.

Five Facts About Sleep-Deprived Workers

“It’s very clear that under-slept individuals are not going to be successful.” – Dr. Walker

1. They take on less-challenging problems.

2. They produce fewer creative solutions.

3. They exert less effort when working in groups.

4. They are more likely to lie, cheat, and engage in deviant behaviors.

5. Less sleep means less-charismatic leaders.

He also notes that a recent report demonstrated that chronic exhaustion and fatigue (due to a lack of sleep) caused most first-world nations to lose about 2% of their GDP (that’s $411 billion for the U.S.). “If we solve the sleep deprivation problem in the U.S., we could almost double the budget for education, and we could make huge in-roads into the problems we have with healthcare,” he adds.

Dr. Walker shares an analogy to represent the current nature of an office workplace by comparing it to a spin class: “Everyone in the office looks like they’re working hard, but the scenery never changes – there’s never any forward progression in terms of momentum with productivity and creativity.”

Finally, he ends his evaluation of workplace attitudes by observing how their attempt to optimize the efficiency of every system stops at the human level. Where the budget, taxes, hardware, and software are all effective, there’s no focus or understanding of a human’s cognitive or physiological capacities and their necessity to reboot and recharge.

Sleep: The Human Recycling Period

“There really isn’t any system within your body, or process within the brain, that isn’t wonderfully enhanced by sleep when you get it or demonstrably impaired when you don’t get enough.” – Dr. Walker 

Dr. Walker informs us that we need eight-hours of sleep after 16-hours of wakefulness; and after 20-21 hours of being awake, we are as cognitively impaired as someone who would be legally drunk behind the wheel. So what exactly is happening when we sleep?

Sleep is simply divided into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, where we dream, and non-REM sleep; while non-REM sleep is further divided into four sub-stages. Each stage performs different yet necessary functions.

When we are awake, we are essentially in a form of low-level brain damage. Thus, one of the functions performed during the deepest stages of non-REM sleep is to clear out the metabolic toxins that have been built up in our brain. This is done through our brain’s glymphatic system (similar to our body’s lymphatic system). While asleep, this system’s performance increases by 200-300% relative to when we’re awake. (This process is known to remove a toxic protein called beta-amyloid, one of the leading candidate causes of Alzheimer’s disease.)

Sleeping also improves our learning in at least three ways.

1. Sleeping prepares our brain: A lack of sleep leads to a 40% deficit in our ability to make memories.

2. Sleeping ‘saves’ information: While asleep, we transfer information from our short-term to long-term memory. Like hitting the ‘Save’ button, it prevents us from forgetting memories.

3. Sleeping strengthens our memories: Sleep interconnects new memories together and interconnects it with pre-existing memories. This creates an updated associative network of memories.

Dr. Walker comments on the third point, “That’s the reason that you can come back the next day having extracted and divined creative novel solutions to previously impenetrable problems that you were facing.” While simple problems benefit from focused thought, complex problems benefit from non-conscious thought, such as that which occurs during sleep. It’s because of this function that nearly every language has a phrase similar to “sleep on a problem,” and not to “stay awake on a problem.” He ends with the analogy, “It’s essentially informational alchemy that occurs overnight.”

The emotional circuits of our brains are also modified during sleep. Our amygdala is reconnected to our prefrontal cortex when we get a good night’s sleep, which puts a brake on our emotional gas pedal. When we are deprived of sleep, the connection is severed, which essentially makes us all emotional gas pedal and no brake.

The benefits of sleep don’t end at the brain; there are many physiological systems that are rebooted during sleep as well. Deep, non-REM sleep is one of the best forms of blood pressure medicine, because it slows your heart rate. It also releases a variety of restorative chemicals and hormones, including a growth hormone that restores the cells in your body.

Sleep regulates your metabolic system, specifically insulin levels. In fact, studies have shown that one week of five-six hours of sleep a night will disrupt a person’s blood sugar enough to classify them as pre-diabetic. This illustrates the crucial role sleep plays in regulating the metabolic system.

A lack of sleep is known to age both men and women by a decade in terms of wellness and virility by disrupting the reproductive system.

Appetite regulation and food consumption are directly affected by sleep. Sleep deprivation causes in imbalance in leptin, which tells your brain when you’re satisfied with your food, and ghrelin, which tells your brain you’re not satisfied with your food. This causes you to eat 300-500 more calories a day. Not only do you eat more, but you’re also more likely to reach for starchy carbohydrates and high-sugar foods, while avoiding high-protein foods.

One night of four-hours of sleep will drop your cancer-fighting immune cells by 70%. The link between sleep-deprivation and cancer is so strong, that the World Health Organization recently classified night-time shift work as a probable carcinogen because it disrupts our sleep rate rhythms.

Five-hours of sleep per night the week before you get your flu shot will reduce your body’s antibody response to less than 50%, rendering it largely ineffective. Similarly, with five-hours you are 200-300% more likely to catch a cold than someone who gets eight-hours of sleep.

According to Dr. Walker, “All lack of sleep is, perhaps, a slow from of self-euthanasia.”

How to Fall Asleep Fast and Sleep Better

“I think what we know is that: Without sleep there is low energy and disease, with sleep there is vitality and health.” – Dr. Walker 

Dr. Walker begins to share five tips (and their explanations) for how to sleep better. These five tips all follow a primary, overarching requirement: Carve out an eight-hour, non-negotiable sleep window every night.

1. Go to bed and wake up at the same time.

Regardless if it’s a weekday, the weekend, or a holiday, always wake up at the same time. Even if you have a bad night of sleep, just make sure you fall asleep early the following evening. Sleeping in late causes “social jetlag” where you feel tired in the evening and drift forward in time; this has deleterious consequences to your health and sleep.

2. Keep it cool.

Keeping your bedroom around 68°F (18.5°C) is optimal for most people. This is because your body needs to drop its core temperate 2-3° to initiate sleep. If your feet get cold, then you can wear socks. Also, a hot bath before bed causes mass vasodilation (more so than a hot shower); this pulls your blood near your skin’s surface, plummeting your core temperature.

3. Keep it dark.

Darkness releases melatonin, a vital hormone for the onset of sleep. Too much light inside the house (or from LED screens) before bed will trick your brain into thinking it’s daytime, shut off the production of melatonin, and prevent sleep. Dim your lights by turning half of them off in the evening, avoid LED screens in the last hour before bed, and use black-out curtains.

4. Get up if you’ve been awake in bed for longer than 20-minutes.

Whether you’re trying to fall asleep or wake up, you must get out of bed if you’ve been lying awake for more than 20-minutes. If not, then your brain creates the association that your bed is about being awake, rather than asleep. If you’re trying to fall asleep but can’t, then go to another, dim room and maybe read a book (but avoid eating and screens). Only when you’re sleepy should you return to bed; that way you fall right asleep and recreate the association that beds are for sleeping. Dr. Walker, a hard scientist and skeptic, even suggests meditation, citing its support from clinical trial data and his recent conversion to the practice himself.

5. No caffeine after noon and no alcohol in the evenings.

Even people who claim that caffeine doesn’t affect them because they fall right asleep suffer from less-deep sleep. When they wake up, they don’t feel as refreshed, then reach for an extra cup in the morning, thus building a cycle of dependency and addiction. If you don’t stop at noon, then certainly after 2:00pm. Alcohol, on the other hand, sedates your cortex (effective knocking out your brain). This causes un-restorative sleep by waking you up multiple times throughout the night. It also blocks your REM sleep, which is critical for creativity and memory processing as well as emotional and mental health.

A common trap for people to fall into is thinking, “Well, this is how I am now at this age.” But this perception of yourself prevents you from realizing that you can be a far better version of yourself, mentally, cognitively, and physiologically, if you simply start getting enough sleep.

This trap can easily occur as a result of excessive or improper caffeine consumption. It isn’t until people come off caffeine that they start to feel the benefits that normally come from high-caffeine use. “It’s like wiping a fogged window, and you can start to see clearly through it,” Dr. Walker comments, attributing the improvement to a full, restorative night of sleep. 

How to Deal with Insomnia

            “There are no sleeping medications that we have currently that produce naturalistic sleep.” – Dr. Walker

Sleeping Pills

Dr. Walker goes on to address the question of sleeping pills. He explains that the current class of drugs one will be prescribed are called ‘sedative hypnotics.’ Just like alcohol, these sedate (or knock out) your brain. The sleep you get on sleeping pills is not the same as natural, healthy sleep.

Additionally, these pills are associated with a far higher risk of death, cancer, and infection. Though these links have not be confirmed as causal or merely associational. He goes on to inform us that that people don’t necessarily need them, and there is a safe, non-pharmacological alternative which is just as effective: cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI).

With CBTI, the benefits to your sleep are just as powerful in the short-term, but they also continue long-term as you maintain the practice. Sleeping pills, on the other hand, produce rebound insomnia, where your sleep is just as bad (or worse) once you stop taking them. (People should revisit these issues with their doctor if they’re interested in alternative treatment.) 

GABA

GABA is the principle, inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain; it works like a red light for your neurons, telling them to stop firing. Most sleeping medications work by targeting the GABA system, though their blunt nature is incapable of properly mimicking the complex neuro-chemical and neuro-physiological ballet that occurs during sleep.

Melatonin Supplements

Next, Dr. Walker discusses the uses of melatonin supplements. While they don’t actually help a young, healthy person with a stable sleep schedule, they’re great for helping someone adjust to a new time zone. By taking it 30-60 minutes before you want to sleep, it can help reset your body’s internal clock and counteract jetlag. He also notes that if people take melatonin and they feel that it helps (even if it doesn’t), then they should continue to do so.

Napping

Many people think that, if they don’t get enough sleep, then they can just “catch up” on it later, either with a nap or by getting more sleep at night. Dr. Walker states, “Sleep is not like the bank. You can’t accumulate debt, then hope to pay it off at the weekend. There is no credit system.”

However, if you are sleep-deprived, then you can nap and overcome some of the basic sleepiness. Your reaction times improve a little, but you don’t overcome the higher-level cognitive issues, like decision-making, learning and memory, and focused attention. He goes on to discuss a futile tactic he sees in his students that he calls ‘sleep bulimia.’ This is where they get too little sleep during the week, then try to binge sleep during the weekend and make up the deficit.

He uses an analogy to describe a negative aspect of napping: Throughout the day we build up a chemical pressure in our brain, a sleepiness pressure, due to the build up of adenosine. The more you build up the sleepier you feel; and after 16-hours of wakefulness, you should fall right asleep and stay asleep for eight-hours, thus releasing the sleepiness pressure. However, when we nap, it’s like we open a valve and let a little of the pressure out. This makes it harder for us to sleep well at night, either by struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep.

Echoing the placebo affect associated with melatonin supplements, if you can nap regularly and sleep well at night, then keep napping. Otherwise, you should avoid napping and build up that sleepiness pressure until you fall asleep at night.

Action Steps for a Good Night’s Sleep

To finish off, Dr. Walker suggests a simple self-improvement test: Give yourself one week of eight-hours of sleep a night. Determine if you feel better when you get eight-hours of regularly scheduled sleep versus a random schedule of five-hours one night, then six-hours the next, and so on. Then ask yourself, “Did that experiment work? Is it in my favor? Do I feel any better? Do I notice that improvement?”

Thank you so much for listening!

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SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

[Book] Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
[DVD] Memento
[Twitter] Matt Walker
[LinkedIn] Matthew Walker
[Website] Sleep Diplomat

Why We Sleep (14min)

• The incredible benefits of getting enough and the terrible side effects of not getting enough. 

• The Brain and The Functions of learnings and memory. 

  • Sleep after learning is essential and like hitting the “save” button after learning. We also now know that it’s important even before learning. 

  • Without sleep the memory circuits become blocked up.

• Examine The Hypothesis of the All Nighter

  • 40% deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep.

  • Brain activity is shot almost entirely after sleep deprivation. 

    • He describes it as like Memento the movie. (Great movie BTW)

• What is it that causes people to get good sleep and how does it affect our brain?

• What in sleep causes these benefits?

  • As we get older our memory gets work but our sleep does as well and they are related.

• Sleep is critical for your emotional and mental health

  • On less sleep these areas of the brain become irrational. 

  • Video of a subject illustrates this point. - Subject goes from angry to laughing then back to base in about 20 seconds. 

  • Without sleep you can’t take your foot off the emotional gas pedal.

• Sleep deprivation is correlated with depression and almost every psychiatric disorder. 

• The body relies on sleep as well.

  • 75% reduction in NK cell activity even after one bad night of sleep. Immune system will be shot. 

  • Lack of sleep and cancer has been shown to have a strong relationship. 

Matthew on CBS This Morning (6min)

• ⅔ of Americans do not get their full recommended 8 hours of sleep. 

• Every disease in developed nations is made worse by lack of sleep.

• Short Sleep = Shorter Life

• Brain - builds up a toxic buildup in the brain.

• Body - No immune system and activities stress chemistry leading to heart disease and cancer. 

• ALL RESEARCH BASED

• Naps - A double edged sword. Sleep is not like the bank, you can’t accumulate debt then pay it off as you go about your day. 

• Sleeping Pills - These are bad!

Secrets of the Sleeping Brain (1hr 41min)

• Long video that goes deep into some of the topics covered above. 

• Love the concept that we’ve hit on before that sleep actually allows you to integrate in ideas and learnings into what you’ve been doing prior. 

The Sleep Deprivation Epidemic (6min)

• Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences. Award-winning professor of neuroscience Matthew Walker provides a fascinating insight into why it is vital we start taking sleep seriously.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:06.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet; bringing the world’s top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fable.

[00:00:19] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries. 

In this episode, we bring back one of our all-time greatest interviews from the archives and share everything you ever wanted to know about sleep, with one of the world’s pre-eminent sleep experts, Dr. Matthew Walker.

This is seriously one of my favorite podcasts that we’ve ever done. Matthew Walker’s work is truly important and impactful. Now more than ever, I think we all need to understand the power of a good night’s rest. 

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we shared insightful lessons from selling over a 1,000 companies, what really matters when you’re building a business, how to grow companies and what mistakes to avoid if you want to exit big with our previous guest, Michelle Seiler Tucker.

Now, for our interview with Matthew

[00:01:54] MB: Today, we have another fascinating guest on the show, Dr. Matthew Walker. He’s a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and a founder and the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science. He’s published over a 100 scientific studies and is the author of the book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, which is currently the number one Amazon bestseller in the neuroscience category. He’s been featured on TV, radio, including CBS’s 60 Minutes, National Geographic and much more.

Matt, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:02:26] MW: It’s a pleasure to be on Matt. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:28] MB: Well, we’re very excited to have you on here today. I’d love to begin the conversation and talk a little bit about – as I think you’ve called it the sleep deprivation epidemic, and what happens to us when we don’t get enough sleep.

[00:02:43] MW: You’re right. There is currently a global sleep-loss epidemic. This is sweeping developed nations. It’s been underway for probably about 60 or 70 years. We know from surveys back in the 1940s that the average American adult was sleeping 7.9 hours a night. Now we know that number is down to 6 hours and 31 minutes during the week for American adults.

Back in my home country, not much better. It’s 6 hours and 49 minutes on average people are sleeping. Japan seems to be the worse; 6 hours and 22 minutes. I just give you those numbers to reaffirm first this pernicious erosion of sleep that has happened over the past 70 or 80 years as truth. But also, just to take a step back, I think we have to realize that it took mother nature 3.6 million years to put this necessity of 8 hours of sleep in place.

Then we have come along, and in the space of blink of an evolutionary eye; 60, 70 years we’ve locked off maybe 20%, 25% of that sleep amount. How could it not come with deleterious consequences? I think it’s been proudly confirmed that we are in a global sleep-loss state of deficiency, or an epidemic as the CDC and the World Health Organization have called it.

What are the consequences though? Because if it’s not doing us any harm, then why worry? If only that were true, there is demonstrable harm that is underway because of the sleep-loss epidemic. We can start at the big 30,000-foot level and make it a very simple statement based on epidemiological studies from millions of people. That is the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all-cause mortality.

I think that classical maxim that you may have heard. You can sleep when you’re dead. It’s always struck me as ironic, because if you adopt that mindset, we know from the evidence that you will be both dead sooner, and the quality of that now shorter life will be significantly worse.

If you dig down a little deeper you can say, “Well, if a lack of sleep kills you more quickly, then what is it that is killing you more quickly?” It seems to be just about everything. Every made disease that is killing us in the developed world has causal insignificant links to a lack of sleep. That list currently and tragically includes Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, as well as numerous mental health conditions; depression, bipolar disorder and most recently and sadly, suicide as well.

I think we’re really now starting to understand not just how deathly a lack of sleep is and the current weight of our sleep deprivation, and that elastic band of sleep deprivation can stretch only so far before it snaps. But with also understanding from hard science exactly why a lack of sleep produces such disease, sickness and ill-health within the brain and the body.

[00:06:03] MB: It’s amazing and it’s so important to think about why sleep is so vital. Yet, in today’s society it seems like there is more and more of a push to sleep less, work more, hustle more, do more. How do we combat that?

[00:06:22] MW: There is. I think currently, sleep has an image problem in society, because more often than not, we seem to stigmatize sleep and we suggest that people who are getting sufficient sleep and I actually choose my words quite carefully there. As being lazy, as being slothful, those who get maybe 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night.

People I think are – or some people, I should say. Not all, but some people are perhaps quite proud of the fact of how little sleep that they’re getting and where it almost as though it’s a badge of honor to be celebrated. It’s sad, because for all of the reasons that we’ve just discussed, it’s an ill-advised mentality to expose.

It’s also strange, because if we don’t always have that opinion. I don’t think any of us would look at an infant sleeping during the day and say, “Gosh, what a lazy baby.” We don’t do that, because we know that sleep at that time of life is absolutely non-negotiable. It’s fundamentally necessary. But if you look at the evidence somewhere between infancy and now even childhood, not only do we abandon this notion that sleep is necessary and important, but we give it this terrible stigma.

I think that attitude has to change, and there are many ways in which it has to change. I think part of the problem perhaps is that the science of sleep is actually not being adequately communicated to the public. I think it’s people like myself who are to blame. I’m a sleep scientist, a professional sleep scientist for 20 years now.

I can’t go around wagging the finger at people if people have not been educated by the science that the taxpayer dollars have funded. That was part of the motivation to write the book that I didn’t feel as though there was a book after that gave people a blueprint manifesto of all of the real hard science of sleep.

There are lots of books out there that you can buy about the quick fix, these are the 10 rules to better sleep, or – I got nothing against those types of books, but for me I felt it was important because my sense is that people don’t respond to rules. They respond to reasons rather than rules, and I wanted to give and write a book of reasons for why you should sleep, rather than rules for how to sleep.

[00:09:00] MB: I want to dig a little bit more specifically into some of the negative implications or maybe the flipside of why sleep is so important for certain activities. For somebody who – let’s contextualize this maybe within a framework broadly thinking about, if I want to get more work done people often say, “All right, I’m going to sleep less,” or, “I’m going to pull a all-nighter,” or, “I’m going to cut down on my sleep so I can be more productive,” how does that usually pan out? What does the science say about doing that?

[00:09:31] MW: It doesn’t pan out very well. In fact, the opposite is true; we now know that less sleep does not equal more productivity. There have been lots of laboratory and workplace with these, and they give us five clear truths. Firstly, underslept employees tend to take on less challenging work problems. In other words, they opt for the easy way out. Underslept employees actually produce fewer creative solutions to work problems that they’re facing.

They also actually exert less effort when working in groups, and we’ve done some of these work. They essentially slack off. It’s what we call social-loafing. They write the tale of others and try to claim their hard work is their own.

We also know very interestingly that underslept employees are more likely to lie, cheat and engage in deviant behaviors, such as falsifying a claims, receipts, etc., and it’s a scaling function; the less sleep that you have, the more likely you are to lie and be deviant.

What’s also interesting is that it scales the business hierarchy all the way up to the top. We know that the more or less sleep that a business leader has had, the more or less charismatic their employees will rate that business leader.

Even though the employees themselves know nothing about how much sleep that business leader has had. They can actually see it in the expression of the behavior of their leader. You can then actually scale that up from those that have low-level studies, all the way up to the high-level studies. There was a recent round report, an independent report that demonstrated that chronic exhaustion and fatigue due to a lack of sleep caused most first-world nations about 2% of their GDP. For the United States, that’s 411 billion dollars that we lose each year due to a lack of sleep.

If you can just think about that, if we solve the sleep deprivation problem in the US, we could almost double the budget for education and we could make huge in-roads into the problems that we have with healthcare. Or we could just flat out give people remarkably high tax rebates, simply by solving the sleep-loss epidemic.

I think in response to your question, it’s very clear that underslept individuals are not going to be successful. It’s a little bit like, if you think about your workforce and you’re forcing them to come into work every morning, early and leave very late, so no one is getting enough sleep, it strikes me a little bit like a spin class at a gym.

Everyone in the office looks like they’re working hard, but the scenery never changes, there’s never any forward progression in terms of momentum with productivity and creativity. I think we need to change our attitude in the workplace regarding sleep. The evidence is very clear there.

[00:12:37] MB: Especially around the creativity and the productivity aspect of that. It makes me think almost about the – an applied version of the 80-20 principle, where it’s not necessarily just more hours of work equals more output, but it’s really vital to have quality work, where you’re creative, where you’re bringing a fresh perspective and a well-rested mind. That’s when you really produce value. That’s the 20% that produces 80% of your results. All the busy work and the hustle and muscle, if you don’t get enough sleep, you’re not going to be able to really be incredibly productive.

[00:13:17] MW: I think that that’s very true. Is there a way that we could actually break the classic praetors of 80-20 law that’s common throughout nature and it’s applied to human beings as well? By way of manipulating sleep, could we actually force it to be that it’s 30% or 40% of your workforce that returns now 80% or 90% of the productivity by way of sufficient sleep.

It’s just coming down to the very fact that what is the recycle rate of a human being? I think people have failed in the workplace to actually face this question and ask it. It’s surprising, because people in the workplace are wonderfully astute at trying to squeeze every ounce of effectiveness and efficiency out of all of their systems, be it the budget, be it the tax, be it the hardware, be it the software.

I think we forget about the biological organism at the heart of most companies, the human beings themselves. We have to ask, “How long can an individual be awake before they decline and decline significantly in the productivity, efficiency and effectiveness?” We now know that that evidence, you need 8 hours of sleep, 16 hours – after 16 hours of wakefulness, the cognitive capacities and the physiological capacities of the body starts to decline dramatically in after 20 or 21 hours of being awake. You are as cognitively impaired as someone who would be legally drunk in terms of driving behind the wheel.

There really is a recycle refresh rate of a human being, and we know that and it declines dramatically once you get past that 16. What I’m suggesting there is not 16 hours of work. I’m suggesting that this 8, 9-hour work span, then people need that downtime and they need to get that 8 hours of sleep to reboot and refresh.

[00:15:17] MB: What’s actually happening during that recycling period?

[00:15:22] MW: Well, we know firstly that there are multiple different stages of sleep that we ebb and flow in and out of, throughout a full 8-hour phase. Those different stages of sleeping, the two principle types of sleep, I should note that probably most people are aware of, or what are called non-rapid eye movement sleep, or non-REM sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep, which is the stage principally from which we dream.

Non-REM sleep actually has several sub-stages to it, stages one through four, increasing in the depth of sleep. By the way, it always strikes me as funny that scientists are not a very creative bunch. We have these four stages of deep non-REM sleep, and all we could come up with was stages one through four. Let’s set that side for a second.

We know that all of those different stages of sleep perform different functions end up all necessary. To come back to your question though, exactly what is happening at night? Well, let’s take deep non-REM sleep for a start.  The deepest stages of non-REM sleep. That stage of sleep is actually critical for essentially clearing out all of the metabolic toxins that have been building up in your brain.

Now that may sound a little bit hand-waving, but is actually very hard to get science from animal studies. When we are awake, we are essentially in a form of low-level brain damage. That’s what wakefulness is. We produce a variety of metabolic byproducts as a result of all of that waking brain cell combustion that we’re doing.

It is during sleep at night when we clear that away. What is clearing that away? Well, it turns out that we made a discovery, which is a sewage system in your brain. Now you have a sewage system in your body that you’re probably familiar with called the lymphatic system. But your brain also has one, it’s called the glymphatic system after the cells that produce it or compose the system called glial cells.

That sewage system within the brain, glymphatic system, is not always on, at least not in highest flow capacity. It’s only during sleep and particular deep sleep at night where that cleansing system of the sewage network actually kicks in to high gear. It increases by maybe 2 to 300% relative to when we’re awake.

Why is this important? Well, one of the metabolic toxins that the glymphatic system clears away as we sleep at night is a toxic protein called beta-amyloid. Beta-amyloid is one of the leading candidate causes of Alzheimer’s disease. This is why we know that people who are not getting sufficient sleep across their lifespan are at a far high-risk probability of going on to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The less sleep that you have, the less clearing away of that toxic byproduct. That’s one-way, general way that we know that the brain gets essentially a refresh.

We also know that different cognitive systems and networks within your brain undergo a restoration. For example, we know that learning in memory systems get overhauled. We take information that we recently learned and we transfer it from short to long-term memory during sleep, which is actually like hitting the save button on new memories, so it prevents you from forgetting by cementing and solidifying those memories into long-term story sites.

We also know that there is a clearing out of your short-term memory reservoir. It’s perhaps a little bit like shifting files from a USB stick, so that when you wake up the next day, you have this renewed capacities to start learning and acquiring new facts and information all over again. That’s a more specific way in which the brain actually gets an overhaul at night during sleep.

We also know that the emotional circuits of the brain are changed and modified by sleep. There are deep emotional brain sensors, very old evolutionary centers specifically a structure called the amygdala, which controls the vital flight response. That structure, the amygdala is normally regulated in us higher order primates, human beings specifically, by a part of the brain that sits just above your eyes called the prefrontal cortex, which acts a little bit like the CEO of the brain. It makes very high-level executive top-down control decisions.

When you had a good night of sleep, that part of your frontal lobe has been reconnected to your deep Neanderthal amygdala fight or flight center of the brain. It just regulates it. It’s a little bit like a break to your emotional accelerator pedal. When you don’t get enough sleep, that connection is actually severed and there’s a consequence. You become almost all emotional gas pedal and too little frontal lobe regulatory control brake.

There are many different ways in which sleep generally and very specifically seems to regulate our brain. I could also speak about the different ways that sleep actually reboots multiple systems within the body. That’s certainly the ways in which it refreshes your brain.

[00:20:46] MB: I want to dig into learning productivity and the emotional aspects. But before we do, tell me briefly about the physiological and the body reset aspects of sleep as well.

[00:20:58] MW: Firstly, we know that deep non-REM sleep that we described is perhaps one of the best forms of blood pressure medication that you could ever imagine. It’s during that deep sleep that your heart rate actually drops, your blood pressure will lower. There are a variety of restorative chemicals and hormones that are released, a growth hormone in particular to actually restore the cells within the body. It’s fantastic for the cardiovascular system.

We also know that it regulates your metabolic system, specifically it regulates insulin levels. If you’re not getting sufficient sleep, your blood glucose actually starts to become disrupted. There are [inaudible 00:21:40] now that are taking healthy people with no signs of diabetes. And after one week of five to six hours of sleep a night, their blood sugar is disrupted so profoundly that their doctor would subsequently classify them as being pre-diabetic. That’s how critical sleep is to maintaining the metabolic system.

We also know that sleep is essential for another one of the major systems, the reproductive system. Here I’ll speak frankly about testicles, because we know that men who are routinely getting just 5 to 6 hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who are sleeping 8 hours or more.

In addition, men who report getting just 5 or 6 hours of sleep each night have a level of testosterone, which is that of someone 10 years their senior. In other words, a lack of sleep will actually age you by a decade in terms of that aspect of wellness and virility. We see very similar impairment in equivalent reproductive hormones and health, of course by a lack of sleep. It’s not just males who are disrupted in that way.

There are a variety of systems within the body. It also regulates appetite and weight and your food consumption. We know for example that those individuals who are not getting enough sleep will have an imbalance in the two hormones that control your hunger and your food intake. Those two hormones are called leptin and ghrelin.

Now leptin sounds like a Hobbit, I know, but trust me they are actually real hormones. Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain you’re satisfied with your food. You’re no longer hungry. You should stop eating. Ghrelin is the antithesis of that. Ghrelin will actually signal to your brain that you are not satisfied by the food that you’ve just eaten, that you are still hungry and that you should eat more.

People who are put on a regiment of just 5 or 6 hours of sleep for one week will have a mocked reduction in leptin, the hormone that says, “You’re fine. You’ve eaten enough, you can stop eating. You’re not hungry.” A mocked increase in the hormone ghrelin, which tells you, “You’re not satisfied with your food. You’re hungry and it’s time to eat more.”

That’s why people will actually eat somewhere between 3 to 500 calories more each day when they’re not getting sufficient sleep. You should also know by the way, it’s not just that you eat more, but what you eat is non-optimal when you’re sleep-deprived. Without sufficient sleep, you actually reach for the heavy-hitting starchy carbohydrates, as well as high-sugar foods and you stay away from the protein-rich foods. In other words, you’ll find yourself reaching for another slice of pizza rather than leafy greens, kale and beans.

It’s not just that you eat more. It’s what you eat that is also detrimental too. I hope that gives people just a little bit of a few brush strokes in terms of the bodily consequences. The one that we probably haven’t mentioned though, which is perhaps most impacted is your immune system. We know that one night of 4 hours of sleep will drop critical anti-cancer fighting immune cells called natural killer cells by 70%, which is a truly remarkable state of immune-deficiency, which happens very quickly within just one night.

Secondly, we also know that the link between a lack of sleep and cancer has now become so strong that the World Health Organization recently classified any form of night-time shift work as a probable cause energy. In other words, jobs that may induce cancer, because of a disruption of your sleep rate rhythms.

We can look to more benign things too. We know that if you’re getting just 5 hours of sleep in the week before you go and get your flu shot, you will only produce 50%, or in fact, less than 50% of the normal antibody response, rendering that flu shot largely ineffective.

Finally, know that if you’re getting just 5 hours of sleep a night, you are 2 to 300% more likely to capture cold, than someone who is getting 8 hours of sleep a night. This was a remarkable study where they quarantined people in a hotel and they had tracked how much sleep that they were getting in the week before. Then they flushed up the nose of all of these individuals; the flu virus. Then in the next few days they looked to see how many of those individuals succumbed to the flu, how many got infected. Then they bucketed them on the basis of how much sleep that they had in the week before, and that’s how they were able to come to that conclusion.

There really isn’t any system within your body, or process within the brain that isn’t wonderfully enhanced by sleep when you get it, or demonstrably impaired when you don’t get enough.

[00:26:58] MB: What a powerful statement. I mean, just that sentence alone really succinctly summarizes the fundamental conclusion that the science is in across nearly every spectrum of the body, the brain, etc., that sleep is incredibly valuable. That 8 hours of sleep specifically is really critical.

[00:27:18] MW: I think it is. I think what we know is that without sleep, there is low energy and disease. With sleep, there is vitality and health. The sleepless epidemic is perhaps the greatest curable disease that no one is really talking about, or effectively trying to solve. I would simply say that the lack of sleep is both the most striking omission in the health conversation of today. All lack of sleep is perhaps a slow form of self-Euthanasia.

[00:27:49] MB: I want to dig back into the relationship. Let’s touch on learning and memory. Tell me a little bit more about the work you’ve done and some of the research around how sleep can improve learning and memory.

[00:28:02] MW: Sleep actually is beneficial for memory in at least three ways that we’ve now discovered and this is the work that we’ve been doing, or some of the work that we do at my sleep center.

First, we know that you need sleep before learning to essentially prepare your brain; perhaps a little bit like a dry sponge, ready to initially soak up new information the next day. We did a study where we tested a very simple hypothesis. Is it wise to pull the all-nighter? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing?

We took a group of individuals and we either gave them a full night of sleep, or we kept them awake throughout the night. Then the next day, we wedged them inside an MRI scanner and then we have them try and learn a whole list of new facts as we were taking snapshots of brain activity. Then we tested them to see how effectively that learning had been.

Firstly, what we found is that when we put those two groups head to head, there was a 40% deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep, and just a frame that in context it would simply be the difference between acing an exam and failing it miserably. What we went on to discover from the brain scans however was why the brain was failing to lay down those new memories.

There is a structure in our brains, on the left and the right side called the hippocampus. You can think of the hippocampus a little bit like the memory inbox of the brain. That it’s actually very good at receiving new memory files and holding on to them initially.

When we looked at that structure in those people who’d had a full night of sleep, we saw lots of healthy learning-related activity. Yet, in those people who were sleep deprived, we actually couldn’t find any significant activity whatsoever.

It was almost as though sleep deprivation had shut down your memory inbox as it were and any new incoming files. They were just being bounced. You couldn’t effectively commit new experiences to memory. If people would like to just understand what that means in terms of the hippocampus, I’m sure many people listening have probably seen the movie Memento. In that movie, that gentleman has damage to the brain and specifically to the structure of the hippocampus. From that point forward, he can no longer make any new memories. It is what we call in neurology, densely amnesic.

That part of his brain was the hippocampus and it is the very same structure that your lack of sleep will actually attack and prevent your brain from actually laying down and placing those new memories into a fixed state within the brain. That’s the first way that sleep is good for learning a memory.

You also need sleep not just before learning, but also after learning, but for something different now. Sleep after learning will essentially hit the save button on those new memories. It will essentially solidify those memories into neural architecture of the brain. As we mentioned before, it actually will transfer those memories, almost like packets of information being transferred across the network, from a short-term vulnerable storage site to the more permanent long-term storage center within the brain, which is called the cortex; this wrinkled mass that sits on top of your brain.

That means that when you come back the next day, those memories are protected and safe and you will be able to remember, rather than those memories being vulnerable to being overwritten or lost, for example to the ravage of time. Which mean, that they are ultimately forgotten.

We also know a little bit about how sleep not only transfers memories during sleep, but even strengthens those memories. It’s during sleep that the brain actually replays the information that you’ve recently learned. These are studies done in humans, but also in animals they were actually placing electrodes into the brains of rats and they were having them run around a maze.

As they were running around the maze and learning the maze, all of these different brain cells which fire in a specific signature pattern, which was essentially the imprinting of a memory and it adds different tones to them. It would sound a little bit like “babababam, babababam, babababam.” The brain is imprinting this memory as the rat is running around the maze.

Low and behold, what happens is that when you then let the rats sleep, but keep recording and keep eavesdropping on the brain, what do you think reemerges? It’s exactly the same pattern, “babababam, babababam.” The rat is replaying those memories. What’s incredible however, is that it’s actually replaying them at somewhere between 10 to 20 times faster. Rather than “babababam,” it’s actually, “brrm, brrm, brr, brrm, brrm.” It’s this high-speed fidelity replay. We think that that actually helps score the memory trace into the brain in a strengthened manner, almost like etching on the surface of glass. You’re really strengthening that neural circuit. That’s sleep after learning to strengthen individual memories, and I guess essentially future proof that information within the brain.

There is a final third way that sleep actually helps memory that we’ve discovered, which I think is perhaps most exciting. Sleep doesn’t just simply strengthen individual memories. It’s that strengthening of individual memories by the way that happens during deep, non-rapid eye movement sleep, or dreamless sleep.

Sleep also then actually interconnects those new memories together and interconnects new information with all of your pre-existing back-catalog of autobiographical stored information. Essentially, what sleep is doing and this is actually the work of rapid eye movement sleep of dream sleep, is that you’re starting to collide information together within the brain. This is a bit like group therapy for memories.

What you awake with the next morning is a revised mind-wide web of information within the brain. It’s a new associative network, or at least not a radically new associative network, but it’s an updated and it’s a modified associative network. That’s the reason that you can come back the next day having extracted and divine, creative novel solutions to previously impenetrable problems that you were facing.

It’s probably the reason – I mean, now know this, for example that sleep will actually provide almost a three-fold advantage in problem solving relative to an equivalent time period spent awake. That science is now very well, I think rendered and described.

There probably is a reason that you’re never told to stay awake on a problem and in every language that I’ve inquired about to date, that phrase sleeping on a problem seems to exist. It seems to transcend cultural boundaries. It’s a phenomenon that is common across the globe. I should also note by the way that we – the British, we say you sleep on a problem. I believe and please correct me if anyone knows this, but I believe the French translation is a little closer to you sleep with the problem, rather than you sleep on a problem. I think that says so much about the romantic difference between the British and the French. I’ll digress before I lose my British passport.

[00:35:54] MB: That’s great. Yeah, that’s a funny anecdote and probably true. I’ve seen the phrase creative incubation and some research around creativity, and some of the science behind what you’re describing. To me, it makes so much sense that the more you give the brain the ability to something, and when you come back to that problem, you’re going to be much more creative. You’re going to be much more effective at solving.

[00:36:20] MW: That’s right. It’s not just sleep, by the way. If it’s a complex problem, simple problems tend to benefit from deliberative focused thought. But complex problems, problems where there are maybe 10, 20, 80 different variables and you could think of this as something very crass to you. What type of knife or fork set do you buy? This may be just three or four different variables. Versus, what type of card do you buy, where there is maybe 16 different features of variants that you have to choose between.

Well, the more complex a problem is, the more benefit there is to actually stepping away and stopping consciously thinking about it. That’s where the non-conscious brain seems to go to work. It seems to be able to distill amounts of information that we just can’t consciously juggle all up in the air at the same time when we’re awake. It’s just too much for a working memory.

If you’re to think of perhaps what the extreme version of that non-conscious processing would be, you would probably design a system that looks very similar to sleep. That’s exactly why sleep provides those creative benefits. It’s essentially informational alchemy that occurs overnight.

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[00:39:33] MB: I want to segway now and get into strategies for sleeping more effectively. We’ve talked at length about how important sleep is both from avoiding a tremendous amount of negative consequences, but also in producing a myriad of positive benefits. Tell me about, for somebody who maybe has trouble sleeping, or just in general, what are some of the basic interventions that we can implement in our lives to sleep better?

[00:40:01] MW: These tips I suppose, and again, I’m not just going to tell you the rules. I won’t just try and explain the reasons for each of these rules. I do warn people that some of them are probably not necessarily desirable. It makes me very unpopular, but here they are.

The first overarching rule of course, is that you just have to carve out an 8-hour non-negotiable sleep opportunity every night. It sounds crass and it’s sounds hokie, but I do this in my life as well. I’m not just saying this because I’ve just written a book and I want to practice what I seem to be preaching. But it’s from a very selfish perspective, because I know the evidence so well. If you knew the evidences I do, which and I hope people will do after reading the book, you just wouldn’t do anything different. I don’t want to short a life, I don’t want a life filled disease and pain and sickness and suffering. That’s why I do give myself a non-negotiable 8-hour opportunity every night.

Once you’ve got that in place – I don’t think it’s insurmountable. People are doing wonderful things in terms of actually committing non-negotiable time to exercise, and people are trying to eat more healthily. I don’t think sleep is a lost cause in this regard.

Once you’re getting that opportunity, then I think there are five things that you could do. If there is one thing that you do from all of these tips, it is these; regularity. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, no matter what, no matter whether it’s the weekend, or the weekday. Even if you had a bad night of sleep, still wake up at the same time the next day. Accept that it’s going to be a bit of a tricky day. But then just get to bed early the following evening and then you will reset.

Because if you sleep in late for whatever reason, you’re not going to feel tired until later that following evening, and you start to drift forward in time and it’s called social jetlag. That has marked deleterious consequences to your health and to your sleep. Regularity is key.

The second is temperature. Keep it cool. Keep your bedroom around about 68 degrees is optimal for most people, which is probably colder than you think, or about 18 and a half degrees Celsius. The reason is this, that your body needs to drop its core temperature by about a 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit in order to initiate sleep. That’s the reason that you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room that’s too cold, than too hot. Because at least the cold room is moving your brain and body in the right thermal direction, that it actually wants to go to for sound and healthy long sleep.

Try to keep your temperature in the bedroom cool. Wear socks if you get cold feet. Some people complain about this, so it’s okay to wear those socks, but keep the bedroom cool. Another way that you can exploit this hack is actually to take a hot bath before bed, or a hot shower. The bath is better if you look at the evidence.

Most people think that when they have a hot bath, they get into bed, they’re nice and warm and that’s what lets them fall asleep more easily. It’s actually the opposite. When you get into a bath, all of the blood comes from the core of your body out to the surface, that’s why you get that rosy glow. It’s what’s called mass vasodilation.

Once you get out of the bath with all of that blood near the surface of your skin, you have this huge massive thermal dump. You get this evacuation of heat from the body, which plummets your core temperature, and that’s why you’ll fall asleep more quickly and more soundly.

The third tip is the light, and actually darkness more specifically. We are actually a dark-deprived society in all first-world nations. You need darkness to allow the release of a critical hormone called melatonin. Melatonin will time the normal healthy onset of sleep. If you’ve got lots of light inside of the house during the evening, and especially if you’re looking and staring at those LED screens from phones, tablets, laptops etc., that will actually fool your brain into thinking it is still daytime and it will shut off melatonin, so you won’t be releasing melatonin.

There were studies done where they had people reading on an iPad for one hour before bed. If I was doing that here in California, their data demonstrated that my release and peak of melatonin didn’t happen, or were shifted by three hours forward in time. I would essentially be close to Hawaii in terms of my internal clock timing to sleep, rather than California.

Keep it dim. You can turn down half the lights in the house in the evening. You don’t need all of them on the last hour before bed. Also stay away from screens in the last hour, and try and use black out curtains, that can actually be very helpful.

The fourth tip is not to stay in bed if you have been awake for longer than 20 minutes. This applies to whether you’re trying to fall asleep, or whether you’ve woken up and are trying to fall back asleep. The reason is this, your brain is a remarkably associative device. If you are lying in bed awake, it quickly learns that being in bed is about being awake rather than being asleep.

You need to break that association. After 20 minutes or so, if you haven’t fallen asleep, get up, don’t get too stressed, go to a different room and in dim light, perhaps just read a book, no screens, no eating. Only when you feel sleepy should you return to bed. In that way, you will actually relearn the association between your bed being about being asleep, rather than being awake.

I would note that some people actually don’t like the idea of getting out of bed. It’s dark. Maybe they’re warm and maybe it’s colder in the rest of the house. I understand that. Another way to try and help you get back to sleep that has good proven clinical trial data behind it is actually meditation. I’m actually quite hard know a scientist, and when I was looking into this evidence as I was writing the book, I was really quite skeptical.

The studies were very clear, very well done, some of them out of Stanford here just down the way from me. So much so that I actually started meditating myself and that was seven months ago, and I’m now a regular meditator. If I’m traveling going through jetlag, for example and struggling with sleep, I will actually use a meditation relaxation practice.

The final tip is the one that really makes me deeply – well, deeply unpopular, just generally as a person anyway, but this is the one that really makes me unpopular with people. No caffeine after noon and avoid alcohol in the evenings. Forego and I kept and I’ll explain both. 

Everyone knows of course that caffeine activates you. It’s a class of drugs that we call a stimulants and it can keep people awake. What people may not know however is that for those people who say, “Well, I can drink an espresso after dinner and I force sleep fine and I stay asleep.” That may be true. However, the depth of the deep sleep that you have when caffeine is swirling around within your brain during sleep is nowhere near as deep as if you had not had that cup of coffee in the evening.

As a consequence, people wake up the next morning. They won’t fee refreshed or restored. They don’t remember having a problem falling asleep or staying asleep. They don’t equate it with the cup of coffee they had the night before. But now they find themselves reaching the two cups of coffee, or three cups of coffee in the morning, which essentially is building a dependency and addiction cycle. That’s the issue with caffeine and that’s why the suggestion is stop caffeine midday and certainly after 2 PM.

Alcohol is probably the most misunderstood drug when it comes to sleep. Alcohol is a class of drugs that we call the sedative hypnotics. Sedation is not sleep. Many people will say, “Well, I nightcap, I have a quick whiskey and it puts me to sleep. It’s great.” It’s actually not true. What you’re simply doing is you’re sedating your cortex, you’re knocking out your brain essentially. You’re not getting into natural sleep.

Then there are two more problems with alcohol. Firstly, it will fragment your sleep so you will wake up many more times throughout the night, which leaves you with what we call unrestorative sleep. The final thing is that alcohol is one of the best chemicals that we know blocking your dream sleep, your REM sleep, which is essential for not just creativity and that associative type of memory processing that we spoke about.

REM sleep is also critical for emotional and mental health. It is during REM sleep when we provide our brain a form of emotional first aid, and you won’t be getting that if you’re blocking REM sleep by way of alcohol. Those would be the five tips to better sleep and hopefully they help some folks. I’m also happy to speak a little bit about sleeping pills. They’re also misunderstood, but those would be for most people the five tips that I would offer.

[00:49:28] MB: Great advice. I try to implement as many of those as possible. One of the things, specifically caffeine is something that I used to drink at my peak. About a cup of – I mean, a pot of coffee a day. Now I basically don’t consume any caffeine. When I do, I limit myself, no caffeine afternoon. Maybe one cup of tea is the maximum. I’ve noticed a huge impact on that impact in my sleep. Sorry, were you going to say something?

[00:49:55] MW: Yeah. I’m just going to say, I mean it’s immensely wise and it’s one of the problems with a lack of sleep is that you quickly reset your perception of your effectiveness and your health. You just think, “Well, this is how I am now at this age.” Not realizing that you could actually be a far better version of yourself, both mentally, cognitively and physiologically if you were just to start getting sufficient sleep.

I think many people fail to realize that with caffeine especially that it’s only when they come off caffeine do they really start to feel both the benefits of all of the side effects that normally come with high caffeine use, but especially the benefits on sleep. It’s like wiping a fogged window and you finally can start to see clearly through it.  That’s the benefit of a full restorative night of sleep.

[00:50:46] MB: I have a couple short questions all around specific sleep strategies or tactics. Let’s start with – you touched on sleeping pills. Tell me about sleeping pills. Do they work? If so, why or why not?

[00:51:00] MW: There are no sleeping medications that we have currently that produce naturalistic sleep. The current class of drugs that you will be prescribed are called sedative hypnotics. Again, as we mentioned with alcohol, sedation is not sleep. The sleep that you have when you’re on sleeping pills, if I were to show you the electrical signature of your sleep if you would come to my laboratory, it would not be the same on sleeping pills as it would be if you’re just having naturalistic healthy sleep. That’s the first thing.

The second thing, and I go to great lengths and a whole chapter in the book to discuss this, is that people are probably not aware of the risks of sleeping pills. They have not been communicated to public adequately. Firstly, we know that sleeping pills are associated with a far higher risk of death. They’re also associated with a significantly high risk of cancer and infection.

Now, we don’t yet know if this is causal versus simply associational, but what I wanted to do is to try to get that information out to the public, so they at least could be armed with the knowledge and make an informed choice with that doctor when they go and see the surgery. That’s I think one of the biggest problems of sleeping pills is that the misunderstood nature about what they give you and the dangers.

People also don’t necessarily have to be taking sleeping pills, I should note. There is a safe and non-pharmacological alternative which is just as effective. It is called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBTI for short. You work with a therapist for a couple of weeks. As I mentioned, it’s just as powerful as sleeping in the short-term, but better still, once you finish that short therapy phase, you continue to maintain that better sleep. Unlike sleeping pills, when you come off those you tend to actually have what’s called rebound insomnia, where your sleep is as bad, if not worse than when you started.

I think people can revisit their sleep issues with their doctor. I’m not trying to shame people who are on sleeping pills. I’m not trying to make you feel bad if you are. I’m very sensitive to the desire for better sleep and I’m so sensitive to the issue of insomnia, or the desperate, desperate state. You should be aware of what sleeping pills are, what they do and what the alternatives are.

[00:53:26] MB: What about taking a melatonin supplement?

[00:53:29] MW: Melatonin is useful in the circumstance of jetlag to try and reset your body clock in a new time zone. You should take it 30 to 60 minutes before you want to get to sleep in the new time zone. Melatonin works to essentially time the onset of your sleep. I guess, the analogy would be if you think about the 100-meter race in the Olympics. Well, melatonin is the starting official who has the starter gun.

It’s melatonin that brings all of the different ingredients off the sleep race to the starting line, then starts the race in its entirety. It begins the sleep race. Melatonin itself does not actually participate in the race of sleep, in the generation of that sleep race. That’s a whole different set of chemicals. As a consequence, that’s why actually melatonin when you are in a new time zone and you’re stable now in that new time zone, if you’re a young healthy individual, then melatonin actually isn’t effective as a sleeping aid. It doesn’t actually help if you look at the studies.

That said, I would note that for those people who are taking melatonin and they feel as though it helps their sleep, well then I usually tell people continue on. It’s because the placebo effect is one of the most reliable effects in all pharmacology. No harm, no foul if you think it’s working for you.

[00:54:58] MB: What about napping? Is napping something – if you’re sleep-deprived, can you catch up with a nap?

[00:55:04] MW: Unfortunately, you cannot catch up on sleep. Sleep is not like the bank. This is another myth that I try to deconstruct in the book. You can’t accumulate a debt, let’s say during the week and then hope to pay it off at the weekend. Sleep just doesn’t work like that. There is no credit system, or there is no credit sleep sell within the brain.

You can if you are sleep-deprived, take a nap and overcome some of the basic sleepiness. Your reaction times will improve a little bit after a nap, but you don’t actually overcome all of the higher level, cognitive issues such as decision-making, learning in memory, focused attention, all of those types of things that we know are would buckle and collapse by way of a lack of sleep. Naps just don’t seem to be able to overcome those.

You can’t overcome – you can’t bank sleep and you can’t sleep off a debt. I see this in my students. It’s what I would call sleep bulimia, which is where they’re binging on sleep at the weekend and they’re – try and taking too little sleep during the week. It’s this binge purge kind of cycle.

I would also say naps, just more generally are a double-edged sword. If during the day when we’re awake, we actually build up a chemical pressure in our brain. It’s a sleepiness pressure. Now, it’s a hydraulic pressure, don’t worry. As I said, it’s a chemical pressure.  The chemical that builds up is called adenosine. The more of that sleepiness chemical that you have, the more and more sleepy that you will feel. After about 16 hours of being awake, you’re nice and tired and then you should fall asleep and stay asleep for about 8 hours.

When we sleep, we remove that sleepiness pressure. It’s almost like a valve on a pressure cooker. We release that sleepiness steam as it were. This is where I come back to naps. If you nap too late in the day, you actually release some of that healthy sleepiness, which means that when it comes time to sleep normally at night, you may actually struggle to fall asleep, or at least stay asleep.

The advice would be this, if you are someone who can nap regularly and you don’t struggle with your sleep at night, then naps are just fine. But if you can’t nap regularly and/or you’re having difficulties with your sleep at night then the advice is you shouldn’t nap, you should stay awake, build up that healthy sleepiness, and then you will have a better night of sleep because of it.

[00:57:40] MB: What about someone who’s in a situation, let’s say like a new parent. Is there anything that they can go through obviously, very chronically sleep-deprived state? Is there any strategy for them to be able to implement, that would help them battle through that in some way?

[00:57:55] MW: Some parents describe trying to work better shifts and what I mean by that is in two ways. Firstly, some parents will try to take early, the early shift and then the late shift, the first half of the night versus the second half of the night and switch between those two. Another way that you can do that on an informed choice is try to determine whether you are a night owl, or you’re a morning type, what we call a lock. That’s a genetically predisposed. It’s called your chrono type.

If you are someone who likes to go to bed late and wake up late, versus someone who likes to go to bed early and wake up early, that’s not a choice. That’s a genetic mandate that’s being given to you in your DNA code. You can try to ask in the couple, are you someone who would prefer to wake up early and go to bed early? In which case, could you take the morning shift, the late morning shift?

If I’m someone who likes to go to bed late and wake up late, well then it’s easier for me to actually take the first half of the night and then sleep for the second half of the morning and sleep late. You can think about split shifts like that. Some people will also flip-flop back and forth. Some people will say, “Well, I’ll take the next two nights and you get good sleep, then we switch over and you take two nights.” They try to mix and match it in that way too. It’s a desperately difficult situation.

In part, we would not actually design to be family units like this, if you look at hunter-gatherer tribes who have not been touched by the electrical influence, then they actually tend to sleep in groups. Restless legs dangling all over the place, arms intertwined. Whole families would sleep together and people would take turns in terms of caring for the young. It’s a lot to ask of parents, and those are some of the ways that you can try to overcome it.

[00:59:56] MB: One other question and this is out of left field a little bit. I’m curious, have you seen or studied around the neurotransmitter GABA and its relationship with sleep?

[01:00:07] MW: GABA is the principle inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain. The way that most sleeping medications work right now and you can just name your favorite one and it will work in this way, is by essentially trying to activate the receptors in the brain for GABA. Those receptors essentially are like the red lights on your neurons. They stop them firing, they stop them from going.

Drugs that try to target the GABA system within the brain are really quite blunt instruments and that’s why sleeping pills, which act exactly in this way are really not precise tools. Sleep is a remarkably complex neuro-physiological and neuro-chemical ballet if you look at it. All of these different stages of sleep, neurotransmitters going up and down and brain networks ebbing and flowing.

To think that you can essentially recreate something that is so complex and so bi-directional sleep by simply just knocking the brain out and switching it off using GABA receptors is really just – it’s an unfortunate outcome of how poor our pharmacology is in this day and age. We just don’t yet have the pharmacological precision and sophistication to mimic sleep at this stage.

[01:01:32] MB: What’s one piece of homework that you would give to a listener who wants to sleep better?

[01:01:39] MW: I would say try giving yourself one week of 8 hours of sleep and see if you feel any better. Just give it as self-improvement test. Try it as a hack, that if you are one of those people who are into the quantified self-movement and you’re into self-experimentation then just test out all of that what you’ve just heard in the past week and just determine if you feel any better when you’re sleeping 8 hours every night and you’ve regular each and every night. Versus a staccato sleep schedule where you’re sleeping 5 hours and 6 hours and 12 hours and then 5 hours again. Just ask yourself, “Did that experiment work? Is it in my favor? Do I feel any better and do I notice that improvement?”

[01:02:29] MB: For listeners who want to learn more and want to find you and your book online, what’s the best place to do that?

[01:02:36] MW: They can find the book, which is called Why We Sleep. They can find that online. Amazon holds it. You can find it from all of your major bookstores, both the major brands, as well as all of the independent. It’s on the list of most libraries too. If you don’t want to part with your money, my publisher would probably won’t like me saying that, but I read online, it’s about the knowledge of the book, not the sales.

If you want to learn more about the work that I do, you can follow me on social media. I am at sleepdiplomat, all one word. Sleepdiplomat. I’m on Twitter and also you can find me on LinkedIn. Also, on the web I am at – it is www.sleepdiplomat.com.

[01:03:21] MB: Well, Matt. This has been a fascinating conversation. So much great information, practical strategies, tons and tons of science. Really appreciate it. Incredible insights. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all of these wisdom.

[01:03:36] MW: Well, thank you and I have to say a real thanks to you too. It’s not just what people say at the end of these interviews, but I’m trying to fight this battle for sleep. I can only do so much by getting on shows or television, radio or writing a book for example. I need fantastic journalists and media and genius types to actually join and partner with me to get this message out. I too just want to thank you, Matt. Thank you for being part of the sleep mission.

I’m going to grant you now the title of being a sleep ambassador for having me on the show. Thank you very much. Sincerely, I really want to thank you. I desperately need to get this message out. This portal is a remarkable way to proclaim the virtues of sleep. Thank you.

[01:04:25] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My email is matt@successpodcast.com. That's M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I'd love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail. 

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How To Stop & Reverse Aging with Dr. David Sinclair

In this episode, we share the science of how to reprogram your body and reset your biological age. Can you permanently reverse aging? What should you do to slow down your aging process and stay young for longer.. maybe even forever.. with our guest Dr. David Sinclair. 

David A. Sinclair, Ph.D. is an entrepreneur, tenured professor at Harvard Medical School, and world leader in aging research. He has published over 160 scientific papers, is a co-inventor on over 50 patents, and has co-founded 12 biotechnology companies in the areas of aging, vaccines, diabetes, fertility, cancer, and biodefense. David is the author of the bestselling book Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To. He serves as co-chief editor of the scientific journal Aging, works with national defense agencies, and works with NASA. He has received 35 honors including being one of Australia's leading scientists under 45, TIME magazine’s list of the “100 most influential people in the world” and many more. 

• Aging doesn’t have to be that way. 

• There are genes that control how long we live.

• Lifespan is 80% lifestyle, 20% genetics. 

• You can manipulate the genes that impact your lifespan both at a personal and lifestyle level, 

• There’s a clock in your body that can be reset. Aging can be reversed. 

• The information for your body to be young again still exists. The instructions are still in your cells. 

• The 9 hallmarks of aging

  • Mitochondrial dysfunction

  • Genomic instability caused by DNA damage

  • Telomere attrition 

  • Epigenome alterations

  • Loss of proteostasis

  • Deregulated nutrient sensing 

  • Accumulation of senescent zombielike cells that inflame healthy cells

  • Stem cell exhaustion

  • Altered intercellular communication and the production of inflammatory molecules

• What is the upstream cause of ALL the main impacts of aging?

• There are unified upstream causes of aging.

• Starting with cellular aging 

• “Sirtuins"

  • Silent Information Regulator 

• “The information theory of aging"

• We are born with a perfect set of genetic information. It’s in 2 forms:

  • DNA

  • Elements that read the DNA (epigenome)

• Information becomes lost and diluted over time. 

• While mutations are one way, if it’s a reading error it’s another way. 

• A genome is just a chemical - it’s words on a page. To bring it to life, you need a “reading machine” - the nucleus and the cell that supports the nucleus. 

• “Epigenetic reprogramming” 

• DNA damage can still be an important piece of aging. 

• DNA Methylation - clover leaves that accumulate on your DNA

• Your epigenetic code sits on top of your DNA and actives or turns of certain strands of DNA.

• By reading your DNA Methylation pattern you can see what your “biological” age is. 

• Key life interventions to extend your life by 14 years on average:

  • Eat healthily

  • Workout

  • Sleep well

  • Fasting & Caloric Restriction

• Every cell in your body has to respond to at least one broken DNA strand per day - that’s 28 billion broken DNA strands - potential tumors or medical issues - happening in your body every day. 

• What causes DNA damage and how can we avoid it?

  • Cancerous materials

  • Sun damage

  • Don’t microwave plastics

  • Inkjet yellow die is really toxic

  • X-rays and CT scans will break your DNA

• How can we make our sirtuins more effective?

  • Take “sirtuin-activating molecules"

  • Eat foods that activate them. 

  • High-intensity exercise

  • Weight lifting 

  • Fasting

  • Cold Exposure

• We’ve known for over 80 years that calorie restriction extends the lifespan of any animal from a spider to a dog. 

  • 70-80% of what it would normally eat. 

• Cold therapy makes white fat become brown or beige fat. 

  • So this isn’t a cold shower, it’s more like cryotherapy. 

• There are 7 sirtuin genes on our body and they are our bodies protectors. 

• If you never experience COLD or extreme HEAT - if you’re never hungry - if you’re never under stress - your sirtuin circuit starts to relax and your epigenome degrades much more rapidly. 

• Why external stress is a necessary component of having a healthy and active epigenome, which keeps you younger for longer. 

• MTOR AMPK

• How “Tet enzymes” can help a blind old mouse see like it was young again.

• Injecting a virus into your body that reverses your age.

• The quest for the “fountain of youth"

• The supplements you should consider taking to slow the aging process.

  • 750-1000 mg of NMN

  • Metformin may be a powerful drug for reversing aging

  • Resveratrol

  • CoQ 10 - soluble form

• Homework: Eat less often. You still have to eat well, and you can still eat the same amount of calories, space out the meals, and don’t snack in between. 

Thank you so much for listening!

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• David’s Wiki Page

• David’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

• Lifespan Newsletter

Media

• Google Scholar Citations: David A. Sinclair

• Harvard Med - The Sinclair Lab: David A. Sinclair’s Affiliations

• Inside Tracker - “Q&A: How Harvard's David Sinclair Unlocked His Own Fountain of Youth” By Erin Sharoni

• Bisnow - “Can You Add 15 Years To Your Life? Q&A With Bisnow Escape Speaker David Sinclair, Genetics And Longevity Expert” by Benjamin Paltiel

• Inside Hook - “A Conversation With a Harvard Geneticist on How to Live (Well) Past 100” by Tanner Garrity

• Outside Online - “This Scientist Believes Aging Is Optional” by Graham Averill

• Kaiser Health News- “Is Harvard Geneticist David Sinclair's ‘Fountain Of Youth’ Pill Real? Sure, If You’re a Mouse.” by Marisa Taylor

• Boston Magazine - “Has Harvard’s David Sinclair Found the Fountain of Youth?” by Catherine Elton

• OZY - “WILL THE GOVERNMENT BLOCK THIS GENETICIST FROM SELLING AN ANTI-AGING PILL?” By Molly Fosco (2018)

• Serious Science Video interview directory: David Sinclair  (4 videos, 2015)

• [Podcast] The James Altucher Show - 564 - Coronavirus Update: How to Boost your Immunity in Times of Pandemic with Harvard Medical School Professor & Biologist David Sinclair (March 22, 2020)

• [Podcast] THE RICH ROLL PODCAST - Ep 436: David Sinclair On Extending Human Lifespan & The Science Behind Aging

• [Podcast] Lewis Howes Show - EP. 904: AGING IS A DISEASE ACCORDING TO DR DAVID SINCLAIR

Videos

• Tom Bilyeu - This Harvard Professor Explains the Secret to Aging in Reverse | David Sinclair on Health Theory

  • Harvard Researcher Tells You Everything You Need to Know About Coronavirus Pandemic | David Sinclair

• PowerfulJRE - Joe Rogan Experience #1349 - David Sinclair

  • Joe Rogan Experience #1234 - David Sinclair

• Talks at Google - Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To | David Sinclair | Talks at Google

• TEDxTalks - A Cure for Ageing?: David Sinclair at TEDxSydney

• Found My Fitness - “Dr. David Sinclair on Informational Theory of Aging, Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, Resveratrol & More”

• Frontiers - David Sinclair - Cracking & reversing the aging clock - Science Unlimited 2019

• The Sheekey Science Show - Lifespan - David Sinclair, PhD (overview & thoughts)

Books

• Lifespan Book Site

• Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To by David A. Sinclair PhD and Matthew D. LaPlante

• Just In Time: The Discovery of Sirtuin and How it Will Change Everything by David Sinclair (release December 2020)

Misc

• [Website] calorierestriction.org

• [Journal Article] “The first long-lived mutants: discovery of the insulin/IGF-1 pathway for ageing” by Cynthia Kenyon

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, bringing the world's top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fable. 

[00:00:18] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over 100 countries. In this episode, we share the science of how to reprogram your body and reset your biological age. Can you permanently reverse aging? What should you do to slow down your aging process and stay young for longer, or maybe even ever? With our guest, Dr. David Sinclair. 

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we’ve put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our email list. We have some amazing content on their along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time for What Matters Most in Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That successpodcast.com, or if you're on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word SMARTER. That's S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44222. 

In our previous interview, we dug into the incredible story of Blake Mycoskie, the one-for-one model. What it's like to be an entrepreneur? To be the founder of Tom's, and ultimately to find happiness. 

Now, for interview with David.

[00:01:44] MB: Dr. David A. Sinclair is an entrepreneur, tenured professor at Harvard Medical School and a world leader in aging research. He has published over 160 scientific papers. Is a co-inventor on over 50 patents and has cofounded 12 biotechnology companies in the areas of aging, vaccines, diabetes, fertility, cancer and biodefense. David is the author of the best-selling book Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To. He serves the co-chief editor of the Scientific Journal Aging and works with national defense agencies and NASA. He's received 35 honors, including being one of Australia's leading scientists under 45, Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people in the world, and so much more. 

David, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:02:29] DS: It’s great to be on. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:31] MB: Well, we’re really excited to have you on the show today. You have an incredible background and have done so much interesting work. And I can't wait to dig into it. 

[00:02:38] DS: Let's do it. 

[00:02:39] MB: I’d love to start out with some of the key themes around aging, and specifically what you’ve talked about in your book, Lifespan. Let's start out with one of the core ideas, something that is really almost just a fundamentally accepted premise and most of today's society, which is the idea that aging is natural. Tell me what your thoughts are on that idea. 

[00:02:59] DS: Well, I agree. It is natural, but so is humans not being able to fly and people dying from cancer. We work to make our lives better. And aging is the final frontier, where it’s one of the few things in our lives and in the world that we accept. But I think, hopefully, my book is a wake-up call that it doesn't have to be that way, in the same way that we’ve overcome and continued to rile against many cancers. And we make our lives better. We have air conditioners, we have cars. We are born as species to innovate. And for some reason aging is that barrier, and I feel it's my job and my life, really, to wake the world up from that misconception. 

[00:03:41] MB: It’s such an interesting insight, because we really do almost just accept that our bodies are going to age, they’re going to break down, and we have to go through all of these negative implications as we get older. But my understanding is from really a biochemical cellular level, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. 

[00:04:01] DS: Yeah, we didn't know that until recently. In fact, some of the work is only just about to be published, which is what's so exciting. But we've really learned over the last 20 years that there are genes that control how long we live. Some of us have good copy. Some of us don't. But most of what we do in our lives is based on how we live. Only 20% is inherited. And what we figured out in large part is that these genes that extend lifespan in everything from little worms, up to humans, is that we can manipulate them by how we live our lives, but also increasingly genetically we can manipulate them. 

But the big deal that's in the book, which is very strange because it hasn't even yet fully come out in the scientific literature, but it will soon, is that there’s a clock in our bodies that is actually resettable. You can reset the age of a cell, or a tissue, eventually, an entire animal, so that aging is not a one-way street. It's not just slowable. It’s actually reversible. 

[00:04:59] MB: That’s such an interesting piece of the research, and I want to hear a little bit more about that, because it's one thing to say, “Okay. Maybe we can slow down our aging trajectory.” But to think about actually taking someone who today would be 65-year-old and reverse aging them back to their early 30s or something like that, that's almost something that you would. I've literally read science fiction stories where that happens. 

[00:05:23] DS: Yeah. I mean, there are interesting science fiction stories, but if you go back to the 19th century, there were writing science fiction about flying and going to the moon, and the same is going to be true for aging and aging reversal. But we couldn't have done this even 20 years ago. We didn't understand what was going on during aging. We just thought things wore out and got damaged and it was impossible to fix them. That's not true. 

In fact, the information in our bodies to be young again still exists. We know that. We can clone cells. Matt, I could take one of your cells if I wanted to and make a tissue out of it. I could even clone you if I had the authority to do so. Not that I would. Don’t worry. But those instructions are still in ourselves. We haven't lost them. It's similar to being able to reboot a computer and make it run like it was new again. 

[00:06:11] MB: Honestly, I wouldn't be totally opposed to having a clone of myself just to get some more stuff done. 

[00:06:16] DS: I suspect you do have one, given how much you’ve achieved and probably will achieve.

[00:06:20] MB: I could definitely say the same thing about you, and we’ll get into some of that stuff as well. But I want to really understand better the science of aging. Tell me a little bit more about both what our understanding is today of how the body ages, and what's happening when we age at a cellular level. 

[00:06:39] DS: Well, I'm excited about speaking with you today, because we have an audience, you have an audience, that is really interested in getting into the nitty-gritty. Too often, I just have to talk in analogies like the computer rebooting, but we can really get into this. So, I’m excited. And tell me if you want me to go even deeper. 

But let's start at the top and work our way in. At the high-level concept is that there are numerous causes of aging. There are eight main ones called the hallmarks of aging, which you’ll read about occasionally in the media. Mitochondrial dysfunction, telomere shortening cellular senescence, the zombie cells, protein misfolding, DNA damage. Telomere shortening, I might have already mentioned. But these things and basically a list of things that go wrong during aging. But I've never been satisfied with that. I mean, it’s a good starting point. And address one of those, and you'll be healthier and live longer. But what if you could address them all with a single treatment? That's what I'm looking for. What we call the upstream cause of all of those other things. 

[00:07:38] MB: So, tell me more about that. 

[00:07:41] DS: Right. What we’ve discovered back in the 1990s. So, I was just a kid. I was 25. I’d come from Australia. Figured I'd come to the US for a couple years, get some experience. [inaudible 00:07:52] a lab to work in. It was working on yeast aging, which sounds crazy at the time. It was crazy. Now, a whole field on it over time. And what we wanted to do, and my professor’s name was Lenny Guarente, and he was a rebellious guy. He taught me also how to be rebellious. 

We decided to figure out why the yeast cells grow old, because if we can't figure that out for our yeast cell, good luck with humans. And then we figured if we could find those genes that controlled the process. It might tell us why we age and how to control our aging process. And it's not all just a story about me today, or in my book. There was a rebellious group of about 10 labs who were doing research on the cutting edge who said, “Let's just forget what we know and use genetics to figure out if there are genes that control aging. 

In our case, in yeast, we found a group of genes called sirtuins. The sirtu part of it comes from the first gene that we were working on called Sirtu, and it’s interesting that the sir part of it, S-I-R, as in yes, sir, stands for silent information regulator, and the most important word that I've told you today is the word information, because I believe, and my theory is called the information theory of aging, is that we are born with a perfect set of information, most of us, if we’re lucky. And that information is in two forms, the DNA and the elements that read the DNA known as the epigenome. 

People have looked at the genome for many years and found that there are mutations here or there, but could never really prove or find convincing evidence that the DNA information, the genetic information was what was going wrong during aging. So we focused on epigenetic information now that we had learned that yeast use information regulators to live longer. 

And my theory basically, if you want to boil it down, is that the information in our bodies due to entropy becomes lost over time, and that’s primarily the epigenome, the readers of the genome. The reason that's really important, not only if it's true it's important, because we can potentially reverse it. But what's important conceptually is that while mutations are pretty much one way. If you're full of mutations even with the best Crispr technology, you’re not going to be able to easily reverse that. 

But if it's merely just telling the cells to read the genes the way they did when we were young, that’s doable. And in fact, it only took up my lab a couple years to achieve it. And I'll tell you more in a minute. But just to finish this thought, we’ve figured out how to reverse the age of the epigenome so that cells and tissues can read the genes like they did when the animal was very young. I'm talking about mice, of course. In two years, we hope to have tested out first patient.

[00:10:46] MB: So, just to break down and explain the concept a little bit more, basically, tell me the difference between what is the difference between the genome of the epigenome and how do they interact in the body.

[00:10:58] DS: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you actually what it is. But think of it like a DVD. I'm sure many of us remember DVDs. These were the – We were excited we could put a movie on them. But what’s good about this analogy is that they had digital information on them, right? The pits in the aluminum. And that’s similar to the genome. These are zeros and ones on a DVD in the body. It's an A, T, C on G chemical. And string that billions of times and you've got the genome. But the genome is just a chemical. It's not life. To bring the genome to life, you need the reading machinery, and that’s nucleus, and the cell would support the nucleus. And that's really the epigenome. So what is that actually in physical space? 

Well, we know the genome is a chemical, right? What's an incorrect double helix? But the epigenome is a lot more complicated, and that's the reason why we don't know as much about it as we do DNA. But think of the epigenome as if you’re spooling up a hose on your driveway, how about that thing that winds up your hose. That kind of thing. There were systems that are in place to bundle up the DNA when we don't need those genes or to release them as a big loop of DNA so the cell can read those genes. And that combination of loops and bundles, loops and bundles, tens of thousands in a row across a chromosome is what tells the cell how to live, how to survive, and what type of cell it should be. And all of that gets established during embryo development until we are born and eventually we become teenagers. But, essentially, once you've locked in that you are nerve cell, or a skin cell, or a liver cell, you’re not going to change. And thank goodness, otherwise we'd all be the world's biggest humor. 

A nerve cell has to say a nerve cell, and it's the epigenome loops that I’ve described that allow that to be maintained. Of course, anyone who’s saying and thinking will realize that aging is the destruction of those loops and bundles, in my view.

[00:12:55] MB: That totally makes sense. And so the DNA is essentially just a set of instructions or almost like a set of computer code. And the cells, the nuclei and so forth are almost many machines that are reading that code. And over time, they start to develop small errors in the way that they read it, but the code itself is essentially unchanged. And so you can just tweak the machinery, get it to read the code perfectly and things will revert back to – I don’t know, the term the DAs or the less-aged version. Is that I correct characterization?

[00:13:27] DS: Yes, it is way. We call it epigenetic reprogramming. But you’re right. Now, I just want to make sure that my colleagues don't get upset with me. I'm not saying that mutations aren’t important. There are certainly mutations in cells that are exposed to the air, to our food, to the light. Anyone who's lived in Australia has gotten wrinkles in their 40s knows this to be true. But, really, what I'm saying is that they're not the main driver but DNA damage is still important, because what we've discovered in my lab over the last decade is that the damage to the DNA is one of the main – Possibly the main reasons those loops and bundles get disrupted in the first place. 

[00:14:08] MB: So, I want to bring us back to something you said earlier and start times into how we understand it more effectively. So you mentioned previously that genetics is about 20% of age-related. I guess, genetics controls about 20% of your lifespan. And the other 80% is essentially the broad category of epigenetics. Is that a correct understanding?

[00:14:29] DS: Generally. There’s always finer detail. 

[00:14:31] MB: Right. Yeah, sure. 

[00:14:32] DS: The word I have to use as a scientist is heritable. And you can inherit more than your DNA. You inherit some of your epigenome, right? From your parents. In fact, if your parents eat a lot of food and are hugely obese, because of epigenetic, you’ll be more predisposed to obesity and diabetes yourself. But yeah, what you don't get from your parents, it’s the other 80%, which is how you live your life, and that is I think really one of the most important messages we could ever have in our lifetimes that our genes are not our destiny in the long run. 

[00:15:05] MB: So, give me a sense of at an epigenetic level within cells and the cellular structures inside of our bodies. How does that epigenetic reprogramming actually starts to take place?

[00:15:18] DS: Well, I could talk all day about this, because it's the most exciting thing I've ever worked on. Let's start from a little bit of background here. Those loops and bundles are controlled by proteins mainly, a little bit of RNA. But, essentially these are proteins that either bind to the DNA or bind to those proteins that bind the DNA and assemble these structures in three dimensions. And we’re finally developing these technologies. In fact, I was on a scientific advisory board meeting today for a few hours of a company that's on the cutting edge of being able to read the genome in its three-dimensional state, which is blowing the field wide open. 

Besides those proteins that bundle and spool, including these SIRT1s that I work on, the silent information regulators, they shut down the genes and bundle them up. There’s something else that we haven't mentioned that’s really important for this process to be understood and to reprogram it. It's called DNA methylation. And DNA methylation is a very simple process. Metals are carbon with three hydrogens on it. Think of a clover leaf. And those get decorated on our DNA. 

Initially, it's done during development so that the cells remember what type of cells they are. And it's a very important and permanent mark, one semi-permanent mark on DNA. And there are enzymes that add those chemicals, stick them on there, they’ll stay there up to 100 and something years. In the case of a whale, few hundred. And then there are enzymes that take them off, they’re called TETs. I think I’ll bring up TETs later. 

But think of this as a code on top of the genetic code called the epigenetic code, and it's a read/write system, but it also allows the cell to say permanently, “Okay. That's a group of genes that should never come on. That's a liver group of genes, and we’re supposed to be neurons. So shut them off.” 

In fact, DNA methylation is really important for telling the body where the head is and the tail is as you're developing. And what we’re finding is during aging, is that those genes, they’re called hox genes, H-O-X, they come on during aging. But getting back to this clock, these DNA methyl groups can be read by a machine in the lab. We have sequencing machines in most labs these days. We’ve got one that's the size of a little candy bar. It's quite an amazing technology. And if we read all those little methyls, those cloverleaves as I’ve just called them for the first time. As they accumulate on the DNA and occasionally get subtracted by TET enzymes, that is a – If you look at the right places in the genome, not all of them, not hundreds of thousands of them, but there are about a few hundred that reproducibly, time and time again, in humans, in mice, in dogs, they serve as a clock. If I was to read your DNA methylation pattern, Matt, I can plug that into an algorithm that we’ve develop using machine learning by looking at hundreds of humans, and I could tell you if for your chronological age, whether you are doing better or worse for your biological age, and that is a better predictor of your longevity than anything else. In fact, if you look at the biological age based on this clock, you can predict whether somebody smoked or not even better than they remembered.

[00:18:40] MB: How much variance can there be between your biological age and your chronological age just from the data that you've already seen? Assuming people who haven't necessarily taken a lot of these interventions to either slow or reverse aging.

[00:18:53] DS: Well, I've seen data points where people are a decade younger [inaudible 00:18:57] 20 years younger. And these are people typically that have eaten the right things, stayed lean, exercise, all those good stuff the doctors figured out through other means that these are healthy for you. But, yeah, it can make a massive difference. By the way, just doing those things that I mentioned as well as getting good sleep, and there’s a fifth one. I think it might be have a community around you for mental health. You extend your life by 14 years on average. By doing this really rigorously like I do, I think that 14 years is just the beginning. 

[00:19:27] MB: It’s so funny, things are often simple, but not easy. And from a variety of disciplines, I mean, if you look at the book blue zones, what you're just talking about, all of these different methodologies. If you get a lot of sleep, if you eat relatively healthfully, if you take care of your body and stay physically active. Those things go such a long way towards pretty much reducing all caused mortality, increasing your happiness, increasing pretty much everything you can imagine. And everybody, it's so obvious that people almost ignore it. 

[00:19:56] DS: Well, I think that the time we are in with COVID-19, people are paying more attention to their health, because when you're young, and I still feel young. I’m 50. Death and sickness is so far in the future. We don't think about it. But if you are obese right now, you can be quite susceptible to COVID-19. Same for any condition. And so it's not just something in the future. It can actually affect your life now. 

I have a friend who spent two weeks on a ventilator who was in his 40s. He wasn't particularly unhealthy, but still I think we’re in a time where we shouldn't be ignoring our health and putting it off into the future. The other thing that's important to know is my field and my lab have studied rodents and dogs for many years. It's very clear to us that the sooner you start healthy living, the better it is and the bigger impact you have. You can't say, “Okay. I'll go to the gym when I'm 65.” That's not going to work as well as if you do it your whole life.

[00:20:53] MB: So I want to tie this back in to the epigenetic reprogramming. Some of those lifestyle interventions are obviously ways that you can start to take some steps to reprogram your epigenome, to change your lifestyle, to reverse or decrease the impact of aging in some form or fashion. But tell me a little bit more about how that reprogramming is actually happening and what are some of the factors that drive that and can actually move that lever. 

[00:21:19] DS: The main one we've discovered is broken DNA. Now, when you chromosome breaks, it's a do or die, fix or die problem for the cell. You’ll either rip your chromosomes to shreds when you try to copy it and divide, or you might become a humor, both of which you don't want. So the cell has to really mount a massive response to even just one piece of broken DNA in each cell. And each cell has at least one broken chromosome per day, which is pretty incredible, right? What's that? 26 billion breaks in your body a day. Your body has to react to that. 

And what it does in its reaction is send proteins from key areas, like the sirtuins, are normally holding those bundles together so that genes don't get read. Then we see the move to the break or breaks. They do their job, but then they have to find their way back to where they came from. And that happens 99.9% of the time. That's why we don't grow old within a few days. But it's cumulative, because if .1% of those proteins don't make it their way back and they up staying where they were or they off and do something else, cells eventually, as we see in mice and in human cells, they lose their identity, because genes that shouldn't be on start coming on because of this reshuffling of these silencing proteins, the sirtuins and others as well. So that's one thing. 

So what I would say practically speaking is try to avoid DNA damage. Now, you can't avoid DNA breaks completely, because it's part of life. That will happen. And even if you lived on the bottom of the ocean in a led box, you’d still have DNA breaks. But there are things that exacerbate DNA damage and DNA breaks, certain chemicals. The ones that are known to cause cancer are good examples. Going in the sun will create what are called thymine dimers, which also can lead to breaks. Don't microwave plastics. Yellow die out of inkjet printers is pretty toxic for this kind of stuff. X-rays and CT scans will break your DNA. I try to avoid X-rays, for example, that are frivolous. 

I’ve had a minimal amount, what I would call the necessary amount of dental X-rays, but no more than that. And every time I go into the dentist, I have a fight with my dentist. And in the end, I win, because I think that I have a right to refuse something. But, I mean, I still have X-rays. Don't get me wrong. I'm not that crazy. I don’t wear tinfoil in my head. But I don't like excessive radiation exposure. 

[00:23:51] MB: That makes total sense. So, we avoid some of the causes of DNA damage. What are some of the strategies for making your sirtuins more effective?

[00:24:02] DS: Good question. We found in yeast that just by putting in an extra copy of the gene sirtu, they lived 30% longer, and that mimic the effects of fasting or caloric restriction as it used to be called more commonly. And that's how we figured out how this all works. That the environment is stressful or at least perceived adversity in the environment like low amounts of sugar for a yeast cell would activate the sirtuins and make more of it or we could genetically modify those cells within a few days, and that was sufficient too. 

So what turns on those genes naturally, because we can't easily genetically engineer ourselves. One way is to take what are called sirtuin-activating molecules. Those are molecules we’ve discovered over the years will bind to the enzyme and make it work more effectively, like speeding up a Pac-Man. You can also just have foodstuffs that have these chemicals in them. So there's a little bit in red wine [inaudible 00:25:00], which was the first activator that got some press from our lab. Olive oil now, oleic acid turns out to be an activator. 

But ideally you want to have more than just a trace amounts that are in red wine. I’ve admitted, but I don't endorse products, that I take resveratrol and I've done so for about 14 years now. But in daily life, let's say you’re opposed to taking any pills of whatsoever. Exercise will dilute certain types of high-intensity exercise as well as weightlifting, both of which I do. You can fast, be hungry for a little bit of the day each day. I try to skip breakfast. Well, I always skip breakfast. I try to skip lunch. I eat a regular dinner with a bit of a wine, and that's fine. I haven't admitted this publicly, I don't think ever before. But I struggle with this diet. I mean, I love food. My brain is like everybody else's. I like to eat. And occasionally at night, especially if I’ve had a glass of wine, I might grab some snacks. But really, I don’t do that every night. But I am only human. I say that because it's important to try. And even if you are not perfect at these diets, it's the mere fact you’re trying that’s really important. 

So those are all the things. There’re also some saunas and cold plunges that are a little bit less proven. But there is all evidence for these things turning on the sirtuins. 

[00:26:24] AF: This episode of the Science of Success if brought to you by our partners at the Business Casual Podcast. Business Casual is a new podcast by Morning Brew that make news enjoyable, relatable, and dare I say even fun. Host, Kinsey Grant, interviews the biggest names in business program topics like how technology is changing the fitness industry, to the economics of influencer marketing. It’s the business podcast that makes you smarter and makes you laugh. It’s that mixture of entertainment, but also information. Listen to Business Casual wherever you get your podcasts today. 

[00:27:03] MB: You've talked a lot about fasting, and even if you go on some of your social media profiles, one of the most predominant themes that you share is that the importance of fasting and increasing your longevity. Tell me a little bit more about how that works and why it's so effective. 

[00:27:19] DS: We've known for over 80 years that caloric restriction extends the lifespan of many animals. It started in rats. It’s been done in mice, and everything from a spider to a dog. Caloric restriction works, and caloric restriction, the way it used to be done was you give an animal about 70% to 80% of what it would normally eat. That means they’re pretty hungry for most of the time. So that's not enjoyable, and what used to be only about a thousand people that I knew of that did this rigorously. They even had a website, it was calorierestriction.org. They have some really good recipes, mostly salads, say. 

But the modern way of doing it, more modern, and I think easier way to do it, is to – Of course, not eat during the night. So you have an early-ish dinner. I tend to eat around 7PM, and then try not to eat after that. For breakfast, the most I would have would be a spoon or two of homemade yogurt partly for the micro-vein, partly to dissolve my resveratrol, which is like eating brick dust, and then skip lunch. So what’s happening to the body when you do that is that, first of all, there is the obvious things that all doctors will tell you, and probably most people know already, which is that blood sugar levels will come down and your body will start to make its own blood sugar out of the liver, or sugar glucose, and it will start to burn fat. All good things. 

But here's the thing that most people don't understand, at least two really important things happen during that. One is that you’re going to make oleic acid, which is a breakdown product of white fat, white adipose tissue, and that has just been discovered to activate the enzyme, SIRT1, and that’s going to stabilize your epigenome and help repair the telomeres and broken DNA and fix the misholded proteins and dampen inflammation that leads to disease. Yeah, just being hungry and burning fat is actually healthy. I don't think anybody that I know of understands this very well. 

And the second thing that happens is that you will have low levels of glucose that trigger insulin, and then that state will actually turn on the SIRT1 enzyme as well through insulin signaling, which has been linked to aging for many years ever since Cynthia Kenyon discovered that worms, nematode worms that are mutant in insulin signaling live twice as long. 

Yeah, what we’re learning is that these things that we’ve bumped into like eating Mediterranean diets, being hungry that people probably knew thousands of years ago were actually correct at the fundamental molecular level of slowing aging down. 

[00:29:58] MB: Another one that I find really fascinating that I know you've talked about previously as well is cold exposure. Tell me a little bit about how cold exposure works to reverse or slow the aging process.

[00:30:09] DS: So when I started writing my book, the editor said, “You've got to put more of the pop culture stuff, the –” What is it? Cryotherapy? And this is going back three years ago now. It wasn't very scientific at all to say the least. And I rebelled and I said, “I don't want to put that kind of stuff in my book. This is going to be the best science that you’ll ever read.” But I looked into it, and interestingly, there is some validity to cold therapy and also saunas. Again, I thought probably BS, but it actually looks good. It's not as clear as the fasting that I just talked about. But cold therapy, what it'll do is it'll turn on or activate white fat to become brown fat, or beige fat, which is an intermediate form. 

So what is brown fat? Brown fat is found in babies, because babies for the first few weeks cannot shiver, and instead they use brown fat to heat themselves, and that's how they stay warm. But it was thought that after we become little toddlers, we lose out brown fat. But people recently, maybe the last five years, have discovered that adults also have brown fat. And the way to turn on, activate the brown fat brown your existing fat just under the skin is to be called. And I'm not talking about walking out in a windy day for two minutes. That's probably not going to do it. What you need to do is to shock the system. You need to expose the skin to really tough cold. 

In a mouse, what we do is we put them at 4°C, like put them in a fridge for a little bit, and we see they can get brown fat. Possibly, pull them out again and warm them up. Don’t worry, we don’t hurt them any more than us going out on a winter's day. But you can do a cold plunge. You can do cryotherapy. These things potentially are very good for us. 

Getting back to my work and the sirtuins, one of the – So let me tell you, there are seven sirtuin genes in our body, and I've mostly been talking about number one, six and seven, which are found on DNA. But there are others that are floating around outside the nucleus. And number three, four and five are in the mitochondria, which I'm sure you all know is that power packs, the energy-generating system of the cell. And those sirtuins actually are controlling particularly number three sirtuin, controls the browning when it's cold. 

So, really, you got to think of these sirtuins as the body’s protectors. They’re like the Pentagon. And when there's an emergency or even a potential emergency, they send out the troops and make the body more defensive. Conversely, I want to put this in, Matt, because I don't forget to say, because I t’s really, really important. If you never experience cold, and typically we go from our garage, to our cars, to our houses, to work. If you don't experience hot like a sauna, if you don't ever feel hungry, and you don't need to today. If you barely ever exercise, if you barely ever lift anything heavy, you sirtuin survival circuit is going to just relax and say, “Cool, man. This is great.” And your epigenome is going to degrade and you’re going to find that you have diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's much quicker than someone else who did all the right things. 

[00:33:21] MB: That's another point that I think is so fascinating, which is the importance of having some kind of external stressor to actually keep your sirtuins – I don't know the right term, but productive, proactive, etc. Tell me a little bit more about that concept and why some level of stress, whether it's hunger, etc., cold, extreme heat and so forth is actually important. 

[00:33:46] DS: Well, from an evolutionary perspective, what I have proposed is that this is a very ancient survival circuit that has been around since life first was in the primordial pond, I guess you’d call it. It’s really a set of genes that responds to perceived threats, whether it's a lack of nutrients on DNA damage, or whatever it is. It could be UV light coming in. It could be a lack of amino acids. And it turns on this survival circuit, and the sirtuins are part of that.

Now, there are other components that are important to know about. One is mTOR, which works best for longevity when there're low amounts of amino acids. So, if all you ate is a steak every night, your mTOR is going to work for you. And then there's one called AMPK, which is short for AMP kinase, which is a protein that senses how much energy we have, and it'll come on when we’re hungry and when our cells don't have enough energy, and it'll switch on the mitochondria and make them more active, which actually turns out to be beneficial for repairing things and living longer. When you have all of those survival genes switched on, whether you’re an early microbe in the primordial soup or a human being 3.7 billion years later, it's all good. In fact, it's better than good. 

[00:35:04] MB: So, in our modern lives of luxury and comfort, relatively speaking, because most people in have things like air conditioning, and so forth, we’re not living like we used to live thousands of years ago. The fact that we have many of these comforts today has actually made us from an epigenetic standpoint more prone to aging and disease. Is that correct?

[00:35:29] DS: It’s 100%, and it's similar to use it or lose it. We live in a world, a modern world, the marketing world, consumer world has decided that the best way to make money is to give us comfort and satiety, lots of sugar, lots of salt, lots of fat, lots of comfy chairs, right? This is what our brain seeks. Our brain doesn't want to be running away from a sabertooth tiger or being hungry, because that's dangerous. So we've evolved, unfortunately, to crave these comforts. But what that leads to in the long run is susceptibility to diseases, including infectious diseases as we’re finding out now.

[00:36:10] MB: I want to come back to something we talked about earlier, because I understand – And it makes total sense to me that somebody who's eating healthy and sleeping well and cultivating healthy stress in their life, all of these things, is going to slow down their aging. But at least from my experience, I haven't seen a lot of people who start eating salad and jogging and suddenly go from being 65 to being 25. Tell me about how does this get into the actual reversal of aging and what is some of the cutting edge science that you're working on? Some the interventions that you're seeing that may eventually emerge that we can start to implement to actually not only just slow our aging down, but really think ultimately about potentially reversing aging.

[00:36:49] DS: Yeah. Well, yeah. Slowing down aging was step one. And I would say that we’re pretty far into that as a field. There are drugs like rapamycin that inhibit mTOR, which extend the lifespan of rodents at least by 20%. That’s a pretty good start. But, you're right. You can't give rapamycin or resveratrol to a mouse and expect it to suddenly go back to being young again. We don't see that. 

Now, I will say that we’ve been somewhat successful. In my lab, for example, we can activate the sirtuin enzymes and get part of their youth back. We published a paper a couple of years ago in the Journal Cell that showed that by activating the SIRT1 enzyme in the lining of blood vessels, the endothelial cells, which by the way are what COVID is seeming to be attacking. Those mice could go from being elderly and weak and unable to run on a treadmill to running up to two times further like a young mouse. So there are aspects. Aspects is important. Not the whole animal, but suspects can be reversed. 

But how far are we from flip a switch and in three weeks you literally get your hair back, your hair color? You get your eyesight back? Your brain works like it was young. Hopefully, you’ll retain all your memories. We’re testing that right now. So, what it needs is something a little bit more potent than just activating sirtuins. You have to get the sirtuins and these other proteins that they work with to go back to where they came from when they started, when we were babies, and get those methyl groups, those cloverleaves to be going back to the pattern that they had when we were young. 

And we don't know all of the workings of the system, but we do know actually how to contact the cell and initiate a program that does exactly that, which is get the sirtuins to go back, we think. But what we definitely see, and we’re going to be publishing this for the first time, is that you can trigger these TET enzymes that I mentioned earlier, these are enzymes that remove those methyls off DNA. And when you trigger those, the clock goes back quite a lot by 50%. But here's the kicker. If you don't have a TET enzymes in your body, or if you're a cell or a mouse, I should say, then reprogramming doesn't work, and the tissues that we’re looking a – Typically we do the eye, the old eye, then reprogramming doesn't work. You don’t get a young eye back. 

If you do have the TETs around, and we initiate this program effectively, in three weeks, we can take an old mouse that’s essentially blind to back to seeing like it was young again. That's where we’re at. And what's exciting about this is that if we can reverse aging in the eye, which is a very complex tissue, it's possible we can reverse aging in any part of the body, and that's what we’re testing now, and that's what we’re working towards in clinical trials to test whether we can reverse the damage that is caused by pressure in the eye, glaucoma. I'm sure you've heard of it. And this is one of the largest causes of blindness on the planet. Right now, there's nothing you can do once you've lost your vision or you’re losing it. You can have a little bit of slowdown by some treatments. But to be truly reversing, that damage is unprecedented. And we’re pretty excited about testing to see if this will work in people as well.

[00:40:10] MB: It’s so fascinating, and I’m definitely going to be watching from the sideline. Anxious to see how this research progresses and hope that in a few years or maybe a decade or two, this is something that really can become mainstream and help people start to actually reverse aging. It will be truly fascinating to see that.

[00:40:27] DS: Well, yeah. Sometimes people think, “Oh! This is just hype, because it sounds too god to be true. But I’ve got some very good people on this. I’ve got a number of companies that I work with and I’ve cofounded. The one I’m reprograming, it’s still in stealth. So I won’t say too much about it. But it's got some really top people from the pharmaceutical industry, from banking. And if anyone can do it, this team can. 

So it's really real, right? I could be wrong. Maybe it only works in mouse size and it'll never work in anything else. But I think that's highly unlikely, because we didn’t choose the eye for any specific reason other than we like a challenge. And my student knows a little bit about the retina, but we could've chosen the liver. We could've chosen the kidney. And we’ll see if we can reprogram an entire animal soon. But you asked what does this mean for us. Clearly, I'm not going to let you come to my lab and inject yourself with the gene therapy that we use. It's a virus, by the way, that will inject into the eye and turn on three reprogramming genes. We call them, OS and K. It's an acronym for four Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4, which people currently use to make stem cells out of adult cells, but we use it to reprogram the animal. 

But, yeah, that's where we’re at. So what we do in our lives? Well, if you can give me a few years, I'll let you know if we’re on the right track for all of us. But until then, what I would say is that you should definitely watch this space. My colleagues and I, my three cofounders, four of us, are working on the next generation. We have now found small molecules. In other words, chemicals, that we can get even in our diet or from a supplement that will hopefully do the same thing, literally, a youth pill. And I hate to use that term, because it sounds like a bunch of BS. But it's true. And these are people who I think could potentially win a Nobel Prize for those kinds of discoveries.

[00:42:19] MB: It’s so fascinating, and it's just such an interesting topic. I'm curious, you touched on one or two of these, but what are some of the – All caveats included in this. But what are some of the supplements or treatments that you take things like resveratrol, metformin, etc. that potentially can mitigate some of the impacts of aging?

[00:42:40] DS: Right. I'll refer listeners to my book, because it's a list and that's all explained why I do and what I do. Page 304 if you want to go to the cheat sheet, but do read the book as, well because it explains in more detail about the things we’ve talked about like exercise and diet in more detail. But some of the main ones that I will tell you now, a gram of resveratrol, just basically teaspoon of a powder. I got to say upfront, because everyone will want to know this. Unfortunately, I have to be very careful. I'm not a doctor. I’m a Ph.D. I'm at Harvard. Very conservative. I don't have companies. I'm not making money off this. I definitely don't mention companies. And the reason is that my name and Harvard are used all the time, unfortunately, to sell products. And Harvard gets very upset. So do I.

So I'm not to mention products. But I will tell you in general what to look for, and I also explained a bit in my book that you want high quality supplements, which means that the resveratrol should be gray or white in color, not brown. 

The next one I take is NMN, which is what's called an NAD precursor. And we haven't talked about NAD today, but NAD is the fuel for sirtuins. Without it, sirtuins don't do any of their job. They don’t spool up the DNA. As we get older, we think we make less and less of this NAD. And we need NAD also for life.  Mitochondria need it to make energy, for example. I supplement with – What is it? About 750 to a thousand milligrams of NMN every morning as well to boost my NAD levels up. Now, that’s some proven – There haven't been a lot of clinical trials with NMN yet, as supposed for resveratrol, where there’s a pretty good literature. So it’s still – I'm giving all the caveats. So I’m a scientist after all. But I am doing clinical trials with hospitals around Boston to test this. And for the last two years, we've never seen anything that's being a worry in terms of safety. So I feel quite comfortable talking about it. 

The other kind of things I do, let's say I do the usual aspirin, which I'm now convinced is protecting against many types of cancer. You just have to careful to get the coated ones. You don’t want to hurt your stomach lining in the long run. What else do I do? I take a metformin, you mentioned. Metformin is a severe – Well, not severe. It's a potent molecule. It's used to treat type II diabetes. It's a derivative of a molecule out of a French lilac client. It's been used in millions of people and it's very safe in general, but it's not 100%. So you got to be careful if you take it. You could get lactic acidosis, which could damage your body. 

But in general, it's pretty safe. But it also requires a prescription. So you need to talk to you doctor. I’ll tell you ahead of time that most doctors are not happy prescribing metformin to a young or a healthy individual. They’re trained to wait and to actually get type II diabetes. And as soon as you cross that threshold, they’ll give it to you or prescribe it. 

I get frustrated. I understand where they’re coming from. But still, it is frustrating that metformin is so safe, so cheap and can prevent type II diabetes. But you have to get a disease for most doctors to treat the symptoms. Anyway, good luck with your doctors there. Not much we can do about that at this point. But I'm trying to educate doctors that metformin looks like one of the best molecules for delaying diseases of aging in tens of thousands of people that have been looked at with type II diabetes that turn out to be relatively resistant to cancer and heart disease, and frailty, and Alzheimer's even compared to those who never had type II diabetes, which is quite an amazing proposition. 

I'm trying other things. Alpha-lipoic acid is something that's used in mitochondria. I take that. I’m on regular drugs. I’ve have had high cholesterol most of my life since I was in my 20s. So I take Lipitor. Much to the chagrin of Joe Rogan who thinks that I might be hurting myself. But I've got a condition. So I have to do that. But to compensate, you should know that should be taking CoQ10, the soluble form of it, because you can deplete your CoQ10. Without CoQ10, your mitochondria are a less effective. Actually, without CoQ10, you’re dead. But you don’t want to be depleted in it at all. That some of what I do, but what I've found is that combination of the first three, metformin, NMN and resveratrol really had a big impact on my body. I measure my body as a scientist should to see what's happening, especially if I’m going to talk about it in my book and on podcast. It's really been quite beneficial to my body. My cholesterol levels have never been better. My bad cholesterol, actually, it's lower than my good cholesterol. I still can't believe it. HDL levels are usually a fraction of your LDL, and you try to get them closer at a ratio of five or less. I have a ratio of less than one, which is quite a thing to think about. 

[00:47:32] MB: Some great suggestions, and obviously, again, all of that with extreme caveats. And read the book, because it actually goes much more detailed explanation of the science, the warnings, all the things you should pay attention to. So don’t just jump in to the ship without doing a little more homework, but those are some things that I'm certainly going investigate and see if it makes sense to get into.

[00:47:53] DS: There’s another thing I want to say. It's good point. Thanks, Matt, for saying that. The other reason that you shouldn't just take a list and go with that is that everybody's different. And if you don't understand why something works or measure it, you don't know. I mean, most people are not like me. I would bet that most people listening to this are not Hungarian derived 50-year-old males with ADHD and sleeping issues. That’s me, right? But my microbiome is also quite personal. So it's going to – I think everybody should try things if they’re into it. Do it in a stepwise fashion. Make sure that it doesn't hurt them. Make sure they feel well. Make sure their liver is still functioning well, if not better, and then work up from there. It's really important to know. You don't just take a handful of pills and hope it's going to work. That's not the point. 

[00:48:44] MB: So, for somebody who's listened to this whole conversation and wants to start with some first action step, what would be the first thing you would recommend that they do to begin slowing down the aging process in their bodies?

[00:48:58] DS: Gee! Well, if you’re aiming on only one thing, I would say it would be less often. But importantly, I'm not talking about any eating disorders. I'm not talking about malnutrition. You’ve got to eat well, and you can actually eat about the same amount of calories as normal. But space out the meals and don’t snack in between.

I have a beef with nutritionists who are under – Many of them are under the impression and telling their clients or customers or patients that you shouldn't feel hungry. It's bad to feel hungry. I think that goes against all the science that we have right now. It’s actually good to be hungry. It’s not good to be too hungry. It's not good to be too thin. It’s not good to be deficient in vitamins and minerals, but it is good to feel hungry. 

[00:49:45] MB: David, for listeners who want to find out more about Lifespan, about you, about your work and everything you've got going on, so much interesting stuff that we didn't even get to jump into much of it. Where can they find you online?

[00:49:57] DS: Well, I have a newsletter which comes out every 10 or 15 days now. A lot of it is on the current situation of the world, I'm right in the middle of all of this. Surprisingly, aging is just part of what I do. Lifespanbook.com, lifespan book.com, you can sign up for that. There’re links to my podcast. There are blogs that I've written, and you can get the backdated copies of my newsletter as well, which have all the little tips that you may not find in the book like have a cup of hot water. It actually makes you no longer feel hungry. So those kind of things are all in there. I'm also on social media pretty often with new things that I'm reading over time, including ways to get through the next couple of years with COVID. That’s who I am.

The book, I really encourage people to read it mainly because the people who have given me feedback have said it has been life-changing for them, which is great to hear. But also because it's a really unusual book, and I'll tell you why. I'm a tenured professor at Harvard. So, unless I do something really outrageous, I'm not going to lose my job. So I can take risks. And the risks that I took that most scientists, probably nearly all scientists would not have taken, would be to write a book about the research that we were doing before we published it, right?

You can read about details in my lab and what it was like to discover reprogramming of the body and reset the age of the eye and make nice run twice as far. That's all in the book. A lot of that is only coming out now to the scientific world, and I'm proud of that, because I think that the public has a right to know what goes on behind the scenes. They have a right to because they paid for it, right? My salary comes out of the National Institutes of Health, which is paid by all the taxpayers in the US. So I'm here talking tonight not because I like to hear my voice. In fact, it’s the opposite. But because I love the idea that everybody can get interested in science and learn how to live longer better lives. 

[00:51:57] MB: Well, David. Thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing all this wisdom. So many great insights and a really deep look at how our bodies age and what we can do to combat that. 

[00:52:09] DS: Well. Thanks, Matt. It's been great being on. 

[00:52:12] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Science of Success.

The Good, The Bad, and The Accurate with Angelo Poli

In this special episode, our producer Austin Fabel conducts his first standalone interview with Angelo Poli. They dig into the science behind a healthy diet and lifestyle and why most people fail to see their goals both in life and health.

Angelo Poli is an internationally recognized expert in fitness and nutrition. He has spoken at conferences such as TEDx and continues to be a Wellness Consultant for multiple universities and hospitals around the country. Poli has been featured for his specialty in Neuromuscular Re-education (Posture and Alignment) and weight loss sciences in major media outlets such as Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, and The Wall Street Journal. 

Poli's latest venture, MetPro, is a concierge nutrition, fitness and lifestyle coaching company that specializes is unlocking your metabolism to help you achieve your greatest results.

• What makes someone truly extraordinary?

• What are the most common health goals for the average human?

• Angelo’s personal story of recovery and coming back from a major injury. 

• Why it’s so important to customize your approach to your goals around you and your unique profile. 

• The biggest pivot Angelo has had to make in his life. 

• How to go from one client to hundreds and scale in a measurable way. 

• What is Metabolic Profiling?

• The importance of Strategy, Confidence, and Faith. 

• What are the first crucial steps to take when setting out to achieve your goals? 

• What role does visualization play in your mind?

• How to focus on what you’re NOT going to work on right now. 

• What lifestyle changes can have the biggest impact on your health and diet right now?

• What is the one critical secret you must know in order to succeed? 

• We already know a lot of the science around goal setting and health, so why aren’t we all hyper-efficient and athletic?

• How to we avoid plateaus?

• How to baseline test and pivot accordingly when reviewing the results?

• The Data May Be Good, It May Be Bad, But it Will ALWAYS be Accurate 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

The Science of Success is brought to you by MetPro a world-renowned concierge nutrition, fitness & lifestyle coaching company. Using Metabolic Profiling, MetPro’s team of experts analyze your metabolism and provides an individualized approach to obtaining your goals.

Science of Success listeners receive a complimentary Metabolic Profiling assessment and a 30-minute consultation with a MetPro expert. To claim this offer head to metpro.co/success

MetPro’s team of experts will guide you through personalized nutrition and fitness strategies and educate you about how your body responds to macro and micro-adjustments to your fitness, nutrition, and daily routine.

Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• Follow MetPro on Social Media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube

• MetPro Website

• Angelo’s Website

• Angelo’s LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook

Media

• [Trainer Profile] Whole Body Fitness - Angelo Poli

• Angelo’s article directory on HuffPost

• Katie Couric Media - “Unlock the Mysteries of Your Individual Metabolism”

• [Podcast] Podchasers - Angelo’s appearances on sports podcasts

• [Podcast] The Brian Buffini Show - How I Lost 30 Pounds and How You Can Too – an Interview with Angelo Poli #135

• [Podcast] Beyond the To-Do List - Health: Angelo Poli on Metabolism, Contrast and Consistency - BTTDL278

• [Podcast] Gene Hammett - Becoming an Energetic and Healthy Leader with Angelo Poli at Metpro

• [Podcast] Stefan Aarnio Coaching - Data-driven solutions to optimize your life with ANGELO POLI

• [Podcast] Productivittist - Episode 249: The Magic of Metabolic Profiling with Angelo Poli

• [Podcast] Thrivetime Show - METPRO FOUNDER ANGELO POLI ON HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT FASTER WITH METABOLIC PROFILING

Videos

• MetPro YouTube Channel

• TEDxTalks - Realigned - technology's impact on our posture | Angelo Poli | TEDxChico

• MetPro - Troubleshooting your metabolism with MetPro founder Angelo Poli

• Stacking Benjamins - Should You Love Your Career? (with Angelo Poli from Metpro)

• Heart Healthy Hustle by Jonathan Frederick - What's Going On with My Business' Metabolism!? with Angelo Poli

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[00:00:12] AF: Well, well, well. Welcome to another episode of the Science of Success. As you may or may not know listening to this, this is not your usual host, Matt Bodnar. No. This is a special episode with me, your producer, Austin Fabel. Matt and I have been doing a lot of planning about what's to come in 2020, and one of the things you can expect see a little bit more of me on the front of mic. 

In the past, I've been handling a lot of things like guest relations, postproduction. Matt and I are going to be doing a couple of additional things. We’re going to be tag-teaming interviews, and some interviews you'll even find are just going to be with me, Austin. I'm really excited that I opened up this dialogue with you all. I’m really excited to get in front of the microphone. 

As many of you may know, I've had a number of podcasts in the past, so being able to jump in to this world with the of Science of Success, that I'm so passionate about, is truly a huge honor and I can't wait to open up the lines of communication with you. 

So, welcome to the Science of Success, special Austin Fabel takeover. We are the number one evidence-based growth podcasts on the planet. We have over 5 million downloads in over 100 countries, and today, we had a very special guest, Angelo Poli. Angelo is an internationally-recognized leader in the fitness industry. He is a Huffington Post blogger and wellness consultant specializing in postural alignment and nutrition. His class has been featured everywhere, everything from the cover of Sports Illustrated, to Forbes. He’s been seen on MTV, ESPN. 

Poli’s latest venture is MetPro, which is an all-encompassing fitness system that can transform the way you look, feel and perform. We’ll get into that in here in a little bit. I would urge you to go sign for our email list if you haven't already. You’ll get a ton of free goodies including weekly curated content by me and Matt and our team, the articles, the podcasts, and videos that we've been listening to that had been really catching our eye and we’ve been learning a lot from, as well as a free course on how to create more free time for the things that matter most. Are you in the car right now? Are you at the gym and not in front of your computer? That's fine. Text “smarter”, S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44222 and we’ll sign you up for the email list that way. 

[00:02:21] MB: Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we’ve put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our email list. We have some amazing content on their along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time for What Matters Most in Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That successpodcast.com, or if you're on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word “smarter”. That's S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44222. 

[00:03:03] AF: Last week, we had a very special episode with Sean O'Meara. It's all about apologies and how we need to make apologies and what really the truth behind apologies are. I would highly recommend you check out that episode. For now, we’re going to dig in to Angelo Poli. I hope you enjoy the interview and I’m open to all of your feedbacks. Shoot me a message at austin@successpodcast.com and let me know how you like the interview. I cannot wait to experience more time in front of the mic bringing you great content and interacting with you. 

Without further ado, here's Angelo. 

[00:03:35] AF: Angelo, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:03:37] AP: Thanks for having me here, Austin. This is great.

[00:03:40] AF: Yeah. It’s great. I’m glad we finally got a chance to do it. I'm looking forward to talking to you, and I would love to kind of start out really from ground one. Tell the audience, so who are you and how did you get kind of on the path you find yourself on today with MetPro?

[00:03:54] AP: I am a nobody and a series of unfortunate events and injuries in my personal life landed me on this path. By the path that I'm on, however, I think is something pretty special. I've really enjoyed being part of building a methodology, a means for people to reach their goals. We help people transform, and it’s what me and my team get to do every single day. Transformation can mean something different for everyone. 85% of people who reach out to us are trying to lose that last few pounds. But transformation can mean improving performance, having more energy, being more equipped for the sport of life. It can mean any number of different things, and we do believe that there is a methodology and a science to most effectively getting you from point A to point B, and that's what we help people do and I get to spend my days doing and I love it.

[00:04:47] AF: Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, some of the transformations are really just – I mean, they’re eye-opening. They're incredible. You’ve had clients been featured all over the place, from the cover of Sports Illustrated, to Forbes. I mean, the results will speak for themselves, and it's obviously a passion for you. I'm curious to know, was it like a moment in your life where you kind of decided you're really going to give you your physical health and your goal is the attention that they deserved?

[00:05:12] AP: There was one kind of longer-term event and then one earlier moment that created the passion or maybe [inaudible 00:05:19] described as obsession in me. When I was young, I got my first fitness training client just by accident and she was a gal in her 60s. She smoked. She was overweight. She wasn’t very healthy. We started working together and it was one of those fairytale stories. It was really inspirational. 

She lost 50, 60 pounds. She quit smoking. She married her high school sweetheart. I mean, it really couldn’t have been like – It was just like that perfect story. So she said to me, “Angelo, I have another individual, a friend, actually some extended family, who wants to lose some weight also. Can she join us?” and she was younger and healthier, but had a good amount of weight to lose. So we did the exact same things, same exercises, “Okay. We’re going to eat less sugar. We’re going to eat more of this.” She lost 5 pounds. 

I had one client lose 60 and another do the exact same thing who is younger, I might add, and only lose 5. At that point, I became obsessed with answering the question why? Why is it you can have two different people doing the exact same thing and having two different outcomes? That's why I just started on my journey that later led to education and teaching and critical evaluations of how we can identify the path that's going to be the most relevant for each person. That was really getting back to the root of answering that early, early question. 

I’ll leave this spoiler here. Everybody asks me, “I've heard about every strategy out there, every diet from ketogenic, to vegan. From intermittent fasting to small meals. From clean eating to –” I mean, you name it. There's every different program out there and which one is the best one? My answer is all of them work. I have seen every single approach work for someone. Now ask me which one is the best for you, and we can have a meaningful conversation. 

That all comes back to that experience I had very, very early on. I mean, I was probably barely 20, maybe 21 at that time, and that's kind of what set me on my path. Then my late 20s, I endured a fairly debilitating injury that forced me into a unique experience. You kind of hear stories of people overcoming certain adversities and how it grew into something larger. That definitely was unintentionally the case for me. 

Here I am, a personal trainer with a severe back injury. I couldn't even hand people 20 pounds dumbbells, but I didn't want to leave the industry, and this had gone on for years. I just specialized in the coaching nutritional science and strategy elements of fitness and transformations. For years, that's what I did. I traveled. I did seminars, and I educated on the topic of technical transformations. Then in my 30s, I was able to finally get better at some fortunate interventions medically and a lot of hard work, and between the combination, I was able to get myself healthy again. Here I am now a decade later from that applying the life lessons that were cast upon me in my 20s and I’m fortunate for it. I’m better for it, I think, and we’re having a lot of fun.

[00:08:47] AF: Such a fascinating story, and there're chapters there and there're lots to unpack. I think it says a lot that you were on this path in your 20s, 21, getting your first couple of clients, but then as life threw you different curveballs, it forced you to sort of pivot the way you approach it. You’re in a scenario where you're not even able to hand somebody 20 pounds dumbbells, but you still find a way to be engaged, right? You find a way to be doing something that's going to move your goals and keep you involved and your passions forward. 

It's interesting too how – I just discovered something we have in common, but those injuries in those moments really can define you. I remember, I was about 12 years old, I had a spinal fusion, and I was having these crazy – It was kind of when your foot cramps and it sort of tries to bend itself backward. That would happen to my back in the middle of the night random times. They found that I had jumped off a 60-foot cliff into some water and essentially just disintegrated one of the cushions between my vertebrates. 

[00:09:46] AP: Oh wow! What levels were fused?

[00:09:48] AP: I don't remember, to be honest. It’s in my lower back.

[00:09:51] AP: That’s a good thing.

[00:09:52] AF: Yeah. I’ve got them in in some files somewhere, but it's just funny, because before that injury, I didn't – I was very unhealthy. Of course, I was only a teenager, but I didn't really focus on health, whatsoever, or being active [inaudible 00:10:06] gym class. But, essentially, I was told that we could either fuse my back, which they didn't really recommend at the time because of my age, but we luckily found a doctor who had some new procedure that we could perform. But basically I was told that I wouldn't be able to like run a half marathon or like be involved in sports at 12. For a 12-year-old who’s all about Peyton Manning and football, it was crazy. 

When the procedure was done, I got really into sports and working out, became a wrestler, played football. Ultimately, about two years after my spinal fusion, was back doing more than I had in the past. It's funny, I just think hearing about your injury, like we definitely have that in common. I think it's such a common thread for people that are high-performers in life, not classifying myself in a group, but you certainly, that it's a point where you – A lot of people, you can sink or swim or you kind of bow out and find something else, but it shows real determination to stay on that path and moving forward. 

[00:11:08] AP: My experience with people – And like I said, Austin, I am so fortunate. I do. I have the best job in the world. I get people from all over the world reaching out and saying, “Here's what I want to transform. Help me get there,” and it is a unique and thrilling journey for every single one of them.

People that reach out to me, it's interesting, because there seems to almost be this ugly shadow in the industry, fitness industry, medical community, where this is kind of belief that, “Well, someone doesn't have the body that they want, if they're not the weight they want, if they don’t have the health that they want simply because they're just not willing to do what it takes.” 

Don't get me wrong. I've been in this industry for 20 years and I have seen my fair share of that. But by and large, I large find that is false. I find that, really, a more accurate description is people without a strategy, people without a belief system that they can embrace and confidence and faith in a methodology working are the ones that are unable to see permanent change. 

It’s not that they're not willing to put in some effort. It's not that they're not willing to do some work. It's that they haven't been presented with somebody that's going to lead them there, give them the step-by-step and give them the return on that investment. Because there is nothing more demotivating than really trying hard for something and not seeing it work. Versus if when you go to the gym and exercise, when you change your diet, you actually see results. I don't mean overnight. It's not overnight, but you can see some measurable results. It is so motivating. 

More often than not, I find that people are willing to go the next mile, take those next steps. It's that there is a ton of stuff that you could invest yourselves into in the pursuit of better health, better physique, better self, but not all things return the same rate of investment. You got a CD that's paying 1.5%, 2%, or you have this other investment over here that's 10-xing your money, right? 

Most people just don't know which is which and they invest 90% of their time and energy into the items that are only contributing 10% of the results. At MetPro – MetPro is short for metabolic profiling. That's what we insist that we relieve our clients from doing. We insist on not wasting time on the items that are not going to do directly return on your investment and therefore motivate you to take those next steps. 

Maybe my perspective is unique, but I really believe that more people who believe they can have the ability to really and dramatically transform their body, transform their health, and see measurable results if they have the right strategy. I really believe that's the key.

[00:14:26] AF: It's something. I couldn't agree with you more and it’s something we’ve explored on the show for over four years now is this growth mindset, right? You're not just given a hand of cards and that's what you're stuck with. With the right strategy, with the right tactics and the right beliefs, you can make almost anything happen. 

I think too, I'm curious, you mentioned how not everything works for everybody, and that’s a been throughout our conversation, and I was fortunate enough, thanks to you all to be able to go through a pretty extensive amount of time with MetPro, and it was fascinating to me because I was – Obviously, this audio, I'm about 5’10”. I weigh about 210 pounds and I work out all the time, but I'm really not seeing any results at all. 

So one of the things that we really worked on that kind of shocked to me a little bit was I was eating more food, like twice as much food as I normally was. I mean, there were times where I like wasn't hungry, but –

[00:15:25] AP: You got to eat it. You got it eat.

[00:15:27] AF: You got to it. That’s when I would send in like my food and whatever and I was like, “Well, you got to eat some more vegetables, or more grains,” and it's interesting, because the point we’re making here is that it takes the right strategy and it takes the right learning, but you can ultimately reach your goals no matter what. 

I'm curious, my profile really kind of shocked me, but what is metabolic profiling? What is the process of seeing like, “Okay. You are X, Y, Z. This is how you behave normally. This is your body type. This is what she should do.” How do we go about breaking that down?

[00:16:00] AP: I break it into five very important categories. Now there's a lot more to it than this, but we can basically break it into five bullets. I'll just be briefly on each topic. Not everyone is going to have your experience. In other words, not everyone who goes, “Hey, I want to talk to these consultants, to these experts, and find out about myself,” are going to be told, “You need to go and eat more.” 

In fact, sometimes quite the opposite, is we’re being very structured and aggressive and manipulating and calculating what they're taking in. In your case, without looking in depth at your profile, clearly what your coach was doing was ramping up your metabolic rate. They were focused on creating contrast or leverage. So there is distance between what your intake is an then what we would then change it to. So they were identifying you need to eat more, and that's because at some point in the future, depending on what your goal is. I don’t know if you want to lose 20 pounds, gain 20 pounds, we have that leveraged springboard from. 

But everyone's leverage point is different. To answer your question, the first thing we look at is what is your body type and what is your goal? Body type, we can talk about ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorphs. We can talk about how each person is a sliding scale and you're not just one or the other, but you could have traits from multiple. Really, when I say body type, I'm talking about what is your genetic predisposition. Are you predisposed to gaining weight? Are you predisposed to carrying a lot of muscle? Are you predisposed to having skinny legs like me? What is your genetic predisposition? 

Once we identify that, then we want to talk about your goals. I want to clear up what effective goal setting. Effective goal setting is about deciding what you're not going to work on right now. That's effective goal setting, and here's why, because everybody calls me and basically says the same thing, “Hey, Angelo. I want to get a little bit more energy. I want to drop a few pounds. I want to perform better and I want to transform and get leaner.” I know. Because who wouldn’t, right? We want all of those things. 

Now, the reason that you haven't achieved those to the degree that you would like in the past is likely because we were lacking enough specificity in any one particular area to dramatically force your body to adapt. There are people that they’re naturally genetically gifted and they can just dabble in a little bit of this and a little bit of that and see progress across the board. If you are that person, more power to you. 

I’ve worked with a few like that. They’re amazing. But if you’re like all the rest of us, all the rest of us especially over 30 or over 40, you're going to find that just a little bit of dabbling here or there doesn't always produce as dramatic of a result. What we have to do is we have to specialize. It doesn't mean that we don't care about your performance, your strength, your energy, your mile time, how much you’re bench pressing, how much you’re dead lifting. It doesn't mean we don't care about that. It simply means that if we determined that our initial focus is going to be dropping 15 pounds of body fat, everything about your meal plan design, your exercise design, your time management and your overall strategy should be indicative of that goal. We’re going to hit that goal. We’re going to check it off the list and then we’re going to move on to, “Okay. What's next? What's next? What's next?” 

If you would like to lose a few pounds, if you would like to lean out a little but really your main priority is PR-ing your mile time or PR-int your marathon time, then we can dabble in the others, but your training, your nutrition, your lifestyle and your strategy should all pinpointed, reflect that our goal is to PR our marathon time. 

Deciding what our initial goal structure is is critical because we don't have enough hours in the day, and biologically we don't have the ability to recover from unending demand. With finite recovery capacity and finite hours in the day, we have to figure out what it is we want to achieve and apply enough focus on those items to force them to adapt, to progress, to move. That's the first item; body typing goal. 

Did I make sense there?

[00:20:30] AF: No. Definitely. Yeah, I’m taking notes here. I mean, I think there's a lot of things I want to unpack. 

[00:20:37] AF: Hello everybody. This is Austin Fabel with the Science of Success, and this podcast is brought you by our partners at MetPro, a world-renowned concierge nutrition, fitness and lifestyle coaching company. Science of Success listeners can now receive a complimentary metabolic profiling assessment and a 30-minute consultation with a MetPro. To claims offer, head to metpro.co. That's MetPro, M-E-T-P-R-O.CO/success. 

MetPro’s team of experts analyze your metabolism and provide individual approaches to obtaining your goals. MetPro’s proprietary science technology and techniques have helped thousands of executives and business leaders learn how to optimally manage their health and achieve their associated performance goals regardless of extensive travel schedules and demands on your time. It's really incredible and it's backed by science. That’s why we love it at the Science of success. 

I personally was using MetPro for several months and got down below 200 pounds for the first time in a long time. You may not know this or can see me. I’m a little bit a bigger guy. What’s great about it is it uses the science of your body to help you reach these goals. For me, I found that I was eating more food every day, but I was eating the right foods, and the results happened instantly. It was great. 

Once again, Science of Success listeners receive a complimentary metabolic profiling assessment and a 30-minute consultation with a MetPro expert. Even if you don't go long-term, take advantage of this offer. Learn more about MetPro and get your metabolic profiling assessment today. The 30-consultation will add extreme value no matter who you are, no matter how much you work with MetPro. 

Again, go to MetPro. That M-E-T-P-R-O.co/success to redeem this offer today.

[00:22:30] AP: The next one is lifestyle. People will sometimes be taken back. If they reach out to any of our team and any of our professionals, we say, “We’re going to do a one-on-one consultation with you.” They’re expecting to say, “Okay. Here's my weight. Here's my BMI. Here's my current exercise program.” We’re like, “That's good. I got it.” But really what I want to know about is what's your work hours. What time do you go to bed? Are you married? Do you have family inside the house? Do you take meals with your family? Do you take meals out? Do you take meals socially? How often do you travel? In your travel schedule, do you eat out at –” 

We end up talking even more about the lifestyle elements, because that's really the battleground. People asked me often, because they know that I'm a big fan of snacks throughout the day and people say, “Well, science has shown this. Science has shown that.” I'm like, “Yup.” Then ask me, “Why do you do snacks?” Because people don't take snacks socially. They take them by themselves, and I love foods that people eat by themselves because there’s no peer pressure to eat something wrong. 

Honestly, that's the reason. That's the reason I do it. All the other reasons are metabolically it will boost and you can control blood sugar and there're other benefits. There are pros. There are other cons. All of those other reasons, they are dwarfed by the functional, practical application of I can make Johnny eat exactly what I want. If I want them to have some Greek yogurt, half an apple and a handful of almonds at 2:30 in the afternoon, I can get them to do that consistently. If I tell him that I want him to eat this, this and this at dinner when he's out with friends or workmates or cooking with the family, that might be a little harder. So I will take what I can get. So, practical application. 

Then people would say all on this kind of topic of lifestyle and knowing someone, I’ll do these seminars, executive retreats or things like that and people say, “Mr. Poli, I know of the celebrities you work with, or this athlete that you've worked with. What's the secret to success? What do you have them doing in the gym, or what do you have them eating?” My response to them is always the same, it's you're asking the wrong question. 

It's not about the gym. It's not about your food. It's about time management. It is really about time management, because the gym and the food and all of your best intentions don't happen without time management. People say, “Oh! Yeah. No. I know how to do that. I know how to food prep and I know what’s good to eat and what's bad to eat.” I believe you. I know you do. My job is to help you execute on what you already know fast. Speed is king. 

If you can execute quickly, if you have an expert in your corner, a consultant, a coach who is teaching you the skillset of executing on just the right strategies for food prep, on just the right strategies for what you should and shouldn't be doing in the gym. It is all about speed, because the number one reason someone didn't get to the gym, someone didn’t what they were supposed to, someone didn't follow through with their strategy. The number one reason, “I ran out of time. I got too busy.” That's the number one reason. It is all about lifestyle. That's really where the strategy component comes in. 

Then identifying, kind of leaving that. That was the second category. Then going into the third. This has to do with the evaluation process for someone, and you can do this at home. I mean, this isn't just for someone who's thinking about working with one of our professionals. I want everything we talk about to be applicable tomorrow for you. I’ll always try and put that slant on it. Are you strategic or metabolic? This is a little pulling back the curtain and giving you the insights on how our experts work. 

This is what our experts are looking to determine about you in the first phone call with you. Are you strategic or metabolic? Here's a hint. You're both, because everyone is both at different times. But roughly, are you the type of person who with the right exercise and with decent nutrition sees progress, or are you the type of person that despite dialed nutrition, despite consistent exercise, you've experienced the plateau, because that is two different strategies. That is two different programs. For one, we have to manipulate your metabolic circumstance. We have to actually challenge your metabolism to speed up and then create enough contrast and leverage, which we’ll talk about in the next point. 

For the other person, it's not so much about, “Okay, we have to speed their metabolism. We have to alter their chemistry.” No. It's simply about we have to create enough time and strategy for them to be consistent with clean eating and regular exercise. Here's how we’re going to do that. Are you strategic or metabolic? Then that dovetails really into answering your ultimate question; how do you transform someone? How does someone see success? The answer, I believe, is baseline testing. 

Austin, I have literally dieted 20,000 people. I’ve have been doing this for two decades. I have learned from that experience that I do not know what you have to eat to lose weight. I’m using weight loss as the example. It could be anything. But 85% of people who call us up struggling to lose weight. So I'm going to use that as our vehicle for today. I don't know what you need to eat to lose weight. The reason I don't know is because it is different for every person. That's why it makes complete sense that there are literally a thousand different strategies and Gurus saying do this and do that and they all contradict one another and there is no standard. Medically, there is no standard in the fitness industry on what you should or shouldn't do nutritionally to lose weight, because all approaches can work for a subset of people. 

Not all approaches have been optimized or tailored to what you need. That is an answerable question, until we baseline test. If we baseline test, then I can actually say, “Here is where your body is today metabolically.” I can't promise good news or bad news. It might be great news. It might be terrible news. What I can promise you is I can get accurate news, and at least armed with that accurate news, then I can lay out your options. 

To illustrate, our baseline testing process, years ago, when it wasn't called MetPro. It was just Angelo Poli coaching Johnny. That was it. But years ago when I started developing kind of a process in place, what I learned is that I had to create leverage and not everyone has the same leverage point. I would baseline test. 

I put someone a meal plan. I'd have them follow it, and then after a period of time following the meal plan, doing an exercise program, I would be able to assess how their body was responding and what changes we would need to make. It used to take me 4 to 6 weeks. I mean that was a bummer. That sucked, but that's kind of the industry-standard, “Here. Go follow this diet or this meal plan or this workout regime. Do this for 4 to 6 weeks. Come back. We'll talk about your results and then make some changes.” That was just too long. I wasn't feeling that. 

Over time, I wrote the book, Metabolic Profiling, checklists, and we were able to get that process down from 4 to 6 weeks down to seven days. Now, go follow this strict protocol. Do this, do that, the other. In seven days, granted I don't have all data fields, but I have a good indication. Then with iteration, time marches forward, we’re able to introduce some technology. 

With that aid of tech and algorithms, now we have that process down to about three, four days. Usually about 72 hours. Now, I know there's going to be some naysayers out there, some listeners, some people maybe in the fitness industry that are like, “Oh! You don't know what you’re talking about. You don't know if something working in three days,” and you are right. You do need more time for a full evaluation. But in 72 hours using technology and our algorithm and baseline testing, we’re able to identify enough markers to where we can begin making new recommendations with confidence in the 90 percentile accuracy just looking back at historically here's what we have recommended, and over 90% of the time 92%, 94% of the time, it was the right recommendation given the data feedback we get in just 72 hours of engagement. On the times we were off, we catch it in the next 72 hours. So it's not like you two months later we figured out we made a misstep. No. That's where the technology has really come of age. 

Practical terms, now you went through at least a form of baseline testing. Didn’t you, Austin?

[00:32:01] AF: We did. Yeah. We made a couple of pivots in my diet. First of all, which was I had to stop drinking Guinness. But that was probably the most difficult pivot, but we did go through a couple of the times adding in – Actually, I think there was more carbs, but they needed to be the right kind of carbs, obviously.

[00:32:19] AP: That's interesting. You would be among the – I’m going to say – I mean, that's not unheard. Probably 25% to 30% where we actually end up increasing first step, but here's what I – Full disclosure; if you love drinking Guinness, if you love this, it’s not that you can never have that stuff again. 

[00:32:35] AF: Sure.

[00:32:36] AP: I am going to ask for baseline testing purposes. You have to give me three perfect days.  That means doing without the booze or without this, or without the sugar for three days. If you can go three days, then I can get enough baseline. Here's what that looks like. Basically, we’re going to put you on a meal plan. That's straightforward. It’s been used not by just one or two people. This is a meal plan that of course is matched to your age, your gender, your demographic, athlete, mid-30s circumstance, but has also been used to baseline test thousands of others, and that's relevant. 

The reason that's relevant is because then I can take the data that I've gotten from them and say, “Okay. On this exact intake,” and I know your calories, your macronutrient breakdown per meal, the glycemic load of meals, the intervals of time between them, we have everything measured. Now when I get your results, I can compare your results to thousands of others who have done the same test and I can say, Based on your average, male, mid –” Whatever the case may be, female, mid-40s, whatever you land in, the average person loses 1.2 pounds in your demographic on this intake. You lost 3 pounds, or you gained half a pound, or whatever the case is. We’re going to get a data point, and that's where it's neither good, it’s neither bad, it's just honest, and it's not debatable. It's not, “Well, my opinion is this or that.” I'm talking past tense. Not what I think is going to happen. I'm looking back at what just did happen, and what just did happen was empirical data. 

So now we have that data and we’re going to say, “Okay, based on your data, we need to make this, that or the other change in order to drive you towards your goal of building muscle, or your goal of losing 50 pounds, or whatever goal it is that you have. In that evaluation process, we reveal some pretty critical truths about your personal metabolism. We figure out if you have leverage, you've probably heard about the debate between – What is it? Calories or carbohydrates? Have you ever had that conversation with anyone, Austin?

[00:34:57] AF: I haven’t. No.

[00:34:58] AP: Okay. That's a big – I mean, there is 101 different strategies out there. But most diets fall into one of two grandfather categories. They either fall into calorie control or they fall into carbohydrate control. There is a whole genre of everything from aggressive ketogenic to something more like the South Beach or Mediterranean diet, which are applying carb management. All the way over to, whether you realize it or not, intermittent or cyclical fasting, that is calorie control. Whatever brand or breed or style of the hotness of the month, diet is out there. It usually falls into one of these two categories. Now which one is better? That is a flawed question. That's like walking into the car mechanics garage and saying, “Hey, what's better? The screwdriver or the wrench? Because my neighbor really loves his wrench and it's working good for him.” It's a ridiculous question. Whatever tool is going to work for the job you have, and the job you have has to do with leverage. Leverage is where you can affect the most change. 

This probably isn’t a shocker to anyone, but here're all the secrets. Here're all the secrets. If you are used to watching carbs and you are trying to lose weight, simply cutting a few more carbs out of your diet is unlikely to produce dramatic results. It's going to be marginal? Why? Because your body is already used to watching carbs. If you are used to restricting calories in any way, shape or form, simply restricting a little further is likely to produce unremarkable results, because it's not dramatic enough. 

What we’re going to do is we’re going to look at where do we have the most leverage, and maybe it's a combination. Wherever we have the most leverage is likely going to be the path that’s going to produce the greatest results and it's not you go down this path and it’s once for all time. It's we’re going to leverage this tool now until we start to get diminishing returns, because we track everything. As soon as we begin hitting diminishing returns, which is survival mechanic. Your body is going to hit a plateau. That's what keeps you alive. It happens for absolutely everyone. We’re going to pivot and implement another strategy and then pivot again and again so that way we continue to shock and force your body to adapt. That is the process of baseline testing. We just start with a very pointed and sharp baseline testing 72 hour period and then we move into larger, more general reassessing and reevaluating periods as we continue to march towards your goal. 

[00:37:47] AF: It’s fascinating. There's a lot to unpack there, and it’s definitely a very thorough process, and having been through it, I can attest to everything you're saying. I'm curious too, when it comes to achieving our goals in general, something that rally stood out to me and something that I know is it's backed by science and whether trying to quit smoking, whether you're trying to develop a new habit or break a bad one, is there's always this thing that's lacking when people lose – They don't follow through on their goals. They don't get where they want to go. I feel like majority of time, that's accountability. When you get up to go to the gym, it's really easy to press the news and just turnaround and not go, unless you have someone waiting on you, someone that’s going to go, hold you accountable. It's really easy to say, “Screw it. I’m going to have a smoke break,” unless you’ve got that coworker across the hall or the other desk who’s also trying to quit with you. 

One of the things that I think so crucial to hitting your goal no matter what it is is accountability. That plays into your overall system in a really, really heavy way. How important is accountability when you're trying to either break a bad habit or start a new routine?

[00:38:51] AP: I love where you're going with that, because that's very much our belief system at MetPro, and we have proven out the fact that everything you just said is accurate. It is indisputable. You will let yourself down before you'll let someone else down. that's just the fundamental human reality. We just react. We respond that way. 

That accountability factor is huge, and that actually dovetails beautifully into the fifth area of evaluation, and that the psychological profile. Now, we’re not psychologists, but we pride ourselves on being expert motivators, because that really is what it takes. But what we've learned interestingly is that not everyone is equally motivated by the same stimulus. Everyone is motivated by accountability. Everybody is empowered by leadership and a coach and companionship on the journey. 

With that said, there is quite a bit of diversity in the style and breed of motivation that really resonates with some people. For example, some people really thrive under a highly mentored program where they really feel like they have a support system. Someone who’s taking an interest in them. Someone to pick them up when they fall. Someone to really walk hand-in-hand with them through the process. 

Others we find, while that always helps, is less concerned about the outside stimulation and more concerned about having someone to teach them the why. In other words, “Sure. I'll do that exercise. I’ll eat that. I’ll do what you're asking me if you can explain to me why you're asking me to do that. Why specifically that instead of something else, and then what you're planning on having me do next.” Those people thrive under more of an instructor relationship where someone is imparting to them more detailed knowledge and teaching them the why behind the strategy. Then there's the third kind, and I know a few of the listeners are going to be nodding their head going, “Yeah. Okay, at least one of these relates to me.” The third kind is the type that, “Hey, I want to know the why and I want the support, and that's all great. But you want me at my best for better or for worse? I needed challenge. I need to be invited to meet your challenge.” That's a whole breed into its own. 

What are coaches try and to do is really figure out – Now, it's not good to change the science. The science is very data-driven, but it is going to change the vehicle that we use. I have some clients where I’m like, “You know what I'm going to do tomorrow? I'm going to the track and I'm going to run. I'm going to the gym. I'm going to do this work out. Here, I'm sending you right now. You’re going to get it in your app. You’re going to get it. I’m going to send you the exact workout I’m going to do. We’re going to do it together. You’re going to tell me how much weight you used, your reps, and I’m going to tell you mine.” That's that person who wants that companionship and that support, versus I give the exact same assignment to another client. Exact same assignment, “Hey, here's the workout I did today. Here’s the reps I did and the weight I did. Let’s see if you can keep up.” It’s the same thing, right? 

[00:42:17] AF: Sure. 

[00:42:18] AP: But it’s just how it's presented. So that's where the art – I believe, the art of coaching and the science of coaching really comes to play. Something really interesting. For years, before developing my own company, what I did was I consulted for wellness programs and larger health clubs all up and down Northern California. What I would do is go in and I would coach anyone involved in their personal training program and I would actually assign personal training participants to specific coaches. I would give them their meal plans. I would do their overall program design. Then the personal trainers that worked at these gyms would take them through the workouts. It always – Rather, I should say, it never cease to amaze me how you could have the exact same program; nutrition, workout layout program design, and someone could thrive under the mentorship of one coach and struggle under the mentorship of another even when the program was the same. 

It just gives credence. It lends its support to the belief system that the mind and the body are connected and things that motivate us, people that motivate us really do make a difference, which is one of the core five things that we believe in and we hang our hat on and build our philosophy and methodology upon at MetPro. I am huge on the accountability piece. 

[00:43:52] AF: One of the things you said a little while ago that I thought was pretty insightful was the secret to success is time management. I'm curious, even outside of your fitness goals and running a business, obviously, there’s lot of demands on your times. But how do you go about managing your time and managing your routines? What's a typical day for Angelo look like?

[00:44:12] AP: Well, I don’t want to bore you with the details of my typical day, but I want to give you examples of what time management looks like that I think would be applicable for our listeners. Here, I have lists of like, okay, top 10 destructive behaviors. They all have a theme. They’re behaviors that are disruptive in a good way to your lifestyle. They all have a theme. They save you time. 

One of the examples – Of course, I apply this in my life as well. One of the examples is can you eat breakfast? That's a simple question. Can you breakfast? If somebody says, “Yeah, I can eat breakfast.” “Well, then great. Here's what I want you to do. While you're eating breakfast or making your breakfast, I want you to pack some of that breakfast as an afternoon snack.” Why is that highly disruptive? Because you can't back out of it and say, “Oh, I don't have time for that,” because we just eliminated time as a barrier. You're already making breakfast. You can use the same ingredients or just reach one shelf higher to grab a different ingredient. It doesn't add any measurable amount of time to your day to throw something in a sack lunch bag, take it with you and you have an afternoon snack. It’s disruptive, because now you've committed to two things, not one. You've committed to eating breakfast and you've committed to an afternoon snack, which is committed you to basically a structured timeline without even realizing it. Now you’re going to have breakfast. You’re not going to miss your lunch, because when you eat breakfast, believe it or not, you actually have a little bit more appetite for lunch. So now you’re going to have your lunch, but you’re not going to overeat at lunch, because you know you've committed, “Hey, I promised to Angelo I'm going to have this afternoon snack.” So you’re going to eat reasonable at lunch because you’re going to have that afternoon snack coming. Now you've already eaten three times by the middle of the day. So it's unlikely that you're going to have low blood sugar when you get to dinner and accidentally overeat. 

At dinner, though you may not eat perfect, you're more likely – You're setting the stage for statistically favorable outcomes in your food decision at dinner, which means that because you’ve kept your blood sugar stable, you've eaten throughout the day, you're less likely to binge eat on sugar and chocolates and ice cream before you go to bed at night. One tiny little act has disrupted your entire day in a good way. Time management, number one reason why somebody will – They will either live or die by it. When somebody fails to reach their objectives, it is not a flaw in willpower. 

I mean, you could almost say that it is a statistical margin of a rounding error is willpower. Don't get me wrong. Willpower is something we cultivate. In other articles and sessions, I talk a lot about the value of having values over goals, having character over willpower, but all of that aside, the time management and your ability to execute on time management always ends up being the deciding factor, and here is why. Are you going to have this – Now, mind you. You're trying to be healthy. You’re trying to eat good. You're trying to have a healthy strategy in your life. I'm going to give you two options. You can have this grilled chicken salad. It's delicious it's freshly made, or you could have this greasy cheeseburger, and I'm handing you both. Which one are you going to eat? If it was simply a matter of willpower, then that means you'd always go for that greasy hamburger. But guess what? I bet every single person listening is going, “Oh! I’d take the chicken salad. I'm wanting to be healthy. He's making it for me. It's right there. I'll eat the chicken salad.” You know what I found? Coaching about 20,000 people, is 90% of the time people will take chicken salad. 

Then why aren’t people eating the chicken salad? Because life isn’t giving you those two options. It's 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the boss is calling you. You're behind on your deadlines. You got to pick up kids. You’re running late. You haven't even gotten to your lunch. Now your body is saying, “You got to eat something now or I’m going to revolt. Your blood sugar is taint. You’re starving and you can just grab that delicious smelling hamburger that's going to cost you a nickel and all you have to do is turn right, right into the drive through. Not even get out of your car and they’re going to hand it to you. 

Option B is you can stop what you’re doing in the middle of the day, drive home, put on your apron, get out your chopping board and start cutting and slicing tomatoes and dicing onions. Now, which are you going to do? When you look at it like that is it really is it willpower? Is it really? It is willpower or is it really time management? 

[00:48:51] AF: Right. That’s an interesting example. I love how kind of laid that out. I think I’d probably fall in the camp of eating the chicken salad and having a bite or two at the burger.

[00:49:00] AP: Fair enough. Deal. Fair enough. Yup.

[00:49:03] AF: I’m interested too, you mentioned something about sleep, and sleep the something that we've dug into a lot on the show. How to have a better night sleep? What sleep science says around that? What do you think is the optimal amount of sleep for us to get and what roll does sleep play in your life? Being a business owner, I'm sure you've got all sorts of constraints on your time and things going on. What role does sleep play in all these? 

[00:49:23] AP: Oh, man. You’ve been spying on me. You’ve been talking to my wife. You hit me in my weak spot. Sleep, I have struggled with that for years since I was a teenager. I never was a good sleeper. That said, despite that, I can tell you, I function just fine on significantly less sleep than my wife functions on. Just from a practical standpoint, I can tell you that different people need different amounts of sleep. 

That said, don't use that as an excuse or an enabling. There is nobody out there that, “I have three hours of sleep at night. It's all I need. I function great.” Yeah. Bull crap. It’s guts garbage. Everybody needs at least some threshold of sleep and quality sleep too is so important. I would even lump sleep in with a bigger category, and that is simply recovery. I get some people that are really gung ho about they love their fitness routines and they sleep every night, but they just don't give their body rest from the battering and recovery. Recovery and sleep all factor into what your body needs. 

Going back to willpower, cravings, blood sugar, all of that is affected if you're not getting enough sleep. If somebody – If we’re seeing, statistically out of character, deviations in somebody's weight history. I want to qualify that. That was a mouthful. What that means is if you find that you’re the type of person where every day you could gain or lose a pound, you're completely normal. That is everyone, even people losing weight, and on a good trajectory, they'll bounce up and down, up and down. 

We've tracked people on different regiments and different routines. We’re just hardcore. We know bite for bite what they’re eating. Day by day, how they’re training. Even if they are rapidly losing weight or if we have them on a rapid gaining progression, it's always a zigzag. You’ll be up a pound or two, down a pound or two. That's completely normal. 

Now, if over 7 to 9 days we know what you're taking in. Metabolically, your body is indicating that it should be in a downward trajectory. Yet that's despite some bouncing and minor fluctuation, you are not progressing or seemingly going up when there is no statistical reason for it. One of the first things that our experts will look at is sleep patterns, because that will throw off the body chemistry. It'll alter how much – I mean, just think of nights you don't sleep good. You wake up the next morning puffy. I mean, that's just the common sense stuff. It will absolutely influence water retention, how your body functions, stress hormones, all of those things. We’re always looking at habits that will help you sleep better. 

Possibly, doing a lot of intense brainwork right before you go to bed, or a vigorous workout right before you’re trying to sleep and then scratching your head going, “I wonder why I'm not sleeping so well,” or simply not having a consistent schedule. All of those things are what we have found to be the largest influencers on whether somebody's getting good or bad sleep.

[00:52:41] AF: Yeah, I think regularity is really key in there. Then, of course, I think everybody in the world has an issue with looking at their devices before they go to bed, which science has shown is probably the last thing you want to do. For me, I mean, I was very similar to you and like I would stay up till 1 AM before I had children, a kid, excuse me, just because I could. Now I find that I wake up at like 4:30 in the morning but I'm in bed usually asleep by 9:30. 

Man! Angelo, this has been great. I really appreciate your time. I’ve got just like one or two kind of last little questions that I want to dive into and then I'll let you go here. But I'm curious, you seem like someone who is an avid learner, someone who's constantly trying to grow, take a look at the science. What book have you read in the past year that’s really kind of made you stop and think and has you implement something new in your life.

[00:53:29] AP: Oh! Okay. What I’ll do is I’m going to give you a recent one just because I've just recently been reading it. Recently, I have been reading Extraordinary by Michael Dauphinee, and his take and his look into how we think what our strengths are and our vocabulary to express and identify personal strengths and weaknesses is brilliance and. He is an acquaintance of mine, a friend of mine, and his newest book I have absolutely been loving. I would give that my highest recommendation. If you're interested in psychology and motivation and how our brains work, you'll probably really enjoy it. 

[00:54:13] AF: What’s one piece of homework you’d give the audience listening today to start to implement in their lives tomorrow when they wake up to help achieve their goals?

[00:54:20] AP: Oh! I'm glad you asked that. Of course, anybody is welcome to reach out to us, and we would love to talk even if you’re in an info gathering state. But if you were going to have one assignment tomorrow, go home, write down what you're currently doing. If you are participating in a health and wellness, in a fitness, in a weight loss, in a strategy in your life, write down what you've been eating this week and what exercise you've been doing. 

I want you to take it to someone in your life, not an expert, not a trainer, not a nutritionist, just taken to someone who you think is intelligent and reasonable. Show it to them and then ask them, “Based on this, what would you guess my goal is?” If they cannot give you an answer, reevaluate your priority hierarchy. You have to become more specific in your efforts. 

[00:55:19] AF: Man! That some good advice there. I've never thought about doing that. It's interesting. I've ever heard doing some similar things on how we take feedback and how we kind of get a full assessment of who we are kind of as a human under stress, asking people like, “Who do you think Austin Fabel is that at its best?” and having them kind of tell you what you look like at your, because you may not know. 

Looking at what you eat, it's crazy, because I mean even for me I think, I ate like half a cup of candy popcorn last night. Didn't even think about it. But if I had to actually write that down and show it to somebody, I’d probably like, “Oh! I shouldn’t have done that. It’s not worth the shame.” 

[00:55:56] AP: Don't get me wrong. I mean, I love candy popcorn. I'm not one of those guys that I think all sweets or treats or desserts are evil. I’m one of those guys that says, “Hey. Look, Austin. You called me because you said I want to achieve X, Y, Z objective. While that doesn't mean never indulging in those things, I’m going to make sure our strategy is dialed in specific enough to where if I'm going to put my name to it, you better believe, we’re going to hit those objectives. That's what it's about.”

[00:56:26] AF: I love it. Angelo, where can people find you if they want to learn more?

[00:56:30] AP: Austin, thank you so much for doing this. We’re going to do a special consultation offer for your listeners if you go to metpro.co/success. That’s metpro.co/success, then we’ll know that they came in from your channel and we’ll give them a free consultation to actually talk with one of our experts.

[00:56:54] AP: Yeah. It’s such a generous offer. I can't recommend it enough. Definitely encourage everyone in the audience to at least take advantage of this 30 minute consultation. If anything else, take some of the things that Angelo has been talking about today and then act them in your own life. You’re going to definitely going to see results. I’m not going to attest to that. But, Angelo, I’ll let you go. I know you're busy. It's been great talking to you and thanks for coming on speaking with the audience. 

[00:57:15] AP: Thanks so much. 

[00:57:17] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Science of Success.

The Hidden Lie of the #Hustle Culture

Modern work has become exhausting and dissatisfying, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We share strategies for defeating burnout and making progress on the most important and meaningful things in your work with our guest Bruce Daisley.

Bruce Daisley is the former European Vice-President for Twitter and host of the UK’s number one business podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat. He is also the author of the bestselling “The Joy of Work: 30 Ways to Fix Your Work Culture and Fall in Love with Your Job Again” and the soon to be released “Eat Sleep Work Repeat: 30 Hacks for Bringing Joy to Your Job”. Bruce has also been recognized as one of the 500 Most Influential People in Britain.

•  We are in a crisis situation with work.

• The average working day has gone up from 7 hours to 9 hours in the last 15 years

• We are in the midst of a burnout epidemic. Half of all US workers are in a state of burnout. 

• The average state of working is heightened anxiety and stress, and it’s having a major toll on us. 

• More than ever before work is becoming part of our identity, much more than any previous generation. 

• We lionize people like Elon Musk as roll models and ask ourselves - do I need to work that long and hard?

• What is the impact on your energy, output, cognitive ability, and results of working 100+ hours per week?

• The total productivity of people working more than 50 hours per week is less than those who work more. 

• Working more than 50 hours per week is LESS productive than working less than 50 hours per week IN TOTAL PRODUCTIVITY, not per hour. 

• Working relentlessly creates fatigue and lessens total aggregate output 

• Scarcity forces you to make decisions. If you knew that you only had 40 hours of productive work per week, then you’re forced to make scarcity decisions about what the most important way to spend your time is. 

• Right now we aren’t making KEY trade offs and scarcity decisions about how to spend our time - we are trying to cram as much in as possible. 

• There are serious problems with #hustle culture

• The 3 major brain systems and how they relate to productivity, creativity, and insights 

• The best ideas live in the spaces between - not during periods of intense focus - when your “default mode” network is working 

• We have no blueprint for work

• We’ve developed a new version of work that no one really agreed to. Constant email. Open plan offices. The average person spends 16 hrs per week in meetings and sends/receives 200 emails per day. 

• Walking meetings are a powerful strategy to improve your focus and creativity. 

• We are seeing technological breakthroughs in work, yet none of them are translating to productivity rises. 

• We haven’t innovated the way we work, despite technological change. 

• “Turning off notifications on your phone can be one of the most productive things you do.”

• Conduct meetings where phones are not allowed. 

• Teams that spend time together socially are more likely to be cohesive. 

• Unlock the power of “Monk Mode Mornings” to make progress on the most meaning things in your work. 

• Modern work has become exhausting and dissatisfying, but it doesn’t have to be that way. 

• Homework: You have more power to change things than you think. Start a dialogue in your workplace. Bring evidence, science, and data to the conversation to help change your workplace culture. Your boss is navigating the new world of work with the same confusion that you are. 

• Quite often, work is the lie we tell ourselves.

Thank you so much for listening!

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

•  Eat Sleep Work Repeat 

  • Website

  • Podcast

  • Twitter

• Bruce Daisley’s LinkedIn and Twitter

• Bad Boss Helpline

Media

• The Drum - “Twitter’s EMEA VP Bruce Daisley departs after eight years” By Katie Deighton

• People Management - “Bruce Daisley: “People check their work emails on a night out… they’re lying to themselves”” By Robert Jeffery

• ResearchLive - “TWITTER’S BRUCE DAISLEY: ‘TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS TO BEAT WORKPLACE STRESS’” by Katie McQuater

• HR Magazine - “Bruce Daisley, author and VP EMEA, Twitter” by Ellie Froggatt

• BDaily - “Interview: Twitter’s Bruce Daisley on work, balance and the science of sleep” by Richard Bell

• Qubit Blog - “QTalks 2019 - The Joy of Work with Bruce Daisley” by Elli Lawson

• Evening Standard - “Business interview: Twitter boss Bruce Daisley is a fast-talking news addict who’s found the right medium” by Mark Shapland 

• [Podcast] The Internal Comms Podcast - Episode 08 - The Joy of Work

• [Podcast] Hays Worldwide - Leadership Insights Podcast - PODCAST 7: THE SECRETS BEHIND A GREAT WORKPLACE CULTURE with Bruce Daisley, EMEA Vice President, Twitter

• [Podcast] Life Done Differently - Bruce Daisley - How 'Cartoon Boy' finds the fast lane

• [Podcast] How To Be Awesome at Your Job - 384: Bringing More Joy into Work with Bruce Daisley

• [Podcast] Ctrl Alt Delete w/ Emma Gannon - #171 Bruce Daisley: How To Fall Back In Love With Your Job Again

• [Podcast] CULTURELAB WITH AGA BAJER- Bruce Daisley: How to Fix Your Culture and Enjoy Work More

Videos

• TEDxTalks - How To Turn Work Into Joy | Bruce Daisley | TEDxNewcastle

• EatSleepWorkRepeat podcast Channel

  • Modern Work is A Lie - Bruce Daisley

• Market Research Society - Twitter's Bruce Daisley on idiot bosses and a happier work place

• HRD Leaders - 30 Ways to Fix Your Work Culture and Fall in Love with Your Job Again

• Like Minds - Keynote: Bruce Daisley – EMEA Vice President, Twitter.

• Unbound - unbound 2017 - Eat Sleep Work Repeat

• Wayra Startups - Twitter's Bruce Daisley on surviving the modern working world

Books

• Eat Sleep Work Repeat: 30 Hacks for Bringing Joy to Your Job  by Bruce Daisley

• The Joy of Work: And 25 Ways to Find It by Bruce Daisley

Misc

• [Article] Stanford (SIEPR) - “The Future of Hours of Work?” By John Pencavel

• [Discussion Article] - “The Productivity of Working Hours” By John Pencavel

• Stanford Faculty Profile and Publications listing: John H Pencavel

• Paul Graham - Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[00:00:11] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

Modern work has become exhausting and dissatisfying, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In this episode, we share strategies for defeating burnout and making progress on the most important and meaningful things in your work with our guest, Bruce Daisley.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we’ve put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our email list. We have some amazing content on their along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time for What Matters Most in Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That successpodcast.com, or if you're on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word “smarter”, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44222. 

In our previous episode, we showed you the power of listening. Taught you how to transform the way that you listen and unlock an incredible set of communication skills that almost no one uses or even understands with our previous guest, Julian Treasure.

Now, for an interview with Bruce. 

[00:01:39] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Bruce Daisley. Bruce is the former European vice president for Twitter and host of the UK's number one business podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat. He’s also the author of the best-selling The Joy of Work: 30 Ways to Fix Your Work Culture and Fall in Love with Your Job Again and the soon to be released Eat Sleep Work Repeat: 30 Hacks for Bringing Joy to Your Job. Bruce has also been recognized as one of the 500 most influential people in Britain. Bruce, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:02:10] BD: Thank you. So good to talk to you. 

[00:02:12] MB: Well, it’s so good to have you on the show. I'm so excited to dig into your work. I think it's so important and something that's a really relevant and timely topic especially in today's age. To start out with, I’d love to begin with a look at modern work and the state of modern work. You've obviously been a very successful business executive and seen a lot of this firsthand and uncovered some really interesting phenomenon. What's going on with work today?

[00:02:39] BD: Yeah. I think we’re in something of a crisis situation where silently over the last few years we found ourselves sleepwalking into a situation where by one estimate, the average working day has gone up by two hours over the last 15 years. But every step of the way, we felt that the changes that were coming were benign. The reason why the average working day has gone up is because we're spending more and more time on our mobile devices. 

Now, look, if you said to anyone, “I'm going to take email off your phone,” we’d all be really offended by it. We love email being on our phone. It makes work feel more manageable. It makes our working lives feel more easily adapted around our private lives. We love that aspect of our work, but the consequence of it has been that the average working day has gone up. There’s one of the challenges. 

Now, the output of that, the outcome of that is that we’re in something of a burnout epidemic. Burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as a genuine thing, and by some estimates, half of all U.S workers are in something of a stage of burnout where burnout where things we used to find enjoyable aren’t as enjoyable as they used to be or we find ourselves hyper stressed when we’re trying to go to sleep, but exhausted when we wake up in the morning. 

We’re in this phenomenon where a lot of us are feeling that the average state of working is heightened anxiety, stress and it's really just having a toll on our whole lives. Work is more than ever before becoming our identity. We’re starting to define ourselves who we are via talking about our jobs more than in any previous generation. 

My feeling was that in the spirit that you wholeheartedly come at this podcast with, my whole feeling was that I wanted to explore whether there was any evidence. What data science would give us about how to address this balance? How could we get back to really finding that there was enjoyment in our jobs and what pointers would the evidence give us towards that? 

[00:04:49] MB: So many interesting points, and one of my favorite lines from the book was this idea of – And I think we've all had this experience of going to bed wide awake and waking up exhausted. Such a great way to encapsulate this major problem with the burnout that everybody is suffering from and the almost constant treadmill of anxiety that are working culture has become.

[00:05:11] BD: Yeah, absolutely. Look, it's not held by the fact that many of us find that maybe when we first go into the world of work and maybe if we’re in our late 20s, early 30s and we’re contemplating how to get on in work, how to – We've decided we want to be a success, we want to graduate to achieving more and the thing that we find very quickly is that the people that we see as models around us, people who say they've got the secrets of success. 

Quite often, model, practices that when we look at them we think, “Okay. Well, I need to do that.” Elon Musk, it would be no surprise if a few of your listeners thought, “Okay. I want to be a bit more Elon. How can I be more Elon?” Elon Musk, when he's asked about it, his own working practices, he says he works 130 hours a week. He says he sleep under his desk two or three days a week. You too can have the Elon Musk experience, get yourself down to Target and buy a sleeping bag and you too can have that Elon experience. That's the challenge that a lot of us see people like Elon as role models, and yet we believe therefore, “All, right. Do I need to work that long and hard?’ That's what I was interested in. 

Okay. Objectively, if we look at people work 100 hours a week and we measure them over the short to medium-term, what is the impact on their cognitive abilities? What's the impact on their energy? What’s the impact on their ability to get their job done? Here’s what we learn, people who sustain those long periods of work. There's long working hours over a long time. We all remember probably, your listeners probably remember a time at college where they were working longer into the night. But what we delete from that college story was the fact the next day we slept-in and then we had a four week vacation. 

Any time we actually look at when people work a hundred hours a week, what we discover pretty quickly is that productivity rather than going up, it goes down. In fact, one of the biggest pieces of research into these hundreds of thousands of data points was done by a guy called John Pencavel at Stanford University and he looked into average working hours sustained over the long-term and he concluded that anyone who works over 50 hours a week, their total productivity is lower than people who work less. That's fascinating, because that's not the lie we tell ourselves. 

We tell ourselves that certainly when it comes to us, we can work late into the night. We can work weekends. Maybe we can work early mornings, and yet when people have set about trying to measure that and demonstrate whether the data proves it, whether there’s data behind it, actually it seems that it's not the case. Working long hours is an illusion rather than a way to maximize our productivity.

[00:08:05] MB: Such an insightful point, and I want to clarify a piece of this because it's something that I wrestle with and struggle with and think about. The people who were more productive, is it that the marginal hour is less productive or their total aggregate output is less productive?

[00:08:22] BD: Total. Total. There’s the interesting thing. Here’s the strange thing. That dataset that John Pencavel worked with, he said that if people were working a seven day week, and I guess some people might be channeling a startup mentality. Maybe they tell themselves, “I’m going to work a seven day week.” If those people, if they're in the routine of working seven days a week, then if they get into a routine of working six days a week, their productivity is higher on those six days than it is on those 7 days. Why? Because we just carry that fatigue through every hour of working. 

In fact, the marginal increases from working hours. Stop going up after 55 hours work. John Pencavel says the increase between 50 hours and 55 hours is incredibly small. I think he said if anyone knew how small it was, they wouldn't optimize for work. But over 55 hours, over the course of the week, over 55 hours, their total output starts going down.

[00:09:18] MB: Staggering and so interesting. I definitely want to dig into that research a little bit more.

[00:09:22] BD: Isn’t it fascinating though that even though we hear all of these examples, Marissa Mayer when she was the chief executive of Yahoo, she described her time working at Google. She was employee number 20 at Google. She was asked the secret of her success, and like Elon Musk, she said the secret of her success was working 120 hours a week. She said that she also slept under her desk. She often didn't take bathroom breaks and she never went on vacation. There’s the same story painted out. Yet when we get someone to look at the evidence, we can't replicate that practice being productive. 

Look, here’s the interesting thing, that we look at other professions where people use their energy. Maybe let's look at track and field, and if someone told you that their plan to be the next Usain Bolt was them training 120 hours a week, the first thing we’d probably ask is, “Oh! Interesting. Does it work? Can you measure that that's more effective?” Why? Because we sort of know that that notion that you could while and train relentlessly, it must lead to fatigue. Yet here’s the strange thing. When it comes to our own jobs, it's like challenging religion. We feel uncomfortable with challenging the idea, the notion that we can work relentlessly. We can work infinitely. 

Here’s why I think this matters, because I think scarcity forces us to make decisions. If we knew that we only had 40 units of productive work a week, 40 hours of productive work, then what would we do? We’d start making decisions of scarcity. We’d start saying, “Okay, I don't want to be in that four-hour status meeting, because if I'm in that meeting for four hours, then that's a 10th of my week, and I could do something more productive,” and we start making decisions of scarcity. 

Here’s I think the really interesting conundrum that were presented with work right now. We’re not making those decisions of scarcity. W we tell ourselves, “I’ll work late into the night,” and yet maybe I was a classic example of these. I would routinely come home and I would be a kitchen table emailer. I would come home. I would eat some food. Maybe there would be TV on in the background, some music on. Maybe I would treat myself occasionally to a glass of wine, but I would sit at the kitchen table typing emails.

It was only latterly I sort of reflected on what I had actually accomplished. What did I do on that Monday not emailing? Well, I read one particular email, a difficult email. I read it four or five times. I closed it. I’d come back to it again. It’d change the music. I’d answer a couple of these emails. I’d then open a document. It was really complicated. I’d close it. I’d come back to it later. I wasn’t actually doing anything, but we sometimes create the illusion that we’re working. I think that’s the critical thing that I would say. I would say there’s so much evidence about how we could improve. 

I was swept away with how many papers, how much academia has gifted us in this field and yet so little of it reaches people in work. That was my feeling, “Wow! Such revelation is hitting me,” and I wanted to be able to share some of it with people in full-time profession. 

[00:12:41] MB: I want to come back to this topic of why we refuse to make these key scarcity decisions, but before we do, something else you said a minute ago really resonated with me and in many ways underpins a lot of this, which is this idea that more and more and more, work is becoming part of our identities, and this badge of honor that I work harder than anybody. I sleep under my desk. All of these stuff, it's a very slippery slope.

[00:13:08] BD: Yeah, very much so. Look, I'm really charmed when I see organizations that recognize another way. I saw the organization, Slack, and it really struck me that a lot of people who work at Slack said that it hadn’t been their first tech job. They'd been around the track once. That forged an impression in them. So Slack has a value that they, it’s one of their values, which is do a good day's work and go home. 

What does that mean? That means they have no football tables. They have no ping-pong tables. They don't have beer tap that serves beer if people stay late. They don’t have any of those things. They encourage people to do good days work and go home. Why? Because they believe that the richer people’s personal identities, the more that people have got passions and interests, those things bring themselves into people's work and they bring color to people's work. They bring diversity, a plurality of perspectives. 

I was really charmed with that, because I think so often now, especially as property prices and student debts are ever bigger as a presence in people's lives, it's completely natural that any of us might sit there thinking, “I just want to work hard and pay off my college debts.” Of course, it's a human response. 

I was really impressed that some organizations are saying, “We actually want you to bring your fullest self to work by having other interests. We’re not going to value you staying late and working into the night. That won't be the reason you get promoted here.” 

[00:14:44] MB: That’s a great example, and I know you're in many ways leading this charge as well, but I hope to see more companies and organizations start to embrace some of what the science and the evidence tells us about how people could be more productive and more effective instead of these cultural myths about what work is and the false badge of slaving away and working hundred plus hours per week.

[00:15:08] BD: Yeah. I think this is the critical thing that there are so many icons of #hustleculture and there’s so many people who are celebrating working hard and that relentless eking out every last drop of productivity. Unfortunately, there’s very few role models, there’s very few examples we can look at who say, “Actually, there’s another way.” Because here’s one thing that I really fascinated by, and I think for me this is really instructive, that any of us who’s setting about trying to be the best version of ourselves. Of course, productivity is an important notable goal. But let me give you something that I was really captivated by, which is a sort of rudimentary take on neuroscience. 

If you and I, Matt, we’re doing sort of an introductory level of neuroscience. Neuroscience 101 would be this effectively three systems of cognition in the brain. The first one is called the executive attention network. Okay. That’s you, you're typing an email on your phone. The executive attention in that work is you typing that email. Then a second network that runs directly in parallel, all the times that the executive attention network is running, there’s another network called the salience network. This network protects us from – It makes sure the we’re back typing that email on our phone, and meanwhile we’re walking across the road and the salience network is what protects us from oncoming traffic. It makes sure it's a safe time to walk across the road. Those two run in conjunction with each other. 

But there’s a third one, and the science of understanding what's going on in people's brains is relatively recent. Brain scanning, the last 20 years we’ve really got some value from it. Scientists were baffled by the fact that they would give people something to do and their brains would light up. But then the moment they stopped doing it, their brains would light up, but in a different way, and they [inaudible 00:17:03] this the default mode of the default network. 

Here's the interesting things. The default mode, we might – If we were in the brain scanner and we were in the default mode, the researcher might say to us, “What's happening right now? What are you thinking about?” Generally we’d say something like, “I was dreaming. I was daydreaming. I wasn't thinking about anything. I was a million miles away.” Boredom, if I could give you a term from your youth. Do remember boredom from when you’re a kid? Those hours of boredom we used to have. That's what the default mode is. Boredom is where we’re in the default mode. Long way of saying it. These three systems in the brain, one of which is sort of this unfocused, this boredom. 

But here's the really fascinating thing. When we come up with our best ideas, and I’d challenge your listeners to think about this. The next time you have a good idea, which of these states were you in? Were you in like the executive attention network? Were you frowning into your laptop trying to come up with an idea or was it the moment when you gave up frowning into your laptop, you walked into the other room to pour yourself a glass of water and an idea struck you? Because, broadly, that's what a lot of people observe. They observe that their best ideas happen not in these intense focus, but in this rather sort of more dreamy unfocused. 

My favorite example of this was this very acclaimed screenwriter. A guy called Aaron Sorkin. He wrote Moneyball. He’s just writing now. He’s got the theatre production of To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway. He’s incredibly prolific writer, poet, all amount of screen and stage. He wrote the West Wing TV show. He realized his best ideas were coming to him when he was on deadline. His best ideas were coming to him not when he was in the state of focus staring into his computer screen, but when he was in a state of these default mode, in a state of sort of dreamy distraction. 

He realized for him, his best ideas were coming to him not staring into his laptop but in the shower. He told Hollywood report magazine, he had a shower installed in the corner of his office and he takes 6 to 8 showers a day. Fascinating, right? He was asked about it, “Are you doing this because you're sort of obsessive-compulsive?” He said, “Not at all.” He said, “When I'm on deadline, when I need to come up with something, I find that the fact that I get into the shower, I almost reboot my whole system and something occurs to me.” For me, this is such an epiphany, because we spend so much of our time trying to optimize for our productivity. So much amount of time thinking, producing more with every waking minute. 

Here's the strange thing, any of us who are charged with coming up with original thought, we’re thinking of a clever way to do it. That’s all of us. We don’t like to call it creativity, but all of us are charged with improving things. What we find is that those flashes of inspiration, those sparks of ingenuity, those moments of guile, they strike us in our default mode. They strike us when we’re on downtime. 

Someone told me, I have all my best ideas walking my dog, and I thought, exactly, default mode. That's one of the critical things that I feel that I've learned, is that we need to be thinking more not just about how can we produce more, but how can we allow our brains to breathe and actually sort of create moments of creative inspiration? 

[00:20:18] MB: I couldn't agree more, and there's so much research supporting this idea of creating the space, creating the contemplative time to really step back and not be so caught up in everything constantly happening. Even the neuroscience, I don't know if you came across this term, but the phrase and a lot of the scientific research around this is the idea of creative incubation and how the subconscious works on problems much more effectively if you take your conscious focus away from really burning constant focus on whatever you're trying to solve or wherever you're trying to generate a creative breakthrough.

[00:20:54] BD: Very much so. I think the more that we get an understanding of this, I think the more that we, all of us, try to get a layperson's understanding of some of the science that governs these things. Then we can try to intervene and push back against some of the things that appear common sense in our workplaces but are actually potentially quite destructive.

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[00:22:48] MB: Let's explore a couple of those other ideas we've talked a lot about, the general culture of work. But tell me about a few more of the things within our workplaces that seem like they're common sense but are really counterproductive and harmful to productivity and well-being.

[00:23:03] BD: I think one of the things that become the norms, what we’ve found I think is that we have no blueprint for work. We've developed a new version of work that no one has ever really signed off on. If we were to look at some of the cold hard facts of modern work, the average U.S. worker spends about 16 hours a week in meetings. 

In fact, if your boss expects you to stay connected to your device, then generally we’re observing that the average working week of attention on our email can be around 60 to 70 hours a week. We find ourselves in open offices, so in sort of open plan environments where we set with constant interruptions. Then when we do get to our desks, generally we are sending and receiving about 200 emails a day. All of those things act to drain some of our cognitive energy. 

One the things that I think is an important decision that we need to reflect on is that scientists argue about whether there’s a finite capacity to our brains, but it does appear to be elements of cognition, which are closer to the battery on our cellphone, then we probably would like to normally think. We often can force our self to believe that our brains are infinite. For anyone who's tried to read a complicated book or a complicated paper, at 11 PM, we’ll know that their brain doesn't seem to have the same battery power as it does at 9 AM. 

I think understanding that is really critical. Psychologists, neuroscientists sometimes call this ego depletion, the idea that cognition is finite. Now, while they do argue a little bit around the edges of the extent of ego depletion, how finite our brains are. There seems to be some evidence that we can restore some of our energy with the actions we take. Walking meetings seem to be a really good way to revive, re-energize our attention to bring some energy back into us. For my feeling, we've created a version of modern work, which has got all these meetings, these emails, and it's exhausting. 

I think if any of us were told when we were children the amount of time we were going to spend in meetings not paying attention to what was going on, we’d be astonished, because if a child – I always think of freaky Friday. If a child's transport planted into your brain today and saw that you're sitting pretending to listen to someone's PowerPoint slides, the child with the sort of naivety of a child would say, “Why are you doing this? Just get up and leave,” and yet most of us find ourselves in hostage to those situations. 

I think this is a critical thing for me. One of the things I was – Here’s my entry point. I was working, running Twitter across Europe, and one of the things that we observed was that while people might superficially think tech job, that's what I want. I want to go and work in a big tech platform, and that's definitely true. We had lots of people who were really inspired by the work they were doing, but we were starting to witness burnout in the people that we employed. It was largely a reflection of the way we were working. 

People were burnt out because we were emailing all weekend. Because of different time zones, we were emailing all evening, and there was a constant expectation that people would be available to jump on a call, and all of those things acted. They were in service of just the team starting to feel depleted. The team feeling like they could do a tour of duty, but they couldn't last forever. 

We were seeing – One of the things that was a real wake-up call for me, I was seeing some of my most talented people quit, but worst, some of them were quitting with no job to go to. I was presented with this realization, “Wow! If we've got some of the best people I've ever work with and they’re quitting with nowhere to go to, it's such a vote of no confidence in the culture that I had created, in the organization that I was running.” I told myself, “Look, I need to delve into the science books. I need to delve into the evidence here. I need to be trying to find answers.” There aren’t just my thoughts, my hunches, my instincts. I’ve got to try and find answers that are proven by data and evidence. That's why I set about doing challenging some of these norms that we've created and trying to find a way to create a more energizing positive and more productive version of work.

[00:27:30] MB: That's a truly inspiring vision and I applaud you for embarking on the journey. There're a couple of things you mentioned that I want to dig into. The thing that you talked about earlier that I really want to unpack a little bit more is this notion of how we think that we can just pile more and more and more work into our week. We can always take on another project, another priority, and yet when you really truly come to grips with the reality that there's, let's say, 40 to 50 hours of truly productive time that you actually have, it forces you to really prioritize and to make tradeoffs and to make scarcity decisions around where you spend your time. 

Why do you think so many people are afraid to do that and how can we be better about making those kinds of decisions and bringing that thoughtfulness to the way that we approach our work?

[00:28:22] BD: I think more than anything, the first stage of the process is an awareness of it, because it's very easy. When a colleague says to you, “Can you attend this meeting?” and you end up in a two-hour meeting. What happens is the emails that you are meant to do, the document that you are meant to create, the things that you are meant to give your attention to, they don’t disappear. They just get displaced. Most of us probably who work full-time now recognize the feeling of sitting on the sofa, answering an email or getting told off by a friend when we’re just answering an email on a night out. 

Most of us recognize that we've seen an erosion of the boarders between work life and home life. Look, look quite often we are willing accomplices, we often feel like it reduces our stress to answer that email rather than having it sitting there waiting for us. I think that’s the reality of modern work for a lot of us. We’re sort of presented with those conundrums. 

I think the challenge for me is this, is that we’re not being honest with ourselves. The moment we start being honest about, “Okay. I've got 40 units. This is zero cost. This is zero-sum to my working week. If I gave two hours to that meeting, I'm going to stop doing something else.” As soon as we say that, it starts forcing us to prioritize. Look, you’ll know well the old truism that sort of in business, strategy is what you choose not to do. 

I think one of the things that we find is that anyone who takes a look at productivity stats, workplace productivity stats for the 20 years, it's a total enigma. Why? Because we've seen the fastest innovation of technology and the tools available to every worker is unprecedented in history. We've never seen innovation like this, and yet average productivity per work hasn't grown. In manufacturing industry, productivities continue to rise. 

In office workplace, we haven't seen productivity rise. It's this total conundrum. Why on earth would this technology be afforded to us and yet we've seen none of it transferred to the bottom line? It's largely because we've effectively started making more demands on workers. It’s no surprise that burnout has gone up. People are working longer, because that’s the only way we’ve seen total output increase not from the amount people are producing per hour, but because they’re working longer and harder. 

For me, as soon as we start adjusting to these things, as soon as we start asking questions about these things, we’re going to get so far more honest state of work. There’s a really interesting thing. If you go back and you look at previous revolutions of technology. If you go back to the 1900s when the steam engine was replaced with electric motors. Among the first thing that happened was that when you saw that big system change from one to the other, steam engines required vast sort of turbines the required enormous coal and consuming furnaces and they would work at vast scale. They were huge. 

Electric motor to the engines could be tiny. The first thing that happened was that we first replaced the steam engines with an electric equivalent, and it was only afterwards gradually over the course of the next couple of decades that people said, “Oh! But by switching to little electric motors, we can miniaturize some of these processes. We can transform the way that we bring detail, we bring sophisticate sort of tiny little microscopic luxurious detail to the things we’re creating rather than produce it at vast scale.” 

It led to a big change, but we went through this transition. That's probably where we are with work right now, that we have not really innovated how we were working in the previous generations. We've just brought technology to it, and it’s why so many people right now are feeling like they are at something of a personal burnout, a breaking point themselves. 

[00:32:19] MB: If we feel burnt out, if we feel like we’re at the breaking point, you’ve shared one or two great strategies already and things like walking meetings are fantastic. What are some other strategies to help us recharge? To help us really combat that burnout?

[00:32:36] BD: Yeah. I think I've talked about the importance of probably drawing a line. The big thing for me was that I sat there thinking – It’s an interesting exercise. I sat there thinking my team are burnt out. I can't order them to make changes. I need to try and influence them. One of the things that I set about doing was, as I mentioned before, trying to model the 40 hours was enough of a working week, but there were certainly other things I could do. 

One of the best things that any of us can do, if we’re trying to get into a state of thought and concentration, turning off notifications on our phone seems to be one of the most productive things that we can do. There’s a strange thing. When I say to people they should turn notifications off on the cellphone, they say, “Oh, really? But how will I know if I’ve got messages?” Look, people generally reach the right conclusion for them. Some people say, “I’m going to leave my iMessages on,” or other people say, “I'm going to leave my social media on.” But broadly my feeling is that we should try and turn notifications off for our emails, or our Slack, because largely the reason why is that I guarantee that if you or I were to go and look at our emails now, we’ve both got emails. 

Actually, that alert that we've got more emails in itself isn't helpful. But what it does is it steals some of our cognitive power. There’s a strange thing that when Frances Frei, the culture expert went into Uber and she was invited in a Harvard business professor. She was invited into Uber, and she observed that they were all taking their cellphones into every meeting and it was having the impact of reducing everyone's attention but also making meetings longer. There were also like a back channel of the subtext of meetings that was being communicated nonverbally. 

She pointed out a piece of research that says that if we bring our cellphones into meetings, everyone's attention measurably goes down. If your cellphone is up turned so you can see, your attention dips even further. I think this is a really interesting thing. If any of us are trying to get our job done more quickly and productively and maybe with more flashes of inspiration, then turning notifications off on our phone seems to be an incredible, helpful intervention. 

Look, I set about thinking those things more than anything. I was fascinated with team culture. I want it to be back to my team feeling enjoyable. There's a lot of ways that I think we can build team cohesion, some really trivial ones. When you’re looking at how teams work together in an office, we often spend a lot of time thinking of org charts and sort of who reports into who, but as effective, a wonderful company did some really fascinating research effectively tracking people in offices, like we might track thoughts players on the field, they sort of, they put tracking devices on them. They watched where they went and they observed that the location of the coffee machine and the water cooler has as much impact on who works with who in an office as the org chart and the management structure. 

For me, understanding these things, where do you put the coffee machine? Can you introduce a social meeting? That’s a meeting where you sort of get together every week and there's no agenda. You just get together to be together. It seems incredibly wasteful, especially, I particularly meetings, but what we observe is organizations that set time aside to be together socially seem to demonstrate more cohesion and higher productivity. 

My fascination was how could any of us – We’re not the boss. I worked on the basis, we’re not in charge. But how can any of us set about improving the working dynamic where we are. One of the ways that we would set about doing that is just really looking into the evidence and the science. 

[00:36:33] MB: Great suggestions. I love this quote that turning off notifications on your phone can be one of the most productive things that you could do, and yet so many people think it's the opposite, right?

[00:36:43] BD: Yeah, but I think sometimes we do bias towards immediacy. We’re all guilty of these. If you ask people whether they like working with their boss, one of the things that they determined how much they like their boss is how quickly their boss replies to their emails. We’re all guilty of it. We want our boss to notice us quickly and get back to us quickly. We want other people to do the same. 

My feeling is this it was a wonderful piece of work by an investor, a guy called Paul Graham. He did a really interesting thing where he differentiated between two mindsets. The manager’s mindset, and it doesn't necessarily mean a people manager just by someone who manages projects or someone who's executing, getting things done. The manager’s mindset and the maker's mindset. 

He said, “Here’s the interesting thing. A manager can break that time into 15-minute segments.” They can be immensely productive. They can be auctioning and powering through things. You might attempt to your inbox. You might finish that document. It's about execution. The moment you switch into maker’s mindset, the moment you're trying to reflect, produce, think, then actually the way that time works is very different. 

If you've got a four-hour block, a manager can split that very easily into 15-minute segments. It might be a 30 minute meeting and then lots of very small segments. But if you're asked to come up with a new idea and you have that four-hour block and in the midst of that four-hour block you put a 30 minute meeting, he said, “That doesn't break up the four-hour block. It destroys the four-hour block.” 

The maker's mindset is very different. The maker’s mindset, if we're going to be allowing ourselves to get into deep thinking, to get into deep work, then breaking it with instructions and being constantly beset with little pings on our phone doesn't just have a slight impact, it destroys those moments of productivity. I thought it was a really interesting way to frame it. 

[00:38:39] MB: Yeah, the maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule post is a classic, and we’ll make sure to include that along with a lot of the other research you’ve talked about in the show notes. I want to dig into another recommendation from the book that I personally really resonated with this. Tell me about monk mode mornings. 

[00:38:56] BD: Very much in the same spirit. The notion of monk mode is that we sometimes reach those intellectual breakthroughs. We sometimes reach those moments where aha moments happen to us, when we’re in a state of undistracted concentration. The challenge of course for all of us, especially we might be just making our first progressions on the career ladder and we don't call the shots. 

If we were to say any of us would say to our bosses, “I’m not contactable all day on Wednesday, or I'm not going to be contactable for the next three hours.” Then I guess most of us face the prospect that our managers might respond negatively to that. 

The monk mode morning is the attempt to recognize the we have these demands upon us that our attention works best when it's uninterrupted. But as the monk mode morning says, “Okay. What are the ways that any of us can bring this into our work?” 

One the best ways, the monk mode morning is the idea that maybe you take 60 or 90 minutes out of your calendar twice a week. Monk mode worked best if you do it before you open email. The moment you open email, you sort of have these caffeinated seeds, these effervescent phase of thoughts fizzing through your mind. If we take a monk mode morning before we open our email, it seems to be more productive, and you just set an hour aside. 

It might well be you say to your boss, “Hey, I'm not going to be in till 10:30 on Wednesdays because I'm just taking an hour at home in the mornings to work on big pitches for new clients or big concepts for our 2021 plan.” 

The idea is the that period of concentration generally seems to be immensely rewarding for us when very simple, but when we ask people if they have had a good day at work, they generally describe having a good day at work when they've made progress in something meaningful. If we can set aside an hour or two hours a week just to do that, it's astonishing what we can produce in that time.

[00:41:09] MB: I totally agree and I've used that strategy for years to carve out time every single week to focus on the most important high-priority things in my life before getting distracted and sucked into the whirlwind of email and all of the demands on my time. 

[00:41:25] BD: Yeah, very much so. I think, look, these are the things that affect all of us and having a big impact on the way that we feel about our jobs. It’s really sad stats. If you delve into this – This is just not the luxury of office workers. If you look at teachers, 3/5th of all US teachers say they’re contemplating quitting the job in the next five years. 

It's the same for health workers, that this is not just the reserve of those who work in nice offers jobs, but we've created a version of modern work, which people find exhausting, dissatisfying. They’re seeking an escape. They’re seeking meaning elsewhere, and I'm convinced that there are small actions that any of us can take to just bring some of the enjoyment back to our work. 

[00:42:13] MB: Such a simple and powerful message. For somebody who listened to this conversation and wants to start to take action in some way to bring some joy back into their work, to get over the exhausting and dissatisfying nature of modern work, what would be one starting place, one action item that you would give them as their first piece of homework to really begin to bring that joy back into their lives?

[00:42:38] BD: Yeah. For me, I felt that this needed to be a democratic process. I felt that bosses – This book Eat Sleep Work Repeat, bosses don't read books like this. They send themselves on expensive executive training course and yet most of us find ourselves in the workplace cultures that maybe are not perfect that need fixing. I’m an optimist and I sort of believe that often we can find that we have more power of influence to change things. My feeling was start a dialogue in your workplace. Start a dialogue about can we do things differently. 

Let me give you one example. It's very easy, and my organization find ourselves doing the practice that I’ve really decided is one of my biggest no-nos, and that is the weekend email. In fact, one boss I had at my job at another organization sends a document round, all the people who reported to him. He said, “You might not work at the weekend, but I do, and I will be working all weekend.” 

You would come back from may be a morning bit of exercise and you would come into your apartment and there would be 30 emails not just from him, but from the people who reported to him. It felt like you can never escape work. It felt like work followed you around. Now, my feeling now is that there was a discussion worth having and bringing a bit of evidence to that discussion and maybe at that manager's offsite suggesting, “I wonder if we could have a discussion about how we work and our working methodologies and bringing some evidence.” I think you need to bring evidence to these, but you bring some evidence to it, and I believe that most bosses when presented with evidence will say, “Okay. Let's give it a go.” 

My feeling is, it’s the spirit of your whole podcast here, that actually the best discussions we have are informed with not opinion. We’ve all got our opinions, but with data, with science, with evidence. I remain optimistic that any of us should – The first thing we should try and do is start a dialogue. Start a dialogue. Can we set about improving the way we’re working?

[00:44:50] MB: Great piece of advice and really important to recognize that you do have more power than you think to change your culture, to change a workplace and to influence those around you. So many people give that power up without ever even trying. There's some real magic that can happen if you're willing to take the initiative and try to create a positive change in your life.

[00:45:09] BD: I couldn't agree more. There was a fascinating piece of work by a woman called Leslie Perlow from Harvard, and she went to try and track down people who said, “You can't change things here. You can’t have an impact on our culture.” She found management consultants. These management consultants said, “Look, you know you can't stand our job. We need to be on email all the time.” So then she started staging slight interventions. She’s ask them, “Okay. Amongst yourselves, I want you to agree who will not look at their phone on Tuesday night. Who will not look at their phone on Wednesday,” and she put them into teams. If someone looks at their phone when they were not meant to on a Tuesday night, the whole team lost. What happened was they initially said, “You don’t understand our job.” 

Within weeks they said, “I feel my energy levels are better. My partner is more grateful for me because when I’m out on date night, I’m not looking at my phone all the time. My family are grateful that my attention doesn't seem to become divided,” and she staged a number of those interventions. 

I think what they proved to me is they prove that, quite often, work is the lie we tell ourselves. Quite often, we tell ourselves that, “Oh! I can’t do this. I can’t change this.” We can change far more about our jobs than we realize, but we just – We need to start that process, that process. For me, it's about starting to dialogue on it. You start a dialogue and you realize very quickly, number one, you're surrounded with people who think the same as you. Number two, your boss kind of thinks things aren't working either and is open-minded to someone coming up with suggestions. 

My experience is we sometimes can imagine that when we’re in our most uncharitable frame of mind, that our boss somehow created something that sets to destroy us. Far from it, bosses are navigating these new world with the same confusion we are and starting a dialogue on these things. In my experience, I’ve now chatted to dozens of organizations. In my experience, it’s far more ground to be optimistic when we bring the science along than some of us ever really ever dare imagine.

[00:47:16] MB: Bruce, where can listeners find you, find the book, find all your work online so that they can learn more?

[00:47:24] BD: Best place to look is my website, is eatsleepwork repeat.com and I’ve chatted to countless psychologists, neuro scientists, experts there about trying to improve culture. The book is available with the same title, so Eat Sleep Work Repeat. It’s 30 hacks to improve your work. Anyone who's thinking, I just want to improve the way things feel around here. Maybe I just want to laugh more at work. Maybe I just don't want to be lying awake on Sunday night dreading going to that place. My feeling was I was you. I was that person, and I set about trying to change it. As someone who's reached the other side, I’m strongly of the opinion that all of us can take actions to make our work better. 

[00:48:07] MB: For people who feel like they can approach their boss, they’re struggling, Bruce you put together something that I thought was quite funny and really, really interesting. Just tell our listeners a little bit about the Bad Boss Helpline.

[00:48:21] BD: Yes. I’ve created Bad Boss Helpline, badbosshelpline.com. There’s a telephone number there or there’s an email address and you can contact us with your especially egregious boss and we will send a copy of Eat Sleep Work Repeat anonymously to your boss. If you do have a monstrous manager, if you’ve got a demonic supervisor that you’re sort of dealing your wrestling with, please do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

[00:48:49] MB: Well, Bruce thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing all this wisdom. Some really insightful takeaways and really important dialogue about the future of work and how we can avoid burnout and bring some happiness back into our workplaces. 

[00:49:03] BD: So lovely to chat to you. Thank you so much. It’s been so great to chat, Matt.

[00:49:07] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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Don't forget, if you want to get all the incredible information we talked about in the show, links transcripts, everything we discussed and much more, be sure to check out our show notes. You can get those at successpodcast.com, just hit the show notes button right at the top. 

Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Science of Success.

Google Knows Your Darkest Secrets - The Truth in Your Searches with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

What happens when you peer into the dark underbelly of the human psyche? How should we react when we uncover the raw truth of human nature and emotion, sexuality, and racism? We explore all of this in this fascinating interview with our guest Dr. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. 
What can research about condoms tell us about human nature and the problems with survey research? Why the #1 google search for “my husband wants” in India will blow your mind. What does searching for celebrities with herpes have to do with hidden suicide rates? We explore all of this and much more with Dr. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. 

• What’s wrong with surveys?

• Social desirability bias can massively skew the results of surveys. 

• Why do people lie when they take surveys? How can that massively impact research results?

• What can research about condoms tell us about human nature and the problems with survey research? 

• Women say they use 1.1 billion condoms, men say they use 1.6 billion condoms.. but only 600mm condoms are actually sold in the US total. 

• People lie about both the frequency of the sex they’re having and whether or not their sex is protected. 

• People tell google things that they don’t even tell their closest loved ones. People tell google about hidden health problems, secret dark thoughts, pornographic preferences, and much more.

• Google, Facebook, and social media and data porn sites can reveal the darkest facets of the human psyche

• What did researchers uncover from digging into troves of data from top porn websites?What can that tell us the truth about societies deepest sexual desires?

• The #1 google search for “my husband wants” in India will blow your mind

• The truth revealed by in depth study of human behavior is that everyone is weird in their own way, and that’s OK. 

• What happens when you peer into the dark underbelly of the human psyche? How should we react when we uncover the raw truth of human nature and emotion, sexuality, and racism? We explore this and find out how to go forward from here. 

• What does searching for celebrities with herpes have to do with hidden suicide rates?

• There are many people struggling with things that aren’t openly talked about. 

• A huge source of unhappiness is comparison to other people’s cultivated personas - when you peel back the onion and look at people’s searches, you would realize that everyone goes through suffering, anxiety, doubt, and weird thoughts.

•  Rejection is not personal 

• How looking back through search results can be used as a potential medical diagnostic tool.

• Moneyball for your life. Applying big data to hacking and improving your life decisions. 

• Moneyball for parenting - one of the most important factors revealed by data for raising your kids. 

• Most people are too concerned with people thinking they are weird. 

• Don’t be normal, be polarizing, to find a better fit for yourself. 

• Homework: anytime you’re feeling bad about your life just type “I am always…” into google autocomplete. Realize that everyone is struggling and suffering and that is part of the human experience.  

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• Seth’s Website

• Seth’s LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook

• Seth’s Wiki Page

Media

• Article Directory on New York Times, Quartz, and Big Think

• Directory of Seth’s research and data projects

• Google Scholar Citations - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

• The Gist - “Everybody Lies” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz – a review” By Anna Duncan

• Vox - “Persuasive proof that America is full of racist and selfish people” By Sean Illing

• Binary District - “Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: Everybody Lies, But Not To Google” by Charlie Sammonds

• The Behavioral Insights Team - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz & Nick Chater discuss how well do we know ourselves

• [Book Review] The Guardian - “Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz review – what internet searches reveal” by Galen Strawson

• The Guardian - “Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

• Smart Brief - “The dangers of corporations and big data” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

• [Podcast] Policy Punchline - What Big Data Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

• [Podcast] Hidden Brain - I, Robot: Our Changing Relationship With Technology

• [Podcast] Freakonomics - How Big is My Penis? (And Other Things We Ask Google) (Ep. 286) 

• [Podcast] The Conversation - Speaking with: ‘Everybody Lies’ author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on why we tell the (sometimes disturbing) truth online

• [Podcast] FutureSquared - Episode #163: Everybody Lies with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Videos

• TEDxTalks - The Secrets in Our Google Searches | Seth Stephens-Davidowitz | TEDxWarwick

  • What Google Searches Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are | Seth Stephens-Davidowitz | TEDxNashville

• Talks at Google - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: "EVERYBODY LIES: Big Data, New Data, and What the [...]" | Talks at Google

• Big Think - Questions about Sex That Women and Men Google the Most | Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

  • Google Searches May Be the Best Measure of Human Nature Yet | Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

• The RSA - Everybody Lies | Seth Stephens-Davidowitz | RSA Replay

• O’Reilly - Lessons in Google Search Data - Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (NY Times)

• CBS This Morning - "Everybody Lies": Online searches reveal our true thoughts

• MSNBC - Here’s What We’re Googling In The Age Of Donald Trump | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

Books

• Everybody Lies Book Site

• Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

What happens when you peer into the dark underbelly of the human psyche? How should we react when we uncover the raw truth of human nature, emotion, sexuality and racism? We explore all of this and much more in this fascinating interview with our guest, Dr. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word “smarter”, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we discussed all things sleep. Sleep has been under attack for the last 10 years and yet, it is one of the most powerful things that you can do for your performance, your health, your mental well-being and your body. In our previous interview, we explored how to improve your sleep, how sleep works and what you can be doing to sleep better with our previous guest, Dr. Dan Gartenberg. If you want to get a good night's sleep, listen to our previous episode.

Now for our interview with Seth. Please note, this episode contains mature and adult content.

[0:02:02.9] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Seth is an author, data scientist and speaker. His book Everybody Lies was a New York Times bestseller and an economist book of the year. Seth is a contributing op-ed writer for The New York Times and has worked as a visiting lecturer at the Wharton School and a data scientist at Google. He received his BA in philosophy from Stanford and his PhD in economics from Harvard. Seth, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:02:31.8] SSD: Thanks so much for having me, Matt.

[0:02:33.4] MB: Well, we're really excited to have you on here today. Your work and your research is so fascinating and I can't wait to dig into it. I'd love to start out with a really simple question or idea, which is what's wrong with surveys and the way that we try to collect data about humans and our behavior and human nature? What's the problem with the current methodologies that we're using?

[0:02:58.4] SSD: Yeah. One of the problems is, so there are actually lots of problems with surveys. One of the problems that I focus on the book is that people lie to surveys. There's an issue called social desirability bias, where people don't say what they're really thinking, or really going to do, or why they do the things they do. They say things that are socially desirable. 

If you ask people, are you going to vote in an election? Far more people say they are going to vote and actually go out to vote in an election. If you ask people are you racist? Just about nobody says yes, even though many, many people are racist. Many times we see that what people say isn't really true and that the bias is in the direction of what's socially desirable.

[0:03:36.3] MB: Tell me a little bit more about the concept of social desirability bias and what causes people to do that and how it can negatively impact survey results and research results.

[0:03:47.5] SSD: Well, I think we don't really know. Technically, surveys are anonymous so people don't need to lie. I think there are a couple of reasons people lie. One is that people lie in their day-to-day life. Your wife, or husband asked you, “Do I look good?” You tend to just say yes, even if they don't look good. Or was the dinner good? You say yes, these little white lies as we go through the day.

Then a big issue in surveys is there's no incentive to tell the truth. You don't have an incentive to lie necessarily, but you definitely don't have an incentive to tell the truth. If someone asked you, Gallup or Pew asked you a question on some topic that might be a little sensitive, people just assume, “Well, what do I gain by telling the truth?” I'll just tell something that just makes me feel good, or look good. There's really no reason for me to tell my secrets.

[0:04:38.4] MB: It's almost like their identity is playing into that and people want to see themselves in a certain way, even if they're not trying to deceive the survey or necessarily, perhaps they're really trying to reinforce a certain identity, or a certain characterization of themselves.

[0:04:53.8] SSD: Yeah, that definitely does play a role.

[0:04:56.3] MB: There's a great series of examples that you had. You touched on voting as one of them. Tell me the story about condoms and what some of the survey research revealed about that.

[0:05:07.8] SSD: Oh, yeah. I looked at data from the General Social Survey. That's this big data set every year produced by the University of Chicago. They asked men and women how frequent they have sex, whether they use a condom, whether it's heterosexual sex. 

You do the math and basically, American women say they use 1.1 billion condoms every year in heterosexual sexual encounters. American men say they use 1.6 billion condoms every year in heterosexual sexual encounters. By definition, those numbers have to be the same. There are only a certain number of condoms used every year in heterosexual sexual encounters. We know that somebody's not telling the truth, lying about this.

I reached out to Nielsen. They have actual ground truth data on how many condoms are sold every year in the United States. We have a woman saying 1.1 billion condoms used, men saying 1.6 billion condoms used. Well, according to Nielsen there are only 600 million condoms sold every year in the United States, some of them used by gay men and some of them thrown out. Basically, I think everybody's lying about this.

I think I do further research that I think they're not just lying about whether they're having protected sex, they're lying about the frequency of sex. I think there's a lot of pressure in today's culture for both men and women. It's a little stronger among men, but it's there for everybody to say you're having more sex than you actually are having, because I think it's people don't want to admit if they're not having sex, they're having very little sex. It shows the strong pressures in our sex-obsessed culture to maybe exaggerate how much people are having.

[0:06:36.7] MB: You discovered a methodology to start to see through some of these illusions and peel apart the social desirability bias that can skew research results. Tell me, how did you discover this new methodology and what is it?

[0:06:52.9] SSD: I was doing my PhD in economics. I don't even remember. One day, I just saw that Google had released this tool called Google Trends, which allows researchers to look basically how a search term when it’s searched, where it's searched, how frequently it’s searched. 

Right away, I became obsessed with this data set, in part because I suspected and I think I later confirmed that people would be really, really honest on Google and they tell Google things, that they don't tell other people, they don't tell their friends, their family members, their neighbors, their doctors, their psychiatrists, surveys, people pour their heart out to Google.

People will tell Google about their sexual desires, the pornography they want to watch. People will tell Google about their health problems, even health problems that might be embarrassing. People will tell Google about their dark thoughts, racist thoughts. People will tell Google about problems, their big struggles they're going through child abuse, self-induced abortion, there are all these areas where people might be really shy to talk about these with other people, but they really do pour their heart out to Google.

[0:08:03.8] MB: It's such a fascinating thing to uncover and this idea that you may not ever think about that in your daily life. I certainly hadn't thought about it that way until you phrased it like that. The fact that we really do tell Google our deepest, darkest thoughts, the things we wake up at 3 a.m. and Google in the middle of the night, we tell Google all of our fears and fantasies. Oftentimes, there are things that we would never dream of telling, even some of the closest people in our lives.

[0:08:33.8] SSD: Yeah. It's definitely an interesting window into people. I've expanded it beyond Google. I also in the book, I got data from Pornhub, what videos are searched for and watched all around the world and that also is an interesting data set, where people – if you ask people, many people I don't think they're going to be necessarily want to say what they're watching or what they're searching on Pornhub, but the data set is really, really interesting and revolutionary for the study of sexuality. I think really there is corners of the Internet where people are giving us windows into the human psyche that we've never had before.

[0:09:11.2] MB: I want to dig into that a little bit, because you have some fascinating conclusions and research that have come out of that. Tell me a little bit more about what came out of the research that you did on sites like Pornhub and what fascinating things you revealed about the darkest facets of the human psyche.

[0:09:28.9] SSD: Yeah. Pornhub. I mean, I think the general conclusion from Pornhub data is that sexuality is a lot more varied than we're usually told. I think when I was growing up, there was an idea that sexual fantasy was basically Playboy magazine. It was this very conventionally attractive, big-breasted, thin, maybe blonde-haired girl next door. I think Pornhub data really reveals much wider array of sexuality, like heavyset women are very, very popular on Pornhub and that's not usually talked about.

Usually, we think that skinny is attractive and heavy isn't attractive. You see widespread desire for heavier women. Then people's fantasies are just very politically incorrect sometimes. Violent pornography, even rape porn is about twice as common among women than men, which isn't usually talked about. It doesn't mean that women want to be raped, or that makes rape less of a crime, but it does show that people's minds are not – they don't always go places necessary they'd want them to go and sexual fantasy can be politically incorrect, basically.

[0:10:39.3] MB: The interesting thing about a lot of this data and this applies well beyond research into human sexuality is that these are the hidden, real trends and patterns and thought patterns that are driving human behavior. It's so interesting that a tool like Google, or a pornography website could be used to peer into and almost become a mirror to look back and give us the truth about something that people would potentially never reveal in traditional survey style research.

[0:11:10.6] SSD: Yeah. My favorite fact I uncovered in all of my research is that the number one Google search that starts with, “My husband wants,” in the country of India is, “My husband wants me to breastfeed him.” That's India and a little bit of Bangladesh and nowhere else. Also, pornography for adult breastfeeding is much more popular in India than anywhere else. That just shocked me.

Then I think I published that and then they did some research and they asked people in India about this. Everybody's like, “No, no, no. That's not a thing in India.” I'm confident based on this data that it is reasonably widespread sexual fantasy that developed in India and a little bit in Bangladesh and nowhere else and isn't talked about at all, which is just fascinating for a lot of reasons that a sexual fantasy can develop in one part of the world and nowhere else. What caused it? That something can be widespread. Because it's shameful, just not be talked about at all and not be ever acknowledged. Yeah, that's – it really does change how you view the world.

[0:12:17.7] MB: It's as if you've started to really see and understand human nature in a way that very few people have and in a way that may even be a little bit uncomfortable.

[0:12:29.0] SSD: Yeah, there's definitely an uncomfortable element to it, because I think people lie. There are two islands. One of it which I think is comforting is that you can feel less weird knowing that other people are also weird. I think a lot of human suffering is because everybody else puts on a front of how their life is going. I think a lot of people think that their problems are – they're uniquely messed up. I think the data from Google, or from Pornhub shows you, “All right, everybody's a mess in their own way, or weird in their own way,” and even if it's not talked about and there's probably nothing particularly abnormal about you. That I think can really comfort people.

There is also a dark side. Another reason people lie is people lie in socially desirable ways to say, for example, “I'm not racist.” I uncovered in Google searches a huge amount of secret, explicit racism in the United States, people searching for really, really nasty jokes about African-Americans in huge numbers. That does make you feel worse that people might be if you're black, people might be smiling at you and shaking your hand and being really friendly and nice, but then they're going home and searching things like N-word jokes that is an uncomfortable fact that this data reveals.

[0:13:48.3] MB: How have you grappled with that and what have you taken away from that research? How have you thought about what we should do with that information?

[0:13:59.7] SSD: Initially, I just was uncovering these facts that are hidden, but now I'm more interested in how we can use it to change society. Instead of studying how much racism is there, say can we use this data to understand what actually lowers racism, which may be different from what people talk about. 

Yeah, I think there are just a lot of secrets. I'll give you one study I'm working on a little bit. It's preliminary, but I'm doing this study on what people search for before they search for suicide, which I think is really, really important. I don't think we really know it necessarily why people choose to end their life, or think about ending their lives, because there's so much stigma around mental health and suicide.

I found that a big complaint is health problems, about 30% of people before they search for suicide searched for some health problems. Many of the health problems in the data set I was looking at – there's actually a different data set. It's an AOL data set, which allows you to track anonymous individuals over time, not Google which doesn't allow you to do that. 30% were health problems and the number one health complaint was depression, which isn't any surprise. We know that depression is a major risk factor for suicide and anxiety was very high.

Then near the top in the data set I looked at was herpes, the STD. People search for herpes, and then basically that they've gotten a diagnosis of herpes, then they search looking to commit suicide. That shocked the hell out of me, because that's not really usually considered a risk factor for a suicide. I think the reason for that is the stigma around the disease. Some young people when they get the diagnosis that being young, it is a period of life where there's a huge amount of paranoia and nobody really knows what's going on, what's normal, what's weird and many people can get very paranoid.

I was also looking at this data and I said, okay, what else do people search when they search herpes and suicide? I found the number one other search for people searching herpes and suicide was celebrities with herpes, which is actually a common search for many illnesses. If people have searched – suggest they have depression, they searched for celebrities with depression and I think people with an illness like to find role models, people who have that disease and have spoken out about having that disease and it makes them feel better, so they know they're not alone and they know that some of their heroes also have struggled with this problem.

Then I googled what comes up when you search celebrities with herpes. When I looked, as I checked, basically all that comes up is a list of celebrities accused of having herpes who deny they have herpes. They're a couple B list, or C list, or probably D list celebrities who do say they have herpes to try to lower the stigma, but very, very few celebrities and no real A list celebrities.

That's disturbing that you have this data uncovered by searches that there seem to be a large number of people, particularly young people greeting a diagnosis of herpes with thoughts of suicide and they're looking for role models. Instead of having a list of top celebrities saying, “I have this. It's not a big deal. It's nothing to be ashamed of.” We have a few celebrities saying, “I would never have such a horrible illness. It's so embarrassing that I would never admit it,” basically. I think that literally based on my analysis, if celebrities admitted that they had herpes that literally would save lives.

[0:17:24.9] MB: It's so interesting that even the concept of retroactively looking back through search histories and saying, okay, someone is searching about suicide, which is a predictor of potential suicide rates, let's figure out what's causing that. The ability to even just go back through their search history and see the evolution of those thought patterns is such a fascinating research methodology and creates so much potential for really truly understanding how people think and behave.

[0:17:57.4] SSD: Yeah. It's sad too. It makes you more compassionate, because some of these search strings, I just remember this one guy, he's in horrible back pain and just over and over again, he's like, “I need to end my life. I can't take this back pain anymore. Blah, blah, blah.” It just makes you compassionate, because you really have no idea who's in back pain. It's like, you might walk around and be jealous of some guy, or girl, or like, “Oh, that person has everything.” If they have back pain, they might be going literally insane on the verge of suicide because of that. You just really don't know what's going on in other people's minds.

I think when you look through some of this data, I think it does make you more compassionate, more easy on other people. There are a lot of people struggling with things that aren't openly talked about. Even people who probably on the outside look like they have everything, or look  like they have it all together.

[0:18:53.3] MB: I think that that is such an important life lesson. One of my favorite quotes and I'll paraphrase it a little bit, but it's this idea that everyone you know is fighting a battle that you know nothing about. Your research has really in many ways uncovered the truth behind that and peered into the soul of many people and realized wow, there really is so much suffering and struggle that we never hear about, never see about, especially in today's world which ironically, the surface level of all these technologies, all of the social media is this glossy veneer of my life is perfect and it's amazing and look at me going on vacation and eating all this amazing food and taking wonderful photos. Yet the flip side of that, the same technology platforms are basically hiding and housing the deep, dark secrets of all of these people.

[0:19:48.9] SSD: Yeah, definitely. That's a good way to put it. Sometimes I do wonder if we'd all just be happier. I’d never suggest this, but if literally all our searches were just revealed, or all our Internet behavior would just be revealed, it would be embarrassing for five seconds, then I think we'd almost have a better society at that point. I think a huge cause of unhappiness is comparison to other people's lives and other people's cultivated lives. The lives that they put on social media and the lives that they might talk about when they're trying to impress you.

I think a lot of us feel our lives don't compare. Then if you saw people searches, you see just about everybody's going through a lot of suffering and a lot of anxiety and a lot of doubt and a lot of weird thoughts. I think it would just make everybody feel a little more normal, a little more okay in who they are. I hope that at least my book and some of the research I've done will do that on an aggregate stick scale. You don't know for any individual, okay, what's that person going through, but you know through this data that a lot of people, a huge number of people are going through things.

It's a good excuse to go easier on yourself and on other people. You go easier on other people, because you know they're going through things. You go easier on yourself, because you're like, “Okay, I haven't failed as much as maybe I feel I have. Other people also have problems and issues and struggles and difficulties and it's totally normal.”

[0:21:16.5] MB: Such a great insight. We've had a number of really good interviews on the show about the power and the importance of being self-compassionate. I'll throw some of those into the show notes for listeners who want to dig in on that. You brought up a really good point earlier and just underscored it again, which is this notion that as a researcher who's actually coming through this data, you've uncovered so many fascinating trends. One of the changes that it's created for you is that you've become more compassionate and more understanding of other people and their quirkiness and their own struggles and challenges. What are some of the other changes, or lessons that you've pulled from doing all of this groundbreaking research?

[0:22:01.6] SSD: Dating is another one. When you see the pornography data and how much variation there is and what people search for, I think when I first started dating a while ago, I viewed the world as everybody is ranked 1 to 10. Brad Pitt or whatever is a 10 for men and Natalie Portman is a 10 for women and goes down from there. I think you do see in the data that that’s not really as true as you might think. There are some people into just about anything.

I think one experience that I've been through and I think other people maybe can relate is you get rejected by someone who you think is a 5, or a 4 and then you go on a date with someone who you think is a 7 or 8 and she's into you and you're like, “Why?” Well, you might just be her type basically. That makes rejection a little less personal too, because you might really just not be – it's not just that I'm lower on the ladder than you are, it's more just like, okay, I may not be your type. Just keep going out and trying until you find someone who is your type and you are their type.

[0:23:12.8] MB: Yeah. That's a really important lesson, this idea that this false narrative, or the social construct of some dating hierarchy doesn't really exist. This could be applied to any – even something like sales, right? If you don't have a pipeline of opportunities and you give up after the first no, or the first rejection, you're missing out on a huge array of potential that – and this could apply to any endeavor in life. If you don't cultivate a number of opportunities, you may not get to where you need to get, because there's so many different reasons that people may like you, or your business, or your opportunity, your idea, your podcast, your research, whatever it might be, you as somebody in the dating pool, all these different pieces. 

A lot of times it's a process of discovery to go out there and put yourself out there. You have to be willing to be rejected and fail a few times to really find a good match for yourself.

[0:24:08.4] SSD: Definitely. I think yeah, the variation in taste is really, really important, I think. Yeah, it's the same with entertainment, or a podcast. Some comedians – I might find a comedian really funny. My friend may think that person's not funny. Then there might be another comedian where it's completely reversed. You just have to find your market and put your content out there widely and find your market and not take the rejection so personally.

[0:24:37.4] MB: Do you remember when you started your small business? It was no small feat. It took a lot of late nights, early mornings and the occasional all-nighter. The bottom line is that you've been insanely busy ever since. Why not make things a little easier? Well, our friends at FreshBooks have the solution.

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[0:26:06.2] MB: I want to zoom out a little bit and dig into a couple other themes from your research. One of the more interesting papers that you produced that I thought was fascinating discussed the relationship between opioids and anxiety and panic attacks. Tell me a little bit about that work and how you decided to research that and what some of the conclusions were.

[0:26:29.6] SSD: Oh, so I just was interested. There's been a big rise in anxiety searches in the United States over time. There's this tool Google Correlate, which allows you to see basically what searches are made the same time periods that searches for – If you put a search, anxiety or panic attack, it will tell you what searches, track that search in a time series that when weeks and when those searches are high, panic attack searches are high.

One of the top when I looked at it was opiate withdrawal. That was really interesting, because I'm like, “Wow. Are opiates playing a big role in the rise of anxiety?” Again, something that's not really talked about. In general, the whole anxiety thing is interesting, because I think I live in New York City, I live in Brooklyn, I'm from the New York area. I think there's a stereotype of urban intellectuals being really neurotic. There's Woody Allen and all these movies about being this neurotic New Yorker and Larry David expanded on that idea.

If you actually look at the data, where is anxiety highest, where panic attack is highest, it tends to be rural areas, poor areas, places with lower levels of education and I think areas that have been really hit hard by the opiate crisis. I think that was just suggestive evidence. It's not definitive, okay, the opiate crisis is causing a rise in anxiety. I think it's highly suggestive that that's playing a role.

[0:28:04.5] MB: Very interesting. What are some other fascinating connections, or things that you've uncovered in your research peering into some of these search result trends?

[0:28:18.2] SSD: One of them, this actually isn't my research, but I think it's an important one. The Microsoft researchers have looked at people who searched for pancreatic cancer, suggesting they just got diagnosed with a pancreatic cancer. What are they searching the weeks and months before that. They found really, really subtle patterns of search symptoms, basically what symptoms they searched. They found things like if you search indigestion followed by abdominal pain, that's a risk factor for pancreatic cancer.

That really wasn't known to the medical community and that's I think a really fascinating way to do medicine, to mine these enormous data sets with thousands or tens of thousands of people who just say they got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and what symptoms were they searching in the lead up. The key with pancreatic cancer is the earlier you find out, the higher your survival rate. We can potentially use this information to maybe help people earlier on.

[0:29:09.7] MB: That's wild. That in many ways reminds me of the same methodology from some of the research around suicide and in the sense of looking for people who searched for pancreatic cancer and then tracking that back through time and saying, well, what were the prior searches that were precursors to them having that potential diagnosis? The whole idea of using that as a medical diagnostic tool could really open up some fascinating possibilities.

[0:29:35.9] SSD: Yeah, definitely.

[0:29:37.4] MB: I want to change gears and think about how we can take some of the lessons and ideas from your research and apply this to our own lives. I know you mentioned to me that you're working on a project about how we can start to use data to make better life decisions. Tell me a little bit more about that.

[0:29:57.1] SSD: This is I guess right along with the theme of your work. I just really noticed in my own life that I'm obsessed with data. I really love the book Moneyball and the movie Moneyball. I'm a big baseball fan, so I was obsessed from an early age about data analytics in how they transformed baseball. I've used in my own business, like when I worked at Google, I was using data to help make decisions.

When I think about the big decisions of my own life, I would say I'm about as nerdy and data-focused as it gets. I would say basically, I've largely gone on my intuition, just followed advice of other people. I haven't really used good data and I haven't done things. One of the great things about the Moneyball example is that baseball teams start doing all these counterintuitive things, these things that looked wrong and felt wrong, but war according to the data actually right.

Baseball teams started widely using the infield shift, where you put all the infielders – you put mostly infielders on one side of the infield. It looks crazy. You're opening up one side of the field totally. It looks like it can't possibly be a good decision. Yet, the data suggests more times than not, it's the right play. I can't really think of many examples in my own life where I've done something that felt wrong, but it was justified by the data.

I wanted to say what would be a Moneyball approach to life, to the big life decisions, to dating, to parenting, to career, to health, dieting, to happiness. What would be things that maybe, or many of them might be counterintuitive, many of them might feel wrong, but actually according to the data are better decisions. That's what I've been exploring for the last couple years and hopefully producing a book based on it.

[0:31:51.0] MB: What have you uncovered so far and which decision categories have you started to dig into?

[0:31:55.9] SSD: One of the ones I like is parenting. If you actually look at the data on parenting, I think it's pretty overwhelming that the number one decision you make as a parent that counts more than every other decision combined is where you raise your kids. There's new evidence that they've tracked using tax data, kids who move from one part of the United States to another part of the United States. 

They found that growing up in certain parts of the United States just gives you a massive advantage, even tiny neighborhoods are massive advantages, relative to the other things parents do the evidence for a long time has said overall, parenting has actually a pretty small effect, whether you read to your kids, or whether you ban video games, or what advice you give them, all these things seem to add up to not that much.

Then the neighborhood you raise your kids in adds up to a whole lot to the point that I think more than 50% of the impact to a parent will be what neighborhood you raise them in. Then there's all these data using these places, the best places, both the places that have historically been the best places to raise your kids and the characteristics of neighborhoods that are best places to raise their kids. 

What seems to matter more than anything else it's not the economics of the area, whether it's growing or not, it's not necessarily even the schools, traditional metrics of school success, it tends to be the people around the area, whether they're good citizens themselves, whether they're good role models for your kids.

I think one of the reasons for this, the evidence starting to suggest is that kids frequently will tune out what you tell them. If you give them advice, they'll go through a stage where they're like, “Ah, that's stupid. I'm going to try something else.” They go through a stage where they think you're a clown and you're crazy and everything you say is wrong, but the neighbors they’ll always respect and think highly of.

For example, girls who move to areas with lots of female scientists, if their neighbors are female scientists, they're much more likely to become a female scientist. Basically, what it suggests is as parents, that's counterintuitive, so I think parents just assume okay, the big things are how I raise them, the models I sell, or the career advice I give them, the opportunities I offer them, the lessons I teach them, the books I read to them, the presents I give them. I think what this suggests is really the big thing you're going to give them is the people you put in their environment, people you put near them, the other adults you put near them, who they're going to model themselves after and track.

Again, these are not necessarily the places you'd normally think. It's not necessarily, okay, go to the suburbs where there's some highly ranked school. That may not be the best role models. There may be better people, better role models in other parts of the country.

[0:34:44.3] MB: Very interesting. Coming back to the framework that you're using for this, I love the Moneyball approach to solving some of these big challenges in life and using science data and research to find sometimes counterintuitive strategies is such a great methodology for trying to implement really anything.

[0:35:05.0] SSD: Yeah, definitely. Another one is dating, because this came up in this discussion of porn, but there's actually a study where they've shown that woman who shave their heads do surprisingly well in online dating sites and getting lots of dates, which you think would be totally crazy. Women shaving their heads is not usually thought of as attractive. It goes to the point that there are different types and people are into different things. By doing something that really expresses your personality, you can really become 10s to some people.

I think the intuitive strategy in dating is you rank yourself on a scale of one to 10 and you try to say, “What can push me higher? If I'm a five, how can I make myself into a six on average?” I think the better dating strategy is to increase your variance, not your mean. Instead of saying if you're a five, don't try to say what makes me a six on average. Say what makes me a 10 to some people? Do things that might be a little bit more – that some people are going to find really unattractive, but some people are going to find really attractive.

[0:36:12.1] MB: That methodology of increasing your variance instead of your mean in general is a great mental model. Dating is certainly one example where that can be really effective. I think even drawing that out and having that as a tool in your tool about of mental models is a great and very counterintuitive method for potentially improving your output, or your results in many different fields.

[0:36:36.9] MB: That's true. I agree. It depends a little on how big is the market, are there different preferences for your product, I guess. Yeah, I think in general it's probably not done enough. I think a lot of people are really concerned with people thinking they're weird. Doing these things frequently requires getting your variance high, frequently requires doing things that will make some people think you're weird.

If you shave your head as a woman, you're walking down the street, some people are going to think, “That person's a weirdo,” but it's actually the better strategy. If you have an outrageous product, that's going to cause some people to think you're weird, but it could mean some people are really into you.

Yeah, I think artists have found this a lot. Bob Dylan, I remember when he was starting out, he just got extreme reactions, very polarized reactions. Some people loved him and some people hated him and thought he was the weirdest guy ever and why's this guy singing. That was a good thing. I think Dylan had this personality where he didn't care so much about people thinking he was weird, which helped him a lot.

[0:37:47.2] MB: If you look at a field, even as broad as success, if you want to achieve something that not a lot of people have achieved, you have to do something that not a lot of people are willing to do. That same idea of doing things that people may say, “You're weird. Why are you doing that?” Those are often the exact things that you need to, or should be doing if you really want to stand out, if you really want to create results, if you really want to achieve something.

[0:38:13.8] SSD: Yeah. I mean, I definitely learned that in my own life. I was working at Google and I remember I was in this beard garden with a couple my friends, a bunch is random people and I was about to quit my job to write my book. I was reading sections for my book to them. It was I think a section on sexuality, or pornography, which I thought was really interesting. They were just like, “Who the hell is this creep? He's so weird. Why is he quitting his job at Google? You have a good job. You're going to quit to write this book.” Then it ended up working out really, really well.

Yeah, I think now if people think I'm weird, I don't really think it's bad. I usually think that's a good thing. I'm a little concerned when everybody thinks what I'm doing is really normal, or everybody thinks it's a good idea, because again, yeah, just being meh, okay to everybody, it is not usually the way to win in modern society.

[0:39:04.1] MB: That's a great lesson something I've also experienced in my own life. It's so important to really think about – I almost use it as a contra indicator. If I'm doing something, or a positive indicator. If I see something I'm like, “This seems weird and people might judge me for doing this,” I often think to myself, “Maybe that means that that's exactly why I should do it.”

[0:39:27.4] SSD: Yeah. You got to stand out. Attention is so hard to get these days. I think so many people are – there's such a high pressure to conform and to not be weird, basically. People feel that so strongly. I think you got to try to fight against that.

[0:39:43.0] MB: Seth, for listeners who want to take something that we've talked about today and concretely implement some of these themes and ideas into their lives, or use what we've discussed to improve their lives in some way, what would be one action item that you would give them as a step to concretely implement or use this to improve themselves?

[0:40:03.7] SSD: Maybe any time they're feeling bad about their lives, just look at Google autocomplete and type something like, “I am always.” You'll see all these people. “I'm always tired. I'm always hungry. I'm always thirsty.” I think typing in things like this and seeing what's on people's minds, I found that usually makes me feel a little better when I'm really hard on myself, makes me a little more compassionate.

[0:40:30.4] MB: That's a great and really simple hack to realize that everybody is struggling and everybody is suffering, and that you are not an isolated island. That part of the human experience is almost to feel the solution that you're alone, when really, we're all going through the same things.

[0:40:51.7] SSD: Yeah. Again, I think at least myself, but I'm guessing a lot of other people really can be hard on their selves, thinking that everybody else has it figured out. We personally don't. Literally, Google autocomplete. Just type, “I hate.” You see, “I hate myself. I hate my wife. I hate.” You just see, okay, a lot of people are struggling and confused.

[0:41:13.5] MB: Well Seth, where can listeners find you and your work and all of your research online?

[0:41:18.9] SSD: I always suggest just googling Everybody Lies Seth, because I have a complicated last name that nobody's going to find. If you Google Everybody Lies Seth, you'll find out who I am and see all my website and my Twitter feed and anything else you'd want.

[0:41:35.2] MB: Well Seth, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing some really fascinating and thought-provoking research and some interesting life hacks and strategies to implement as a result of it.

[0:41:46.7] SSD: Thanks so much.

[0:41:48.2] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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Remember, the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to a friend, either live or online. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us an awesome review and subscribe on iTunes because that helps boost the algorithm that helps us move up the iTunes rankings and helps more people discover the Science of Success. 

Don't forget, if you want to get all the incredible information we talk about in the show, links transcripts, everything we discussed and much more, be sure to check out our show notes. You can get those at successpodcast.com, just hit the show notes button right at the top. 

Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Science of Success.

The Science of Sleep Revealed: How To Hack Your Sleep with Dr. Daniel Gartenberg

In this episode we discuss all things sleep. Sleep has been under attack for the last 10+ years and yet it is one of the most powerful things you can do for your performance, your health, your mental well being, and your body. We explore how to improve your sleep, how sleep works, and what you can be doing to sleep better with our guest Dr. Dan Gartenberg. 

Dr. Dan Gartenberg is a researcher and tech inventor. He holds a PhD in cognitive psychology with expertise in sleep, A.I. and preventative health. He is the creator of several apps including the Sonic Sleep app for detecting sleep stages and improving sleep quality using wearable tech. Daniel has three patents, numerous peer reviewed publications, and his technology has been featured on TED.com, the Today Show, Inside Science, and many more outlets!

• Sleep has been under attack for the last 10+ years in our society

• Lack of work life balance and constant phone addiction are destroying our society’s sleep 

• Sleep impacts nearly every single chronic health issue and disease, every organ of the body

• Sleep is the operating system for how we make sense of the world

• There’s a problematic “badge of honor” that people wear thinking that not sleeping is good for you

• The “synaptic homeostasis hypothesis” and why it demonstrates the vital importance of sleep to memory consolidation, personality, and much more. 

• Sleep cleans out beta amyloid plaques in your brain and reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s

• Daylight savings time predictably increases heart attack risks because of the 1 hour sleep reduction 

• Neuroscience and sleep is one of the final frontiers of human exploration. 

• What are the different phases of sleep?

• REM sleep vs Non-REM Sleep. REM sleep is “almost magical” for your brain. 

• In the US there are 4 stages of sleep.. but in Europe there are 5 stages of sleep… this demonstrates that our understanding of sleep is still VERY early stage.

• “N1 Sleep” - the transition between the conscious and unconscious mind. 

• You want more REM and you want more DEEP SLEEP and not more light sleep. 

• Deep sleep is how you prune, REM is how you integrate. 

• When you are in deep sleep your brain is operating on delta waves.. which are a completely different experience to waking life.

• Is there a way to get more out of the sleep that you’re getting?

• How many hours of sleep should you actually be getting?

• Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep on a regular basis according to the world’s top sleep scientists. 

• Hours in bed are not the same thing as hours asleep - you need 7.5+ hrs in bed to ensure you get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep. 

• Sleep until you can’t sleep anymore.

•  When should you nap? Is napping good for you?

• Taking a power nap right at your circadian dip is often an optimal performance strategy. 

• What is your circadian rhythm and how can it shape your sleep schedule and performance?

• What is “chronobiology” and how it can help us be more productive and effective?

•  The importance of sunlight in controlling your circadian rhythm.

• How does intermittent fasting interact with your daily energy levels and circadian rhythms?

• What are the hacks and strategies for improving your sleep quality and getting more out of your deep sleep?

• Tip: get rid of noise pollution when you’re sleeping. 

• Your “Homeostatic sleep need” builds up as you get tired and helps you sleep more effectively

• “Targeted memory reactivation” in sleep science - smells during a REM sleep will cause memories to process and encode while you are dreaming. 

• Visualizing and practicing in your dreams or practicing tasks in your dreams can help you improve waking performance

• Science backs up the concept of lucid dreaming.

• Homework: Find one thing to do to improve your sleep quality. 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

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It's a labor of love which makes getting through the late nights, early mornings, and occasional all-nighter so worth it. It's no secret that business owners are incredibly busy!

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• Dan’s Website

• Dan’s LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook

Media

• Being Patient - “An Expert’s Secrets to a Better Night’s Sleep—And a Healthier Brain” By Christine Barba

• [Research Directory] ResearchGate - Daniel Gartenberg

• [Citation Directory] Google Scholar Citations - Daniel Gartenberg

• NY Times - “No, Night Owls Aren’t Doomed to Die Early” By Bryan Clark

• HumanOS - “Sleep Tracking and Sleep Enhancement. Podcast with Dr. Daniel Gartenberg” by Ginny Robards

• Quartz - “Why eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist” By Georgia Frances King

• Bulletproof - “Your Sleep Quality Declines As You Age. Here’s What to Do About it” By Courtney Sperlazza

• Inc. - “The '8 Hours of Sleep' Rule Is a Myth. Here's What You Should Do Instead” By Julian Hayes II

• HotDoc - “The Science of Sleep, And the Noise that Induces Deep Sleep” By Michael McKay

• [Article Directory] on Medium

• NewsWire - A New Scientific Sleep App Recently Featured on Dr. Dan Gartenberg's TED.com Talk

• NY Post - “Modern life is so stressful that humans need even more sleep” By News.com.au

• HuffPost - “I’m Thinking About Sleeping - And Science” by Steven Rosenbaum

• [Podcast] FutureTech Podcast - An App That Can Help You Achieve Deep, High-Quality Sleep—Daniel Gartenberg, PhD—Sonic Sleep Coach

• [Podcast] Bulletproof Radio w/ Dave Asprey - “SLEEP NEED & SLEEP AGE: FIND OUT YOURS – DAN GARTENBERG, PH.D. #583”

• [Podcast] Founders and Funders - EP 56: The Software Team That’s Revolutionizing Sleep Health

• [Podcast] The Disruptors - 116. Sleeping Your Way to Superhuman Lifespan Before We Become Cyborgs | Dan Gartenberg

• [Podcast] Best Night Ever - The “Ask A Sleep Researcher Show” with Dr. Dan Gartenberg PhD

Videos

• TEDTalk - Dan Gartenberg | TED Residency - The brain benefits of deep sleep — and how to get more of it

• Being Patient - Have A Bad Night's Sleep? Here's What It Is Doing To Your Brain

• Dr. Nikki Talks Health - Tips to Deep Sleep with Daniel Gartenberg of Sonic Sleep

• Young and Profiting - Episode. 12: Unlocking the Power of Sleep with Daniel Gartenberg

• Dr. Anil Shah - "Masters Of Beauty" Sleep Scientifically with Dr. Daniel Gartenberg - Founder & CEO of Sonic Sleep

• Espeakers - Daniel Gartenberg: "Tracking and Improving My Sleep"

• NSL Experience: Never Stop Learning - NSL Bites: Daniel Gartenberg, PhD, Discusses the Impact of Sleep on our Health

• HumanOS.me - 071. Sleep Tracking and Sleep Enhancement. Podcast with Dr. Daniel Gartenberg

Misc

• [SoS Episode] Using The Bleeding Edge of Neuroscience to Optimize Your Brain with Dr. Daniel Chao

• [Film] Waking Life

• [Apps] Daniel’s Apps

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we discuss all things sleep. Sleep has been under attack for the last 10 plus years and yet, it is one of the most powerful things you can do for your performance, your health, your mental well-being and your body. We explore how to improve your sleep, how sleep works and what you can be doing to sleep better right now with our guest, Dr. Dan Gartenberg.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word “smarter”, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we exposed the lie that success makes you happy and discovered the truth about engineering happiness into your life. Can you choose to be happy? If so, what should you do and how should you change your behavior? We also confronted the reality that in today's world, we no longer have the tools to handle real or even perceived threats. We discussed how to build mental toughness and what you can do to build your own mental strength and resilience. All of that and much more with our previous guest, Neil Pasricha. If you want to be happier, listen to our previous episode. Now for our interview with Dr. Dan.

[0:02:09.5] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Dr. Dan Gartenberg. Dr. Dan is a researcher and tech inventor. He holds a PhD in cognitive psychology with an expertise in sleep, AI and preventative health. He's the creator of several apps, including the Sonic Sleep app for detecting sleep stages and improving sleep quality using wearable technology. Dr. Dan has three patents, numerous peer-group publications and his technology has been featured on the TED stage, The Today Show and many more media outlets. Dr. Dan, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:02:40.2] DG: Hey, thanks for having me, Matt.

[0:02:42.0] MB: Well, we're super excited to have you on the show today. Sleep is such an important topic. I'm so excited to dig into it. Tell me a little bit about the way that we sleep today and why it's not the way that we've always slept?

[0:02:58.6] DG: Yeah. Sleep has been under attack really since the past 10 years, especially with all these chirping devices poking you at all times a day, the work/life balance where now that people have e-mails, they're always expected to be responsive. It’s really created this lack of boundary between when you should be in work mode and when you should be in sleep mode, regenerating your body.

When we start looking into the science of sleep, what we find is that sleep is literally impacts almost every single chronic health disease, it impacts every organ of the body. At this time when we're taking in more information than ever, sleep is actually the operating system for how we make sense of all of that, sometimes meaningful, but often times meaningless snapchats, or tweets, or what have you. At the same time that sleep is under attack with crummy lights from your office space and the lack of work-life balance, it's actually probably more important than ever to help us navigate this barrage of information that we're being attacked by every day.

[0:04:20.6] MB: It's funny, because in our society today, some people treat it as almost a badge of honor to not sleep, or to hustle 24/7 and to constantly be checking their phone and yet, the research is pretty clear that that's pretty devastating path for your health.

[0:04:37.1] DG: Yeah. I mean, this whole badge of honor societal thing, I'm a New Yorker, so it's especially palpable here, this I sleep when I'm dead. People are like, “Oh, I got four hours of sleep last night.” It's similar to when this smug badge of honor around binging Netflix for four hours and stuff. There's really a societal change that needs to be taken place just on how we think about sleep and how we value it. It's funny when people say they sleep-deprive themselves, I think in my mind, it's almost like when people used to brag like, “Oh, I smoke X amount of cigarettes or something like that.” That was more socially acceptable 40 years ago to say something like that. I think that's what in 30 years from now, people are going to look back on our society and they'll have a similar feeling around smoking as we think about sleep.

[0:05:36.1] MB: Yeah, that's a great perspective. It'll be interesting to see how we look back in the future, 40, 50 years in the future and see the way today that we treated sleep and all the things that we didn't understand about how important it is, or did understand and didn't act on.

[0:05:53.7] DG: Yeah. I mean, especially as jobs become more cognitive. I do a lot of – some programming, which I shouldn't do, but I do a lot of heavy-lifting cognitive tasks. Sleep is almost a useful tool in accomplishing those things. There's famous anecdotes about Einstein and Edison using naps to ideate. I think a lot of people can relate to waking up from say, a power nap and being able to solve that problem, because your brain is processing how to solve problems and optimize your survival while you're sleeping.

There's a theory that got me introduced to this when I was an undergrad at University of Wisconsin, one the most famous researchers in this field is a gentleman named Giulio Tononi and he founded something called the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis. It's basically this idea that deep sleep in particular functions to down-regulate all of the excitatory connections that you make throughout the day, such that they're relevant things to your survival rise to the top. It used to be like, “Oh, don't go to this part of the jungle. That's where the predators are.” Now it's like, “Oh, what did Mindy say to me at the office holiday dinner or whatever?” Something a lot more innocuous, but it's still relevant to your survival oftentimes.

Then in REM, you basically replay that pertinent information and then integrate it into your long-term memory and your working memory and your personality really, long-term memory and personality. That's one of the main functions of sleep called the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis for why sleep is so important to performance and success.

[0:07:41.9] MB: That's fascinating. Tell me a little bit more about why we sleep and how important it is.

[0:07:50.2] DG: Yes, so there's probably eight reasons why we sleep. Every organism on the planet sleeps for various reasons. Obviously for lower organisms, it’s more around energy conservation, making it so you can get predators at certain times and focus your energy, or get prey at certain times and focus your energy on that. For humans and actually all living organisms, a lot of this is cell recovery and repairing damaged cells in your body.

Something that we focus in our laboratory is in how sleep actually cleans out that beta amyloid plaques that form in your brain, which are associated with things like Alzheimer's disease. Deep sleep in particular, responsible for human growth hormone, doing the cell recovery thing and then these areas involving memory integration and whatnot. Sometimes when I try to scare people, I say stuff like, sleep is related to cardiovascular disease very strongly. If you don't go treated for something like sleep apnea, it takes five years off of your life in one study, they showed.

It also is correlated with cancer, as I mentioned, Alzheimer's disease. Really strong correlations with hypertension. Even one day of sleep deprivation can cause a spike. There's a cool science experiment that every member of society does twice a year, which is daylight savings time. It's looking at population studies. It's really interesting. What they find is when we lose an hour, the rate of heart attacks predictably increases, which again points to how sleep is really so tied to our health and well-being.

[0:09:50.0] MB: It's amazing that sleep, or lack of sleep essentially correlates with all-cause mortality essentially across nearly every negative outcome, increases in probability if you're not sleeping. Every positive outcome, or many positive outcomes increase in probability of you are.

[0:10:06.2] DG: That's right.

[0:10:07.4] MB: Tell me a little bit more about deep sleep and zooming that out slightly, more broadly the sleep phases. What is sleep made of and what are the different components of it?

[0:10:20.1] DG: This is what is so captivating to me. I'm a very curious person and explorer. I also want to help people. The neuroscience and sleep in particular is one of those last frontiers. Right up there, right? The brain is right up there with the universe in my mind. The crazy thing about sleep is we really only discovered this process around 70 years ago, when we made this distinction between REM and non-REM sleep, based on hooking people up to various EEGs. These EEG electrodes, this montage is known as in sleep as polysomnography. It's a 16-channel montage. Usually there's 12 on the scalp at various locations to get the different brain regions. EOGs to measure REM, because when you're in REM sleep, your eyes dart around while you're dreaming and actually, your body's paralyzed.

The first distinction that they made with the stages in the 40s basically was what's known as REM and non-REM. There's really clear physiological signals between those stages. Your body is paralyzed in REM, you lose thermal regulation. When I've looked at people's brainwaves in the lab and when they're in REM, it's almost a magical thing. You see a really noticeable transition on what we use to measure sleep.

Then there's non-REM. This is what points to how complicated this process is and we really still don't understand it, the fact that in the United States, there are four stages of sleep. In Europe, there are five stages of sleep. What this points to is the fact that humans a lot of times like to create these arbitrary categories. It gives you a sense of control. When you look at some of these physiological phenomena, it's not so easy to categorize them. The way that we even define sleep in and of itself is probably going to be archaic in the next – as soon as 10 years, I think.

Some researchers even claim that there are 19 stages of sleep. A lot of this has to do with distinctions in light sleep, or N1, that transition phase between consciousness and the unconscious mind, which is probably much more complicated than we give it credit for and another area that were fascinated in our laboratory. It's very complicated. A simple way of thinking about what you want to get out of your sleep is you want more REM and you want more deep sleep at the expense of light sleep, and you want to make sure that you're sleeping enough.

[0:13:21.1] MB: No, that's super helpful. I want to dig into how we can ultimately capture both more REM and more deep sleep. Before we do, tell me a little bit more about the distinction between each of those and which works for things like memory consolidation and things like that, which is more important for cell regeneration, etc., and what's happening in each of those phases.

[0:13:42.6] DG: Yeah. The thing about REM and deep sleep is that they're very tied together. It's hard to inhibit one without inhibiting the other. I think about it like deep sleep is how we prune and then REM is how we integrate. When you're in REM, your consciousness is very similar to your waking consciousness. It's why we remember our dreams from that perspective of the eye. You have your sense of self when you're in REM.

When you're in deep sleep, your brain is oscillating at these delta waves, which are very different to waking life. You basically don't have this sense of self really when you're in deep sleep. Your whole brain oscillates and these delta wave bursts, which is point 0.80 to 1 Hertz basically. As you get older, what happens is you lose that percentage of time spent in deep sleep usually at the expense of light sleep.

What a lot of researchers now are interested in is since we lose this as we get older, is there a way and they think it's related to aging, memory, all these really things that help you keep you young, is there a way, especially for older people to enhance your deep sleep brainwaves? I've been in this field for a while. I've been making sleep apps for a long time. I gave up for a while when I saw how inaccurate some of the sensors were when I was doing algorithm development work for a Fortune 500 company in grad school.

When the Apple watch came out, what we saw was finally we can get the raw data from the watch augmented with heart rate and actually detect people's sleep stages in real time, for the purpose of delivering an intervention that actually makes their sleep more regenerative. That's the golden goose thing that I'm going to dedicate my life to trying to figure out. Is there a way to get more out of the sleep that you're already getting?

I mean, first and foremost, get enough sleep. After that, how do you get more out of the sleep that you're getting? We study this in a very scientific way in our laboratory, but there's lots of hacks that I can throw at you in order to get you to have a more regenerative amount of sleep through increasing your deep sleep brainwaves and augmenting your REM as well. I'd be happy to dive into that with you.

[0:16:20.9] MB: Yeah, absolutely. No, I want to get into all of the hacks for improving deep sleep, for augmenting REM sleep, for making it more effective. Before we do that, the thing that fascinates me is and I've anecdotally heard this. I'm sure many people have, this idea that your sleep actually gets worse as you get older and it makes sense that this deep sleep phase is the thing that's decreasing.

I'm curious for somebody who's listening, we've probably heard these recommendations, but it always bears repeating, how much sleep should you actually be getting and what are the consequences of saying, “Oh, I can operate just fine on four hours of sleep, or six hours of sleep, or whatever that number is.” Tell me a little bit about that.

[0:17:02.0] DG: Yeah, great. Thanks for bringing that there, because that's really one of the core questions that needs to be understood. Oftentimes, the media is really bad at expressing nuance. There's all these articles like, get eight hours of sleep. I even had an article that I was quoted in eight and a half is the new eight. The thing about something like sleep is it's very individualistic. It's hard to give these generic pieces of advice that are good clickbait. It's not a great headline. Some people need seven hours, other people need eight.

The society of behavioral sleep medicine gave a consensus report amongst all the best sleep researchers in the field that adults need seven to nine hours of sleep on a regular basis. That's a nice lower limit. Something to keep in mind is when they say that they also need seven hours of sleep, not seven hours in bed. Actually, if you spend more than 95% - if you spend a 100% of the time in bed asleep, it actually probably means you're sleep-depriving yourself. A healthy amount would be 90% to 95%. Basically, what that means is adults should be spending at least seven and a half hours in bed.

Now, there's lots of things that can impact how much sleep you need. Not only does it differ between individuals, but it also differs intra-individually. Meaning, last week started up a more intense workout routine and I needed more sleep that next night. Bodybuilders do this all the time. They take these long naps in a day to build up their human growth hormone, so their body can recover and create more muscle.

Also, other situations like if you're sick, if you feel yourself getting sick, you want to get more sleep that day. Not only is it that I can't tell you what you need generally, I can't even tell you what you need exactly. It's going to vary from day-to-day too. There are certain ways that you could figure out your natural sleep need. One of them that my professor mentioned to me, Orfeu Buxton at Penn State; I work with him closely in our research, is basically try to book a relaxing vacation. Go to bed at the same time every day. Of vacation, you don't have a lot of external things pulling you out. How much you sleep without those external pressures is probably how much sleep you need.

One way we like to think about it is sleep to affect. Meaning, you should sleep until you basically can't sleep anymore. There's some nuance to that, but if you're depressed or if you have some thyroid issues, that might not be the case. For generally healthy people, you should just sleep until you can't sleep anymore and you shouldn't feel tired during the day.

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[0:21:40.4] MB: Is there a such thing as oversleeping?

[0:21:43.1] DG: I mean, you can oversleep for sure. I'm not a medical doctor by the way, but if you're depressed for something, you might not want to sleep too much. Actually, there's some evidence that if they have some – if you do extreme sleep deprivation, it can actually bounce you out of depression. I'm not recommending doing that. Talk to your doctor.

There is some links to mood and depression and you can actually shift yourself into a manic state in a certain sleep-deprived state. I mean, this is another topic about our society has these very judgmental things about depression and mania. It's also a naturally occurring thing to be able to shift into a manic state when your environment pushes you to do so. If you're being chased by a predator, you better get into a manic state for that.

Sometimes when I'm watching a product or whatnot, I'll get in a manic state a little bit and I’ll actually get less sleep when I'm in that situation. I have a good metacognition on when I'm in a state like that, because I don't have a chemical thing. It's caused by external environmental pressures, basically pushing me into that mindset. A lot of times what I'll do in response and is – I'll have a recovery sleep after that high-performance situation. This is just some personal experiences that I've had, but I think a lot of people can relate.

[0:23:13.2] MB: Is there such a thing as either cashing up on sleep? Or I've heard some people use the concept of a sleep bank, where you sleep a bunch and then don't sleep as much for a couple nights. Does that actually work, or do you need a certain amount every single night to really reap the benefits?

[0:23:29.7] DG: I mean, it works to some degree, but you can't fully catch up. If I were to say what the ideal situation is is get a healthy amount every night. Now obviously, that's not necessarily practical. In the cases where you're not getting enough one night, it's better to catch up the next day than to continue getting not enough. Does that make sense?

[0:23:55.7] MB: Absolutely. Yeah. It's possible, but it's not an ideal scenario.

[0:24:00.6] DG: You can make up some of the sleep debt, but you can't make up all of it. There is actually a strategy for taking – in sleep, there's actually different types of naps. There's something called an appetitive nap that you can do in preparation for your sleep deprivation. The timing of naps, especially for shift work, jetlag is something that's really important to maybe proactively counteracting a situation where you know you'll be sleep-depriving yourself.

[0:24:31.9] MB: I know we're jumping around a little bit, but you're bringing up some topics that I think are really interesting. I want to dig into napping briefly. This is another one that there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of gray areas. I've heard some people say that naps are amazing, they're super beneficial for you. I've heard other research that napping actually reduces the quality of your sleep, or your ability to fall asleep. If you're super tired, or if you're not, when is napping appropriate? When is napping a beneficial strategy, or should you be napping at all?

[0:25:00.8] DG: Yeah. This is one of those other nuances that it's really hard to give generic feedback on. Really, that's what we're trying to do with sonic sleep is understand uniquely what's going on with the individual, so we can give this relevant feedback. Napping is a perfect example, where you can't give a generic piece of advice to someone. If someone has a problem falling asleep and staying asleep, they have sleep problems, it's recommended that they do not take a nap, because what you want to do if you have problems falling asleep and stay asleep and staying asleep is you want to regulize your sleep and consolidate your sleep.

What naps can do for those people is it makes it – so it's even more difficult to consolidate their sleep, because it throws off their circadian rhythm. You actually want to build homeostatic sleep pressure at specific times if you're having problems falling asleep and staying asleep. One way to doing that is to not take naps and actually to push your bedtime back a little bit in certain situations.

Now if you're someone like me who doesn't really have a sleep problem, I mean, sometimes it's perfectly – almost everyone periodically throughout the year from a stressful situation has problems falling asleep. I don't have chronic problem. I don't have a chronic problem. For someone like me, taking a 20 minute power nap right at your circadian dip is probably the optimum performance. I find that my optimum performance is to probably get seven and a half hours sleep and then do a 20-minute power nap right at my circadian dip.

Now I'm a night person, so that's for me around 3:00, 3:30 in the afternoon, I'll do rest my – even resting your eyes for that period would naturally have this dip in alertness after lunch. After I do that, I come back, I'm able to reprocess what I was doing earlier in the day almost from a new slate, like I just woke up from processing all this information. I’m able to attack the day with more vigor when I do those sorts of power naps.

[0:27:23.1] MB: Very interesting. That's a great distinction between optimal performance and trying to reconcile, or solve some sleep problem and when napping may or may not be appropriate. The other topic that you just touched on that I want to understand a little bit better is the circadian rhythm. You talked about having a power nap right at your circadian dip. What is that and how does that fit into the broader structure of a circadian rhythm and how we can think about shaping our days and our sleep schedules and so forth around that?

[0:27:52.7] MB: Yeah. The story I like to tell around the circadian rhythm is the fact that we evolved from bacteria in the ocean that could differentiate sunlight from darkness. That's what eventually formed the human eye. Every organism on the planet responds to circadian rhythms, it’s a 24-hour cycle for humans, actually a little bit less than that, but close to a 24-hour cycle. 

Basically, what this is is they've done these crazy studies where they'll bring someone in a completely dark environment for X amount of time and days or months even, and you'll fall into a natural cycle of when you're awake and when you're asleep and when you have alertness and when you don't. They actually have these reaction-time tests called psychomotor vigilance task, which we've also implemented and explored in some of our software, where it's basically sensitive to how much alertness you have throughout the day.

A typical circadian rhythm for a human, usually you'll have a peak alertness about two hours after you wake up, you'll have a decline in alertness about two hours after lunch, you'll start getting more alert as you approach dinner. After you eat dinner and some of this correspondents to the glucose spikes after meals. When you're doing intermittent fasting stuff, which I actually do, there's some stuff to be considered of with all of these. Then you gradually get more tired after dinner and you get a peak tiredness at around 3:00 in the morning when you're going to wake up for a flight or something like this.

Knowing where you are in this and we actually have genes that can tell us if we're a morning person or an evening person and there's a field of sleep science called chronobiology, which is a type of understanding of how immediate early genes, like genes that express themselves based on your environment can get activated, to actually be able to shift you to be more of an evening person, or more of a night person.

We have a genetic predisposition to be one of these. It probably has to do with something like the fact that we were – in tribal clusters of a 100 people for a long time, it makes sense for someone to always be awake. There's also this shift that happens as you get older, you shift to be more of a morning lark as they say. I know I'm a night owl. You can actually shift these.

I'm a crazy mad scientist, so I've done some stuff where I've shifted mine based on this German word in sleep science. I get nerdy on some of this stuff. Sorry if I get a little too nerdy, but there's this German word called zeitnehmer, which means timekeeper in German. What that means is there are these environmental cues that you can exploit to entrench your circadian rhythm, actually and make your sleep deeper and shift your rhythm to either be more of a morning person, or a night owl.

The biggest zeitnehmer is actually sunlight and that's why these house – these office and hospital environments that are void of sunlight are so problematic. Other things are timing of meals, timing of exercise, even things like engaging in social interactions late at night where you're exciting yourself at a time when your body usually isn't excited. You can shift your circadian rhythm. By entrenching this rhythm, you want a healthy rhythm. As you get older, it flattens, which is bad. You want to peak alertness and you want a period of decline and that's something that would help people achieve is with timing of meals, getting sunlight and we integrate with smart lights.

I have this whole system in my home that's triggered with Alexa, where I say, “Hey, I'm going to sleep,” and there's this whole chain of events with sounds that relax me and the whole – all the lights turn red. You actually want red light as you get closer to nighttime. These are just some of the hacks that you can use to entrench the circadian rhythm and achieve more alertness and success the next day.

[0:32:12.8] MB: Really quickly, tell me how intermittent fasting interacts one way or another with the circadian rhythm and energy peaks and valleys throughout the day.

[0:32:22.8] DG: Yeah. What happens a lot of times, and so we have clients where I try to troubleshoot this with them. For example, if you're having issues with waking up too early, there's actually something called – there's evening insomnia and morning insomnia. Sometimes, the reason for that is some people fast at night and some people fast in the day. You have two options, right?

For the people that eat right when they wake up, sometimes when they activate that rhythm too early by eating or doing exercise early in the morning, it also confuses their body and it tells their body that they should be awake then, so then they start having problems where they're waking up too early and not being able to fall asleep. The same thing can be said for the other direction.

Another thing to be conscientious of is you don't want to go to bed too hungry, because it's going to negatively impact your sleep quality and stuff. A lot of this is figuring out if you're intermittent fasting and I'm a big proponent, I intermittent fast every day. I'm a big proponent of it. Just be conscientious of where you're lining up here and making sure that it's not negatively impacting your sleep quality.

[0:33:42.4] MB: Very interesting. All right, I want to come back to some of the ways that we can improve our deep sleep, some of the hacks and strategies for getting better deep sleep, for maximizing the deep sleep that we already have and for augmenting and improving our REM sleep as well.

[0:33:58.2] DG: Yeah. That's really the area of focus that I've dedicated my life to, which is this idea that basically, the brain is a set of circuits and associations, okay? What these researchers found in 2013 that reinvigorated my effort to build this technology was that you could actually play a sound at a certain pulse rate that emulates your deep sleep brain waves and it entrenches that neural state. 

They used to do this – there's pretty convincing evidence so you can do this with transcranial direct current stimulation. It's something similar to a Daniel Chao’s thing with halo neuroscience. What they also have shown is that you don't have to pulse electricity, which is a little bit invasive. You can actually get similar effects with sounds that pulse at a similar frequency as the delta wave.

What we did in our laboratory at Penn State is we brought people into a lab, hooked him up to polysomnography for four days, had someone, polysomnography technologists stay up all night and systematically play these sounds to people. What we were able to show is that we could actually increase your delta waves, increase the amount of time that you spend in deep sleep.

What we're trying to do now is map that on to being able to have improved memory performance the next day and actually addressing conversion to Alzheimer's disease by enhancing people's deep sleep, since it's so associated with cleaning out these maladaptive plaques that form in your brain throughout the day. Sleep is how we clean this stuff out and deep sleep in particular. That's how we're attacking getting more deep sleep. There's other low-hanging fruit things that we do with sonic.

Basically, a really easy way to improve your sleep quality is to block out noise pollution, especially in New York. This is something where you're not aware of how much sounds in your environment can adversely impact your sleep quality. I became very aware of this when I looked at people's brains in the lab and literally, I would see the air-conditioning turning on in the laboratory and you get these little brain arousals. People are not conscious of what's happening when they're asleep. Something emblematic of this is if you have sleep apnea, which is a disease where you won't be able to breathe throughout the night, you can have as many as a 100 arousals an hour and have no conscious awareness of this.

This is just pointing to how unconscious we are when we're in this sleep state to things like noise pollution and snoring, which can negatively impact sleep. A simple hack there, which many people have keyed into probably already, it's having like an air-conditioning, fan sound. We have this adaptive pink noise cushion that changes based on what your iPhone is sensing in your environment that's designed specifically to block out these noise pollution sounds.

Other just really quick hacks for your audience to try to understand how to get more deep sleep is actually messing with temperature with these ice baths, or saunas, or things, building up your homeostatic sleep need with exercise throughout the day is something. This is a recommendation I really like to give, but there's some evidence that having an orgasm actually improves your sleep quality. Those are little hacks to try to get more deep sleep. I can get into REM if we have time.

[0:37:50.5] MB: Yeah, I want to dig into the REM strategies as well. Before we do, really quickly I just want to make sure I understand this concept. You mentioned the idea of your homeostatic sleep need and how exercise as an example can build that up. Is that essentially the notion that the more activity, the more certain things you do throughout the day, you build up almost a level of tiredness and then you have better sleep as a result of that?

[0:38:15.6] DG: That's exactly right.

[0:38:17.0] MB: Okay, got it. No, that's really interesting. Yeah, let's dig into REM sleep a little bit. Tell me about some of the ways to improve or augment REM sleep as well.

[0:38:26.9] DG: Yes. This is experimental technology that still needs to be vetted out. In sleep science, there's something called targeted memory reactivation. Basically, what they found is that if you're doing some cognitive task while you're say, getting exposed to a certain smell, like the smell of roses and then you replay that smell when someone is in a REM state through associative priming, Pavlovian response, it actually primes that memory from the day while you're dreaming and it helps you process and encode that information more, such that you perform better the next day.

A lot of this, you can think about – Another way that I think about is how athletes visualize what they're good at and doing it during the night time, actually helps you perform the next day. That finding is a very strong finding. The act of visualizing doing something actually makes you better at doing it. The idea here is that you could prime the ability to visualize tasks that you want to be optimal at by priming yourself through various cues at certain times of your sleep. 

Since we understand the science of how to play sounds, such that your brain responds to it, but it doesn't wake you up, then we can actually do things where people – I do this thing where I focus on my 10-year vision, while I'm listening to a specific sound. Then sonic replays that sound when I'm most likely to be in a REM sleep, because I'm trying to actualize this 10-year vision that I had for myself.

[0:40:20.4] MB: Do you have any memories or experiences of dreams that you've had that the sounds actually created these vivid, or almost lucid dream experiences as a result of that?

[0:40:31.8] DG: Yeah. I mean, I'm still exploring this, honestly. A lot of this is subconscious, so it's a little bit hard to tell if it's working in all honesty. I generally through this practice of gratitude is another thing that I focused on a lot, and visualizing my reality. I am finding that the reality I'm visualizing and surrendering a little bit is coming to fruition. It's more of a general sense of things. I can't cite a specific lucid dream for you right now, unfortunately.

[0:41:09.1] MB: Have you done any research, or dug into it all of the concept of lucid dreaming, or how lucid dreaming works?

[0:41:15.3] DG: I have. This is partly in my college days. What got me so excited about this was this really fun movie Waking Life. Have you ever seen that?

[0:41:26.0] MB: Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorites.

[0:41:28.8] DG: Yeah. Richard Linklater, a brilliant guy. About lucid dreaming and how you can prime in. That really got me interested in this whole thing. There is science that backs it up. Honestly, I've tried to do it a little bit. I'm just starting to tackle it a little bit more, but I'm not great at it right now. People that are good at it, since the only thing you can move when you're in dream state, when you're in REM – and by the way, you dream a little bit in light sleep too. 

When you're in REM, you're having these intense dreams and they train these lucid dreamers to move their eyes in certain patterns when they're having a lucid dream, which pretty much unequivocally shows that people that are good at lucid dreaming can control their dreams. They're literally able to control their eye movements while they're in a dream state, which is some captivating science.

[0:42:21.4] MB: It's so fascinating. Yeah, that's probably a topic for a whole different interview, but it's something that's personally really interesting to me and I've always wanted to dig into a little bit more as well.

[0:42:29.5] DG: Me too. There's going to be some tools in store for you soon, I think.

[0:42:34.3] MB: Very interesting. Well, I'm curious. We've talked about a lot of different strategies, the importance of sleep, some great tools and tips. For listeners who want to concretely implement this, who want to improve their sleep or take action on something that we've talked about today, what would one action item be, or a piece of homework that you would give them to start taking action towards having better sleep?

[0:42:56.6] DG: This is the homework that I like to start people out with; think about your life. There is one thing unique to you that you can do that's going to either help you get more sleep, or improve the timing of your sleep, such that you can improve your sleep quality, whether it's maybe going to bed a little bit earlier, maybe letting yourself sleep in a little bit more on a day where you can. It's going to be different for everybody. Maybe it's talking to your boss about flexible work times, which is something that we're working with some corporate wellness clients to do stuff like this. It's unique to you. Everyone's at a different place, and so just think about what it might be for you and try to implement that thing.

[0:43:43.4] MB: You talked about work schedules and how this plays into it. That made me think of a putting a bow on this in some way, or really encapsulating an important point that we talked about at the beginning of the conversation as well, is this idea that in many ways, especially in America, especially in Western societies, this idea of sleep and getting a lot of sleep and being somebody who sleeps a full eight to nine hours a night or seven to nine hours a night is almost derided or looked down on, or thought of as being lazy, but the reality is that in many ways from a productivity standpoint, from an effectiveness standpoint, it's often much better to be someone who's sleeping enough and sleeping effectively than it is to be somebody who's pulling all-nighters and sleeping four hours a night.

[0:44:26.1] DG: Totally. As an entrepreneur, I would much rather someone that's on my team who has fully slept than someone who is sleep-deprived. You act erratically when you're sleep-deprived. Personally, I'm not a nice person. No one wants to work with that cranky sleep-deprived person. 

Frankly, we’re I think living in a society that has this global pathology when it's coming to not sleeping enough. We're having this global sickness where you're not as empathetic to other people when you're sleep-deprived. For me, I see sleep as a pathway frankly, just for making us a little nicer to each other.

[0:45:10.4] MB: Dr. Dan, for listeners who want to find out more about you, your work and all of the fascinating research and tools that you've created for improving sleep, where can people find you and these resources online?

[0:45:22.5] DG: Yeah, you can check out Sonic Sleep Coach. We have Android and Apple integration. I think we have probably the most accurate Apple watch algorithm for measuring sleep. There's a bunch of enhancement tools and meditations and deep sleep stimulation in that technology.

[0:45:39.9] MB: Well Dr. Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing all this wisdom, some really insightful takeaways about how sleep works and how we can improve our own sleep.

[0:45:49.8] DG: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Great questions.

[0:45:52.5] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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The Science of Immortality: How Genetic Engineering Is Going to Change Everything with Jamie Metzl

In this episode, we explore the mind-bending science of genetic engineering and why it’s going to change everything in our lives, whether we want it to or not. We share crazy stories and examples from the cutting edge of science, look at shocking examples around the world of what is going on with human genetic science and explore the science of immortality with a few simple life hacks can you implement right now to extend your life and help you live past 100, with our guest Jamie Metzl.

Jamie Metzl is a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council. In February 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on developing global standards for the governance and oversight of human genome editing. He is the author of five books, including the non-fiction work, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia.

• The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet

• Open your eyes a little bit wider and see the radical technological developments that will fundamentally transform your life are on the short term horizon

• Genetic technologies are, in very short order, going to fundamentally transform our societies

• The genetics revolution is inevitable and it’s already here. Countries like China are already massively pushing the limits on genetic science, well beyond what we may even feel comfortable with in the US today

• China is extremely wealthy, extremely powerful, and has a “Wild West” culture around genetic engineering, designer babies, and human genome editing

• “The Arms Race of the Human Race” - what happens in a world where the US restricts or prevents genetic engineering but another country, for example, China, substantially embraces them?

• Slippery slope and how this radically starts to change our world pretty incredibly - most people would probably want to know if their child had a higher risk of a certain disease, so they could prevent it… what happens when we make that shift from a child to a human embryo?

• “The End of Sex” - “Old Fashioned Sex” will soon be viewed as reckless and dangerous.

• “Would you play Russian roulette with your child’s future health by NOT affirmatively selecting health?"

• Would you wish polio on a child because it’s natural? What about a genetic disease that could be prevented?

• It’s not a question of wonderful nature vs scary science. Nature is pretty scary. People die of horrible genetic disorders today.

• Why Jamie considers anti-vaccine “monstrous"

• "In vitro gametogenesis” - what happens if you could make 100,000 potential embryos and pick the healthiest ones?

• What is a synthetic womb and why is it something that is so crazy it might make total sense in 30-50 years?

• Why Jamie’s goal is to live to 150, and what he’s doing to get there.

• Simple life hacks can you implement to extend your life as much as possible?

• Do everything that people who live in the blue zones are doing.

• Homework: Get yourself educated on genetic science.

• Homework: If you’re planning on having children, freeze your eggs and freeze your sperm today. Freeze them when you’re twenty. It gives you the option of using healthy and vibrant genetic material in the future.

• Homework: For longevity: Exercise 45 minutes a day. Eat healthy food.

• Homework: Do your own homework and empower yourself about precision medicine. Medical knowledge is decentralizing. You are the primary agent of change in your life.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

This week's episode of The Science of Success is presented by Dr. Aziz Gazipura's Confidence University!

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• Jamie’s Website

• Jamie’s Wiki Page

• Jamie’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Media

• [Article Directory] Collection of Jaime’s articles from his site.

• [Article] CBS News - “Author Jamie Metzl says the "genetic revolution" could threaten national security” By Olivia Gazis

• [Article and Podcast] Medium - Science, Technology and Ethics: Hacking Darwin with Jamie Metzl, PhD by Dr. Chris E. Stout

• [Article] Quartz - “The designer baby debate could start a war” By Jamie Metzl

• [Book Review] NPR - 'Hacking Darwin' Explores Genetic Engineering — And What It Means To Be Human by Marcelo Gleiser

• [Article] Psychology Today - “Polymath Jamie Metzl on AI, Genetics, and the Future” by Cami Rosso

• [Podcast] HBR - We Have the Technology: Jamie Metzl and Building Better Humans

• [Podcast] Good Code Podcast Episode 14: Jamie Metzl on Genetic Engineering

• [Podcast] Curious with Josh Peck - Ep. 64 | Jamie Metzl  

• [Podcast] Inspired Money - The Genetic Revolution and "Hacking Darwin" with Jamie Metzl

• [Podcast] Jamie Metzl on the Future of Genetics – The Joe Rogan Experience

Videos

• Jamie’s Youtube Channel

• Hacking Life The Sci and Sci Fi of Immortality

• PBS Social - Jamie Metzl on the Future of Genetic Engineering

• Talks at Google - Jamie Metzl: "Hacking Darwin" | Talks at Google

• Talks at Google - Jamie Metzl: "Eternal Sonata" | Talks at Google

• TEDxTalks - Are You Ready for the Genetic Revolution? | Jamie Metzl | TEDxPaloAlto

• Chad Prather Show - The Great Genetics Race | Guest: Jamie Metzl | Ep 68

• 92nd Street Y - Can we live to 150? The Cutting-Edge Science of Human Longevity

• Hidden Forces - Genetic Engineering, Biohacking, and the Future of the Human Species | Jamie Metzl

Books

• Hacking Darwin Book Site

• Hacking Darwin Press Release

• Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity  by Jamie Metzl

• Eternal Sonata: A Thriller of the Near Future  by Jamie Metzl

• Genesis Code: A Thriller of the Near Future  by Jamie Metzl

• The Depths of the Sea: A Novel  by Jamie Metzl

• Western Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975-80 (St Antony's) by Jamie Frederic Metzl

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than four million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we explore the mind-bending science of genetic engineering and why it's going to change everything in our lives, whether we want it to or not. We share crazy stories and examples from the cutting-edge of science, look at shocking examples from around the world of what is going on with human genetic science and explore the science of immortality with a few simple light facts that you can start implementing right away to extend your life and help you live past 100 with our guest, Jamie Metzl.

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Sign up for my e-mail list today by going to successpodcast.com and signing up right on the home page, or if you're on the go, if you're on your phone right now, it's even easier. Just text the word “smarter”, that's S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222. I can't wait to show you all the exciting things you'll get when you sign up and join the e-mail list.

In previous episode, we talked about one of the most important skills in the modern world, the ability to be indistractable. Are you sick and tired of distraction? Do you feel constantly overwhelmed in a world of notifications, demands, messages and more and more information flying at you? In our previous episode, we discussed exactly how you can battle back from distraction, control your attention and choose the life you want using the power of being indistractable with our previous guest, Nir Eyal. If you want to banish distraction from your life, listen to that episode.

Now for our interview with Jamie.

[0:03:13.6] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Jaime Metzl. Jamie is a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council and in February of 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization's expert advisory committee on developing global standards for the governance and oversight of human genome editing.

He's the author of five books, including the nonfiction work, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. Jamie previously served in the US National Security Council, the State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a human rights officer for the United Nations and much more.

Jamie, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:03:48.4] JM: Thanks so much, Matt. Thrilled to be here with you.

[0:03:50.8] MB: Well, we're really excited to have you on the show today. It's such a fascinating topic and I can't wait to dig in. I love some of the insights in the book and I can't wait to share some of these anecdotes with our listeners.

To start out, I'd love to open the conversation with one of my all-time favorite quotes, which really resonates with what the book is about, which is this notion that the future is already here, but it's just not evenly distributed yet.

[0:04:14.0] JM: Yup. I totally agree. That's obviously a famous quote from one of our best-known science fiction writers. That's what for me as a futurist, I also write science fiction, that's my mission in life is to get people just to open their eyes a little bit wider and to see these radical, technological developments that are going to fundamentally transform our lives.

If we can just see what's happening and see what's coming with even a little more clarity, we're all going to make better and smarter decisions about our lives, our businesses, that will create better futures not just for us, but for everybody.

[0:04:53.1] MB: One of the most interesting claims that you make in the book and I want to get into all kinds of ideas and thoughts in here, but the book obviously, for listeners who aren't familiar with is about genetic engineering and the future of humanity. You open with the fascinating anecdote. I don’t know if I'm jumping the gun a little bit, but the idea is that there's a lot of controversy around this topic.

The reality is where our hand is going to be forced, because in many ways, this is an inevitable conclusion. It's going to happen one way or another and we really – we’re coming up on a very short timeframe here from a societal standpoint and we need to start making some really important decisions.

[0:05:30.0] JM: That's exactly right. The question is not should we or shouldn't we embrace genetic technologies. We will. Whether people are for it, or against it, genetic technologies are going to in very short order, fundamentally transform our healthcare, the way we make babies and the nature of the babies we make. It's not should we, or shouldn't we on the science. The question is how, because the decisions that we're going to be need to make in very short order are going to be our way of infusing our best values, our ethics into the process of guiding how these incredibly powerful technologies will be deployed.

That's going to be the difference between the positive outcomes that we can all imagine of people living healthier, longer, more robust lives, preventing and eliminating and curing terrible diseases, aging more, healthily and gracefully and living longer and these dystopian outcomes that everybody can imagine. It's not a question of whether the genetics revolution is coming. It obviously is coming and it's already here. The question for us is what role do each and all of us want to play in shaping how these technologies are used, rather than having other people's decision shape us.

[0:06:56.9] MB: Here in the United States, we obviously have a very robust regulatory structure. A lot of this stuff is still very nascent. In the book, you talk about how other countries may not have the same regulatory structure and maybe actually pushing the envelope well beyond what we find either morally, or ethically kosher in today's world.

[0:07:20.1] JM: Yeah. Well man, you and I both have a lot of experience with China. In this world, there are some countries that are really well-regulated. I would say the best regulated country in the world for genetic technologies is the United Kingdom. The US is pretty well regulated. Although our entire healthcare system is a total disaster and a mess, and so that creates a lot of complications, there are some countries that have absolutely nothing. These are countries, they just don't have any regulatory infrastructure and a lot of them have very little capacity, but they can become destinations for medical tourism, or genetic engineering tourism at some point in the not distant future.

Then there are countries in the middle and China is probably the best example of this, countries that are wealthy, that have a lot of scientific capability, that have decent laws on the books, but where there's a Wild West culture and a mentality. Certainly with China, where there is this national and certainly government-led obsession with catching up, with becoming essentially the world's leading country by 2050. The Chinese government has identified Science and Technology leadership as the primary way to get there.

Genetics technologies and biotech more generally are among the most important sciences and technologies that they focusing on. It's not at all surprising that the world's first genetically engineered babies were born in last year and in 2018 in China, because China is really pushing the limits of what is possible, including with human genetic engineering. That is a really, really big deal. I'm on the World Health Organization International Advisory Committee on human genome editing.

I'm actually just going next week to Geneva for our meeting, board meeting repeatedly over the course this year and next, to try to think about and begin to lay out a framework for what a global regulatory infrastructure on human genetic engineering and genome editing might look like. We're a long way from there. In the meantime, there are countries like China that are really pushing the limits in ways that would not be possible here in the United States.

[0:09:42.8] MB: Even before some of the technology was where it is today, in the book you share an anecdote of somebody from China who essentially had 10 children in the US. I don't want to spoil it. Tell me that story. Share that example to listeners. It's so interesting and it shows the mindset too.

[0:10:01.2] JM: Well China, and you know this from your time there, people are very practical in their thinking. What's the best way to do something? Just because it's a society where essentially, the government has gone to war with traditional values, with traditional moral systems, I mean, that's essentially what the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were.

It's this country that’s very – it's an extremely wealthy, an extremely powerful country. Individuals are empowered, but unlike other countries, even in that region, like Japan and Korea that still have their traditional value system intact. China, it's like starting over after wiping out its own culture. They don't have these hang-ups of as a largely atheist society of well, God is this genius watchmaker and who are we to mess with God's work?

Then it's practical. All right, and so this example that to China there are some restrictions on surrogacy, which California doesn't have. There was this guy who wanted to have a kid with his wife and they using IVF, they fertilized 10 eggs. Then the plan was to send 10 to 10 different surrogates in California. Then go after these kids are born and look at these kids and pick a couple of them that they wanted to keep and then put the other eight for adoption. I mean, it's so mind-boggling and frightening that people are thinking about life this way.

For me, the takeaway is we are this incredibly diverse species and whatever we think, whatever value we – there's going to be somebody else who just thinks differently and operates by a different value system. That's what we're going to have to navigate and that's why there's some people, the trans-humanists who feel like, “Well, we shouldn't have any regulation. Let people do what they want.” We're talking about the future of life. It had in our decisions, especially using these very powerful technologies have to be guided by an ethical system and the use of these technologies has to be regulated.

[0:12:23.7] MB: This is seriously a global challenge. What happens in a world where for regulatory, moral, political reasons, let's say the United States doesn't really embrace these technologies and a place like China goes all-in on them?

[0:12:39.2] JM: Yeah. Well, I have a chapter in the book called The Arms Race of the Human Race, which explores exactly this. Let's just say that the United States opt out of these technologies. First, it's going to be hard to do, because opting – what opting in means doesn't mean that we're going to – everyone's going to have a designer baby.

It also means that our healthcare is going to be worse. We are transitioning now from a system of generalized healthcare based on population averages, to world of precision medicine and healthcare based on people's individual biologies. What that means is that everyone's going to have their genome sequenced and that's how your doctor is going to in many ways know who you are, so you can get your personalized treatments, actually where you are, Matt, in Nashville, Vanderbilt as a leader in this process.

That means we're going to have many millions and then billions of people who had their genome sequence. We're going to use big data analytics to crack the code of complex biology and genetics. That's going to really open up a lot of possibilities in our healthcare. When we say opting out, first question is opting out of what? We certainly wouldn't want to opt out of the improvements in our own healthcare system.

Then once you do that, then our healthcare system moves from being precision to being predictive, because we'll have a lot of information about people's genetics, that'll tell us something about how their future lives might play out. Then people will be able to use that same understanding of genetics to select embryos when they're using IVF. Then on top of that, we're going to be able to do what has already happened in China, which is use precision gene editing tools to edit the genomes of future babies. Again, all these things are already happening.

Coming back to your question, so what do you do if that as this technology develops, as it whittle that we recognize, as we will, that we're going to be able to have healthier, longer-lived, maybe higher IQ, maybe taller, maybe more athletic, whatever it is that individuals, or even countries want will be doable. What happens if a country like the United States decides to opt out at some point? Well, option one is say, we're opting out, you, whether it's China or somebody else you're opt in, and we'll see how it plays out.

I mean, maybe we'll be better off for opting out, maybe you'll be better off for opting in. In 20, 30 years we'll know the answer to this question, because if you're right, you'll win all the gold medals in the Olympics, you'll get all the Nobel prizes in math and we’ll be the country that said, well, we made an ethical decision, but now there are consequences of that. Or it could be the opposite story.

Or you could say that if you and let's say China, if you, China, genetically alter your people, then what happens if your people procreate with our people? If you wanted to stop that you could say, all right, well we're going to make it illegal for people from our country to procreate with people from your country and you'd have to set up a whole police state system to make sure that you were testing for that, which would be terrible. Or you could say we're going to try to force you, the other country, to stop doing what you're doing of genetically engineering or enhancing your population, but how's the country like United States going to do that against big and powerful and nuclear-armed country like China?

Then we get to this where we started, which is well, if we don't want those kinds of outcomes, how far can we go in building some global regulatory infrastructure that would have to be very permissive, but that could at least try to build some guardrails, so that the terrible Nuremberg style abuses of humans doesn't happen? That's what we're working on in Geneva, but it's a really hard task.

[0:16:59.6] MB: Such an interesting problem. I want to explore – we've talked already about the inevitability of this and because of the global nature of the phenomenon and the science. I want to start digging into some of the crazy stories, ideas, happenings, things that are taking place both now and are possible in a world where this science becomes more ubiquitous.

Maybe as a starting point, let's dig into a little bit more on a topic you already touched on, which is healthcare. Let's assume we can put aside the geopolitical and ethical questions for a minute. We may come back to them. I want to explore, what does the world look like in a world with precision medicine, or even predictive medicine that's enabled via some of this genetic science?

[0:17:43.2] JM: Yeah. Well it's great, because every time when we go to a doctor, for most of the conditions that we have, we'll get a symptom and we'll go to our doctor. The doctor will treat us based on our being a human. For an average human, if you have a headache, a Tylenol for example, will make you feel better. In this world of generalized medicine based on population averages, the way you find out that if you're one in, whatever the number, a 100,000 people who will die from taking that Tylenol is by taking the Tylenol. That's how we've have treated cancers and still treat most cancers. If you have as one cancer, whatever we have treatments for those big categories of things.

In the world of precision healthcare, your doctor is going to know a lot more about who you are based on your personal history, family history, biometric information, various tests. The most important piece of information is going to be your sequence genome, which will be the foundation of your electronic health record and that's how when you go for a treatment, your doctor is going to give you something that's tailored for you, or if in case, the cancer we're going to sequence, which is starting to happen, about 12% of cases. Now sequencing your tumor cells, so that we can target an approach based on exactly the type of cancer that you have. That's precision medicine.

When we have, as I mentioned before, these billions of people and we have their genetic, their genotypic information and their phenotypic information, which means how those genes are expressed over the course of their lives in massive data pools, then we're going to crack the code of complex genetics and we're going to have a lot of probabilistic, predictive information about how from birth, essentially, about how your life may play out. Part of that will be about risk factors. If you know you have an increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes, for example within from early childhood, your parents should be helping you to have habits of exercise and healthy eating and self-monitoring.

If you know that you have an increase – your daughter, for example has an increased risk of breast cancer genetically, so you'll want to start breast cancer screenings maybe when she's 20, rather than when she's 40, which is the norm. That's going to be right now, a lot of that information, predictive information is it's scary to people, because nobody wants to be at the hospital taking home their newborn and told that their newborn has a 50% greater than average chance of developing early onset Alzheimer's 40 years from now. I mean, right now that scares people.

The medical community is afraid that people are going to freak out, because doctors tend to believe now that people can't handle raw information about their futures, which is something I very much disagree with, but that's a prevailing view in the medical community. Our genome isn't just a healthcare, or a disease genome. It's a human genome. As we uncode, decipher these secrets, we're going to know a lot more about ourselves that has nothing to do with healthcare, about our potentials for things like IQ, personality style, being great at specific narrowly defined functions, like sprinting, or abstract math. That's going to force us to think differently, not just about healthcare, but about parenting and about life.

[0:21:27.5] MB: It's so funny, because it starts out as such a slippery slope and it really quickly develops into a place where people could be making decisions that are almost today, seem ridiculous, or out of control.

You have the example of, I think most people listening to this show right now would say if they could figure out that for example, the example used that their daughter had an increased risk of breast cancer, they would want to know that, because then they can take steps early in life to prevent that and hopefully ensure that it doesn't happen, or that it's mitigated. What happens when, and this is a very quick and easy and subtle shift. What happens when that genetic information moves from let's say, a newborn child to an embryo?

[0:22:11.6] JM: Well, it depends. I mean, people are going to have a lot of information about their unimplanted, pre-implanted embryo. The reason why I've been writing and speaking for many years about the end of procreative sex is that we know how the traditional model of sex and procreation works. If any of your listeners aren't familiar with that, you can consult the internet. There are lots of pictures and videos. We are moving from that world of it seems simple, just because it's so built into our biology of procreation through sex, to procreation through science.

The way that we're going to do procreation through science is by taking conception outside of the human body and we're going to use the tools of in vitro fertilization, IVF. Women will have their eggs extracted, which it happens all the time now. It will be much more common. Those eggs will be fertilized by the mid of the father's sperm in the lab. Then you'll have a certain –based on the number of eggs and the fertilization process, you'll have a certain number of pre-implanted, early stage embryos. Let's just say that it's 10.

Right now what happens when you're selecting which of those 10 to implant in the mother, generally it's an embryologist looks at the embryo and just visually say, which one looks healthy, and that's an imprecise art maybe, as much as it is a science. There is a process of pre-implantation genetic testing where you extract a few cells that would have gone into the placenta and you sequence them and you can tell a lot of information about mostly single-gene mutation disorders, things Tay-Sachs and sickle-cell disease and Huntington's disease. Then there's something – you get some information about chromosomal abnormalities, like down syndrome and that can be done in various ways and just a few other minor things.

We're moving very, very quickly into a world where we're going to have lots and lots of information that goes well beyond these relatively simple areas that we can understand now and that's connected to describe a moment ago about our great understanding of the genome. Now you are prospective parents and you have these 10 embryos and you have to pick which one gets implanted.

One of the options is to say, “I don't want to know. I'm going to put it, you could say in God's hands.” God's hands is an embryologist and a fertility doctor. Somebody is choosing based on some criteria. Maybe it's just random chance. Maybe people will say, “I want one that I know isn't going to die young of a terrible deadly genetic disease,” and that seems like a reasonable thing for people to do.

Already when you're doing that, I mean, that is in many ways, it's a form of eugenics, because we are making the decision about which of these 10 embryos will have the potential to become a baby. There's a lot of values that go into that decision. We could choose issues related to health, related to longevity. Then beyond that, the sky's the limit. Any genetic trait, any trait that's even partly genetic, we will be able to predict not entirely, but increasingly the genetic component of that trait and then use that in making decisions.

The science is pretty much already there to rank 10 embryos from likely tallest to likely shortest. Maybe we're a decade away from being able to rank them from likely highest genetic component of IQ to likely lowest. Likely most outgoing to least outgoing. You see where this is heading, that all of these attributes that we see as the magic of life are going to be things that we’ll never understand completely, but we'll understand more. That's why I always say this isn't a conversation about science. Science brings us to the conversation. This is a conversation about ethics.

[0:26:33.8] MB: You had a great line in the book where you talk about whether or not people in the future, or even, and really the immediate term will be asking themselves whether or not you would play Russian roulette with your child's future by not affirmatively selecting for healthy embryos.

[0:26:53.0] JM: Right now, if you or your listeners, if you're on the street and you see a little kid and the kid is walking in a way that makes you – makes it look pretty likely that kid has polio, or had polio, what do you think? You don't think, “Wow, that's terrible. Fate has been so unkind to this kid.” You think somebody screwed up, because polio has been eradicated, or mostly eradicated and that's great. I mean, that's what we would want. Nobody would wish polio on somebody else, because, “Oh, no. That's nature. That's God's will. “God's will that your kid should have polio.” Those are fighting words.

We are going to have this ability to make these kinds of decisions, but it's very sensitive. I was on a panel in Berkeley a few months ago and with this wonderful poet, whose daughter has down syndrome and daughters is just this wonderful person. She has opened up his life and it's been – he says and obviously, the greatest gift of his life. It was hard for me to say that what I believe that in 20 years seeing a kid with down syndrome is going to be about as rare as seeing a little kid with polio, because it is just going to be not something that kids are born with and that's already happening in Northern Europe, where non-invasive prenatal screening is required and covered by national health plans.

There are almost no very, very few kids being born with down syndrome in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. All this stuff is really sensitive. How are people going to feel when they see that kid 20 years from now that wanted a whatever kid, who has down syndrome. Are they going to say, “Wow, that's so great that that child's parents embraced nature so much.” Let's say, let's make it even more complicated. Let's not call it down syndrome, let's call it sickle-cell disease, or Tay-Sachs, or Huntington's, or some of these very, very dangerous, painful and even deadly diseases, those are going to be seen increasingly lifestyle choices by the parents.

The parents decided they wanted to do this “natural thing,” even though nothing about our lives isn't really natural when baselined against how our ancestors live. I think that that's going to feel, it's not just going to be wonderful nature versus scary science. I mean, nature is actually pretty scary. People who are having these kids who die of terrible genetic disorders, that's actually pretty scary. If parents can eliminate, or reduce the risk of these deadly, painful genetic disorders for their kids, parents are going to do it.

[0:30:01.6] MB: As you point out in the book, that decision-making process gets us in pretty short order to a place where it could even be considered reckless, or dangerous to have children the old-fashioned way.

[0:30:14.8] JM: Yeah. Right now when most of us, certainly I meet someone who hasn't vaccinated their kids, I don't think, “Oh, that's so wonderful that you're not vaccinating your kids, because if “God had wanted us to be vaccinated, we would have been born vaccinated.”” What I think is you anti-vaxxer, you are a monster.

Because when you look at the number of humans who have died from infectious diseases over the years, I mean, it is in the many hundreds of millions, possibly billions. It's only because we've been so successful in fighting back, that people – and that other people are vaccinating their kids, that people can feel that they don't have to do it.

It's really difficult, because this idea of what is natural is shifting. It shifts within the context of our culture's. Something that feels natural to people and even traditional sexual conception may come to be seen as something that's really dangerous. That's I feel this shift that is happening, beginning to happen now but is increasingly going to happen over the coming years.

[0:31:40.6] MB: Hey, I'm here real quick with confidence expert Dr. Aziz Gazipura to share a lightning round insight with you. Dr. Aziz, how do you become more confident and what do people get wrong about confidence?

[0:31:54.8] AG: I love this question. My life mission is to inform people this one thing, that you can learn confidence. Because the biggest thing that people don't realize is that confidence is a skill. They think confidence is something that you're just born with, that the people that look confident just somehow have some ability that you don't have and that's what I thought for many years, until I discovered that actually, this is something we can learn.

What most people get wrong about this, other than thinking that they can't, so they don't even try, is they think it's going to be this huge undertaking and it's scary and they try to just push through and do this thing that I hate the phrase, but it's so common, which is fake it till you make it.

What they don't realize is that there's a much easier way, a simpler way and ultimately a faster way and a gentler way. That is to treat it like any other skill, like the guitar. You want to learn how to play the guitar, you want to break it down into its individual elements, like notes, chords, progression, scales. If you learn each individual thing, all of a sudden, you could play a beautiful song. Confidence is absolutely no different than that.

You can break confidence down into its little individual elements, like body language, starting a conversation, how to be assertive, all these things can be broken down in sub-skills. If you just learn those sub-skills one after another, take action on what you learn and practice it just like an instrument, all of a sudden in a period of months – you could be stuck for decades, but in a period of months, you can have more confidence than you've ever had in your entire life. That's what I'm dedicated to doing. That's what I teach. That's what I create all my programs around and that's really the message that I want to get out there to everyone listening and everyone in the world.

[0:33:31.5] MB: Do you want to be more confident and stop suffering from social anxiety and self-doubt? Check out successpodcast.com/confidence to hear more about Dr. Aziz and his work and become more confident.

[0:33:48.0] MB: I want to just dip our toe into a couple other themes, or topics that you write about talking about reproduction and some of the crazy things that might be coming down the pike. Tell me a little bit about the process of creating, or synthesizing eggs and I might be misphrasing the science here. Tell me a little bit about that.

[0:34:06.1] JM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The technical term, which shouldn't scare anybody, is called in-vitro gametogenesis. Basically, with just a little bit of background, everybody knows what a stem cell is. When your father's sperm fertilizes your mother's egg, how does that one little – your first cell become you and that that cell has the potential to become everything. As our cells grow over time, they become differentiated and that's why there's a difference we could see in our bodies, we could see in a skin cell and a blood cell and a heart sell, etc.

There's a technology for whom this great Japanese scientist won the 2012 Nobel Prize, Shinya Yamanaka called essentially induced stem cells. What this does is it allows us to take any adult cell and take it backward in time. You take a cell that's differentiated, like a skin cell and then you take it back in time, so that the skin cell becomes a stem cell.

The reason this is important, it connects to what I was saying a little while ago about the number of eggs that a human woman can create. Male sperm, average male ejaculation has about a billion sperm cells. Average woman having her eggs extracted in IVF has about 15 eggs extracted. That's a limiting factor, especially if we're doing embryo selection. Obviously, if you have a bigger number of embryos, you have a greater range of choice.

Using this induced stem cell technology, the approach is already works in animals, not yet applied to humans, but it will be. You take a skin graft, which is easy to do, that has many millions of skin cells, you induce those skin cells into stem cells using these for what are called Yamanaka factors, named after this scientist. Then you induce those stem cells into egg precursor cells and egg precursor cells into eggs. Now you have – you started with a billion sperm cells. Now you have, let's just call it a million eggs.

You fertilize a million eggs with a billion sperm cells. Now humans, so you have a billion options, or a million options, I'm sorry. Let's say you sort them with a machine and you get down to a 100,000 based on whatever criteria. You extract a few using an automated process, extract a few cells from each of those 100,000 early stage embryos, sequence them. Again, the cost of sequencing has gone down from about a billion dollars in 2003 to about $600 now. It's going down towards essential negligibility. Then the process of having a baby is where the mother has her – the father gives a sperm sample the old-fashioned way, the mother has her skin graft taken. Then a couple weeks later, you go to the fertility clinic and you say, “Here are our priorities. We want a kid,” and where this is legal and based on your own values and the regulatory environment around you say, “We want a kid that we want to optimize for health, for longevity, for whatever.”

It's not like build-a-bear, because I mean, you have to work with the biology that exists, but there's going to be tremendous optionality. We are going to be able to push theoretically for now, but actually in the not distant future, we're going to be able to push changes across our population in ways that really would have just been absolutely unimaginable, not just to our parents and grandparents, but to most people today.

[0:38:08.8] MB: So interesting. We're jumping around a little bit, but another topic that I found fascinating and it's almost something that sounds so ridiculous that it's going to make complete sense in 15, 20, 30 years whenever it happens. Tell me a little bit about synthetic wombs.

[0:38:24.7] JM: Yes. It's funny, I talk a lot about synthetic wombs. My friends attack me for it, because – so just back, so synthetic wombs, so the womb exists in the woman's body, it's basically the environment, the little micro-environment inside a pregnant woman in which the embryo grows. There's a lot of work being done now for creating and creating synthetic wombs, which are essentially plastic bags. The nutrients that an embryo needs are being passed through in and out of these synthetic wombs.

Already, it's starting to be applied experimentally in animal models. There are some people who are asking whether humans will have babies with synthetic wombs. If we were to go there, it would really open up this process, it would industrialize the process of human reproduction. When we think about some of the topics people are exploring now, like colonizing Mars and we may just be in very different environments that we made to reproduce, just in different ways than we do now. A lot of work is happening in synthetic wombs.

For now, I'm a little cautious about the possibility of having human babies born in synthetic wombs, just because I think that there is such a complex interaction between the mother, even if it's a surrogate, or the egg mother, the genetic mother, but certainly between whoever is carrying this embryo inside of their body, there's a lot of interaction that it's not just chemicals, it’s sounds, it's emotions. I think that is probably for a while going to be very difficult to replicate. I'm sure it would be possible to have it functionally work and have kids be born this way, but I would be really cautious about damage that might be done to these kids by being raised in an environment with just a lot less stimulus then human kids are used to.

[0:40:45.4] MB: Fascinating. I never considered that perspective. Just thinking about from a safety standpoint alone, it seems like something that could end up being in 50 or a 100 years, it could be considered reckless if you don't have synthetic wombs, why would you jeopardize getting sick, or being in an accident, or whatever when you could grow somebody in a safe and scientifically secure environment?

[0:41:06.3] JM: I mean, that's one possibility. I'm not closed to it. There's a lot in all of biology, including human biology that we don't fully understand. That's why for me when I think about interventions, something like embryo selection where you have to pick one, they're all your natural embryos, and let's just use predictive analytics to try to make our best guess. That I'm more comfortable doing, than something where we are just completely and aggressively transforming a full and complex environment that we don't fully understand. That's why with artificial wombs, I'm more cautious than other people.

Even with genome editing, gene editing, pre-implanted embryos, like was done in China for the first time last year. There are some people who are saying we're going to be making a 1,000, 10,000 gene edits to pre-implanted human embryos. I'm much more cautious. I'm certain we're going to be making edits, but I don't think we're going to be making many thousands just because, again, these are very complex dynamic environments.

If we know that there's a single gene that either is creating an outsized harm and it could be changed, or if changed could create an outsized benefit, I think that will be attractive. Changing the whole environment, that's a bigger deal. Maybe we'll get there, but that's not a 20-year thing in my mind. That's a 100-year thing.

[0:42:44.1] MB: Fascinating. I want to keep digging. There's so many interesting anecdotes and stories and themes throughout the book. Tell me a little bit about what does the science say, or where do you think things are going to be heading for people like us that are already alive? Let's talk a little bit about immortality. Is it possible for us to genetically change our age, or extend our lifespans? What do we do for the people who are already alive and how is the science going to impact us?

[0:43:11.4] JM: Yeah, yeah. I'm very focused on this, because I've already staked my claim that we want to live to a 150. I love life. I think everyone should love life. If we have more healthy life, that's great. Our parents, our grandparents and if we can extend their healthy lifespans, so rather they're going to get dementia happen at 95, rather than 90, imagine all of the wonders. I mean, just what a wonderful contribution to life, to all of us to have more love, more innovation, more ideas, more wisdom. All those things are great. I think we can and we should aspire to them.

A few things we can do; one is we need to get a little bit selfless in the sense that if we want to live longer, we should assume that everybody should have that same right. There are places here in the United States – I mean, I'm in New York City, just a mile away from me, there is a 25-year different average lifespan. It's based on education level and poverty. Certainly globally, there are countries in the developed world where we have 80-year lifespans in their places in Africa where it's in the late 40s and 50s.

If we want this for ourselves, we should recognize that we should want it for everybody. We already easily have the technology to help people in poorer parts of our country, disadvantaged parts of our country, and the world live longer. I think that we should really as our first step, try to do that.

In addition though, if we believe in what we're doing, we should ourselves also live longer, healthier lives. We're not helping anybody by dying younger than we can. There's a there's a few different things that we can do. Now the obvious ones that all your listeners will know is we should just do all the things that people in the blue zones do, which are the places where people on average live longer. That is, I don't even need to repeat it, but it's exercise, diet, community, reason for being, all those kinds of things that everybody knows.

Everybody, if you're not exercising at least 45 minutes a day, you are just taking from the account of your healthy future and life. If you're eating crap, you are taking from your future life. Everybody gets that. Then one of the things that we can do beyond that, so certainly I'm a big believer in intermittent fasting and the basic philosophy behind that is that our ancestors have survived, that's why we're here, these very narrow funnels where most other humans died out. The most recent one was about 75,000 years ago. There were just maybe a thousand homo sapiens left on the very southern tip of Africa.

Our ancestors were the ones who could survive scarcity. The way that they did it is that our cells shifted from growth mode to repair mode, like on your computer shifting to screensaver mode. We have that. When we use calorie restriction, an intermittent fasting in my mind is the best way to do it, our cells shift to repair mode. They go to screensaver mode and that is just by definition, it works to extend our health span.

Then there are a lot of drugs and small molecules that have been shown to have health span extending effects in animals and human studies are just beginning. Some of them include a metformin, which is a type 2 diabetes drug. In different names, humans have been using it since the Middle Ages. There's rapamycin, which is an immunosuppressant, which has extended animal lives by 25% to 30%. There are the various NAD+ boosters, so that maybe some of your people have heard of NMN, or NR. These are basically your body has a cellular repair mechanism, but it gets worse as you get older. This is essentially what these molecules are trying to do is just boost your repair, near natural repair method.

There's the whole set of drugs that people are using. I'm very confident within a decade, many of us will be taking personalized anti-aging drugs, and that's great. Then there's a whole thing of the different – there's pruning senescence cells and there's a whole industry. Jeff Bezos is investing in that. There's parabiosis, where in animal models when they cut open and stitch together an old mouse and a young mouse in many ways, the old mouse gets younger, the young man gets older, and so there's something about blood serum. It is conferring those youth factors. Different companies, like Alkahest are identifying what those are. That's another promising area.

Then finally, with everyone getting sequenced, we are beginning to identify what are the genetic patterns that help super agers, people who live past a 100 to help them live that long and then identifying well, what are those genes doing? We can either say, well, what are those genes doing?

Genes instruct cells to make proteins. We could just short-circuit the process saying, Well, what are those proteins being made and how can we mimic those proteins, perhaps with some pill. Or going back to what we talked about a moment ago, now that we know these genetic patterns that increase the person's chances of being able to live a long and healthy life, how can we select embryos after IVF, that are more likely than the others to live that long and healthy life? This whole field is just exploding and there's a lot of room for progress. I'm pretty confident that we're going to keep pushing the edges of possibility.

[0:49:32.2] MB: There's so many different topics and areas and themes I want to keep exploring, but I know we're short on time. For listeners who want to concretely implement, or start one of the steps, or one of the themes, or the things that you've talked about today, what would be a piece of homework that you would give them, whether it's around immortality, life extension, or even understanding the science better?

[0:49:53.4] JM: Yup. I'll be very specific. Number one, get yourself educated. If you want to read my book, I would love for you to read it. It's written. It's a one-stop shop to tell you what you need to know to make smarter decisions. It doesn't have to be my book. There's lots of great information out there, so you have to get yourself educated. If you are planning on having a baby at some point in your future life, I encourage everybody to freeze your eggs and freeze your sperm, because we're going to make babies in a different way.

In my view, everybody should just freeze when you're 20, because when you're 30, or when you're 35, or when you're 40, you want to at least have the option of using your own sperm, or egg cells that are frozen. It's easier for men to do than for women, but I certainly encourage everybody to do that.

In terms of longevity, absolutely. As I said before, if you aren't exercising 45 minutes a day, if you aren't eating healthy food and not eating crap and processed junk, you're not helping yourself. Nobody should be smoking, because we are – this is about building our future possibility. Then finally, what I would say is for their age of in just in terms of healthcare and personal management, the science is moving so quickly that very, very few of the doctors understand the newest technology.

I mean, doctors are wonderful and wise and conservative in a positive way. Most of them don't know anything about genetics. Most of them are not part of this whole – I mean, they're not trained in what's coming in personalized, or precision medicine. You really have to empower yourself through your own knowledge. We all have to recognize that the world is decentralizing and each individual, we are the agents, the primary agents of change in our lives. To play that role, we really have to hold ourselves more accountable than at an earlier time.

[0:52:14.4] MB: Jamie, for listeners that want to dig in, that want to find you and the book and your work online, what is the best place for them to do that?

[0:52:21.7] JM: Yeah, two websites. One is my personal website, jamiemetzl.com. J-A-M-I-E-M-E-T-Z-L.com. Then the book website, which is hackingdarwin.com. On the hackingdarwin.com, there's a whole discussion forum where people can share their thoughts, they can debate with each other. What I'm really trying to do is to spark a national and global conversation about the future of human genetic engineering. Because this is about our future as individuals and as a species, we all need to be part of the conversation about where we'd like to go and how we get there.

[0:53:02.6] MB: Well Jamie, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing all these fascinating and sometimes shocking anecdotes and stories. The book is packed full of really insightful and interesting information. Thank you so much for sharing it and coming on the show and sharing all this with our listeners.

[0:53:19.3] JM: My great pleasure, Matt.

[0:53:20.3] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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Healing Trauma - How To Start Feeling Safe In Your Own Body with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

In this episode we discuss trauma and how it is stored in the body. What causes trauma and what does it do to your body? We explore whether the rational, thinking mind can deal with trauma and look at some of the ways you can deal with traumatic experiences in your life. What are the best strategies for feeling safe, feeling calm, and feeling in control of your own body? How do you release trauma from your body and feel safe? We discuss all of this and much more with our guest Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk.

Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk is a Boston-based psychiatrist and The New York Times best-selling author of The Body Keeps the Score. He was previously the President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University Medical School, and Medical Director of the Trauma Center. He has taught at universities around the world and his work has been featured in TIME, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and more!

• What is Trauma? 

• How do we define and understand trauma in today’s society?

• It makes you want to forget, it makes you want to push it away, it makes you want to erase it. 

• Trauma is something that is so horrendous that you can’t cope with it, it’s too much to deal with 

• Trauma renders you helpless and makes you feel like there is no way out 

• Helplessness is an absolute precondition for a traumatic experience 

• Our society continuously ignores how trauma is formed and created - pushing it under the rug and hiding from it

• Trauma is not a story - trauma is not a memory about the past. Trauma changes the brain. Trauma sits within you and within your body. 

• People experiencing trauma keep behaving and reacting as if they were stuck in that experience 

• When we are traumatized - the brain often cannot process it and the body “stores it” - the body gets stuck in a state of hyper alertness, the mind gets stuck in a state of hyper-alertness 

• The perceptual situation in the brain becomes rewired to be on “high alert"

• Your body, your mind, your entire system gets frozen or stuck in “fight or flight” mode 

• When you’re traumatized, it’s very hard to learn or integrate new experiences - thats what makes treating trauma  so difficult 

• Trauma is not typically rationally processed, it goes into the irrational part of the brain and your body gets locked into a place of constantly reacting as if you’re in a sense of danger 

• Your body starts generating stress hormones as inappropriate times and you begin to feel out of control and helpless 

• One of the most tragic results of trauma is people try to shut the feeling down and end up shutting down their ability to feel - or they turn to drugs, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals 

• Studies show that yoga is more effective than any drug that has been studied for solving trauma 

• There is promising research around psychotropics (psylocbin and MDMA) for trauma relief

• Neurofeedback is another promising solution for trauma 

• "Playing computer games with your brain waves” to solve trauma 

• Trying to remove delta or theta waves in the frontal lobe

• Self regulation - learning to control your own physiology using ancient Chinese and Indian methods - research is starting to show these solutions help as mind body interventions to solve trauma in the body 

• Our mainstream western culture is “if you feel bad, take a drug” 

• Practically what does it looks like to use something like yoga to regulate your own physiology?

• Chanting is also a very good mind body intervention - singing in unison with others 

• One of the biggest struggles of trauma is that you feel isolated or lonely or by yourself 

• Exposure treatment misunderstands how to treat real trauma 

• It’s not the memory its that you brain/body - entire system - is locked in a state of being “high alert” - and that these mind body interventions are some of the best ways to help people feel “Safe” inside their own bodies 

• How do you feel Feeling safe, calm, and in control over y our own physiology?

•  What are the best strategies for feeling safe, feeling calm, and feeling in control of your own body?

• Trauma is a bodily experience of being intolerable physical sensations - people can’t stand the way their bodies feel 

• Breathing, moving, chanting, yoga, qigong, massage, dancing - these are all ways that you can make your body feel safe. 

• Once your body feels safe, you can allow yourself to slowly go to experiences from the past that caused the body to be put into a traumatic state 

• Your body has to feel safe and be present to heal trauma 

• Sitting still and meditating is often a challenge when you’re experiencing trauma 

• None of this has to do with understanding or explaining why you’re experiencing trauma - understanding WHY your’e experiencing trauma doesn’t make you resolve it

• The rational brain has nothing to do with solving trauma in the body - it has to do with your “animal brain” 

• This is NOT a rational problem - you can’t solve it rationally 

• What are some of the best solutions?

  • EMDR is another effective technique or strategy for laying small traumas to rest 

  • What is somatic experiencing and how does it work? 

  • Sensory motor psychotherapy 

  • Traumatic sensitive yoga 

  • Sidran Foundation

  • Trauma Research Foundation

• This work is 30 years old - people are just discovering the best treatments for trauma and its a cutting edge field - lots of the solutions don’t have a lot of evidence yet because its so new - its all a work in progress - it’s not definitive yet 

• How to help release trauma from your body, how to feel safe in your body 

• What is EMDR? A strange technique that may be revolutionary for solving trauma according to new research and brain scans. 

• Does cardio help or hurt when trying to connect with the body? Not necessarily - it’s all about trying to make your mind and body connect more deeply. 

• Homework: Take care of your body. Develop a loving relationship to taking care of your body. 

Thank you so much for listening!

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• Dr. van der Kolk’s Website

• Dr. van der Kolk’s Wiki Page

• Dr. van der Kolk’s Google Scholar Cited Works

Media

• [Article] Medium - “What MDMA Therapy Did For Me” by Tucker Max

• [Article] Interview on Psychotherapy.net - “Bessel van der Kolk on Trauma, Development and Healing” by David Bullard

• [Article] NY Times Magazine (2014) - “A Revolutionary Approach to Treating PTSD” by Jeneen Interlandi

• [Article] NY Times (2018)  - “How to Rewire Your Traumatized Brain” by Concepción de León

• [Podcast] - On Being: BESSEL VAN DER KOLK - How Trauma Lodges in the Body

• [Podcast] - Shrink Rap Radio: #436 – Brain, Mind, and Body in The Healing of Trauma with Bessel van der Kolk MD

• [Podcast] - The Relationship School: 3 Things Bessel van der Kolk Did To Help Him Through His Recent Trauma – SC 191

Videos

• Center Scene - “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma”

• Meg-Roitwell - “Bessel van der Kolk - how to detoxify the body from trauma”

• 2015 Walden Behavioral Care Conference - The Body Keeps the Score. Bessel van der Kolk

• KripaluVideo - Bessell van der Kolk: Overcome Trauma With Yoga

• Big Think (2015) - Psychiatry Must Stop Ignoring Trauma, with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

  • Learn the Signs and Symptoms of PTSD, with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

• Open to Hope - Episode 47: Healing Trauma/Creative Activities

• Praxis TV - How Neurofeedback Can Change the Way We Approach Trauma Treatment

• Prime Book Review - The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the ... by Bessel van der Kolk | Book Review

• Dance based on the book - The Body Keeps the Score: Dancing with Trauma and Recovery

Books

• [Book Site] The Body Keeps Score

• [Book Citation] The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. by Bessel van der Kolk

• [Book] The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.

• [Book] Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society by Bessel A. van der Kolk, Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth

• [Book] Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Psychological and Biological Sequelae (Clinical Insights) by Bessel A. van der Kolk

Misc

• [Website] Trauma Research Foundation

• [Website] The Center for Self Leadership

• [Website] Sidran Institute

• [Website] EMDR Institute Inc.

• Trauma Center Publications

Episode Transcript

[0:00:00.8] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Dr. van der Kolk is a Boston-based psychiatrist and the New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps The Score. He was previously the President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University Medical School and Medical Director of the Trauma Center. He has taught at universities around the world. His work has been featured in Time, the New York Times, The Boston Globe and much more.

Dr. van der Kolk, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:00:34.1] BvdK: Good afternoon, Matt. Thanks for having me.

[0:00:37.8] MB: Yeah, we're very excited to have you on the show today. I'd love to start out with really a fundamental discussion, or understanding for listeners who I mean, the word trauma really gets thrown around a lot and it's a very deep subject. I'd love to just begin with something simple, which is how do you define trauma? What is trauma?

[0:00:59.8] BvdK: Trauma is an experience that overwhelms you, that just wipes you out, just makes you have an experience and reaction of, “Oh, my God.” Really makes you collapse and makes you want to forget, that makes you want to push it away, makes you want to erase it, is an experience that makes it too – it's too hard to go back to. You don't want to remember it. You don't want to feel it, because it's so horrendous.

[0:01:53.0] MB: is this something that only comes from the most extreme experiences of life, or can we experience or be traumatized by the experiences of everyday existence?

[0:02:08.7] BvdK: Time is really something that just is so horrendous that you cannot encompass it. You cannot cope with it. That is too much. Suddenly seeing your best friend getting killed or something it's just like, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” It's not just a lousy experience. Not flunking for an exam, or being fired from a job.

[0:02:37.5] MB: It has to be something more visceral, something that's almost the body can't quite process it.

[0:02:45.2] BvdK: Yes. The reaction is really, “Oh, my God.” It renders a person completely helpless and no way out basically. Yeah. It can be as simple as being beaten up by your mom when you're a kid. Even though you're screaming, she keeps going on, or he keeps going on. For kids, something in the family system can be quite horrendous in terms of being beaten up, or being kicked, or being molested in the way. For a child, the experience can be quite overwhelming. Just with adults, you could have fought back or you could have done something about it.

[0:03:35.0] MB: Does helplessness play into our experience of trauma?

[0:03:41.8] BvdK: Helplessness is an absolute precondition for. Defeating needs to be like, there is nothing I can do to change what's going on here.

[0:03:53.5] MB: I want to zoom out slightly and hear from you a little bit about the history of our relationship and understanding of trauma and how to treat it in the medical world.

[0:04:09.9] BvdK: Well, the history waxes and wanes. Basically, just like people have been traumatized, society at large doesn't really want to think about it. Doesn't really want to go there, because it's too painful and people feel horrendous and helpless and responsive. I've seen in my lifetime people tend to push things away after a war is over. Civilian populations and politician once again think, “Oh, let's go to war.”

For example, before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote an editorial to New York Times saying, “Yes, you can indeed go to war with Iraq, but what will happen is that after people come back, there will be more suicides than there were battle casualties, because we know that from every other previous war, about half of the people who we will send off will become drug addicted, or alcoholics because it [inaudible 0:05:07.2] to every war. Many of them will become unemployable. Their family relationships will oftentimes become extremely difficult and falters. We know what will happen. If you want to forget the reality of what happens after something like this, you can go to war.

People continuously just ignore what happens. We know there are about a million abused kids in America and we tend to just think, “Oh, somehow they will get over it. Kids are resilient.” No, the kids are not resilient and we will pay a heavy price for outgoing maltreatment for children.

Basically, the history or has been always let's push it under the rug. Let's make it disappear. Let's not pay attention to it. Then from time to time if something happens and something comes up in the culture right after war, people say, “Oh, my God. Look what happened?” Then before too long, it gets forgotten again. Again, something like, what happened in the Mexican border right now with the refugees and everybody goes, “Oh, my God. Isn't it terrible that's happening to these kids?” At the same time, we ignore the affected 2.3 million American children have kids, have parents in jail, are living under circumstances, not unlike what refugees do at the Mexican border.

[0:06:43.8] MB: One of the most interesting things that I've found in your work is this idea that trauma is not just a story, it's not just an experience, but it actually physically changes the brain. Tell me about that.

[0:06:56.1] BvdK: Yeah, because trauma is not a memory about something, about the past. The past is over, but the trauma sits inside of you and it makes you feel and behave as if it is still going on. Post-traumatic stress is really not post-traumatic. It is you right now feel like it's happening to you again, over and over again. You keep behaving and reacting as if you’re stuck there.

There is something very fundamental about the brain not knowing that it's over. Even though roughly it's over, how your system keeps reacting to all stuff as if it's still happening, because the brain changes.

[0:07:50.3] MB: Tell me a little bit more about how the brain changes and how trauma gets for a lack of a better word, or correct my phrasing if this is wrong, but stored in the body.

[0:08:04.6] BvdK: Well, basically what happens is that the capacity of the brain to process an experience as belonging to the past is [inaudible 0:08:13.2], and so the body automatically had the immune system and the endocrine system and the perceptual systems of the body, of the mind, of the brain continue to react as if they are still in danger, so your body is more likely to develop autoimmune diseases, to react to things in the extreme way, to develop heart disease, to develop a number of illnesses, because the body stays on constant alert for something and the body doesn't know where this place is alert for, but it's gets stuck. It is hyper alertness.

The mind gets stuck in a state of, “Oh, my God. I'm going to get hurt.” Suddenly, people may erupt in a defensive maneuver, or become upset. They know that it's irrational. They know they shouldn’t behave like this, but something makes them feel and behave in a particular way. That's basically because the perceptual system in the brain is rewired to overreact to current stresses.

[0:09:29.2] MB: Is trauma stored in certain parts, or areas of the body, or there's certain traumas that are that are stored in certain places, or how does that –

[0:09:40.4] BvdK: It is how the perceptual system of the body is organized. It's brain circuits and body circuits basically. It's about your whole orientation. Like learning how to speak a language, certainly your body, your mind is organized in a new way. That particular areas of the brain where you can say, yeah, you see it over there, you see it over there, you see it in that area called amygdala, you see it in an area called the periaqueductal gray, you see it is an area called anterior cingulate, you see it in an area called the parietal temporal junction, you see it in the insula, which is a connection within your brain and your body, how you perceive your body.

There’s many brain areas that are changed by trauma and the longer it's – the longer its been going on, the more things changes and your whole system becomes a system that tries to cope as it continuously living over time.

[0:10:49.5] MB: Would it be correct to describe that almost as the body getting stuck or locked into that fight or flight mode?

[0:10:58.1] BvdK: Fight, flight and freeze. Not just the body, the whole system – the perceptions that people have, the body of reactions that people have, the way you interpret things with your mind. Yeah, they get stuck in – get stuck at the times of the trauma. I mean, they have a hard time moving on and getting new stuff in. Among the tragic things about being traumatized, it's very hard to learn new experiences, new integration. Somehow it becomes very hard to take in new experiences. It becomes hard to learn, that's why it's such a gigantic public health issue, and that's why treating and taking care of abuse and trauma, this gets important, because if gets kids get stuck there, it becomes very hard for them to become contributing members of society.

That's also true for veterans, of course. Their identity is, “I'm a warrior,” and gets stuck there. They keep having their military decals on their car and this identity. It's hard to move on and say, “That's a long time ago.”

[0:12:21.0] MB: Tell me a little bit more about some of the science behind – obviously you have a very robust research background, been studying and working on the problem of trauma for a long time. Tell me about some of the science and some of the research behind it.

[0:12:35.9] BvdK: Well, first the technology that we have is mainly in the area of page caps. The technology has changed over the past 30 years. We have been able to visualize a lot of how these changes are organized in the brain, so we get the first. One of the most important findings, was our very first study and very first brain study of trauma, there’s people where we saw that the trauma is really lodged in the right side of the brain, the back of the right side of the brain, which is the non-national reactive part of the brain that would be referred to as the housekeeping of the body, is the part of you that takes care of how your body is organized in many ways.

What we discovered is that basically, the trauma barely goes into your rational part of the brain, but it really goes into where your – into the way you organize your body. Your body keeps reacting as if you're in danger. You have these illogical reactions where you get upset and your heart starts racing, you start submitting stress hormones at inappropriate times. You feel out of control and the people around you think this person is nuts. It's not only the arousal, which is part of what happens after trauma, it’s also the shutting down and you feel completely helpless. You don't keep fighting, and so trauma is not primarily about a fight-flight response. It’s primarily about the shutdown response. Your body starts getting into a defensive mode to try not to feel, try to not experience, try not overreact.

One of the most tragic results of trauma is people try to show themselves down and not to feel anything at all. That of course makes it very hard to feel alive and to be engaged with your environment.

[0:14:51.4] MB: Often, people result to things like drugs and alcohol. Even in the western approach to solving trauma, in many cases people look to things like pharmaceuticals as the first step in that process, is that correct?

[0:15:04.4] BvdK: It fascinates me how doctors keep looking for psychotropic agents, or for drugs to make people better. In fact, our research that shows that drugs don't work very well at all. For example, we did a series of studies, three of them actually, where we showed that yoga is more effective than any drug that has been studied. The one drug that’s probably helpful to make you not feel anything is opioid drugs, that's maybe part of either such a large opioid epidemic, but doctors prescribes are not particularly helpful most of the time.

Drugs are generally are not the answer. In our most current research, actually we're using psychotropic agents as using hallucinogens. We're using psilocybin and MDMA, or ecstasy to help people to really reorganize these perceptual problems. That won't be legal for a number of years, but that’s our latest research that we’re involved in. You can allow yourself to get the courage to process all the information if you take these hallucinogens, these psilocybin, or MDMA ecstasy, seem to be very helpful to help people to serve in a very quiet and self-compassionate way to say, “Yes, this is what happened to me. It happened to me a long time ago.” Awful and painful. Now, I may live in a different stage of my life. One of the most exciting areas of research right now is the work that I and many of my colleagues are doing and these newer agents.

[0:17:11.8] MB: It's funny, I just read an article last week about MDMA therapy and obviously, it's illegal in the United States. As a fascinating read, not something I've done a lot of homework on, but it's curious to see that you've also recently been doing some research around MDMA and its solutions for trauma.

[0:17:30.4] BvdK: Yeah. This is one of the promising frontiers. It's not the only one. The other thing that we're doing is somebody called neurofeedback. Now that we know what the circuits are of the brain, it get disturbed, we actually are able to harvest people's brainwaves project it in a computer and then have people play computer games with their own brain waves in a way to reorganize their brain waves. That's actually for me an even more exciting prospect. Not nearly as sexy as the hallucinogens, but it would be a fantastic thing. If you could do this for school children who are traumatized, because we could help kids to be alert and attentive and to manage their emotions, so they can actually be children and be engaged with the classroom procedures.

[0:18:29.5] MB: That sounds really interesting. Tell me a little bit more about this idea of playing computer games with your brainwaves.

[0:18:36.0] BvdK: Well, it's a fairly old technique by now. You can harvest people's brainwaves by putting electrodes on the skull and harvest with outputs underneath it. Then you can project it on the screen and then you can play a computer game where we can serve [inaudible 0:18:51.3] for a certain brainwave patterns for people. Whenever your brain does divide in you, a spaceship starts moving, or color starts coming up, or something happens when the brain gets reinforced to create new patterns of engaging with the world around us, away from the habitual traumatizing patterns.

[0:19:19.2] MB: Which kinds of brainwaves are you typically trying to produce or reinforce with this neurofeedback?

[0:19:25.4] BvdK: Well, we certainly tried to not have the frontal lobe part of the brain be asleep, as it's oftentimes isn't traumatized people, so you certainly don't want to have delta or theta, where is in the front. You certainly don't want to have very fast, agitated waves in the back of the brain, which is supposed to quietly monitor your body, instead of exciting your body. You need the circuits of the brain that you try to rearrange, so that you actually are in the state, that you can play very good attention to what's going on around you, and when your brain is not primarily oriented towards, “Oh, my God. Something terrible is going to happen to my body and I’m in danger.” This basic applied neurophysiology, applied through science where we can actually help people to rewire how different parts of the brain communicate to each other.

[0:20:27.7] MB: I want to come back to something you touched on a minute ago and explore a little bit more some of the really simple mind-body interventions that people can use to help overcome, or deal with trauma. Tell me a little bit more about yoga. I know you've also written and spoken about Qi Gong as another potential solution. Tell me more about those, what the research shows.

[0:20:53.5] BvdK: I don't study Qi Gong, but I'd be amazed if Qi Gong would do something very different to yoga. Certainly, learning how to – See, our culture is not a culture that's very much focused on self-regulation. There's other cultures, like how the Chinese are very good at, some Indians are very good at, where you can really learn to control your own physiology. As I did, there's these age-old Chinese and Indian methods where you can actually learn to by controlling your breath that comes out of your movements, can manage your own physiological arousal.

The only thing that I've studied there is yoga. I’ve not really studied tai chi, or Qi Gong, but these parts if they wouldn't do the same thing, you can actually learn to manage the housekeeping of your body, which gets so disturbed by trauma. by engaging in a regular yoga practice and really learning how to move and to breathe in a way that makes you feel calm and safe. I call this, so a post-alcoholic culture. The mainstream culture, the western culture is very much if you feel bad, take a drug. It gives these very contradictory messages to our kids. You say to our kids, don't take drugs, but take this drug for your ADHD, or take this drug for your bipolar illness.

We don't really teach kids, or adults that our culture is you can actually regulate your own physiology and a lot of the things that I'm really pushing with whoever I can talk to is that every school should learn the four R's, reading [inaudible 0:22:37.8] and self-regulation and that every school actually should teach kids how to regulate their own physiology. It should be a basic skill as all of us as humans should learn.

[0:22:51.7] MB: Let's dig into that a little bit. Tell me practically what does it look like to use some of these techniques to regulate your own physiology?

[0:23:01.5] BvdK: You start every day with doing yoga, or Qi Gong. You start by sitting still, focusing on your body, activating the interoceptive part of your brain, the midline cortical structures of your brain which has to do with self-regulation, you pay attention to your internal world, you pay attention the way you move, you pay attention to the way you breathe and notice how your breathing patterns change your thinking and your mood patterns and you really become familiar with your own internal world.

Basically, what I advocate is that everybody, but particularly traumatized people really have it, practice in which every day they practice being still and working with their bodies to regulate their physiology.

[0:23:54.4] MB: What would you say to somebody who's listening to this interview who thinks that yoga, or meditation, or some of these practices are unscientific, or new agey, or not really effective interventions for traumatic experiences?

[0:24:11.8] BvdK: I would say read the literature. That means that you really are all familiar with the science and you should look up my name and go into Google Scholar and see our researches I and other people have done. If you want to stay with taking drugs, you should definitely do so, but it won't help you very much.

[0:24:35.7] MB: The science is resoundingly clear that a lot of these sometimes ancient mind-body interventions are really bearing out to be really effective ways of managing our own bodies and integrating our mind and body more closely.

[0:24:48.7] BvdK: Yeah. That may be why people have been doing it for thousands of years. Yeah. Chanting is also very good for people. Chanting cases, your heart rate variability changes it. Whereas, your brainstem, the core of your brain just regulate in your body works. Every religion involves chanting basically. It’s very sad that people don't chant so much in our culture anymore. Our grandparents all chanted and sang, but we don't do it very much anymore. Everybody should go back to actually singing in unison with other people, as people have always done in every religion, because it helps people to feel calm and safe. The military also does it. They do the cadences, and so moving and singing together is very good for people's physiology.

[0:25:42.1] MB: Is that something that you have to be chanting with other people to sync up collectively together, or can you do it by yourself?

[0:25:51.5] BvdK: You probably can do it by yourself, but traditionally for since time immemorial, people have worked in making themselves feel calm and a member of community by singing together. Making music together is a communal enterprise and one of the big things of trauma is that you feel isolated, lonely and bereft and separated from anybody else. Learning how to get in tune with other people, being in sync with other people is undoubtedly a very good thing when you’re traumatized.

[0:26:31.7] MB: What about something, or what has your research shown around things like exposure therapy, or revisiting past experiences, or past traumas as a methodology for healing or overcoming traumatic experiences?

[0:26:47.6] BvdK: Well, I think blasting people with the memory of the trauma is the worst thing you could do to people. You may if you blast people long enough, make them desensitize them, but you also desensitize them to themselves and everything else around them. As of making people, their sensitivity is not a purpose of treatment. I think the whole notion of exposure treatment is really a misunderstanding about the traumatic stress does, because it's not the memory that really is the primary issue, but it's affected your brain has changed in response to the old saying you need to help your brain to feel safe in the present.

It’s indeed helpful to be able to relive the memory from a very safe point of view, but the most important thing is that the mind and the brain needs to be very calm as you revisit the horror of the past, and so making people feel horrified as they relive the past is very, very bad for them and would be anti-therapeutic. The reason why we do things like psychedelics and MDMA when we give people, to people with PTSD is because these drugs help people feel very safe, very calm, so did the mind and the brain is capable of actually going back there and saying, “Yes, this happened to me, but this happened to me a long time ago.” Just blasting people with their past is very bad for them.

[0:28:26.2] MB: I think this is obviously a point you made earlier in the conversation, but it bears repeating because it's such an important understanding of the way that this functions, that it's not about the memory of the experience, but rather that because of the experience, the brain, the body, or really the entire system, or your entire system is locked into this state of being on high alert, or being in threat mode and that these interventions, these mind-body interventions like yoga or the chanting, etc., are ways to help people feel safe inside their own bodies.

[0:29:02.3] BvdK: Yes. The core, the operative word here is feeling safe, calm and in control over your own physiology. You don't want to do anything to just blast people with things that make them feel out of control again. The whole teaching issue is how can I help you to feel safe inside and if you have the courage to face very, very difficult things while you feel safe and you feel no harm can occur to you. The most important thing is to create an environment of safety and physiological calm in which healing can occur.

[0:29:51.2] MB: At the risk of rehashing, some of these we've already talked about, I think it bears digging back into this a little bit. Tell me really specifically what are the best strategies that your science, your research, decades in trauma treatment have uncovered for helping people feel safe, calm and in control of their own bodies and their own physiologies?

[0:30:12.0] BvdK: Look, so it starts off as feeling safe in your body. That means that you need to actually do something that allows you to feel your sensations without being freaked out by them. The experience of trauma is we lived in the form of heartache and gut-wrenching physical sensations as a bodily experience of, “Oh, my God. I'm in danger and this is intolerable.” The reason why people take drugs is because they have intolerable physical sensations. They cannot stand the way their body feels. The core issue is we need to help people to feel safe in their bodies. Breathing, moving, chanting, yoga, Qi Gong, maybe dancing massages maybe one – people have to discover first how can I make my body feel safe?

Once your body feels safe, you can allow yourself to slowly go to experiences, or from the past are too horrifying to meet and to encounter again. Once you feel really safe, you can bite off little pieces of what happened back then and say, “Yes, that is horrible.” Then a three-years-old, when an eight-year-old seeing that person being blowed up, or being threatened, or big raped was horrendous. Because I feel safe right now, I can really deeply appreciate that's what's happened back then is something that belongs to my past, not to my present. You can only do that once your body feels safe and feels deeply rooted in the time that you live in 2018 in our case.

[0:32:17.9] MB: Mindfulness, yoga –

[0:32:19.6] BvdK: These issues – yeah, mindful. Mindfulness is difficult for most traumatized people, because becoming still it means they empty our mind and then the demons from the past tend to come up. Just sitting still in meditation is for most traumatized people a big challenge. Doing something like yoga might help your mind to focus and your body to focus and generally, it's more safe for people than just sitting in meditation. I have nothing but great respect for people who have the capacity to sit in silence for 10 days and allow the demons to come out and to wrestle with them and to lay them to rest.

[0:33:10.1] MB: That's an interesting point and one I think that's worth digging into a little bit more, this idea that meditation is a very effective strategy, but it's often very challenging to sit and experience those feelings. That's why something with a little bit of movement, with a little bit of activity to help ground you and your body really helps make it easier to deal with those feelings of fear and panic and anxiety that you're viscerally experiencing.

[0:33:40.7] BvdK: The other thing that's important to say is that none of this has to do with understanding, has nothing – so explaining why you're messed up helps people to understand, “Oh, now I know why I’m messed up.” Understanding why you're messed up does not stop you from being messed up. Explain your people, “Oh, you shouldn't feel that way because this happened a long time ago and today is December 2018. How can you be so stupid to continue to feel like that,” is not really a good treatment. You should not pay for treatments like that.

[0:34:21.9] MB: I think you previously phrased it in such a way that it's not a problem that you can rationally solve.

[0:34:29.9] BvdK: That's right. The irrational brain has nothing to do with this. This has to do with your animal brain, has to do with the housekeeping of your body and your core entity of yourself that feels in danger, even though you know that you're not in danger, you know that this – you know rationally this person is not going to hurt you, but your body feels like this person is about to rape you again.

It comes from a different part of your brain that comes from that right, deep survival part of your brain. You need to go into your survival brain. Sitting on your butt and talking about it is not going to solve the issue.

[0:35:22.4] MB: For somebody who's listening to this conversation, who wants to practically start implementing some of these solutions, whether it's breathing, chanting, yoga, etc., are there any particular resources, or practices, or strategies whether that either you've researched, or that you recommend, or that you think are great starting places for getting back into the body and creating that sense of calm and peace with yourself?

[0:35:52.7] BvdK: That is the big, big question. I think if you go to the American Psychological Association website and there are some people who advertise themselves as being trauma-savvy, they may or may not be. Anybody who can work with bodily states would be very helpful. I think EMDR, eye movement desensitization processing is a very nice technique to help lay relatively uncomplicated trauma to rest is important say to – so there's a lot of EMDR trainers. People have been trained in somatic experiencing, or sensory motor psychotherapy tend to be people who basically know the principles of this. Going to set promises with yoga is helpful, going to certain healing centers like Apollo Yoga Center here in Massachusetts is helpful.

Yeah, the Sidran Foundation. It’s a foundation it has good resources. The Trauma Center, the Trauma Research Foundation, we have resources on our website. Also that experiencing does, the Center for Self-leadership has very good resources. My book has a whole bunch of resources in the back of it, of people who do various things would help.

[0:37:35.1] MB: Sorry, I didn’t I mean to interrupt you.

[0:37:38.0] BvdK: What's important here is that we have this rush towards evidence-based treatments, but it's important to remember this work is 30-years-old. People had just been gradually discovering all kinds of things. For example, 10 years ago I had nothing about neurofeedback. Most people I know still don't know anything neurofeedback. Now a number of people are good with neurofeedback. Two years ago, we started to do MDMA therapy and that's very promising. All of this is a work in progress. Just not like, “Oh, we have discovered it. We know what the truth is. This is what the evidence has done.” People are continuously learning and finding new treatments, so it's important to know that this is an evolving field.

[0:38:40.7] MB: I think that's a very important disclaimer. We'll make sure to include all of the various resources, obviously link to your book and your website and all the resources you mentioned in the show notes for listeners who want to come and do some homework, or want to find some really detailed solutions and strategies. I wanted to clarify, or understand, dig a little bit deeper into two of the things you mentioned. One just a point of clarification and forgive me for mispronouncing, but you said something of the Cedron Foundation, or I missed that –

[0:39:10.4] BvdK: Sidran. S-I-D-R-A-N is the foundation that has paid close attention to this. Yeah.

[0:39:18.2] MB: Perfect. We'll make sure that's in the notes. Then the second one, you mention the phrase somatic experiencing. Tell me a little bit what is that and how does it work.

[0:39:28.6] BvdK: Somatic experiencing is one particular trauma treatment that very much focuses on the body getting stuck in trauma and helping to release and feel safe in your body. Similar to another sister method called somatic experiencing. It has been the sensorimotor psychotherapy. Two methods developed by two different friends of mine. EMDR is very important to mention –

[0:40:04.2] MB: Tell me a little –

[0:40:05.0] BvdK: It is very helpful to – yeah.

[0:40:08.3] MB: Yeah, so I apologize for talking over you. EMDR, tell me a little bit more about what that is and from –

[0:40:14.1] BvdK: EMDR is a very strange technique that is ended by Francine Shapiro about 25 years ago, who discovered that if you call up a memory and you move your eyes from side to side, that oftentimes lead to that memory losing some of its power. It's something that I did research on, funded by [inaudible 0:40:38.8] health and we thought the deed is very helpful in many, many cases. We recently finished the study in the brain scanner seeing what it does and this actually we're able to show that moving your eyes from side to side indeed does change – activate some brain circuits that has to do with self-perception and being able to put things in the proper time sequence.

[0:41:13.3] MB: It's great to see all of these different techniques and strategies. There's a lot of solutions out there for people who might be experiencing trauma who are suffering and struggling. For listeners who are listening this episode, we want to start with one simple action item, or piece of homework to implement some of the ideas and solutions we've talked about today, what would be one piece of advice you can to them?

[0:41:37.8] BvdK: The first action item actually is to – well, one is to take care of your body and to really begin to develop a loving relationship to taking care everybody. I think yoga, Qi Gong, maybe tango dancing, maybe martial arts, a way which really gets in touch with your bodily sensations and learn how to manage about new sensations will be the foundation as far as I'm concerned.

Being able to tell somebody what has happened to you and what you’re so terrified of is also very helpful. Being able to get things off your chest, being able to say to somebody, “I was raped. I was molested.” To really tell the truth is also very important. It doesn't make it go away, but being able to put it out there and say this is what I'm struggling with is a very important issue also. Then being by somebody who really takes you very seriously and doesn't try to fix you, but tries to help you to find ways in which you can feel better about yourself is very important.

[0:43:04.1] MB: For listeners who want to – actually before we get into that, I have one other theme or question that came up when you were talking about that that I wanted to ask about. For something as simple as a cardio workout, whether it's biking, walking, running, have you found any research, any work around whether that's an effective way to get back into the body and help alleviate some of those?

[0:43:33.0] BvdK: It can be, but cardio workouts can also be great ways of actually separating you from your body, being like a monster on a treadmill, it doesn't really make your mind feel more connected with your body. People can use marathon running and these very hard exercises as ways of not feeling themselves. The mindful body techniques into health, but if you go to a gym and you've go in the treadmill, you watch Fox News, I would not call it good trauma treatment.

[0:44:19.4] MB: I think that's an important insight and then I wanted to understand that. For listeners who want to find you, find your book, your work, etc., online, what's the best place for them to go to do that?

[0:44:33.1] BvdK: Well, I have a Facebook blog, The Body Keeps Score. My book is worth reading. I like to say that has sold extremely a copy, so it must be worth reading for some people. Our website is myresearchfoundation.org. Then I have a personal website called bessosvanderkolk.com.

[0:45:05.3] MB: Well, Dr. van der Kolk, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing all of your incredible research and experience and strategies and solutions for overcoming trauma.

[0:45:17.2] BvdK: Thank you. Good luck with your program.

Reveal How You Can Banish Stress & Anxiety With Science & Ancient Wisdom with Dr. Mark Epstein

In this episode we share how to “get over yourself” and stop taking things so seriously, we discuss the important relationship between confusion and clarity, and we explore the art of letting go of the need for safety, security and control in your everyday life so that you can relax into who you’ve always been with our guest Dr. Mark Epstein. 

Dr. Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including his most recent books The Trauma of Everyday Life and Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself. He is currently Clinical Assistant Professor in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University and his work has been featured in Psychology Today, The New York TImes, and more!

• How do we move from addiction/anxiety/depression/worry to love/relief/understanding?

• Being in a place of addiction, anxiety, and worry is the day to day experience for most people 

• What’s the prescription for solving anxiety and worry?

• The prescriptions from the ancient texts of Buddhism are still highly relevant in solving many of today’s problems with the human condition 

• “Training your mind” 

• Realizing that the mind is trainable is the beginning of your journey towards relief and understanding 

• You are not just a victim of your thoughts 

• The untrained mind is a wild thing - one of the challenges of adulthood is to get a handle on your own mind

• Get a handle on your own addictions, cravings, and tendencies towards violence 

• Inner peace is not just about calming or centering yourself

• How do we start to be honest with ourselves and confront our own mental addictions and negative thoughts?

• Anything that promotes self reflection is the way to begin confronting your thoughts

• You don’t have to overcome your fears - you just have to be willing to examine them 

• The hardest thing is often just being willing to take the first step 

• You can’t force someone into meditation - someone has to reach a critical point of personal suffering and to make their own decision

• How his father’s battle with brain cancer transformed Dr. Epstein’s relationship with helping others

• How do you handle your own mind when facing death or dying?

• How do you look for the “feeling of being yourself”

• What does it mean to “relax into who you’ve always been?"

• “The craft of meditation” - the practice and technique of what to do and how to meditate - is only one part of the puzzle 

• The “art of meditation” - beyond just the physical technique - is a rich field of exploration 

• Ancient buddhist texts offer some deep insights into modern psychotherapy - but the language of ancient buddhism is couched in the understand of thousands of years ago and needs some interpretation

• Why people “expect too much from meditation” and what that means 

• Meditation is a much more subtle than people think

• Meditation is ultimately something that you have to teach yourself

• In the west especially - we want the science to “do it for us” - but we have to do it ourselves 

• There’s an important relationship between confusion and clarity 

• The clarity that one seeks only comes from sitting and staring at your confusion 

• The fundamental power of meditation and mindfulness comes from really staring and facing the difficult 

• Swim in the sea of confusion and learn to float with it 

• Creating a "therapeutic split in the ego"

• It’s possible to be both the observer and that which is being observed in your own stream of consciousness 

• What is the Ego?

• “The ego doesn’t really exist” - the ego has to meditate between inner impulses and outer requirements 

• The ego cognitively develops around the age of 3 or 4 when the child first realizes that he or she is a separate person and has to think about their own actions

• The ego - as we think about it in western society is all about self preservation and self control - it’s looking for safety, security, and control 

• How do you “get over yourself” and stop taking yourself so seriously

• You are not an isolated entity in isolation and competition with the rest of humanity. You are an integral part of the world as a whole.

• We can’t jump right into enlightenment - its about the JOURNEY and the everyday work, practice, and moments of honest reckoning with ourselves  

• How to create humility and graciousness in your life 

• Homework: Read a book, or go to an art museum. Go outside, close the door, stand there and listen. Trust yourself. 

• People can find their own way, there are so many paths out there. 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• Mark’s Website

• Mark’s Facebook

• Mark’s Wiki Page

Media

• Article directory for Big Think

• [Article] New York Times - “When a Therapist Puts Buddhism Into Practice” by John Williams

• [Article] Psychology Today - “Buddhism and Psychotherapy: An interview with Dr. Mark Epstein” by Jonathan Kaplan

• [Article] Heal Your Life - “What Is Real Mindfulness?” by Dr. Mark Epstein

• [Podcast] Big Think - Mark Epstein, MD – I, Me, Mine – Think Again - a Big Think Podcast #130

• [Podcast] 10% Happier with Dan Harris - #22: Dr. Mark Epstein

• [Podcast] ShrinkRapRadio - #252 – A Buddhist Perspective on Psychotherapy with Mark Epstein, MD

• [Podcast] Lifehacker - How to Get Over Yourself, With Buddhist Psychiatrist Mark Epstein

• [Podcast] Metta Hour - Ep. 56: Real Love Series with Dr. Mark Epstein

Videos

• Family Action Network - Mark Epstein, MD - "Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself" (01/22/18)

• WGBH Forum - Mark Epstein: The Trauma of Everyday Life

• Rubin Museum - Psychic Medium Laura Lynne Jackson + Dr. Mark Epstein

• Tibet House US - What is Special About Buddhism? Buddhism Explained : Mark Epstein M.D.

  • Can You Observe Your Own Mind? Questioning Distracting Thoughts : Mark Epstein M.D.

• Humanistic Psychology Lecture Series - The Interface of Psychology and Buddhism

• PBS - The Buddha | Interview with David Grubin, Mark Epstein, M.D., & Metteyya Sakyaputta

Books

• [Amazon Author Page] Mark Epstein

• [Book] Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself  By Mark Epstein

• [Book] Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness  By Mark Epstein

• [Book] The Trauma of Everyday Life  by Mark Epstein

• [Book] Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective  by Mark Epstein

• [Book] Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught  by Mark Epstein

• [Book] Going on Being: Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and Psychotherapy  by Mark Epstein

• [Book] Psychotherapy without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective  by Mark Epstein

• [Book] Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy  by Mark Epstein

• [Book] Fast Track to A 5 Preparing for the AP United States History Examination by Mark Epstein

Misc

• [Wiki Article] Alan Watts

• [Website] Alan Watts

• [SoS Episode] Embracing Discomfort

• [SoS Episode] Your Secret Weapon to Becoming Fearless with Jia Jiang

• [SoS Episode] How To Demolish What’s Holding You Back & Leave Your Comfort Zone with Andy Molinsky

• [SoS Episode] The Skeptics Guide To Meditation With Dan Harris

• [SoS Episode] Unleash The Power of Meditation

• [SoS Episode] The Simple 20 Minute Exercise That Rewires Your Brain For Happiness with Dr. Dan Siegel

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than three million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we share how to get over yourself and stop taking things so seriously. We discuss the important relationship between confusion and clarity and we explore the art of letting go of the need for safety, security and control in your everyday life, so that you can relax into who you’ve always been with our guest, Dr. Mark Epstein.

I’m going to tell you why you’ve been missing out on some incredibly cool stuff if you haven’t signed up for our e-mail list yet. All you have to do to sign up is to go to successpodcast.com and sign up right on the home page.

On top of tons subscriber-only content, exclusive access and live Q&As with previous guests, monthly giveaways and much more, I also created an epic free video course just for you. It's called How to Create Time for What Matters Most Even When You're Really Busy. E-mail subscribers have been raving about this guide.

You can get all of that and much more by going to successpodcast.com and signing up right on the home page, or by texting the word smarter to the number 44-222 on your phone. If you like what I do on Science of Success, my e-mail list is the number one way to engage with me and go deeper on what I discuss on the show, including free guides, actionable takeaways, exclusive content and much, much more.

Sign up for my e-mail list today by going to successpodcast.com and signing up right on the home page, or if you're on the go, if you're on your phone right now, it's even easier. Just text the word “smarter”, that's S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222. I can't wait to show you all the exciting things you'll get when you sign up and join the e-mail list.

In our previous episode, we discussed how to boost your energy, focus and happiness in five minutes or less using a dead-simple strategy that anyone can apply right away. We explored the power of self-knowledge and why it's one of the cornerstones of success in any area of life. We uncovered several powerfully uncomfortable questions that you can ask yourself to be happier, healthier and more productive with our previous guest, Gretchen Rubin. If you want to find a near-instant hack for getting focus and energy, listen to our previous episode.

Now for our interview with Mark.

[0:03:03.0] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Dr. Mark Epstein. Mark is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including his most recent books The Trauma of Everyday Life and Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself.

He is currently a clinical assistant professor in the post-doctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis at NYU and his works have been featured in Psychology Today, the New York Times and much more. Mark, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:03:35.7] ME: Hey, thank you Matt. I'm glad to be here.

[0:03:37.9] MB: Well, we're very excited to have you on the show today. To start out, I'd love to come in at a high-level and look at this fundamental theme that you've written and spoken about, how do we think about and this is going to unpack a lot of things, I know this is a big question, but how did we think about moving from this state that we’re in so frequently today of addiction, anxiety, stress, etc., to a place of as you call love, relief and understanding?

[0:04:07.2] ME: Well, I don't think we are just in that place today. Although, this is a heightened moment where everyone is very conscious of their anxiety and addiction and depression and worry. I think that's actually a place that people have been in for generations, millennia, going all the way back to the time of the Buddha and before. That was something that initially attracted me to the psychology of Buddhism when I was just a student in college before I really knew very much about anything.

I read the Buddha's words in an early religion class I was taking, where he was talking about the day-to-day mind of an average person as flapping like a fish on dry ground, trembling all the time. I immediately related and wanted to know what the prescription was in ancient times for that anxiety. I found that that prescription was still relevant for me 40, 50 years ago and now for many of my patients, that the world that we're in is always a difficult place. It's always changing. Our egos want certainty.

That's rare that we can find it. We tend to fasten on to our pleasures and try to make them last longer than they can and then box ourselves in to a feeling of deprivation, or inadequacy. The Buddhist prescription for training one's own mind is something that I took to heart and have tried to use to the best of my ability in my personal life and in my profession as a therapist.

[0:05:57.0] MB: Is training your mind one of the cornerstone pieces of beginning that journey from a place of anxiety and worry, to a place of relief and understanding?

[0:06:07.5] ME: Well, I think realizing that the mind is trainable is the beginning, even before you actually try to do it. For me, at least it was a revelation that I wasn't just a victim of my thoughts, but that it was possible actually to exert some control over the way I related to my experience, the way I related to the world and the way I related also to the stories that I was telling myself about myself.

[0:06:36.2] MB: Tell me more about this idea that the mind is trainable.

[0:06:39.6] ME: Well, that's the basic idea of all the eastern approaches to yoga and meditation. Yoga really means yoking; the way you would yoke an animal. The idea is that the untrained mind is a wild thing. One of the challenges of development of adulthood, of maturity is to get a handle on one's own mind, which means getting a handle on one's own addictions, on one's own cravings and also on one's own tendency toward violence.

The Dalai Lama always talks about inner peace. When I first heard him talking about inner peace, I thought he was talking about the relaxation response, or just calming oneself. I've come to realize that the inner peace actually means non-violence. The way to find that peace of mind is to actually be willing to confront one's own tendency toward violence, or hostility, aggression, anger, rage, etc. It means being honest with oneself and in that honesty, one can learn how to bring oneself under some modicum of control.

[0:07:53.7] MB: How do we start to be honest with ourselves and to confront our own thoughts, our own addictions, our own mental cravings?

[0:08:01.7] ME: Well, there are any number of ways. I mean, in the west we have the tradition of psychotherapy, which hasn't yet gone completely away. As far as addiction goes, the 12-step approach to admitting that one is helpless over one's own cravings is very close to what the eastern approach to meditation is. Now even in our world, we have all the eastern techniques of yoga and meditation. All of those and we could include Christian, Jewish prayer, etc., or atheistic walks in the countryside, anything that promotes self-reflection is really the way in.

Then once you are able to honestly be with the contents of one's own emotional experience, then that's the beginning. That's the beginning of taking stock of where one is at. Once one's willing to do that, then you can start to apply some of the techniques.

[0:09:09.7] MB: It's funny, this idea of self-reflection, self-awareness is such a prominent theme across people we interview from a huge array of backgrounds and disciplines.

[0:09:21.3] ME: Oh, well it's definitely the happening thing.

[0:09:23.8] MB: How do you begin to for someone who's not familiar with this who hasn't started on this journey yet, or even for someone who's just beginning their journey, how do we start to create that self-reflection in our lives? How do we overcome the inertia around, or the fear around really looking and peering at our own thinking?

[0:09:42.1] ME: Well, I don't think you have to overcome the fear. You just have to be willing to examine it, and the same with inertia. I mean, many people are interested in meditation for instance, or even in psychotherapy. The hardest thing is just taking that first step, being willing to sit down on the meditation cushion, being willing to make the appointment and come in and talk to a therapist honestly. To think that you have to wait until you have no fear, or until there's no tendency towards inertia is I think a misplaced idea. The whole idea is to be able to look at all the obstacles, all the defenses and to turn those into a grist for the meditation mill, or the therapy mill for that matter.

[0:10:33.0] MB: I think that's a really important point, this idea that we often make it too difficult for ourselves, or think that it has to be perfect before we take the first step and begin practicing, but the reality is the sooner you get started, the sooner you take that first step as you said, the better it is. You have to begin that journey somewhere.

[0:10:51.7] ME: I think you have to be ready. If you try to force somebody into therapy, or try to force somebody to meditate, that doesn't work. The defense is just we are up and there they're too strong. I think people know when they reach a critical point of personal suffering. That's different for different people comes at different times. If it’s happening to you, you know it. Then it's really worth taking the step, because there is help available and many qualified, really motivated people who are wanting to help.

[0:11:27.6] MB: You touched on that and in many ways and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that shaped the story or the narrative around Advice Not Given is this idea that how did you handle that balance of trying to help people understand this with the fact that maybe it wasn't something that they had asked for originally?

[0:11:43.2] ME: Well, that latest book that you're referring to Advice Not Given, one of the things that happened that led to me writing that book was that my father who was a fairly well-known academic physician, a scientist and he was actually chairman of the Department of Medicine at one of the Harvard hospitals, he came down with a inoperable brain tumor; that was in the silent part of his brain. Cognitively, he was fine and he was still working, but he got lost one day driving home the same 15-minute drive that he'd taken for 30 years and they realized there was this thing growing in the non-dominant side of his brain.

By the time they discovered it, it was too late to do anything from the medical side. He knew that he didn't have that long to live and I knew that too. My father while very supportive of my writing and so on was definitely not interested in any of the Buddhist side of things, or the meditation. It was not scientific enough for him. We hardly ever talked about it. He would ask about my books, or about my practice, but we never got into the substance of it.

When the diagnosis was clear, I was sitting in my own office and I realized I've never talked to my father about any of this. In the Buddhist world, there's actually a lot of advice about how to handle one's own mind when facing death and in fact, what to do with one's mind when actually dying. I realized, I have all this advice I haven't been giving even to my own father.

I with some trepidation called him on the telephone from my office and said something to him like, I don't know if you want to know about any of this, but there actually is all this information that may or may not be true, but it's supposed to be helpful. He was very nice. He’s like, “Oh, sure. Go ahead. Tell me whatever you want.” I said something to him about how there's a feeling a subjective feeling inside that really doesn't change very much from when you're 20-years-old, or 40, or 60, or even 80, he was 84, where inside you feel much the same to yourself as you always have.

If you try to find that feeling, to really look for it, it disappears on you. It's a transparent feeling. I said what the Buddhists seem to say is that if you learn to relax your mind into that transparent feeling, you can ride that feeling out as the body falls apart and that feeling of relaxing into who you've always been is something analogous to what you learn in meditation. He was like, “Okay darling, I'll try.” That was the last conversation that I had with him. I felt he really heard me and at least, I was able to get that much out.

That actually was one of the big motivations for the book, or for the title of the book, because I realized that even with my psychotherapy patients, I was always very careful not to try to lay a Buddhist trip on them if they weren't ready to hear the spiritual language that I wanted to function, the way western therapists function, which is to try to stay out of the way as much as possible in order to let people's real reasons for coming to therapy rise to the surface. Then try to help them as much as I could. I wasn't overtly giving meditation instruction or anything. Then I thought, “Oh, well. Maybe it's time after 40 years of doing this, to be a little more explicit the way I was with my dad for people.” I tried to put a lot of that into the book.

[0:15:45.7] MB: I want to get into more concretely the relationship between Buddhism and your psychotherapy practice. Before we do, tell me about – explain and go a little bit deeper into this idea of relaxing into who you've always been. I find that to be really fascinating.

[0:16:01.1] ME: Well, there are different ways to talk about what we do in meditation. The most common way that I've found is from the outside in, where the technique, or the strategy, or what I sometimes call the craft of meditation is handed down almost in a behavioral way, or in a cognitive therapy way, like focus your mind on the sensation of the breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. When your mind wanders from the direct physical sensation of the breath and you notice that your mind has wandered, bring it back the way you might teach a young child to gently, but firmly direct the attention back to the sensation of the breath.

If thoughts come, note that the mind is thinking but try not to get caught in the content of the thoughts. Try to watch the thought as it rises and falls, as it appears and then disappears; the same with feelings, with emotions, with memories, with sounds and disturbances from the outside. Those are the formal instructions, the technique that one learns if one goes to a meditation class, or a meditation teacher.

I've been increasingly interested in trying to talk about more the art of meditation, rather than the craft what we're really doing when we meditate. That's where I think my own personal experience both as a meditator and as a therapist and as a person in therapy has come into play, because whenever you're sitting alone with your own thoughts and feelings you're actually processing a lot of what we and our culture have come to think about as our personality, going all the way back to who we were when we were a child.

There's a lot of psychological, a lot of emotional material that the ancient Buddhist texts didn't really have the language for. There was no Freud in the time of the Buddha. People didn't pay attention to their childhoods, or to their dreams, or to their relationships in the same way that we do now. All of that material; early traumas, early difficulties in our family life, in school, in our love relationships, all of that stuff is actually filtering through our minds also as we try to meditate. We need to have a way of relating to all of that material too.

I'm thinking of that approach more as the art of meditation. That's what I was also trying to convey to my father, that about behind all of that is this subjective feeling of who we are, who we used to be, who we might be, who we don't quite understand, what we don't quite understand, more the mystery of what it is to be a person with a mind and a body. We tap into that in meditation, as well as all of the psychological stuff that I was mentioning before.

[0:19:16.7] MB: You once said that people expect too much of meditation. What did you mean by that?

[0:19:20.8] ME: Well, a lot of people these days come to meditation hoping for something similar to what they might expect from Prozac, if they're anxious or depressed, that it's going to be the pill, the thing that is going to make them happy. I think that it doesn't really work like that. To hope for too much from meditation is to just get disappointed. It's a much more subtle intervention, even than Prozac. Prozac doesn't always work either.

[0:19:52.7] MB: Tell me more about the art side of meditation. I understand and we've done a number of episodes in the past in the show about this craft and the physical technique and practice of it, but I want to understand more deeply this side around the art of it as you called it.

[0:20:08.3] ME: Well, I think meditation ultimately is something that you have to teach yourself. The Buddha at the time of his death, his last words to his faithful student and attendant Anand were, “Be an island to yourself. Take refuge in yourself.” You can learn the technique, you can learn the craft of meditation, but a lot of us – I don't know if this is only in the west, or if this is more long-standing, but a lot of us want the experts to in some sense do it for us. We want the scientist to lay out what neural pathways meditation is working on and what neurotransmitters are being stimulated by the practice.

It's easier to focus on that than it is to really wrestle with the depth of one's own confusion. That's where the art of meditation law is being willing to be honest in an ongoing way with what one's deepest inner struggles actually are. To find that place of balance inside of oneself, where one can sit as if under a giant tree with all the successes and failures and praise and criticism and pleasure and pain that life throws at us. That's really the art of meditation, being willing to be with all of that with some equanimity.

[0:21:49.0] MB: I think you make another really good point, which is this idea that we have to put in the work and sit in our own confusion and really work through these things, that it's not a quick fix like taking a pill, but it's still something that's really richly rewarding at the end of the day.

[0:22:03.8] ME: Well, there's some important relationship between confusion and clarity, just as there is between anger and love. I think what we've learned from therapy is that it's so much harder to love if you haven't faced the anger that you're actually harboring, even for the person who you need the most. I think it's similar with confusion and clarity that the clarity that one seeks from meditation really emerges out of being willing to sit in the midst of one's own confusion. It's only by staring it in the face, the Zen meditators stare at the wall, they sit and stare at the wall for however long they can stand it. I think that's some metaphor for sitting and staring at your own confusion.

The very word that the Buddha used when he gave his first psychological teachings of the Four Noble Truths, he said, “The first noble truth is the truth of dukkha,” which is generally translated as suffering. The actual word dukkha, kha means face and du is something like it's difficult. The word actually means it's difficult to face. There's something in our experience, something that permeates life that's difficult to face, the same way the wall is difficult to face where does in meditators.

What is that that's difficult to face? It's ourselves, it's the way we fight with experience, it's our own anxiety, our fears, our confusion, our inertia as you mentioned before. There's an awful lot in any given individual’s experience that's difficult to face. The Buddha was saying meditation is a way of actually doing this. If you face what's difficult to face, you start to find that it becomes more workable. It's not an immediate transition to happiness, but it becomes more workable. It's a therapy in its own right. The mind itself becomes more workable. It becomes less rigid, more pliant, more open, more accepting. I think eventually more able to love.

[0:24:18.5] MB: This theme of this ideas as you call it facing the difficult, we've had a number of previous episodes where we talk about the idea of embracing discomfort. Whether you're talking to literally in the case of some of the people we've interview in the past in the show, astronauts to perform, and psychologists at the highest possible level, to neuroscientists, this idea of embracing discomfort is another theme that's really recurrent across a huge number of fields. Again, I feel today so many people shy away from discomfort, or move away from it, or flinch and try to run the other way when they encounter things that are uncomfortable.

[0:24:53.8] ME: Well, that's very natural. Of course, you turn away from whatever is uncomfortable. I think to phrase it to strongly as embracing discomfort is maybe to overdo it in that way that we were talking before about forcing meditation on people might be counterproductive, or going too far towards the discomfort as if it's a good thing.

What the Buddha I think is saying and what a lot of our best psychotherapists are pointing to also is that there isn't just an element of discomfort that is inevitable. If we don't make room for it, I don't know that we have to embrace it, we certainly don't have to like it. If we can't make room for it, then we start erecting these defenses against it that back us into a corner and tend to rigidify our own minds and our own experience such that we become slightly paranoid and afraid, because there's always more discomfort to come. The Buddha is suggesting there's a way of swimming in the sea of it, not necessarily enjoying it all the time, but at least learning how to float.

[0:26:17.1] MB: Earlier, you mentioned love. Tell me a little bit about how you think about love and then how it might be different from the western traditional conception of it.

[0:26:25.7] ME: Well, I try not to think about love too much. Allowing love to emerge when it does, not to be scared of love and to realize that that's really what we're here for. It's available everywhere, so even in family life. Then the psychotherapy office and that were – and people you only know a little bit, we're all wired for it. Not closing ourselves off to it when it wants to reveal itself.

[0:27:00.4] MB: I'm guessing you listen to this podcast, because you want to improve yourself in some way. That's why I'm so excited to have our amazing sponsor, Skillshare, back to sponsor us once again. Skillshare is an online learning community for creators with more than 25,000 classes in design, business and more.

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[0:28:56.0] MB: I want to zoom out and come back to something we touched on earlier, as a psychotherapist how did you begin to integrate, or think about Buddhism as a tool, or as a resource?

[0:29:08.4] ME: Well, I actually came to the Buddhism first. I was in an unusual position in our culture. I think I mentioned before, I found Buddhism when I was still in college, before I had taken any courses in psychology, before I read Freud, before I knew I was going to go to medical school to become a therapist. Buddhism somehow found me. I began to meditate. I met now very well-known meditation teachers like Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein and the Dalai Lama. I met them all when I was young and practiced as much meditation as I could, given the confines of still being at college and so on.

It was only after immersing myself as much as I was able in that world that I decided to really studied to become a therapist and psychiatrist to go to medical school, to become a physician and so on. A lot of my training in western psychotherapy I did after learning about Buddhism. I took it in through a Buddhist lens. I was always interested in the beginning in how do these two worlds line up. Are they saying the same thing, or different things?

The Buddhist way of working with the mind didn't seem that different from the western psychoanalytic way of working with the mind. Both involved setting up what the therapist called a therapeutic split in the ego, where you were both the subject and the object of your own experience. You were observing yourselves in this reflective way that we were talking about before. Meditation was much the same.

The best way of learning how to be a therapist is of course to be in therapy. There's a lot of training in how to be a therapist, but that's similar to the training and meditations. You can get the basic instruction from the outside, but you have to figure out how to do it from the inside. I learned how to be a therapist by being a therapist. I learned how to integrate meditation in Buddhism with my therapy by trying to integrate it with my therapy, in working with my patients over many years. I would say I'm still at the beginning of being able to do that, or being able to talk about how I do that. It's been an ongoing effort.

[0:31:37.9] MB: Tell me more about this idea of creating a therapeutic split in the ego.

[0:31:41.5] ME: Well, that's the basis for most of the psychological development that Buddhism and psychoanalysis is both striving for, that we were talking about at the beginning. That it's actually possible and it's a very strange thing. It's actually possible to simultaneously be both the observer and that which is being observed in one's own stream of consciousness. That's a capacity that somehow we as humans have evolved. There's some evidence that some of the other higher primates and other mammals also have that self-reflective capacity, elephant said octopuses. I'm not sure, it's probably some of the baboons and so on seem to also have bits of that ability, but we really have it.

In the Buddhist way of thinking, the human realm that we're all part of is the optimal place for psychological development, because we can either completely surrender to our thoughts, cravings, addictions, feelings and so on, or we can become the observer of them. In becoming the observer of them, we change how we relate to any of them, so that we don't have to be the helpless victim anymore. We can actually interpose space between the impulse and the action. That's a lot of what kids cultivated in both traditions, eastern ways.

[0:33:24.3] MB: What is the ego?

[0:33:26.6] ME: Aha. Well, that's a very good question. The ego doesn't really exist. The ego is a word that we now put on the aspect of our experience that has to mediate between inner impulses and outer requirements of family, school, friends, the world as we experience it from the outside. The ego is something that cognitively develops at around the age of three, or four when the child first realizes that he or she is a separate person and has to be careful about how he, or she acts.

The ego as we think about it in western psychology is that which is all about self-preservation and self-control. The ego is always looking for some safety, some control, some security. If we didn't have the ego, we would be at the mercy of our most primitive impulses the way – I don't know if you've ever been around someone with schizophrenia, but in schizophrenia something happens to the ego and the person is no longer able to regulate themselves. They're no longer able to mediate their most primitive thoughts, which just come pouring out of their mouths in a disjointed fashion.

The ego is a very important aspect of psychological development. From a Buddhist point of view, it tends to be over-developed and boxes us into that corner I was talking about before, where in the attempt to find security and safety and to exert control, it has to make us more rigid than we need to be, because we live in a world where even though we found amazing ability to achieve some security, it's impossible in a complete way.

[0:35:54.0] MB: One of the most interesting things, I really found the subtitle of Advice Not Given to be a little bit provocative even, which is A Guide to Getting Over Yourself. Tell me a little bit about that and how that relates to the ego.

[0:36:07.1] ME: Well, the subtitle came to me later. The book was going to have a different subtitle, which I can't even remember anymore. Suddenly, I realized Advice Not Given, I had the book structured around the Buddha's Eightfold Path, which is his fourth noble truth, which was the Buddhist prescription for how to deal with suffering or trauma. The prescription goes from right thought, right understanding, right speech, right action, right livelihood, to right concentration and right mindfulness.

The central idea in Buddhist psychology is that we all take ourselves too seriously. That in our attempts to optimize our own personal experience, we end up competing against the other billion or so people in the world and we are inevitably going to come out on the short end of the stick. In order to live a better life, we have to come to the understanding that we are not an isolated entity the way we think of ourselves in competition with, or in opposition to the rest of humanity. We are in fact an integral part of the world as a whole. We can't take ourselves out of it the way we imagine we ought to be able to.

That's the thought behind getting over oneself. It's getting over the way we tend to privilege our own position within the recesses of our own minds. In so doing, we experience ourselves as a relational being, not as an isolated entity. That's what it means to get over yourself in my limited view.

[0:37:53.1] MB: It's such an interesting idea and something that I think about a lot, this idea that we can't possibly be separated from everything else. I think originally came to that from reading Alan Watts, was one of my favorite old school thinkers bridging that gap between Buddhist thinking and Eastern thinking and Western thinking.

[0:38:10.8] ME: Yeah. Well, Alan Watts is one of the first great talkers who – translators, who could make all of this really come alive. Most of us do really think of ourselves as separate from the rest of the world and secretly in the privacy of our own minds, we're scheming about how to keep ourselves safe, or garner enough to secure our retirement. That's our most personal thinking.

[0:38:41.1] MB: The interesting thing about this idea of being one with everything is that from a hard science standpoint, if you look at the physics of it, if you look at the biology of it, it’s something that truly scientifically speaking, we really are inseparable from the rest of reality.

[0:38:57.5] ME: Well, the scientists are probing reality non-stop. What they find is that they can't even separate themselves as the prober from the reality that they're probing. That's the great mystery of relativity. The Buddhists were there in a certain way long ago. This idea even of the therapeutic split in the ego that I was trying to tell my father about, even if you relax your mind into that subjective sense of who you always were, you can't totally pull yourselves out of that greater reality that you are part of.

[0:39:36.8] MB: What are some of the other themes, or commonalities that you've uncovered between Buddhism and psychotherapy?

[0:39:46.0] ME: Well, that idea of non-violence that I was talking about earlier is the one I'm thinking about the most now, because I think the western psychoanalytic traditions especially, were the most fearless at confronting the underlying violence that conditions all of our minds. That when you even look at the psychology of very young children, infants with their mothers and so on, you can see that it's a tendency that we all come in with.

In the eastern traditions and in a lot of those in our culture who are drawn to the eastern traditions, there can be a tendency to try to leapfrog over some of the more raw and primitive instinctual, all kinds of impulses that are driving us, as if we could just jump right into the enlightened states that we read about. I don't really think that's possible. That's the spiritual bypassing, that some of the first generations of people to look at the eastern psychology have been prone towards.

I've been much more interested in what happens if we again take that just very honest reckoning with ourselves and allow ourselves to be humbled by what we see; that seems to yield a humility and graciousness that seems to be good for people.

[0:41:27.0] MB: That's a great turn of phrase; we can't jump right into enlightenment. I think it's a really succinct way of describing the importance of this journey, in this everyday practice of moments of honest reckoning with ourselves.

[0:41:39.1] ME: Yes. Well, it's hard to really know what enlightenment means, since most of us myself included, haven't experienced it. People should be aware of the gurus who are presenting themselves as already there, because it's pretty likely that most of them aren't.

[0:41:59.9] MB: For listeners who want to concretely implement some of the ideas that we've talked about today, what would be one piece of homework or an action item that you would give them to begin on their own personal journey?

[0:42:11.7] ME: Oh, I would just say read a book, or go to an art museum. I was teaching once in Oklahoma and this therapist came up to me afterwards and said, “In Oklahoma, we can't even talk about meditation or mindfulness.” When I'm working with a new person I just tell them, “Go outside. Close the door. Stand there and listen.” I think to be too prescriptive for people is to make the wrong move. That's where that Advice Not Given, that's the other sentiment that was going into the title.

People can find their own way. There are so many paths out there and it's so much better when you find your own way, than when you're just swallowing somebody else's pill that they're giving you. Trust yourself.

[0:43:05.0] MB: For listeners who want to find you and your work online, what's the best place for them to do that?

[0:43:10.7] ME: I have a website that lists all my books and has a couple of links to this or that article or interview. They can go there. I also have a Facebook page, that is Mark Epstein, MD., that has a list of upcoming talks, or lectures, or whatever.

[0:43:32.0] MB: Well, we'll make sure to include links to all of those in the show notes at successpodcast.com. Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show for sharing all this wisdom and knowledge.

[0:43:41.8] ME: Thanks a lot Matt. It's been great.

[0:43:43.5] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you our listeners master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

I'm going to give you three reasons why you should sign up for our e-mail list today by going to successpodcast.com, signing up right on the homepage. There are some incredible stuff that’s only available to those on the e-mail list, so be sure to sign up, including an exclusive curated weekly e-mail from us called Mindset Monday, which is short, simple, filled with articles, stories, things that we found interesting and fascinating in the world of evidence-based growth in the last week.

Next, you're going to get an exclusive chance to shape the show, including voting on guests, submitting your own personal questions that we’ll ask guests on air and much more. Lastly, you’re going to get a free guide we created based on listener demand, our most popular guide, which is called how to organize and remember everything. You can get it completely for free along with another surprise bonus guide by signing up and joining the e-mail list today. Again, you can do that at successpodcast.com, sign up right at the homepage, or if you're on the go, just text the word “smarter”, S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

Remember, the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to a friend either live or online. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us an awesome review and subscribe on iTunes because that helps boost the algorithm, that helps us move up the iTunes rankings and helps more people discover the Science of Success.

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Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Science of Success.

The Evidence Based Habits You Need To Build an Unstoppable Brain with Dr. Mike Dow

In this episode we discuss how to build a rockstar brain. We get into the neurochemical compositions that create moods from happiness to depression and look at you can change the building blocks of the neurochemicals by changing your diet and your habits. In a world were people are more stressed than ever, sleeping less, and trying to do more - we look at the causes of “brain drain” and what we can do to have physically happier and more productive brains with Dr. Michael Dow. 

Dr. Michael Dow is a psychotherapist, neurotherapist, and a New York Times Bestselling author. He has been the host of several television series examining relationships, brain health, addiction, and mental illness. Dr. Mike is frequently a guest cohost on The Doctors and his work has been featured in Today, Good Morning America, Nightline, and more.

• Your brain is being drained every day by stress, life, etc

• The 3 subtypes of brain drain

• Adrenaline

  1. Norepinephrine

  2. Cortisol

• What happens, neurologically, when you suffer from “brain drain” or brain fog

• What are we doing in our daily lives to cause brain drain?

• The brain balancing neurochemicals that are the antidotes to stress hormones

• Through everyday lifestyle changes you can transform your neurochemicals

• EPA and DHA Omega 3 Acids - and why they are important co-factors in building a healthy brain

• People are feeling more stressed than ever, working more, sleeping less

• How are we causing “brain drain” with our daily habits and activities?

• The 24 hour relationship between cortisol and melatonin

• Throughout the day, your melatonin level rises and your cortisol level decreases

• What we do every single day has a far more profound effect on our neurochemicals than we even realize

• Lifestyle interventions you can implement to rebalance and change your neurochemicals

• Stay away from foods that boost your glycemic index

• Sugar and flour drain and shrink the hippocampus - which is the main site of neurogenesis

• Eat more spinach, quiona, bannanas

• How do we cultivate GABA?

• Glutamine from spinach

  1. Vitamin B6 in bannanas, magnesium and zinc

• Eat seven servings of whole fruits and vegetables every day

• “Probiotics are the new prozac”

• Are vitamins and supplements are useful tool or should we get all our nutrients from whole foods?

• The importance of getting Omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA)

• EPA = Feel Better Omega 3 (stress less Omega 3)

  1. DHA = Sleep soundly Omega 3 (promotes restful sleep)

  2. EPA and DHA compete for space in your cells

• Vegan and vegetarian options for Omega 3 fatty acids (ALA)

• Omega 3s are one of the best foods you can eat for your brain - they are the building blocks of yo

• You can build a “rockstar brain” with a modified mediterranean diet

• Lean protein

  1. Nuts

  2. Olive Oil

  3. Fish

  4. Lots of fruits and vegetables

• How soybean oil & Omega 6 fats cause brain inflammation

• The modified mediterranean diet has been shown via research to combat major depressive disorder

• "You are what you eat, ate"

• Common sources of omega 6 fats - soybean oil and factory farmed meat products - most intense source of omega 6 fats which cause brain inflammation

• Strategies for shifting the brain from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic

• Progressive muscle relaxation

  1. Autogenic training

  2. Self hypnosis

  3. Mindfulness meditation

  4. Mantra based meditation

• Fit people release 40% less cortisol than those who are out of shape

• The right exercise at the right time is essential to balancing your neurochemicals, for example Interval training is great long term for weight loss, but spikes cortisol levels in the short term

Thank you so much for listening!

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SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] Heal Your Drained Brain: Naturally Relieve Anxiety, Combat Insomnia, and Balance Your Brain in Just 14 Days by Dr. Mike Dow

• [Book] The Brain Fog Fix: Reclaim Your Focus, Memory, and Joy in Just 3 Weeks by Dr. Mike Dow

• [Personal Site] Dr. Mike Dow

• [Twitter] Dr. Mike Dow

Episode Transcript

[00:00:06.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.9] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than a million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries. In this episode, we discuss how to build a rockstar brain. We get into the neurochemical compositions that create moods from happiness to depression and look at how you can change the building blocks of the neurochemicals by changing your diet and your habits. 

In a world where people are more stressed than ever, sleeping less and trying to do more, we look at the causes of brain drain and what we can do to have physically happier and more productive brains, with Dr. Michael Dow. 

I’m going to give you three reasons why you should join our email list today by going to successpodcast.com and signing up right on the homepage. There some amazing stuff that’s only available to our email subscriber, so be sure you sign up. First, you’re going to get access to awesome free guide that we create based on listener demand, including our most popular guide; How to Organize and Remember Everything. You can get it completely for free along with another surprise bonus guide when you sign up and join the email list today. 

Next, you’re going to get a curated weekly email from us every single week called Mindset Monday. Send it out on Mondays, by the way. It’s short, simple, links, articles and stories that we found interesting, exciting and motivating in the last week. Next, you’re going to get a chance to shape the show. You’re going to get to vote on guests, vote on things like changing our intro music and even submit your own personal questions to our guests, which we will mix in and ask in our interviews. So be sure you sign up, get on the email list. Only people on the email list have access to these and other amazing content that I haven't even told you about. 

You can go to success podcast.com and sign up right on the homepage or if you’re driving around, if you’re on the go, if you’re on your phone, just text the word “smarter”, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44222. 

in our previous episode, We explored luck. Does luck exist? Is there a science behind luck? What does the research reveal about lucky people and unlucky people? Is it possible to manufacture your own luck?

We spoke with the research psychologist, Dr. Richard Wiseman, and learned the truth about luck and how you just might be able to create a little bit more in your own life. If you want to be luckier, listen to that episode. 

Now, for the show today. 

[0:02:31.3] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Dr. Mike Dow. Mike is a psychotherapist, neurotherapist and New York Times best-selling author. He's been a host of several television series examining relationships, brain health, addiction and mental illness. He's frequently a guest or a cohost on The Doctors and his work has been features in Today, Good Morning America, Nightline and much more. 

Mike, welcome to the Science of Success. 

[0:02:54.0] MD: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 

[0:02:56.1] MB: We’re very excited to have you here. So I’d love to start out with when — And I think this is a more common phenomenon, more and more common phenomenon. When we feel kind of cloudy or we don't feel like ourselves, we feel like kind of sluggish, what is that and what’s going on? Is that just a natural part of aging? Is that a natural part of life or is there something deeper there?

[0:03:15.1] MD: To some degree, 1% of it is a natural part of aging. Our brains tend to shrink a little bit as we age, but most, 99% of it, I would say no. What's really going on is our brains are becoming drained. Of course, the title of my book is Heal Your Drained Brain, and I was inspired to write this book, because I was looking at the statistics and I was looking a brain scans, I was looking at what I was countering in my clinic, in my private practice. Just to be honest, a lot of my fellow authors, my colleagues, my friends, what they were experiencing in everyday life and how hard it is to be a high achieving human being these days if you want it all. 

So if you've ever seen like a madman, you look at these old days when you could kind of go to work and you had somebody taken care of your calls and you sat a quiet desk and you focused and then you came home and work rarely bothered you. Those days are over, but I guess the question remains; what is happening? What is all that chronic stress do to your brain, especially if you are somebody who is trying to juggle your romantic life, your personal life, your friends, your families, your career where our brains are becoming drained. 

I'm sure we can jump in to some of the neuroscience and the neurochemicals involved, but that feeling is what I call brain drain, and if you look at the stats, more and more Americans and, by the way, people around the world are now experiencing this condition of brain drain and chances are — It was funny, I just got back from New York and Rachael Ray and I were talking about this and she said she started up the segment by saying, “I don't know what a drained brain is, but I think I have it,” and if you're like her, you probably are in her shoes. If you have this drained brain, you're going to feel it. You're not can have the energy. You're not going to have the resiliency that you need to get through everything you need to do in your daily life. 

[0:05:14.1] MB: Tell me a little bit more about that, kind of what's going on at sort of a neurological level, neurochemical level when we’re experiencing this brain drain.

[0:05:22.1] MD: Yeah, a couple of things. So neurochemicaly, if you have a drained brain — I've created these names for the subtypes of drained brain. There are three stress hormones that I call your three brain drainers. They are adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol. So in a healthy brain you encounter a stress. So let's say you're creating a new app and maybe you're in a new relationship and you got those texts flowing in, rapid fire on your phone and that stress. Every time you get that new text of, “Hey! We have a new deadline approaching.” 

In a healthy balance brain, you have two waves. The primary wave is adrenaline and norepinephrine secreted from your adrenal glands, and then you have this secondary wave of cortisol. Ideally, of course, it’s a little bit easier in the book because you have — I have these nice X-Y graphs, but if you could kind of just visualize two waves. 
Imagine the ocean, you have the primary wave, that's adrenaline and norepinephrine, and then you have that second wave, and that's cortisol. Now what happens in drained brains is a couple of different things can happen. So in what I call the sort of the garden-variety, sort of light drain, all three stress hormones go a little bit too high. In what I call skyrocket drain what happens is they sort of — As the name implies, they skyrocket and then you have panic attacks, you have like feelings of absolute dread. The anxiety becomes almost paralyzing in that case. 

Then you have what I call drop drain. So we've seen in research that some people when you have that stressor, you have that initial response. So if you look at those two waves, you will see the waves of these stress hormones going up, but then it's like imagine two waves hitting a brick wall just as they're cresting. Instead of being able to rise and gently fall, they sort of rise and then they drop. 

Now, while generally speaking, we want to decrease the brain drainers. We also want this normal healthy response, because remember that stress hormones are designed to help you charge through that presentation, get through all the stressors, because a little bit of these brain drainers can be helpful. Then you have this fourth subtype of a drained brain, which is what I call X-treme drain, and I spell X-treme, X-treme, because if you look in an X-Y graph, it really does form an X, meaning the adrenaline and norepinephrine are going up, but cortisol sort of paradoxically stays low. 

So if you stress yourself out for too long and that is left untreated, or we also saw this and scientists and researchers were actually surprised, if you’re a vet, if you are somebody who’s been through a trauma, if you're the survivor of abuse, people who are diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, and if you’re left untreated and you don't take some of my advice in the book, then you're going to have this extreme drain. So you're going to have low levels of cortisol that sort of remain too low and adrenaline and norepinephrine run too high, which creates the state that sort of this you're going to feel wired but also tired.

Cortisol actually helps to wake us up in the morning. In the wee hours, our cortisol starts to rise and that sort of helps to wake us up. So in these brains, the cortisol just stays too low and the other brain drainers are high. So it sort of forms this X, right? So that's sort of — In terms of the neurochemicals, those three brains drainers are at play, and then what I call the brain balancers, which sort of are the antidotes to these stress hormones, so that acetylcholine, GABA, serotonin, melatonin, endorphins, all of these feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters, they're basically running too low. What’s incredible is that through everyday lifestyle change, this is how you exercise, this is how you eat, you could make more of the brain balancers, you can make more GABA, more serotonin naturally, and of course later the show I’d love to tell you how, and then you can also manage the stress hormone spikes, which is really incredible, because we want to sort of regulate the brain drainers, and this is important overall. 

I'm talking about the chemicals now, but now, if we just shift to brain structure, what happens is in drained brains, you are literally shrinking your brain. Unresolved chronic stress we know shrinks the prefrontal cortex. That's a part of the brain that separates you from animals. It is the part of the brain that makes you a human being. It is the most advanced part of the brain. It helps you to put the brakes on urges. It's been said that if a soul, if you're soul lived in a part of the brain, it would be in the prefrontal cortex, right? So that part of the brain shrinks if you don't do anything about this drained brain. Also, if you are eating the wrong foods, we know that, for example, spiking your blood sugar too often shrinks another part of the brain, and hippocampus, and then some solutions, some of the foods in my 14-day program are really designed to help prevent sort of this shrunken drained brain by restoring the brain balancers, making sure your brain doesn't shrink. 

Our brains do, again, shrink a little bit as we age, but if you're getting the omega-3 super foods, especially the EPA, the DHA that's found in seafood. I can talk a little bit about vegan sources of omega-3's if you'd like and getting these B vitamins, especially B12 and B6, all of these vitamins and minerals that act as cofactors that help your brain and body to naturally manufacture the feel-good neurotransmitters that you need to balance this brain drain. 

[0:11:20.3] MB: I want to dig into the strategies we can implement and lifestyle interventions to create kind of a happier, healthier brain. But before we do, I want to look a little bit more at sort of what kind of the inverse side of that coin, which is what are people doing that's causing so much brain drain and kind of brain fog today? 

[0:11:40.2] MD: Yeah. That's a great question. So some of it is — I've a chapter in this book, in Heal You Drained Brain called wired for worry. There is some genetic loading, of course, and then people who are — If you have this family history of any sort of anxiety disorder, you're more likely to think in ways. For example, if you're anxious maybe you get caught in what I call paralysis analysis, which is another way of saying rumination or stewing in anxious thoughts. That drains your brain. It can be a little bit of genetics. It can be what you went through if you're the survivor of trauma, if you didn't have the kind of healthy parenting that you wish you had, but it can also be the result of our everyday lives. 

Even if you don't have a family history, even if you had great parents, it seems like everything in the modern world, Matt, is set up to drain us. So if you look at the stats, the American Psychological Association has been doing this landmark study for over a decade now, and 2017, last year, was the highest reported average stress level Americans had ever reported. So we really are more stressed out than ever. We sleep an hour less than we did a generation ago. We’re working more. This is especially true for Americans compared to other countries. We just — We work all the time. Our commutes have gotten longer as — it's great that our economy is doing so well, but that is also forced people to live further away from their jobs and further away from city centers. So our commutes have actually got longer, and then we’re on the rapid fire text, email, Instagram. It's almost as if the very technology — I always make a joke that it's funny isn't it that social media tends to make some people antisocial, because they're so glued to their social media accounts that they don't have any real friends. Remember that these technologies were invented to supplement or to help us in our lives not take the place of them. 

I think the danger for so many people these days is we are using our phones, our social media accounts as replacements for things like five minutes in nature, a walk with our dog, a sit down dinner without a phone for like 30 minutes. Our phones are great. I love social media. I love texting my friends. I love texting my mom. I don't like long phone calls. I'm not that kind of person. Thank goodness for texts. It’s how I stay in communication with the world mostly, but we have to also remember that dividing our attention — We know that in brain scans, what's happening. If you think you're multitasking, you're kidding yourself, because in brain scans, what you are doing is you are rapidly switching tasks. So what you're doing is you are rapidly single tasking so that it feels like you're multitasking, but in reality you're probably not. 

If you're multitasking between two things that are simple, that's fine, but what happens is as the complexity of the tasks will grow, you start to lose efficiency by switching from task to task in your brain. Even if it feels like you're doing two things at once, you're actually switching really quickly. And then your brain starts to slow down, and then if you are what researchers deem as a heavy media multiuser, so if you're sitting watching Netflix while you're completing a spreadsheet and then you have your phone in your lap and your checking on your Instagram account and you do that 24 hours a day, you lose the ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli. That means when you're at a meeting and you're at a job interview or you’re trying to land a client and somebody is talking to you, you're going to lose your train of thought. They're going to say something and you're going to say, “What? What did you just say?” and that's not going to look good, right?

So it's important to be — It's great — I'm guilty of it to. I love sometimes at the end of a long day sitting with my laptop in my lap and sort of perusing emails as I have something mindless on TV, but we should also know that we can't do that all the time, because it really is fogging our brain. It drains our brain. It increases our level of stress hormones. 

The subtitle of my book talks about how my program not only relieves anxiety and stress, but also insomnia. I also want to talk about the 24-hour relationship between cortisol and melatonin. So I think I mentioned before that cortisol spikes in the morning to help wake you up as melatonin dips, and then throughout the course of a day, your cortisol level should go down as melatonin rises. 

Think about that. At night when you go to bed, your cortisol levels should be at the lowest point they’ve been all day. One of those brain drainers, that stress hormone cortisol, and your melatonin levels should be at their highest, but if you are sitting at 11 PM in bed checking emails from your phone, number one, the stressful email from your boss is going to shoot up your cortisol levels when your cortisol levels should be going down, and then the blue light from all electronics screens — And by the way, if you have one of the newer iPhones, you should use the night filter, because it is the most [inaudible 0:16:46.7] production, but is not perfect. So it's still going to suppress a little bit of melatonin production. Television, phones, it's really taking the melatonin production in your brain. It's suppressing it at the very time when you want melatonin high and cortisol low. Basically everything we’re doing is in some way draining our brain and there's just so much we can do to naturally reverse that process. 

[0:17:09.2] MB: It's fascinating, and I love hearing kind of the sort of interplay between all these different neurochemicals, and something we talk a lot about on the show and I spent a lot of time thinking about, especially kind of how to cultivate things like GABA, serotonin and even dopamine. Is this kind of a good point to segue into and look at some of the positive interventions and ways that we can make lifestyle changes that can actually start to rebalance the neurochemicals within our brains?

[0:17:35.8] MD: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important for people to realize that what we do every single day has a far more profound effect on our neurochemicals on the state of our brain than we think. I want to give you an example. We mentioned serotonin. Serotonin is really our main feel-good downer. Dopamine is really our main feel-good upper, and then it I would say that GABA is also sort of a — Serotonin and GABA sort of are a little bit different, but they're both sort of feel-good downers. If you take a Xanax or releasing a lot of GABA, serotonin — People like the street drug molly, because that releases a lot of serotonin. It tends to make people very feel really good, but very calm, versus dopamine. 

So let's look at, for example, serotonin. First of all, we want to shift away from foods that spike our blood sugar, foods with a high glycemic index or glycemic load. All of those foods that you already know are bad for you, but they're probably worse for you than you think when it comes to your brain. We now know from recent research that your brain will shrink, that spiking your blood sugar with anything that contains sugar or flour, that is going to drain and shrink the hippocampus in your brain. That's a really important part of the brain that you don't want to shrink. It’s the main source, the main site of neurogenesis or the birth of new brain cells and connections, and sugar is basically undoing that and it's shrinking that part of your brain. 

We want your brain to get bigger and better. If you want to have it all in this world, if you want to have a life where you can have a healthy relationship, a rockstar career, you really do want a big beautiful brains to manage all of that stress and juggle all of those things. Let's say you're going to have a rich diet and you're going to eat — A lot of people, when they think of amino acids, they think of muscle growth in bodybuilder, and that's one of the — A variety of fruits, vegetables, and amino acids, but the other reason is for these brain chemicals. 

For example, tryptophan, which is an amino acid that’s found in, for example, quinoa. So if you’re shifting from pasta or pizza and the sugar and flour that's going to shrink your brain to healthy quinoa, you're also going to get this amino acid. Now, your body and your brain converts tryptophan into 5-HTP, which is then converted into serotonin, which is then later converted from serotonin into melatonin, but your body needs cofactors to make this conversion. 

To convert tryptophan into serotonin and melatonin, i needs folate, it needs vitamin B6, it needs vitamin C it needs zinc, it needs magnesium. So that's why you want these healthy food. So for example, you’re going to get some — Let's say you have the salad. So you have the quinoa, which is a great source of tryptophan. You have spinach, which is a great source of folate, a.k.a. vitamin B9. By the way, I like leafy greens, because folic acid, the synthetic form of folate, not nearly as good as folate, the authentic nature’s form of folate found in things like spinach, and then your body is going to convert that to 5-HTP, and then with the help of vitamin B6 from bananas, maybe some vitamin C from raspberries, maybe some think from chickpeas, maybe someone magnesium from Swiss Chard, your brain is going to convert that into serotonin. 

Now, the same thing — Let's talk about GABA, right? Something that also helps you to relieve anxiety. Same thing here, glutamine is an amino acid found in spinach with the help of vitamin B6, magnesium and zinc. That is converted into feel-good GABA. Then the same thing for your main feel-good upper. Tyrosine, with the help of these the same cofactors, these vitamins and minerals, it converts that into dopamine, right? This is why I recommend in my 14-day program that you eat seven servings of whole fruits and vegetables every single day to ensure that you're getting all these vitamins, these minerals that are going to help your brain to make the feel-good neurotransmitters that you need to start to keep
Feeling good and relieve that drain brain. 

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Back to the show. 

[0:23:41.9] MB: I want to want to dig in to some of these solutions a little bit more, but for something like vitamins, for example, what are the effects or is it beneficial to take, for example, a vitamin B supplement or fish oil supplement, the kind of supplement your diet if you maybe are not getting enough of these foods naturally or is it not as bioavailable or is not as effective. Tell me a little bit about that. 

[0:24:02.8] MD: Listen. I think it's a great safety net for a lot of people. Nature has a way — I will say this. Nature has a way of putting things in combinations that increases our bioavailability. It’s just fascinating the way nature just knows how to put things together. 

In many ways, yes, when you do get in a natural form, I like to see the synergistic effects — Something else that heals your brain, probiotics, which I call the new Prozac. If you're eating a diet rich in probiotics, there are prebiotic, but then there are probiotic boosters. If you're eating natural healthy foods, that actually enhances the effect of other feel-good neurotransmitters. There is something to be said about synergy and synergistic effects of foods, but I will say that for a lot of people, supplements can be a really great safety net. 

What I don't want people to do is to supplement and then think that taking a B vitamin supplement means that you can skip all the other great sources of vitamin B6, B12 and folate, because those three B vitamins, 6, 12 and 9, a.k.a. folate, are just so vital. I have to say that I love supplementing, especially when I'm traveling and I’m not getting a healthy well-rounded diet. I can actually feel the difference when I get a little supplement of those B vitamins. So they are really helpful. 

It is also very difficult for a lot of people, unfortunately our world is polluted and it is polluted a lot of our seafood. In my book; Heal Your Drained Brain, I have what's called the omega-3 super food list, which is the list of fish that have, number one, high levels of omega threes, but number two, low levels of toxins, like mercury, and a lot of people just think, “Oh! I just should eat wild caught all the time,” but that’s actually a myth, because for salmon, that's true. Wild salmon, you want to stay away from farm raised salmon, but there are some farm raised varieties of fish, for example, farm raised rainbow trout that are actually very high in omega threes, but actually quite low in mercury. So it's safe to eat all the time, just about as safe as it is to eat wild caught salmon. Of course the same is not true for farm raised salmons. So you want to stay away from that. 

But supplementing with an omega-3 can be fantastic. In this book, in Brain Fog Fix, I call the two omega threes, the two usable forms of omega threes, EPA and DHA. In my book the Brain Fog Fix, because that book is really talking about brain fog, depression, dementia. EPA is your feel — I called it your feel-good omega-3, because it's been shown to relieve anxiety and boost mood, and I called DHA your think better omega-3, because it's also been shown to improve cognition and prevent dementia. 

Now, in this book; Heal Your Drained Brain, because I'm talking more about stress and insomnia, I call EPA your stress less omega-3. We know that supplementing with high levels of an EPA supplement with very low levels of a DHA can reduce your anxiety by 20%, but the ratio of EPA to DHA in a supplement needs to be 7 to 1 or higher for you to get that effect, and that’s because EPA and DHA compete for space in your cells. 

Now, in this book, I called DHA your sleep soundly omega-3, because it's also been shown to promote restful sleep. So even though I eat a lot of clean seafood and omega-3 super food, I do tend to also take on most days, not all days, I do really like taking an omega-3 supplements. I have a family history of heart disease. I'm always on planes. I’ve been to New York and back, been to LA , New York, LA in the past — What is that? Five or six days. So sometimes that's a little stressful packing and unpacking, waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning. A high EPA supplement can really help to relieve that anxiety, and if you're a vegan or vegetarian, I think what a lot of people don't understand — So number one, if you’re man, or number two, if you're an aging woman, what's interesting about the vegan sources of omega-3's, the ALA that you're going to find in walnuts and flaxseed, people don't understand that when they see a thousand milligrams of omega-3's that's like fortified and added to a food or maybe it's found in walnuts, your body has to convert that into the two usable forms that I just talked about, EPA and DHA, and it's not really good at this conversion, and men are not as good at this conversion when compared to women. 

We think that it has something to do with hormones. Theoretically, we know that younger women are probably better at this than older women. We also know that there is a difference between racial, people with different racial and ethnic background. So really, the best way to ensure you're getting the EPA and DHAs going straight to either the omega-3 super food sea foods or supplement. I'll tell you, if you are a vegan or a man and you're eating a lot of the vegan omega-3's, like walnuts, flaxseed, your body is okay at converting ALA found in walnuts into EPA, and it's a great food. Don't get me wrong. It's fantastic. I recommend everyone eat a lot of walnuts and all the other sources of ALAs that omega-3, the plant-based omega-3. But your body is terrible and men are especially terrible at converting ALAs into DHA, which, remember, is the omega-3 that helps you to think better and sleep soundly. 

If you are a vegan, you can supplement with a plant-based DHA supplement. For all those vegetarians out there who don't eat fish, that may be something, and especially the male vegans out there or vegetarian, you may want to pick up that supplement. I think people, when they think about in this way, it’s now, “Well, do I eat healthy or do I supplement?” It's sort of looking at who you are, your lifestyle and seeing which one works best for you and always using supplements hopefully as something to either augment, enhance or as a safety net for those times, like those busy travel periods where you just can't find. You’re at some chain hotel in the Midwest and in the suburbs and you know that all there is fast food around your hotel. That's a great time to get a great supplement to make sure you're getting all of these vitamin and mineral cofactors to heal a drained brain. 

[0:30:42.3] MB: It’s fascinating. I never knew that I can learn so much about just omega-3s. It’s really interesting. 

[0:30:48.7] MD: I love them. Omega-3s are probably one of the best things for your brain. Part of my 14-day program is you have to eat one omega-3 super food each and every day. It’s the best thing you can do for your brain in terms of food, that is. It's the building block of your brain. It’s why pregnant women need DHA to give their developing infant’s brain the building block that the human body needs to construct a brain, and if you're building new brain cells — And by the way, of course, I always talk about use it or lose it, and for a lot of people who are trying to enhance their productivity, it's use it and improve it, and if you're trying to improve your brain and you’re trying to boost neurogenesis and have a better brain, a faster brain, a bigger brain that is going to be able to handle more and be the best in your field, you really want those omega-3s, because it is the building block of your brain. It is important, and you can't go wrong if you supplement, if you supplement as a safety guard. Again, I do both. I supplement and I eat a lot of the omega-3 super foods. 

[0:31:52.6] MB: When you say that they are the building blocks of your brain, you mean sort of litearlly at a cellular level. It's one of the cornerstones of building healthy cells, correct?

[0:32:01.4] MD: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I really compare — When people don't understand what DHA is, that omega-3, I say imagine DHAs like play doh. It's your brains play doh that is actually constructing, or Tinker Toys is may visually is actually a little bit more accurate in terms of what neurons look like in the synapses and dendrites and all that. It really is literally the brain’s building block. People who had — If you have had a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, if your brain is healing from anything, high DHA supplement — My brother has a rare brain disease and had a massive stroke when he was 10 years old, and the first thing my brother, we started — I was 15 at the time and not an expert on brain health, but my father was a physician and did a lot of research and the first thing we did was we got my brother on a high DHA omega-3 and it really helps the brain to rewire. So even if you haven't had a stroke, if you are trying to make your brain better, DHA is probably one of the best things you can take. 

[0:33:04.3] MB: Really, really interesting. What about kind of — We touched on this a little bit, but macronutrients more broadly, sort of each of the different macros, so carbs, fat, etc., and protein, how do each of those kind of play into brain health?

[0:33:18.6] MD: That's a great question and a really large question in terms of what we could talk about. So let me just say that a couple of really interesting things when it comes to sort of that breakdown. I think it's really interesting. I think as Americans we are sort of all or nothing thinkers, right? Remember, a fat-free craze and then it was sort of the carb free craze. One day, everyone in America was eating bagels, fat-free bagels, and then everyone was on the Atkins diet and they’re eating no bagels, but they are eating bacon all day long, and I think what I recommend is the healthiest by far when it comes to having a rockstar brain is what I call a modified Mediterranean diet. That is a diet that is looking at sort of a nice healthy balance. So it's not going carb free. It's not going fat-free, but you’re shifting away from the high omega six fats. So you have this balance, and I call it modified, because in my program, it's a pretty — I would say it's a lower, but not carb free. It's a lower carbohydrate, Mediterranean diet. If you really want to lean body and a lean brain, you want a modified Mediterranean diet filled with the lean proteins, the nuts, olive oil. Those are your best fats.

Olive oil, there's a lot of — People are insane for coconut oil these days. I think coconut oil, if it's a high quality extra-virgin expeller-pressed organic, I think that can be a great treat, but in my opinion, extra-virgin olive oil is still the winner if those two were to be a wrestling match, coconut oil versus EV oil. I think extra-virgin olive oil is still the winner there. 

So you really want this balance. You want this modified Mediterranean diet that can really help your brain to become its best self or you to become your best self and your brain to become bigger and better. We know that shifting away from all of these oils that you will find in almost every food. One of my pet peeves is when I'm in an airport store and I see natural, some sort of a nut and it’ll say like, “All natural almonds,” or something, and I'll look on the back and it's nuts with some terrible oil. All of these oils, especially the worst oil, which is soybean oil, these oils are just terrible for you. If it's not extra-virgin olive oil, all of these disgusting oils, they’re just crap, because they put your brain in a state, something I don't think we've touched on yet. 

The other thing is it put your brain in a state of chronic inflammation. We know that the inflammatory response in the brain is just terrible for the brain. We want to shift to the brain from pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory, and if you take out all the crap oils in the standard American diet and you shift to oils found in nuts, nuts with no added oils, extra-virgin olive oil for cold preparations, and then extra-virgin olive oil isn't as stable at high temperatures. So if you're cooking, you can use just regular, sometimes it’s labeled light olive oil or just olive oil, if you're heating it, shifting you from high omega-6s, a.k.a. inflammation, to higher omega-3s anti-inflammatory response in the brain and the body. This used to be just a few years ago. We thought that this was sort of a preventative approach, but in the past, I believe it was just about one year ago, there was a human clinical study published that show that even for patients diagnosed. So this is not prevention. This is now treatment. Patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder who followed a what I call this modified Mediterranean diet. Some of them actually went into remission. So that's kind of huge for any of us. Even if you're not facing major depressive disorder, we know just how powerful this modified Mediterranean diet is for your brain. It's just fantastic. So it's a lot of fruits and vegetables, nuts, olive oil, fish, and then if you are eating animal products, I tend to try to limit mine. I think a lot of people eat too much. 

When you eat a lot of meat, by the way, your body and brain to get a little boost in stress hormones by eating a lot of meat, so you are going to get a little bit of that brain drainer. So you do want healthier meats, and research also shows that when you favor organic, grass-fed, pastured, humanely raised, all of these words aren't just great for the animals. They're great for you, because you are what you eat ate. 

If animal is humanely raised, grass-fed, free-roaming, organic, and they are actually outside and they are actually eating grass — Food companies can get away with some of these labels and trick you and feed them industrial grains, but if they’re organic, still get away with some of these. So you want as many — I try to go for as many of these words as you can find, and they're becoming less and less expensive these days. We know that animal products that have these words have more omega-3s, which again are great for the brain and less omega-6s when compared to conventionally factory-farmed animal products. Whether you're drinking milk, eating cheese, chicken, beef, no matter what it is. If you favor the organic, you're going to get more omega-3s and less omega-6s. You're still not going to get as many omega-3s when compared to eating like an on omega-3 superfood, but you're definitely going to get more than the conventionally raised crap meat that a lot of Americans are eating all day long. That's sort of a good overview, I think, may be of proteins and fats and sort of the macro approach. 

[0:39:16.5] MB: Just to give some examples. You touched a little bit on soybean oil, but what are some other kind of common sources of omega-6 fats?

[0:39:23.9] MD: I would say the most offensive villain here is the factory-farmed meat. If you go anywhere in the country, it’s pretty much anything you find in processed foods is going to have soybean oil and then it's going to have a factory-farmed meat product. So those two are the most egregious offenders of this high omega-6, a.k.a. a pro-inflammatory diet for your brain, and you just really want to shift away from that, if at all possible. 

[0:39:51.3] MB: I'm curious. Are there other kind of strategies that you recommend or have we missed anything in terms of kind of digging into the various interventions that we can implement to kind of get away from brain drain and build a really smart, healthy, vibrant brain?

[0:40:06.3] MD: Yeah. So I have a lot of practices. The second week of my 14-day program is all about these practices that help to shift your brain from a sympathetic nervous system dominant state, a.k.a. fight or flight, into a parasympathetic dominant one, a.k.a. rest and digest. 

If you kind of look at these two sides, I always use the analogy, this visual of a seesaw, your brain is always going to be tilted towards one or the other. If you're not stressed out and you’re nice and balanced, the seesaw will be tilted towards parasympathetic, rest and digest. If you're drained, it's going to be tilted towards sympathetic nervous system, a.k.a. fight or flight, and it's going to stay there, right?

We basically need to find a practice, and hopefully it's going to be a practice that's natural. I think the other thing that we’re relearning is the less people can rely on prescription medication, the better. So if you don't need to take a Klonopin or a Xanax or an Ativan to shift your brain away from fight or flight into rest and digest, the better. 

I have a lot of clinically proven practices, like progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, self- hypnosis, mindfulness meditation. I think this these things used to be sort of very hippie, airy fairy, but I think they've come into the mainstream and I'm so glad, because they really do work, and I think —I have a script of all of these practices in the book and sort of mantra meditation in the book, and it's sort of finding that tool that works for you. 

I've done a lot of mindfulness meditation and a lot of self-hypnosis. My brain, I prefer self-hypnosis in terms of how deep I can go how quickly, and if I'm feeling really stressed, that's a little practice that I can use in my own mind if I'm — No matter where I am, that works for me. Having that toolbox of what is that little practice, that 30-second practice that works for you. Also, exercise, right? 

In the chapter in Heal Your Drained Brain called jog for joy, it's fascinating. People are just loving — They're going nuts over this chapter, the people that have read and reviewed this book, because I've really broken down exercise into these brain chemicals. For example, overall, we want to be more fit, because during the course of the day, fit people release over 40% less cortisol, that stress hormone, that brain drainer, compared to people who are out of shape. You want to get in shape, but you also want to be really careful and you want to use the right exercise at the right time. 

So let me tell you what I mean by that. If you get on that treadmill and you're having a really bad day and you carry around a lot of anger and you're just having the worst day you’ve ever had, and then you do intense interval training. Recent research shows that you may increase your risk of a heart attack. It's kind of interesting that that would, for example, be a great day to do yoga or something, maybe something that's not interval training. 

Interval training, by the way, is one of the best ways to get in shape fast, and if you need to lose some belly fat, interval training is fantastic, and we do want to get in shape rapidly, because as I said, it's one of the best ways to sort of globally reduce your stress hormone levels, because fit people release less cortisol throughout the day compared to people who are not in shape, but interval training actually spikes your cortisol levels, your stress hormone levels in the short term, but then you get this long-term benefit. 

Another thing that I have in the book that people love is this new form of interval training, and it's a 10- minute interval training protocol that's been clinically proven in research. In this research, they found that cardiovascular health improved in these two groups in equal amounts. One group was doing standard interval training, about an hour class. The other group was doing 10-minute, these high intensity, let’s call it sprint interval training, where it’s sort of warm-up, jog, all out for 30 seconds, jog, all out for 30 seconds, jog, all out for 30 seconds, jog, cool down, a little 10-minute. Over the course of — I forget what the timeframe was, but I think it was about a month. These two groups had similar improvements. 

So this is not to take away from an hour long interval training class. You should absolutely do that. I do a lot of those classes myself, but it proves that 10 minutes — This is a little trick that I use. When I'm in a hotel gym that's disgusting and — It's like basically in this little room and it's hard to motivate yourself when you're tired and jetlagged and you're in this little hotel gym with like one treadmill. You can do this little 10-minute workout if you only have a little bit of time, and it's certainly better than nothing. If in fact, we think that if you follow this format that's in my book, that it may be just as effective in many ways as a longer class, because you're just pushing your body and then pulling back, but you also want to make sure that you're, again, choosing the right exercise for you on the right day at the right time, because it really does have a profound effect on your brain health. 

[0:45:28.8] MB: So many good strategies and kind of practical tips. For somebody who’s listening to this interview, what would be kind of one starting point that you would give them as kind of a piece of homework or an action item that they could use to implement the ideas that we’ve talked about today?

[0:45:44.5] MD: I would say just starts slowly. Remember that when it comes to brain health and healing your drained brain, my 14-day program is certainly a great jumpstart and most people start to feel a lot better, but at the end of the day, your brain health, it's not a sprint, it's actually a marathon, and a lot of the choices are choices that you're going to make for the rest your life. 

That being said, if it is a marathon, the biggest change — The pyramids started with one brick or the Empire State building or whatever that visual is that you love. Just do one healthy thing that you didn't do yesterday and do it today and gradually you’ll start to feel better, and a lot of times when people make one change, they start to feel a little better, and that provides them with the momentum and the positive feedback that makes two changes easier to do tomorrow. If you're somebody who maybe does need a little bit of a boot camp, my 14-day program is great, but what I don't want people to do is go all out and then feel hopeless and then say, “Oh! I can't do it. It was too hard.” 

If you’re in that boat where you’re just feeling, “Oh, gosh! There’s so much I have to do differently.” All you have to do — I would say today, do one thing that you've heard today that is going to be better for your brain. The positive feedback will carry through and hopefully tomorrow you'll do two. 

[0:47:03.7] MB: And where can listeners find you and your books and all these information online?

[0:47:07.8] MD: Yeah, you can go to my website, drmikedow, like Dow Jones, .com, drmikedow. I’m on social media, Dr. Mike Dow on all my accounts, and my new book; Heal Your Drained Brain, is available in all major bookstores; Amazon, hayhouse.com, all indie bookstores. It goes on sale February 6th, 2018.

[0:47:32.4] MB: Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all these information. I learned a tremendous amount about brain health, omega-3s and much, much more. So thank you so much for being a guest and sharing all these wisdom. 

[0:47:42.6] MD: Thank for having me, Matt. 

[0:47:43.8] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created the show to help you, our listeners master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story or just say hi, shoot me an email. My email is matt@successpodcast.com. That's matt@successpodcast.com. I'd love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener email. 

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Don't forget, if you want to get all the incredible information we talked about in the show, links transcripts, everything we discussed and much more, be sure to check out our show notes. You can get those at successpodcast.com, just hit the show notes button right at the top. 

Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Science of Success.

Everything You Know About Sleep Is Wrong with Dr. Matthew Walker

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Listen To The Episode

Show Notes

Video - 4 Scientifically Proven Paths To A Perfect Night Sleep

The Sleep Deprivation Epidemic - Why You Should Sleep More

Links and Additional Research

Episode Transcript

Are you tired? If your answer is yes, it would seem relatively straightforward to assume you're not getting enough sleep.

It’s one of the most important things you can possibly do for yourself.

Improve. Your. Sleep.

You’re going to spend a large portion of your like sleeping. And that’s a good thing! Getting more sleep not only allows you to wake up well rested each morning but also prevents disease and can lead to a longer (and happier) life overall.

Did you know that routinely sleeping less than 6 hours a night can increase your risk of cancer by 50%? After just one night of less than 5 hours of sleep Natural Killer Cells (which fight cancer cells) drop by 70%! After just one night!

Sleep isn't just about rest. It's about the body repairing itself, doing maintenance so to speak. Unfortunately, what has been discovered over time (and discussed in this book) is that, if you lose sleep, taking a nap, while it takes the edge off, it doesn't replace the sleep lost during the night.

Our ability to fight disease (including cancer) and obesity may be directly tied to not getting enough restful sleep. Pills don't help either. Yes, they knock you out and make it easier to fall asleep but they lack the restorative power of natural sleep and, in fact, some sleeping pills can increase your risk of cancer.

Knowing this, it must change the way you think about the old saying “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”… because ironically adopting that mindset will get you there quicker.

Do you find that you wake up feel groggy or angry? Do you reach for the snooze button 1, 2 or even 3 times each morning? Or, do you hop right out of bed ready to tackle the new day?

What about at night? Do you struggle to fall asleep? Tossing and turning seemingly unable to count enough sheep to get to bed. Or, are you out like a light when you pull the covers over yourself?

If you want to literally improve every single aspect of your life and wake up feeling refreshed and rested each and every night this interview is for you.

To get started NOW, download our free guide below and learn 5 super simple and easy ways to maximize your sleep starting tonight!

In this episode we discuss everything you ever wanted to know about sleep. We examine the findings from hundreds of studies across millions of people and pull out the major findings about how vitally important sleep is, the global sleep loss epidemic, the stunning data about sleep and productivity, the simplest and most effective evidence based strategies for getting better sleep and much more with Dr. Matthew Walker. 

Dr. Matthew Walker is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science. He has published over 100 scientific studies and is the author of the book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Which is currently the #1 Amazon Bestseller in Neuroscience . He has been featured on numerous television and radio outlets, including CBS 60 Minutes, National Geographic Channel, NOVA Science, NRP and the BBC.

Show Notes

• Global sleep loss epidemic - the average American sleeps only 6.5 hours per night

• Sleep has slowly been eroded by our society over the last 60 years

• Sleep is vital and essential from an evolutionary standpoint - you can’t just lop off 25% of the necessary sleep you need

• Studies across millions of people show one clear thing - the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life

• If you sleep less, you will be dead sooner, lack of sleep kills your more quickly

• Lack of sleep is a major predictor of “all cause mortality” including cancer, Alzheimers, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, and suicide

• Hard science shows why a lack of sleep is tremendously bad for you

• Sleep has an image problem, we stigmatize sleep and think its lazy and slothful - people wear lack of sleep as a badge of honor to be celebrated

• Less sleep does not equal more productivity

• The 5 clear truths of sleep research and productivity

• Under-slept employees take on less challenging problems

  1. They produce fewer creative solutions

  2. They exert less effort when working in groups (slacking off, social loafing)

  3. They are more likely to lie, cheat, and engage in deviant behavior

  4. The more or less sleep that a CEO has had, the more or less charismatic they will be

• Chronic exhaustion cost most first world nation 2% of the GDP - 411 billion dollars lost each year to a lack of sleep

• The research is very clear that under-slept individuals are not as productive or successful

• The evidence is resoundingly clear - cutting on sleep makes you less productive and less creative and less effective

• After being awake for 21 hours, you’re as cognitively impaired as someone who is legally drunk

• The two principle types of sleep - REM sleep and non-REM sleep

• The different stages of sleep - the 4 stages of REM sleep

• Hard science shows that deep Sleep is critical to clearing toxins out of your brain

• Sleep is like a sewage system for your brain - it cleans all the toxins and debris out of your brain

• The less sleep you have, the higher your probability of getting Alzheimers

• Different cognitive systems in your brain also work during sleep - its like saving files to a hard drive, you have to sleep to get the save button

• The emotional circuits of the brain are changed and modified by sleep - the amygdala (which controls fight or flight) is regulated by the pre-frontal cortex

• Lack of sleep can have a serious negative impact on your emotional health

• Sleep reboots body systems as well - not just the brain

• Deep sleep is one of the best blood pressure medications you can imagine

• Deep sleep regulates insulin levels and blood glucose levels

• Sleep is also essential for the reproductive system

• Sleep boosts testosterone and lack of sleep makes you 10 years older from a testosterone standpoint

• Appetite, weight, food consumption are all regulated by sleep - lack of sleep makes you eat 300-550 more calories per day, and makes you eat more high sugar and high carb foods

• Sleep also has a profound impact on the immune system - one night of 4 hours of sleep will drop natural killer cells (body cancer fight cells) by 70%!

• The link between lack of sleep and cancer the WHO recently classified night shift work as a probable carcinogen

• Sleeping 5 hours per night makes you 200-300% more likely to catch a cold than someone sleeping 8 hours a night

• There is not a SYSTEM or PROCESS in the body/brain that is not impacted by sleep

• The most striking omission in the health literature today is that sleep is not at the center of the health conversation

• 3 key ways sleep improves your learning

• Is it wise to pull an all nighter? What does the research say?

• The “memory inbox of the brain” (hippocampus) and how sleep is vital to creating and storing memories

• Sleep is vital both BEFORE learning and AFTER learning to store and save new memories and solidify them into the architecture of the brain

• Sleep replays information and strengthens memories

• Sleep provides a 3x advantage to problem solving compared to an equivalent period being awake

• "The 6 Unpopular Tactics for Getting Enough Sleep"

• Carve out enough time and make sleep a priority - carve out an 8 hour window to sleep every night

  1. This is the #1 thing to do - regularity is KEY - go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, no matter what

     1. Sleeping in late creates “social jetlag” which has serious negative consequences - regularity of sleep is key

  2. Keep the temperature cool - keep your bedroom 68 degrees - your body needs to drop its core temperature 2-3 degrees to fall asleep

  3. You can hack this by taking a hot bath before bed

  4. DARKNESS is key to producing melatonin. Phones, screens, blue light etc trick the brain into thinking its day time and shut off melatonin production

  5. Reading on a tablet 1 hour before bed shifts your melatonin production 3 hours later!

     1. Use blackout shades

     2. No screens 1 hour before bed

  6. Do NOT stay in bed if you’ve been in bed longer than 20 minutes. You brain is a very associative machine - being awake in bed trains the brain that it’s OK to be awake in bed. Get up, go to a different room, read a book in dim light, no screens, no eating. And only when you feel sleep return to bed, and you will re-learn the key association between making the bed about sleep

  7. Some people don’t like this idea.

     1. Meditation is a great way to get yourself to fall back asleep. The studies are very clear, very well done that meditation can help improve sleep.

  8. No caffeine after noon and avoid alcohol in the evenings.

  9. Caffein prevents deep sleep

     1. Alcohol fragments your sleep and makes your wake up much more, leaving with un-restorative sleep

     2. Alcohol blocks dreams and REM sleep

• Sedation is NOT sleep. Knocking out your cortex is not natural sleep.

• You could be A FAR BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF mentally, cognitively, physiology if you just got more sleep

• Current sleeping pills are “sedative hypnotics” that do NOT productive naturalistic sleep, and do not get the benefits of sleep

• Sleeping pills have a far higher risk of death, cancer, infection

• CBTI - cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is just as effective as sleeping pills in the short term, but much more effective long term

• Melatonin can be a useful tool to time the onset of sleep

• Does napping work?

• There is no such thing as the sleep bank - you can’t accumulate a debt and then hope to cash in on the weekend - sleep doesn’t work like that

• Napping can prevent you from falling asleep and staying asleep! Be careful!

• How does GABA impact your sleep?

• Sleep is a remarkably complex neurochemical ballet

The Sleep Deprivation Epidemic: Why You Should Sleep More 

Do you ever pull an all-nighter to cram for a test, but still fail? Maybe you work 60-hour weeks but feel like you’re getting nowhere. Unfortunately, developed nations are suffering from a sleep deprivation epidemic, but science can help us see the reasons for getting a good eight hours every night.

 A common saying you hear is, “You can sleep when you’re dead!” But recent sleep studies have shown us that less sleep means our lifespans shorten and our quality of life will decrease too. Unfortunately, our society pushes us to sleep less and work more, so we need help shifting our social perspective.

It turns out, that our relatively recent attempt to shorten the amount of sleep we get runs into a lot of problems against the million-year-old necessity that mother nature has put in place. The 20-25% decrease we’ve imposed on ourselves has led to an increased likelihood of developing every major disease that kills us in the developed world.

Elucidating Sleep Science

“I think part of the problem, perhaps, is that the science of sleep is actually not being adequately communicated to the public and I think it’s people like myself who are to blame.” – Dr. Matthew Walker 

Dr. Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, founder and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, and author of Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. His belief is that sleep science is not understood by the public, which was part of his motivation for writing Why We Sleep.

Many people appear to be proud of how little they sleep. However, the list of problems linked to a lack of sleep include Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder, and suicide, among other mental health conditions. With this information in hand, it’s necessary to remove the stigma on getting a sufficient amount of sleep (about eight hours).

Dr. Walker set out to write a book of reasons why you should sleep, rather than rules. He addresses the relationship between sleep and productivity, citing laboratory and workplace studies that have provided him with five clear truths.

Five Facts About Sleep-Deprived Workers

“It’s very clear that under-slept individuals are not going to be successful.” – Dr. Walker

1. They take on less-challenging problems.

2. They produce fewer creative solutions.

3. They exert less effort when working in groups.

4. They are more likely to lie, cheat, and engage in deviant behaviors.

5. Less sleep means less-charismatic leaders.

He also notes that a recent report demonstrated that chronic exhaustion and fatigue (due to a lack of sleep) caused most first-world nations to lose about 2% of their GDP (that’s $411 billion for the U.S.). “If we solve the sleep deprivation problem in the U.S., we could almost double the budget for education, and we could make huge in-roads into the problems we have with healthcare,” he adds.

Dr. Walker shares an analogy to represent the current nature of an office workplace by comparing it to a spin class: “Everyone in the office looks like they’re working hard, but the scenery never changes – there’s never any forward progression in terms of momentum with productivity and creativity.”

Finally, he ends his evaluation of workplace attitudes by observing how their attempt to optimize the efficiency of every system stops at the human level. Where the budget, taxes, hardware, and software are all effective, there’s no focus or understanding of a human’s cognitive or physiological capacities and their necessity to reboot and recharge.

Sleep: The Human Recycling Period

“There really isn’t any system within your body, or process within the brain, that isn’t wonderfully enhanced by sleep when you get it or demonstrably impaired when you don’t get enough.” – Dr. Walker 

Dr. Walker informs us that we need eight-hours of sleep after 16-hours of wakefulness; and after 20-21 hours of being awake, we are as cognitively impaired as someone who would be legally drunk behind the wheel. So what exactly is happening when we sleep?

Sleep is simply divided into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, where we dream, and non-REM sleep; while non-REM sleep is further divided into four sub-stages. Each stage performs different yet necessary functions.

When we are awake, we are essentially in a form of low-level brain damage. Thus, one of the functions performed during the deepest stages of non-REM sleep is to clear out the metabolic toxins that have been built up in our brain. This is done through our brain’s glymphatic system (similar to our body’s lymphatic system). While asleep, this system’s performance increases by 200-300% relative to when we’re awake. (This process is known to remove a toxic protein called beta-amyloid, one of the leading candidate causes of Alzheimer’s disease.)

Sleeping also improves our learning in at least three ways.

1. Sleeping prepares our brain: A lack of sleep leads to a 40% deficit in our ability to make memories.

2. Sleeping ‘saves’ information: While asleep, we transfer information from our short-term to long-term memory. Like hitting the ‘Save’ button, it prevents us from forgetting memories.

3. Sleeping strengthens our memories: Sleep interconnects new memories together and interconnects it with pre-existing memories. This creates an updated associative network of memories.

Dr. Walker comments on the third point, “That’s the reason that you can come back the next day having extracted and divined creative novel solutions to previously impenetrable problems that you were facing.” While simple problems benefit from focused thought, complex problems benefit from non-conscious thought, such as that which occurs during sleep. It’s because of this function that nearly every language has a phrase similar to “sleep on a problem,” and not to “stay awake on a problem.” He ends with the analogy, “It’s essentially informational alchemy that occurs overnight.”

The emotional circuits of our brains are also modified during sleep. Our amygdala is reconnected to our prefrontal cortex when we get a good night’s sleep, which puts a brake on our emotional gas pedal. When we are deprived of sleep, the connection is severed, which essentially makes us all emotional gas pedal and no brake.

The benefits of sleep don’t end at the brain; there are many physiological systems that are rebooted during sleep as well. Deep, non-REM sleep is one of the best forms of blood pressure medicine, because it slows your heart rate. It also releases a variety of restorative chemicals and hormones, including a growth hormone that restores the cells in your body.

Sleep regulates your metabolic system, specifically insulin levels. In fact, studies have shown that one week of five-six hours of sleep a night will disrupt a person’s blood sugar enough to classify them as pre-diabetic. This illustrates the crucial role sleep plays in regulating the metabolic system.

A lack of sleep is known to age both men and women by a decade in terms of wellness and virility by disrupting the reproductive system.

Appetite regulation and food consumption are directly affected by sleep. Sleep deprivation causes in imbalance in leptin, which tells your brain when you’re satisfied with your food, and ghrelin, which tells your brain you’re not satisfied with your food. This causes you to eat 300-500 more calories a day. Not only do you eat more, but you’re also more likely to reach for starchy carbohydrates and high-sugar foods, while avoiding high-protein foods.

One night of four-hours of sleep will drop your cancer-fighting immune cells by 70%. The link between sleep-deprivation and cancer is so strong, that the World Health Organization recently classified night-time shift work as a probable carcinogen because it disrupts our sleep rate rhythms.

Five-hours of sleep per night the week before you get your flu shot will reduce your body’s antibody response to less than 50%, rendering it largely ineffective. Similarly, with five-hours you are 200-300% more likely to catch a cold than someone who gets eight-hours of sleep.

According to Dr. Walker, “All lack of sleep is, perhaps, a slow from of self-euthanasia.”

How to Fall Asleep Fast and Sleep Better

“I think what we know is that: Without sleep there is low energy and disease, with sleep there is vitality and health.” – Dr. Walker 

Dr. Walker begins to share five tips (and their explanations) for how to sleep better. These five tips all follow a primary, overarching requirement: Carve out an eight-hour, non-negotiable sleep window every night.

1. Go to bed and wake up at the same time.

Regardless if it’s a weekday, the weekend, or a holiday, always wake up at the same time. Even if you have a bad night of sleep, just make sure you fall asleep early the following evening. Sleeping in late causes “social jetlag” where you feel tired in the evening and drift forward in time; this has deleterious consequences to your health and sleep.

2. Keep it cool.

Keeping your bedroom around 68°F (18.5°C) is optimal for most people. This is because your body needs to drop its core temperate 2-3° to initiate sleep. If your feet get cold, then you can wear socks. Also, a hot bath before bed causes mass vasodilation (more so than a hot shower); this pulls your blood near your skin’s surface, plummeting your core temperature.

3. Keep it dark.

Darkness releases melatonin, a vital hormone for the onset of sleep. Too much light inside the house (or from LED screens) before bed will trick your brain into thinking it’s daytime, shut off the production of melatonin, and prevent sleep. Dim your lights by turning half of them off in the evening, avoid LED screens in the last hour before bed, and use black-out curtains.

4. Get up if you’ve been awake in bed for longer than 20-minutes.

Whether you’re trying to fall asleep or wake up, you must get out of bed if you’ve been lying awake for more than 20-minutes. If not, then your brain creates the association that your bed is about being awake, rather than asleep. If you’re trying to fall asleep but can’t, then go to another, dim room and maybe read a book (but avoid eating and screens). Only when you’re sleepy should you return to bed; that way you fall right asleep and recreate the association that beds are for sleeping. Dr. Walker, a hard scientist and skeptic, even suggests meditation, citing its support from clinical trial data and his recent conversion to the practice himself.

5. No caffeine after noon and no alcohol in the evenings.

Even people who claim that caffeine doesn’t affect them because they fall right asleep suffer from less-deep sleep. When they wake up, they don’t feel as refreshed, then reach for an extra cup in the morning, thus building a cycle of dependency and addiction. If you don’t stop at noon, then certainly after 2:00pm. Alcohol, on the other hand, sedates your cortex (effective knocking out your brain). This causes un-restorative sleep by waking you up multiple times throughout the night. It also blocks your REM sleep, which is critical for creativity and memory processing as well as emotional and mental health.

A common trap for people to fall into is thinking, “Well, this is how I am now at this age.” But this perception of yourself prevents you from realizing that you can be a far better version of yourself, mentally, cognitively, and physiologically, if you simply start getting enough sleep.

This trap can easily occur as a result of excessive or improper caffeine consumption. It isn’t until people come off caffeine that they start to feel the benefits that normally come from high-caffeine use. “It’s like wiping a fogged window, and you can start to see clearly through it,” Dr. Walker comments, attributing the improvement to a full, restorative night of sleep. 

How to Deal with Insomnia

            “There are no sleeping medications that we have currently that produce naturalistic sleep.” – Dr. Walker

Sleeping Pills

Dr. Walker goes on to address the question of sleeping pills. He explains that the current class of drugs one will be prescribed are called ‘sedative hypnotics.’ Just like alcohol, these sedate (or knock out) your brain. The sleep you get on sleeping pills is not the same as natural, healthy sleep.

Additionally, these pills are associated with a far higher risk of death, cancer, and infection. Though these links have not be confirmed as causal or merely associational. He goes on to inform us that that people don’t necessarily need them, and there is a safe, non-pharmacological alternative which is just as effective: cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI).

With CBTI, the benefits to your sleep are just as powerful in the short-term, but they also continue long-term as you maintain the practice. Sleeping pills, on the other hand, produce rebound insomnia, where your sleep is just as bad (or worse) once you stop taking them. (People should revisit these issues with their doctor if they’re interested in alternative treatment.) 

GABA

GABA is the principle, inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain; it works like a red light for your neurons, telling them to stop firing. Most sleeping medications work by targeting the GABA system, though their blunt nature is incapable of properly mimicking the complex neuro-chemical and neuro-physiological ballet that occurs during sleep.

Melatonin Supplements

Next, Dr. Walker discusses the uses of melatonin supplements. While they don’t actually help a young, healthy person with a stable sleep schedule, they’re great for helping someone adjust to a new time zone. By taking it 30-60 minutes before you want to sleep, it can help reset your body’s internal clock and counteract jetlag. He also notes that if people take melatonin and they feel that it helps (even if it doesn’t), then they should continue to do so.

Napping

Many people think that, if they don’t get enough sleep, then they can just “catch up” on it later, either with a nap or by getting more sleep at night. Dr. Walker states, “Sleep is not like the bank. You can’t accumulate debt, then hope to pay it off at the weekend. There is no credit system.”

However, if you are sleep-deprived, then you can nap and overcome some of the basic sleepiness. Your reaction times improve a little, but you don’t overcome the higher-level cognitive issues, like decision-making, learning and memory, and focused attention. He goes on to discuss a futile tactic he sees in his students that he calls ‘sleep bulimia.’ This is where they get too little sleep during the week, then try to binge sleep during the weekend and make up the deficit.

He uses an analogy to describe a negative aspect of napping: Throughout the day we build up a chemical pressure in our brain, a sleepiness pressure, due to the build up of adenosine. The more you build up the sleepier you feel; and after 16-hours of wakefulness, you should fall right asleep and stay asleep for eight-hours, thus releasing the sleepiness pressure. However, when we nap, it’s like we open a valve and let a little of the pressure out. This makes it harder for us to sleep well at night, either by struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep.

Echoing the placebo affect associated with melatonin supplements, if you can nap regularly and sleep well at night, then keep napping. Otherwise, you should avoid napping and build up that sleepiness pressure until you fall asleep at night.

Action Steps for a Good Night’s Sleep

To finish off, Dr. Walker suggests a simple self-improvement test: Give yourself one week of eight-hours of sleep a night. Determine if you feel better when you get eight-hours of regularly scheduled sleep versus a random schedule of five-hours one night, then six-hours the next, and so on. Then ask yourself, “Did that experiment work? Is it in my favor? Do I feel any better? Do I notice that improvement?”

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

[Book] Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
[DVD] Memento
[Twitter] Matt Walker
[LinkedIn] Matthew Walker
[Website] Sleep Diplomat

Why We Sleep (14min)

• The incredible benefits of getting enough and the terrible side effects of not getting enough. 

• The Brain and The Functions of learnings and memory. 

  • Sleep after learning is essential and like hitting the “save” button after learning. We also now know that it’s important even before learning. 

  • Without sleep the memory circuits become blocked up.

• Examine The Hypothesis of the All Nighter

  • 40% deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep.

  • Brain activity is shot almost entirely after sleep deprivation. 

    • He describes it as like Memento the movie. (Great movie BTW)

• What is it that causes people to get good sleep and how does it affect our brain?

• What in sleep causes these benefits?

  • As we get older our memory gets work but our sleep does as well and they are related.

• Sleep is critical for your emotional and mental health

  • On less sleep these areas of the brain become irrational. 

  • Video of a subject illustrates this point. - Subject goes from angry to laughing then back to base in about 20 seconds. 

  • Without sleep you can’t take your foot off the emotional gas pedal.

• Sleep deprivation is correlated with depression and almost every psychiatric disorder. 

• The body relies on sleep as well.

  • 75% reduction in NK cell activity even after one bad night of sleep. Immune system will be shot. 

  • Lack of sleep and cancer has been shown to have a strong relationship. 

Matthew on CBS This Morning (6min)

• ⅔ of Americans do not get their full recommended 8 hours of sleep. 

• Every disease in developed nations is made worse by lack of sleep.

• Short Sleep = Shorter Life

• Brain - builds up a toxic buildup in the brain.

• Body - No immune system and activities stress chemistry leading to heart disease and cancer. 

• ALL RESEARCH BASED

• Naps - A double edged sword. Sleep is not like the bank, you can’t accumulate debt then pay it off as you go about your day. 

• Sleeping Pills - These are bad!

Secrets of the Sleeping Brain (1hr 41min)

• Long video that goes deep into some of the topics covered above. 

• Love the concept that we’ve hit on before that sleep actually allows you to integrate in ideas and learnings into what you’ve been doing prior. 

The Sleep Deprivation Epidemic (6min)

• Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences. Award-winning professor of neuroscience Matthew Walker provides a fascinating insight into why it is vital we start taking sleep seriously.

Episode Transcript

[0:02:21.7] MB: Today, we have another fascinating guest on the show, Dr. Matthew Walker. He’s a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and a founder and the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science. He’s published over a 100 scientific studies and is the author of the book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the power of Sleep and Dreams, which is currently the number one Amazon bestseller in the neuroscience category. He’s been featured on TV, radio, including CBS’s 60 Minutes, National Geographic and much more.

Matt, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:02:53.7] MW: It’s a pleasure to be on Matt. Thank you for having me. 

[0:02:56.2] MB: Well, we’re very excited to have you on here today. I’d love to begin the conversation and talk a little bit about – as I think you’ve called it the sleep deprivation epidemic, and what happens to us when we don’t get enough sleep.

[0:03:11.4] MW: You’re right. There is currently a global sleep-loss epidemic. This is sweeping developed nations. It’s been underway for probably about 60 or 70 years. We know from surveys back in the 1940s that the average American adult was sleeping 7.9 hours a night. Now we know that number is down to 6 hours and 31 minutes during the week for American adults.

Back in my home country, not much better. It’s 6 hours and 49 minutes on average people are sleeping. Japan seems to be the worse; 6 hours and 22 minutes. I just give you those numbers to reaffirm first this pernicious erosion of sleep that has happened over the past 70 or 80 years as truth. But also just to take a step back, I think we have to realize that it took mother nature 3.6 million years to put this necessity of 8 hours of sleep in place.

Then we have come along, and in the space of blink of an evolutionary eye; 60, 70 years we’ve locked off maybe 20%, 25% of that sleep amount. How could it not come with deleterious consequences? I think it’s been proudly confirmed that we are in a global sleep-loss state of deficiency, or an epidemic as the CDC and the World Health Organization have called it.

What are the consequences though? Because if it’s not doing us any harm, then why worry? If only that were true, there is demonstrable harm that is underway because of the sleep-loss epidemic. We can start at the big 30,000-foot level and make it a very simple statement based on epidemiological studies from millions of people. That is the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all-cause mortality.

I think that classical maxim that you may have heard. You can sleep when you’re dead. It’s always struck me as ironic, because if you adopt that mindset, we know from the evidence that you will be both dead sooner, and the quality of that now shorter life will be significantly worse. 

If you dig down a little deeper you can say, “Well, if a lack of sleep kills you more quickly, then what is it that is killing you more quickly?” It seems to be just about everything. Every made disease that is killing us in the developed world has causal insignificant links to a lack of sleep. That list currently and tragically includes Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, as well as numerous mental health conditions; depression, bipolar disorder and most recently and sadly, suicide as well.

I think we’re really now starting to understand not just how deathly a lack of sleep is and the current weight of our sleep deprivation, and that elastic band of sleep deprivation can stretch only so far before it snaps. But with also understanding from hard science exactly why a lack of sleep produces such disease, sickness and ill-health within the brain and the body.

[0:06:31.1] MB: It’s amazing and it’s so important to think about why sleep is so vital. Yet, in today’s society it seems like there is more and more of a push to sleep less, work more, hustle more, do more. How do we combat that? 

[0:06:49.5] MW: There is. I think currently, sleep has an image problem in society, because more often than not, we seem to stigmatize sleep and we suggest that people who are getting sufficient sleep and I actually choose my words quite carefully there. As being lazy, as being slothful, those who get maybe 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night.

People I think are – or some people, I should say. Not all, but some people are perhaps quite proud of the fact of how little sleep that they’re getting and where it almost as though it’s a badge of honor to be celebrated. It’s sad, because for all of the reasons that we’ve just discussed, it’s an ill-advised mentality to expose.

It’s also strange, because if we don’t always have that opinion. I don’t think any of us would look at an infant sleeping during the day and say, “Gosh, what a lazy baby.” We don’t do that, because we know that sleep at that time of life is absolutely non-negotiable. It’s fundamentally necessary. But if you look at the evidence somewhere between infancy and now even childhood, not only do we abandon this notion that sleep is necessary and important, but we give it this terrible stigma.

I think that attitude has to change, and there are many ways in which it has to change. I think part of the problem perhaps is that the science of sleep is actually not being adequately communicated to the public. I think it’s people like myself who are to blame. I’m a sleep scientist, a professional sleep scientist for 20 years now.

I can’t go around wagging the finger at people if people have not been educated by the science that the taxpayer dollars have funded. That was part of the motivation to write the book that I didn’t feel as though there was a book after that gave people a blueprint manifesto of all of the real hard science of sleep.

There are lots of books out there that you can buy about the quick fix, these are the 10 rules to better sleep, or – I got nothing against those types of books, but for me I felt it was important because my sense is that people don’t respond to rules. They respond to reasons rather than rules, and I wanted to give and write a book of reasons for why you should sleep, rather than rules for how to sleep.

[0:09:27.7] MB: I want to dig a little bit more specifically into some of the negative implications or maybe the flipside of why sleep is so important for certain activities. For somebody who – let’s contextualize this maybe within a framework broadly thinking about, if I want to get more work done people often say, “All right, I’m going to sleep less,” or, “I’m going to pull a all-nighter,” or, “I’m going to cut down on my sleep so I can be more productive,” how does that usually pan out? What does the science say about doing that?

[0:09:59.5] MW: It doesn’t pan out very well. In fact, the opposite is true; we now know that less sleep does not equal more productivity. There have been lots of laboratory and workplace with these, and they give us five clear truths. Firstly, under-slept employees tend to take on less challenging work problems. In other words, they opt for the easy way out. Under-slept employees actually produce fewer creative solutions to work problems that they’re facing.

They also actually exert less effort when working in groups, and we’ve done some of these work. They essentially slack off. It’s what we call social-loafing. They write the tale of others and try to claim their hard work is their own.

We also know very interestingly that under-slept employees are more likely to lie, cheat and engage in deviant behaviors, such as falsifying a claims, receipts, etc., and it’s a scaling function; the less sleep that you have, the more likely you are to lie and be deviant. 

What’s also interesting is that it scales the business hierarchy all the way up to the top. We know that the more or less sleep that a business leader has had, the more or less charismatic their employees will rate that business leader.

Even though the employees themselves know nothing about how much sleep that business leader has had. They can actually see it in the expression of the behavior of their leader. You can then actually scale that up from those that have low-level studies, all the way up to the high-level studies. There was a recent round report, an independent report that demonstrated that chronic exhaustion and fatigue due to a lack of sleep caused most first-world nations about 2% of their GDP. For the United States, that’s 411 billion dollars that we lose each year due to a lack of sleep.

If you can just think about that, if we solve the sleep deprivation problem in the US, we could almost double the budget for education and we could make huge in-roads into the problems that we have with healthcare. Or we could just flat out give people remarkably high tax rebates, simply by solving the sleep-loss epidemic.

I think in response to your question, it’s very clear that under-slept individuals are not going to be successful. It’s a little bit like, if you think about your workforce and you’re forcing them to come into work every morning, early and leave very late, so no one is getting enough sleep, it strikes me a little bit like a spin class at a gym.

Everyone in the office looks like they’re working hard, but the scenery never changes, there’s never any forward progression in terms of momentum with productivity and creativity. I think we need to change our attitude in the workplace regarding sleep. The evidence is very clear there.

[0:13:04.3] MB: Especially around the creativity and the productivity aspect of that. It makes me think almost about the – an applied version of the 80-20 principle, where it’s not necessarily just more hours of work equals more output, but it’s really vital to have quality work, where you’re creative, where you’re bringing a fresh perspective and a well-rested mind. That’s when you really produce value. That’s the 20% that produces 80% of your results. All the busy work and the hustle and muscle, if you don’t get enough sleep you’re not going to be able to really be incredibly productive.

[0:13:44.3] MW: I think that that’s very true. Is there a way that we could actually break the classic [inaudible 0:13:50.0] 80-20 law that’s common throughout nature and it’s applied to human beings as well. By way of manipulating sleep could we actually force it to be that it’s 30% or 40% of your workforce that returns now 80% or 90% of the productivity by way of sufficient sleep. 

It’s just coming down to the very fact that what is the recycle rate of a human being? I think people have failed in the workplace to actually face this question and ask it. It’s surprising, because people in the workplace are wonderfully astute at trying to squeeze every ounce of effectiveness and efficiency out of all of their systems, be it the budget, be it the tax, be it the hardware, be it the software.

I think we forget about the biological organism at the heart of most companies, the human beings themselves. We have to ask, “How long can an individual be awake before they decline and decline significantly in the productivity, efficiency and effectiveness?” We now know that that evidence, you need 8 hours of sleep, 16 hours – after 16 hours of wakefulness, the cognitive capacities and the physiological capacities of the body starts to decline dramatically in after 20 or 21 hours of being awake. You are as cognitively impaired as someone who would be legally drunk in terms of driving behind the wheel.

There really is a recycle refresh rate of a human being, and we know that and it declines dramatically once you get past that 16. What I’m suggesting there is not 16 hours of work. I’m suggesting that this 8, 9-hour work span, then people need that downtime and they need to get that 8 hours of sleep to reboot and refresh.

[0:15:45.3] MB: What’s actually happening during that recycling period?

[0:15:49.7] MW: Well, we know firstly that there are multiple different stages of sleep that we ebb and flow in and out of, throughout a full 8-hour phase. Those different stages of sleeping, the two principle types of sleep, I should note that probably most people are aware of, or what are called non-rapid eye movement sleep, or non-REM sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep, which is the stage principally from which we dream.

Non-REM sleep actually has several sub-stages to it, stages one through four, increasing in the depth of sleep. By the way, it always strikes me as funny that scientists are not a very creative bunch. We have these four stages of deep non-REM sleep, and all we could come up with was stages one through four. Let’s set that side for a second.

We know that all of those different stages of sleep perform different functions end up all necessary. To come back to your question though, exactly what is happening at night? Well, let’s take deep non-REM sleep for a start.  The deepest stages of non-REM sleep. That stage of sleep is actually critical for essentially clearing out all of the metabolic toxins that have been building up in your brain.

Now that may sound a little bit hand-waving, but is actually very hard to get science from animal studies. When we are awake, we are essentially in a form of low-level brain damage. That’s what wakefulness is. We produce a variety of metabolic byproducts as a result of all of that waking brain cell combustion that we’re doing.

It is during sleep at night when we clear that away. What is clearing that away? Well, it turns out that we made a discovery, which is a sewage system in your brain. Now you have a sewage system in your body that you’re probably familiar with called the lymphatic system. But your brain also has one, it’s called the glymphatic system after the cells that produce it or compose the system called glial cells. 

That sewage system within the brain, glymphatic system, is not always on, at least not in highest flow capacity. It’s only during sleep and particular deep sleep at night where that cleansing system of the sewage network actually kicks in to high gear. It increases by maybe 2 to 300% relative to when we’re awake.

Why is this important? Well, one of the metabolic toxins that the glymphatic system clears away as we sleep at night is a toxic protein called beta-amyloid. Beta-amyloid is one of the leading candidate causes of Alzheimer’s disease. This is why we know that people who are not getting sufficient sleep across their lifespan are at a far high risk probability of going on to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The less sleep that you have, the less clearing away of that toxic byproduct. That’s one way, general way that we know that the brain gets essentially a refresh.

We also know that different cognitive systems and networks within your brain undergo a restoration. For example, we know that learning in memory systems get overhauled. We take information that we recently learned and we transfer it from short to long-term memory during sleep, which is actually like hitting the save button on new memories, so it prevents you from forgetting by cementing and solidifying those memories into long-term story sites.

We also know that there is a clearing out of your short-term memory reservoir. It’s perhaps a little bit like shifting files from a USB stick, so that when you wake up the next day, you have this renewed capacities to start learning and acquiring new facts and information all over again. That’s a more specific way in which the brain actually gets an overhaul at night during sleep.

We also know that the emotional circuits of the brain are changed and modified by sleep. There are deep emotional brain sensors, very old evolutionary centers specifically a structure called the amygdala, which controls the vital flight response. That structure, the amygdala is normally regulated in us higher order primates, human beings specifically, by a part of the brain that sits just above  your eyes called the prefrontal cortex, which acts a little bit like the CEO of the brain. It makes very high-level executive top-down control decisions.

When you had a good night of sleep, that part of your frontal lobe has been reconnected to your deep Neanderthal amygdala fight or flight center of the brain. It just regulates it. It’s a little bit like a break to your emotional accelerator pedal. When you don’t get enough sleep, that connection is actually severed and there’s a consequence. You become almost all emotional gas pedal and too little frontal lobe regulatory control brake.

There are many different ways in which sleep generally and very specifically seems to regulate our brain. I could also speak about the different ways that sleep actually reboots multiple systems within the body. That’s certainly the ways in which it refreshes your brain.

[0:21:13.5] MB: I want to dig into learning productivity and the emotional aspects. But before we do, tell me briefly about the physiological and the body reset aspects of sleep as well.

[0:21:25.3] MW: Firstly, we know that deep non-REM sleep that we described is perhaps one of the best forms of blood pressure medication that you could ever imagine. It’s during that deep sleep that your heart rate actually drops, your blood pressure will lower. There are a variety of restorative chemicals and hormones that are released, a growth hormone in particular to actually restore the cells within the body. It’s fantastic for the cardiovascular system.

We also know that it regulates your metabolic system, specifically it regulates insulin levels. If you’re not getting sufficient sleep, your blood glucose actually starts to become disrupted. There are [inaudible 0:22:07.7] that is now taking healthy people with no signs of diabetes. After one week of five to six hours of sleep a night, their blood sugar is disrupted so profoundly that their doctor would subsequently classify them as being pre-diabetic. That’s how critical sleep is to maintaining the metabolic system.

We also know that sleep is essential for another one of the major systems, the reproductive system. Here I’ll speak frankly about testicles, because we know that men who are routinely getting just 5 to 6 hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who are sleeping 8 hours or more.

In addition, men who report getting just 5 or 6 hours of sleep each night have a level of testosterone, which is that of someone 10 years their senior. In other words, a lack of sleep will actually age you by a decade in terms of that aspect of wellness and virility. We see very similar impairment in equivalent reproductive hormones and health, of course by a lack of sleep. It’s not just males who are disrupted in that way.

There are a variety of systems within the body. It also regulates appetite and weight and your food consumption. We know for example that those individuals who are not getting enough sleep will have an imbalance in the two hormones that control your hunger and your food intake. Those two hormones are called leptin and ghrelin.

Now leptin sounds like a Hobbit, I know, but trust me they are actually real hormones. Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain you’re satisfied with your food. You’re no longer hungry. You should stop eating. Ghrelin is the antithesis of that. Ghrelin will actually signal to your brain that you are not satisfied by the food that you’ve just eaten, that you are still hungry and that you should eat more.

People who are put on a regiment of just 5 or 6 hours of sleep for one week will have a mocked reduction in leptin, the hormone that says, “You’re fine. You’ve eaten enough, you can stop eating. You’re not hungry.” A mocked increase in the hormone ghrelin, which tells you, “You’re not satisfied with your food. You’re hungry and it’s time to eat more.”

That’s why people will actually eat somewhere between 3 to 500 calories more each day when they’re not getting sufficient sleep. You should also know by the way, it’s not just that you eat more, but what you eat is non-optimal when you’re sleep-deprived. Without sufficient sleep, you actually reach for the heavy-hitting starchy carbohydrates, as well as high-sugar foods and you stay away from the protein-rich foods. In other words, you’ll find yourself reaching for another slice of pizza rather than leafy greens, kale and beans.

It’s not just that you eat more. It’s what you eat that is also detrimental too. I hope that gives people just a little bit of a few brush strokes in terms of the bodily consequences. The one that we probably haven’t mentioned though, which is perhaps most impacted is your immune system. We know that one night of 4 hours of sleep will drop critical anti-cancer fighting immune cells called natural killer cells by 70%, which is a truly remarkable state of immune-deficiency, which happens very quickly within just one night.

Secondly, we also know that the link between a lack of sleep and cancer has now become so strong that the World Health Organization recently classified any form of night-time shift work as a probable cause energy. In other words, jobs that may induce cancer, because of a disruption of your sleep rate rhythms.

We can look to more benign things too. We know that if you’re getting just 5 hours of sleep in the week before you go and get your flu shot, you will only produce 50%, or in fact, less than 50% of the normal antibody response, rendering that flu shot largely ineffective.

Finally, know that if you’re getting just 5 hours of sleep a night, you are 2 to 300% more likely to capture cold, than someone who is getting 8 hours of sleep a night. This was a remarkable study where they quarantined people in a hotel and they had tracked how much sleep that they were getting in the week before. Then they flushed up the nose of all of these individuals; the flu virus. Then in the next few days they looked to see how many of those individuals succumbed to the flu, how many got infected. Then they bucketed them on the basis of how much sleep that they had in the week before, and that’s how they were able to come to that conclusion.

There really isn’t any system within your body, or process within the brain that isn’t wonderfully enhanced by sleep when you get it, or demonstrably impaired when you don’t get enough.

[0:27:25.3] MB: What a powerful statement. I mean, just that sentence alone really succinctly summarizes the fundamental conclusion that the science is in across nearly every spectrum of the body, the brain, etc., that sleep is incredibly valuable. That 8 hours of sleep specifically is really critical.

[0:27:46.2] MW: I think it is. I think what we know is that without sleep, there is low energy and disease. With sleep, there is vitality and health. The sleepless epidemic is perhaps the greatest curable disease that no one is really talking about, or effectively trying to solve. I would simply say that the lack of sleep is both the most striking omission in the health conversation of today. All lack of sleep is perhaps a slow form of self-Euthanasia.

[0:28:16.6] MB: I want to dig back into the relationship. Let’s touch on learning and memory. Tell me a little bit more about the work you’ve done and some of the research around how sleep can improve learning and memory.

[0:28:29.8] MW: Sleep actually is beneficial for memory in at least three ways that we’ve now discovered and this is the work that we’ve been doing, or some of the work that we do at my sleep center.

First, we know that you need sleep before learning to essentially prepare your brain; perhaps a little bit like a dry sponge, ready to initially soak up new information the next day. We did a study where we tested a very simple hypothesis. Is it wise to pull the all-nighter? Is it a good thing, or a bad thing?

We took a group of individuals and we either gave them a full night of sleep, or we kept them awake throughout the night. Then the next day, we wedged them inside an MRI scanner and then we have them try and learn a whole list of new facts as we were taking snapshots of brain activity. Then we tested them to see how effectively that learning had been.

Firstly, what we found is that when we put those two groups head to head, there was a 40% deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep, and just a frame that in context it would simply be the difference between acing an exam and failing it miserably. What we went on to discover from the brain scans however was why the brain was failing to lay down those new memories.

There is a structure in our brains, on the left and the right side called the hippocampus. You can think of the hippocampus a little bit like the memory inbox of the brain. That it’s actually very good at receiving new memory files and holding on to them initially.

When we looked at that structure in those people who’d had a full night of sleep, we saw lots of healthy learning-related activity. Yet, in those people who were sleep deprived, we actually couldn’t find any significant activity whatsoever.

It was almost as though sleep deprivation had shut down your memory inbox as it were and any new incoming files. They were just being bounced. You couldn’t effectively commit new experiences to memory. If people would like to just understand what that means in terms of the hippocampus, I’m sure many people listening have probably seen the movie Memento. In that movie, that gentleman has damage to the brain and specifically to the structure of the hippocampus. From that point forward, he can no longer make any new memories. It is what we call in neurology, densely amnesic.

That part of his brain was the hippocampus and it is the very same structure that your lack of sleep will actually attack and prevent your brain from actually laying down and placing those new memories into a fixed state within the brain. That’s the first way that sleep is good for learning a memory.

You also need sleep not just before learning, but also after learning, but for something different now. Sleep after learning will essentially hit the save button on those new memories. It will essentially solidify those memories into neural architecture of the brain. As we mentioned before, it actually will transfer those memories, almost like packets of information being transferred across the network, from a short-term vulnerable storage site to the more permanent long-term storage center within the brain, which is called the cortex; this wrinkled mass that sits on top of your brain.

That means that when you come back the next day, those memories are protected and safe and you will be able to remember, rather than those memories being vulnerable to being overwritten or lost, for example to the ravage of time. Which mean, that they are ultimately forgotten. 

We also know a little bit about how sleep not only transfers memories during sleep, but even strengthens those memories. It’s during sleep that the brain actually replays the information that you’ve recently learned. These are studies done in humans, but also in animals they were actually placing electrodes into the brains of rats and they were having them run around a maze.

As they were running around the maze and learning the maze, all of these different brain cells which fire in a specific signature pattern, which was essentially the imprinting of a memory and it adds different tones to them. It would sound a little bit like “babababam, babababam, babababam.” The brain is imprinting this memory as the rat is running around the maze.

Low and behold, what happens is that when you then let the rats sleep, but keep recording and keep eavesdropping on the brain, what do you think reemerges? It’s exactly the same pattern, “babababam, babababam.” The rat is replaying those memories. What’s incredible however, is that it’s actually replaying them at somewhere between 10 to 20 times faster. Rather than “babababam,” it’s actually, “brrm, brrm, brr, brrm, brrm.” It’s this high-speed fidelity replay. We think that that actually helps score the memory trace into the brain in a strengthened manner, almost like etching on the surface of glass. You’re really strengthening that neural circuit. That’s sleep after learning to strengthen individual memories, and I guess essentially future proof that information within the brain.

There is a final third way that sleep actually helps memory that we’ve discovered, which I think is perhaps most exciting. Sleep doesn’t just simply strengthen individual memories. It’s that strengthening of individual memories by the way that happens during deep, non-rapid eye movement sleep, or dreamless sleep.

Sleep also then actually interconnects those new memories together and interconnects new information with all of your pre-existing back-catalog of autobiographical stored information. Essentially, what sleep is doing and this is actually the work of rapid eye movement sleep of dream sleep, is that you’re starting to collide information together within the brain. This is a bit like group therapy for memories.

What you awake with the next morning is a revised mind-wide web of information within the brain. It’s a new associative network, or at least not a radically new associative network, but it’s an updated and it’s a modified associative network. That’s the reason that you can come back the next day having extracted and divine, creative novel solutions to previously impenetrable problems that you were facing.

It’s probably the reason – I mean, now know this, for example that sleep will actually provide almost a three-fold advantage in problem solving relative to an equivalent time period spent awake. That science is now very well, I think rendered and described.

There probably is a reason that you’re never told to stay awake on a problem and in every language that I’ve inquired about to date, that phrase sleeping on a problem seems to exist. It seems to transcend cultural boundaries. It’s a phenomenon that is common across the globe. I should also note by the way that we – the British, we say you sleep on a problem. I believe and please correct me if anyone knows this, but I believe the French translation is a little closer to you sleep with the problem, rather than you sleep on a problem. I think that says so much about the romantic difference between the British and the French. I’ll digress before I lose my British passport.

[0:36:22.5] MB: That’s great. Yeah, that’s a funny anecdote and probably true. I’ve seen the phrase creative incubation and some research around creativity, and some of the science behind what you’re describing. To me, it makes so much sense that the more you give the brain the ability to something, and when you come back to that problem, you’re going to be much more creative. You’re going to be much more effective at solving. 

[0:36:48.0] MW: That’s right. It’s not just sleep by the way. If it’s a complex problem, simple problems tend to benefit from deliberative focused thought. But complex problems, problems where there are maybe 10, 20, 80 different variables and you could think of this as something very crass to you. What type of knife or fork set do you buy? This may be just three or four different variables. Versus, what type of card do you buy, where there is maybe 16 different features of variants that you have to choose between.

Well, the more complex a problem is, the more benefit there is to actually stepping away and stopping consciously thinking about it. That’s where the non-conscious brain seems to go to work. It seems to be able to distill amounts of information that we just can’t consciously juggle all up in the air at the same time when we’re awake. It’s just too much for a working memory. 

If you’re to think of perhaps what the extreme version of that non-conscious processing would be, you would probably design a system that looks very similar to sleep. That’s exactly why sleep provides those creative benefits. It’s essentially informational alchemy that occurs overnight.

[0:39:22.9] MB: I want to segway now and get into strategies for sleeping more effectively. We’ve talked at length about how important sleep is both from avoiding a tremendous amount of negative consequences, but also in producing a myriad of positive benefits. Tell me about, for somebody who maybe has trouble sleeping, or just in general, what are some of the basic interventions that we can implement in our lives to sleep better?

[0:39:50.5] MW: These tips I suppose, and again, I’m not just going to tell you the rules. I won’t just try and explain the reasons for each of these rules. I do warn people that some of them are probably not necessarily desirable. It makes me very unpopular, but here they are.

The first overarching rule of course, is that you just have to carve out an 8-hour non-negotiable sleep opportunity every night. It sounds crass and it’s sounds hokie, but I do this in my life as well. I’m not just saying this because I’ve just written a book and I want to practice what I seem to be preaching. But it’s from a very selfish perspective, because I know the evidence so well. If you knew the evidences I do, which and I hope people will do after reading the book, you just wouldn’t do anything different. I don’t want to short a life, I don’t want a life filled disease and pain and sickness and suffering. That’s why I do give myself a non-negotiable 8-hour opportunity every night.

Once you’ve got that in place – I don’t think it’s insurmountable. People are doing wonderful things in terms of actually committing non-negotiable time to exercise, and people are trying to eat more healthily. I don’t think sleep is a lost cause in this regard. 

Once you’re getting that opportunity, then I think there are five things that you could do. If there is one thing that you do from all of these tips, it is these; regularity. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, no matter what, no matter whether it’s the weekend, or the weekday. Even if you had a bad night of sleep, still wake up at the same time the next day. Accept that it’s going to be a bit of a tricky day. But then just get to bed early the following evening and then you will reset.

Because if you sleep in late for whatever reason, you’re not going to feel tired until later that following evening, and you start to drift forward in time and it’s called social jetlag. That has marked deleterious consequences to your health and to your sleep. Regularity is key.

The second is temperature. Keep it cool. Keep your bedroom around about 68 degrees is optimal for most people, which is probably colder than you think, or about 18 and a half degrees Celsius. The reason is this, that your body needs to drop its core temperature by about a 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit in order to initiate sleep. That’s the reason that you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room that’s too cold, than too hot. Because at least the cold room is moving your brain and body in the right thermal direction, that it actually wants to go to for sound and healthy long sleep. 

Try to keep your temperature in the bedroom cool. Wear socks if you get cold feet. Some people complain about this, so it’s okay to wear those socks, but keep the bedroom cool. Another way that you can exploit this hack is actually to take a hot bath before bed, or a hot shower. The bath is better if you look at the evidence.

Most people think that when they have a hot bath, they get into bed, they’re nice and warm and that’s what lets them fall asleep more easily. It’s actually the opposite. When you get into a bath, all of the blood comes from the core of your body out to the surface, that’s why you get that rosy glow. It’s what’s called mass vasodilation.

Once you get out of the bath with all of that blood near the surface of your skin, you have this huge massive thermal dump. You get this evacuation of heat from the body, which plummets your core temperature, and that’s why you’ll fall asleep more quickly and more soundly.

The third tip is the light, and actually darkness more specifically. We are actually a dark-deprived society in all first-world nations. You need darkness to allow the release of a critical hormone called melatonin. Melatonin will time the normal healthy onset of sleep. If you’ve got lots of light inside of the house during the evening, and especially if you’re looking and staring at those LED screens from phones, tablets, laptops etc., that will actually fool your brain into thinking it is still daytime and it will shut off melatonin, so you won’t be releasing melatonin.

There were studies done where they had people reading on an iPad for one hour before bed. If I was doing that here in California, their data demonstrated that my release and peak of melatonin didn’t happen, or were shifted by three hours forward in time. I would essentially be close to Hawaii in terms of my internal clock timing to sleep, rather than California.

Keep it dim. You can turn down half the lights in the house in the evening. You don’t need all of them on the last hour before bed. Also stay away from screens in the last hour, and try and use black out curtains, that can actually be very helpful.

The fourth tip is not to stay in bed if you have been awake for longer than 20 minutes. This applies to whether you’re trying to fall asleep, or whether you’ve woken up and are trying to fall back asleep. The reason is this, your brain is a remarkably associative device. If you are lying in bed awake, it quickly learns that being in bed is about being awake rather than being asleep.

You need to break that association. After 20 minutes or so, if you haven’t fallen asleep, get up, don’t get too stressed, go to a different room and in dim light, perhaps just read a book, no screens, no eating. Only when you feel sleepy should you return to bed. In that way, you will actually relearn the association between your bed being about being asleep, rather than being awake.

I would note that some people actually don’t like the idea of getting out of bed. It’s dark. Maybe they’re warm and maybe it’s colder in the rest of the house. I understand that. Another way to try and help you get back to sleep that has good proven clinical trial data behind it is actually meditation. I’m actually quite hard know a scientist, and when I was looking into this evidence as I was writing the book, I was really quite skeptical.

The studies were very clear, very well done, some of them out of Stanford here just down the way from me. So much so that I actually started meditating myself and that was seven months ago, and I’m now a regular meditator. If I’m traveling going through jetlag, for example and struggling with sleep, I will actually use a meditation relaxation practice.

The final tip is the one that really makes me deeply – well, deeply unpopular, just generally as a person anyway, but this is the one that really makes me unpopular with people. No caffeine after noon and avoid alcohol in the evenings. Forego and I kept and I’ll explain both.

Everyone knows of course that caffeine activates you. It’s a class of drugs that we call a stimulants and it can keep people awake. What people may not know however is that for those people who say, “Well, I can drink an espresso after dinner and I force sleep fine and I stay asleep.” That may be true. However, the depth of the deep sleep that you have when caffeine is swirling around within your brain during sleep is nowhere near as deep as if you had not had that cup of coffee in the evening.

As a consequence, people wake up the next morning. They won’t fee refreshed or restored. They don’t remember having a problem falling asleep or staying asleep. They don’t equate it with the cup of coffee they had the night before. But now they find themselves reaching the two cups of coffee, or three cups of coffee in the morning, which essentially is building a dependency and addiction cycle. That’s the issue with caffeine and that’s why the suggestion is stop caffeine midday and certainly after 2 PM.

Alcohol is probably the most misunderstood drug when it comes to sleep. Alcohol is a class of drugs that we call the sedative hypnotics. Sedation is not sleep. Many people will say, “Well, I nightcap, I have a quick whiskey and it puts me to sleep. It’s great.” It’s actually not true. What you’re simply doing is you’re sedating your cortex, you’re knocking out your brain essentially. You’re not getting into natural sleep.

Then there are two more problems with alcohol. Firstly, it will fragment your sleep so you will wake up many more times throughout the night, which leaves you with what we call un-restorative sleep. The final thing is that alcohol is one of the best chemicals that we know blocking your dream sleep, your REM sleep, which is essential for not just creativity and that associative type of memory processing that we spoke about.

REM sleep is also critical for emotional and mental health. It is during REM sleep when we provide our brain a form of emotional first aid, and you won’t be getting that if you’re blocking REM sleep by way of alcohol. Those would be the five tips to better sleep and hopefully they help some folks. I’m also happy to speak a little bit about sleeping pills. They’re also misunderstood, but those would be for most people the five tips that I would offer.

[0:49:17.9] MB: Great advice. I try to implement as many of those as possible. One of the things, specifically caffeine is something that I used to drink at my peak. About a cup of – I mean, a pot of coffee a day. Now I basically don’t consume any caffeine. When I do, I limit myself, no caffeine afternoon. Maybe one cup of tea is the maximum. I’ve noticed a huge impact on that impact in my sleep. Sorry, were you going to say something? 

[0:49:44.6] MW: Yeah. I’m just going to say, I mean it’s immensely wise and it’s one of the problems with a lack of sleep is that you quickly reset your perception of your effectiveness and your health. You just think, “Well, this is how I am now at this age.” Not realizing that you could actually be a far better version of yourself, both mentally, cognitively and physiologically if you were just to start getting sufficient sleep.

I think many people fail to realize that with caffeine especially that it’s only when they come off caffeine do they really start to feel both the benefits of all of the side effects that normally come with high caffeine use, but especially the benefits on sleep. It’s like wiping a fogged window and you finally can start to see clearly through it.  That’s the benefit of a full restorative night of sleep.

[0:50:36.8] MB: I have a couple short questions all around specific sleep strategies or tactics. Let’s start with – you touched on sleeping pills. Tell me about sleeping pills. Do they work? If so, why or why not?

[0:50:50.2] MW: There are no sleeping medications that we have currently that produce naturalistic sleep. The current class of drugs that you will be prescribed are called sedative hypnotics. Again, as we mentioned with alcohol, sedation is not sleep. The sleep that you have when you’re on sleeping pills, if I were to show you the electrical signature of your sleep if you would come to my laboratory, it would  not be the same on sleeping pills as it would be if you’re just having naturalistic healthy sleep. That’s the first thing.

The second thing, and I go to great lengths and a whole chapter in the book to discuss this, is that people are probably not aware of the risks of sleeping pills. They have not been communicated to public adequately. Firstly, we know that sleeping pills are associated with a far higher risk of death. They’re also associated with a significantly high risk of cancer and infection.

Now, we don’t yet know if this is causal versus simply associational, but what I wanted to do is to try to get that information out to the public, so they at least could be armed with the knowledge and make an informed choice with that doctor when they go and see the surgery. That’s I think one of the biggest problems of sleeping pills is that the misunderstood nature about what they give you and the dangers.

People also don’t necessarily have to be taking sleeping pills, I should note. There is a safe and non-pharmacological alternative which is just as effective. It is called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBTI for short. You work with a therapist for a couple of weeks. As I mentioned, it’s just as powerful as sleeping in the short-term, but better still, once you finish that short therapy phase, you continue to maintain that better sleep. Unlike sleeping pills, when you come off those you tend to actually have what’s called rebound insomnia, where your sleep is as bad, if not worse than when you started. 

I think people can revisit their sleep issues with their doctor. I’m not trying to shame people who are on sleeping pills. I’m not trying to make you feel bad if you are. I’m very sensitive to the desire for better sleep and I’m so sensitive to the issue of insomnia, or the desperate, desperate state. You should be aware of what sleeping pills are, what they do and what the alternatives are.

[0:53:15.8] MB: What about taking a melatonin supplement?

[0:53:18.6] MW: Melatonin is useful in the circumstance of jetlag to try and reset your body clock in a new time zone. You should take it 30 to 60 minutes before you want to get to sleep in the new time zone. Melatonin works to essentially time the onset of your sleep. I guess, the analogy would be if you think about the 100-meter race in the Olympics. Well, melatonin is the starting official who has the starter gun.

It’s melatonin that brings all of the different ingredients off the sleep race to the starting line, then starts the race in its entirety. It begins the sleep race. Melatonin itself does not actually participate in the race of sleep, in the generation of that sleep race. That’s a whole different set of chemicals. As a consequence, that’s why actually melatonin when you are in a new time zone and you’re stable now in that new time zone, if you’re a young healthy individual, then melatonin actually isn’t effective as a sleeping aid. It doesn’t actually help if you look at the studies.

That said, I would note that for those people who are taking melatonin and they feel as though it helps their sleep, well then I usually tell people continue on. It’s because the placebo effect is one of the most reliable effects in all pharmacology. No harm, no foul if you think it’s working for you.

[0:54:48.1] MB: What about napping? Is napping something – if you’re sleep-deprived, can you catch up with a nap?

[0:54:53.7] MW: Unfortunately, you cannot catch up on sleep. Sleep is not like the bank. This is another myth that I try to deconstruct in the book. You can’t accumulate a debt, let’s say during the week and then hope to pay it off at the weekend. Sleep just doesn’t work like that. There is no credit system, or there is no credit sleep sell within the brain.

You can if you are sleep-deprived, take a nap and overcome some of the basic sleepiness. Your reaction times will improve a little bit after a nap, but you don’t actually overcome all of the higher level, cognitive issues such as decision-making, learning in memory, focused attention, all of those types of things that we know are would buckle and collapse by way of a lack of sleep. Naps just don’t seem to be able to overcome those.

You can’t overcome – you can’t bank sleep and you can’t sleep off a debt. I see this in my students. It’s what I would call sleep bulimia, which is where they’re binging on sleep at the weekend and they’re – try and taking too little sleep during the week. It’s this binge purge kind of cycle.

I would also say naps, just more generally are a double-edged sword. If during the day when we’re awake, we actually build up a chemical pressure in our brain. It’s a sleepiness pressure. Now, it’s a hydraulic pressure, don’t worry. As I said, it’s a chemical pressure.  The chemical that builds up is called adenosine. The more of that sleepiness chemical that you have, the more and more sleepy that you will feel. After about 16 hours of being awake, you’re nice and tired and then you should fall asleep and stay asleep for about 8 hours.

When we sleep, we remove that sleepiness pressure. It’s almost like a valve on a pressure cooker. We release that sleepiness steam as it were. This is where I come back to naps. If you nap too late in the day, you actually release some of that healthy sleepiness, which means that when it comes time to sleep normally at night, you may actually struggle to fall asleep, or at least stay asleep.

The advice would be this, if you are someone who can nap regularly and you don’t struggle with your sleep at night, then naps are just fine. But if you can’t nap regularly and/or you’re having difficulties with your sleep at night then the advice is you shouldn’t nap, you should stay awake, build up that healthy sleepiness, and then you will have a better night of sleep because of it.

[0:57:30.1] MB: What about someone who’s in a situation, let’s say like a new parent. Is there anything that they can go through obviously, very chronically sleep-deprived state? Is there any strategy for them to be able to implement, that would help them battle through that in some way? 

[0:57:45.0] MW: Some parents describe trying to work better shifts and what I mean by that is in two ways. Firstly, some parents will try to take early, the early shift and then the late shift, the first half of the night versus the second half of the night and switch between those two. Another way that you can do that on an informed choice is try to determine whether you are a night owl, or you’re a morning type, what we call a lock. That’s a genetically predisposed. It’s called your chrono type.

If you are someone who likes to go to bed late and wake up late, versus someone who likes to go to bed early and wake up early, that’s not a choice. That’s a genetic mandate that’s being given to you in your DNA code. You can try to ask in the couple, are you someone who would prefer to wake up early and go to bed early? In which case, could you take the morning shift, the late morning shift?

If I’m someone who likes to go to bed late and wake up late, well then it’s easier for me to actually take the first half of the night and then sleep for the second half of the morning and sleep late. You can think about split shifts like that. Some people will also flip-flop back and forth. Some people will say, “Well, I’ll take the next two nights and you get good sleep, then we switch over and you take two nights.” They try to mix and match it in that way too. It’s a desperately difficult situation.

In part, we would not actually design to be family units like this, if you look at [inaudible 0:59:17.8] tribes who have not been touched by the electrical influence, then they actually tend to sleep in groups. Restless legs dangling all over the place, arms intertwined. Whole families would sleep together and people would take turns in terms of caring for the young. It’s a lot to ask of parents, and those are some of the ways that you can try to overcome it.

[0:59:45.6] MB: One other question and this is out of left field a little bit. I’m curious, have you seen or studied around the neurotransmitter GABA and its relationship with sleep?

[0:59:56.5] MW: GABA is the principle inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain. The way that most sleeping medications work right now and you can just name your favorite one and it will work in this way, is by essentially trying to activate the receptors in the brain for GABA. Those receptors essentially are like the red lights on your neurons. They stop them firing, they stop them from going. 

Drugs that try to target the GABA system within the brain are really quite blunt instruments and that’s why sleeping pills, which act exactly in this way are really not precise tools. Sleep is a remarkably complex neuro-physiological and neuro-chemical ballet if you look at it. All of these different stages of sleep, neurotransmitters going up and down and brain networks ebbing and flowing.

To think that you can essentially recreate something that is so complex and so bi-directional sleep by simply just knocking the brain out and switching it off using GABA receptors is really just – it’s an unfortunate outcome of how poor our pharmacology is in this day and age. We just don’t yet have the pharmacological precision and sophistication to mimic sleep at this stage.

[1:01:22.4] MB: What’s one piece of homework that you would give to a listener who wants to sleep better?

[1:01:28.5] MW: I would say try giving yourself one week of 8 hours of sleep and see if you feel any better. Just give it as self-improvement test. Try it as a hack, that if you are one of those people who are into the quantified self-movement and you’re into self-experimentation then just test out all of that what you’ve just heard in the past week and just determine if you feel any better when you’re sleeping 8 hours every night and you’ve regular each and every night. Versus a staccato sleep schedule where you’re sleeping 5 hours and 6 hours and 12 hours and then 5 hours again. Just ask yourself, “Did that experiment work? Is it in my favor? Do I feel any better and do I notice that improvement? 

[1:02:19.2] MB: For listeners who want to learn more and want to find you and your book online, what’s the best place to do that?

[1:02:25.9] MW: They can find the book, which is called Why We Sleep. They can find that online. Amazon holds it. You can find it from all of your major bookstores, both the major brands, as well as all of the independent. It’s on the list of most libraries too. If you don’t want to part with your money, my publisher would probably won’t like me saying that, but I read online, it’s about the knowledge of the book, not the sales.

If you want to learn more about the work that I do, you can follow me on social media. I am at sleepdiplomat, all one word. Sleepdiplomat. I’m on Twitter and also you can find me on LinkedIn. Also on the web I am at – it is www.sleepdiplomat.com 

[1:03:11.4] MB: Well, Matt. This has been a fascinating conversation. So much great information, practical strategies, tons and tons of science. Really appreciate it. Incredible insights. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all of these wisdom.

[1:03:25.4] MW: Well, thank you and I have to say a real thanks to you too. It’s not just what people say at the end of these interviews, but I’m trying to fight this battle for sleep. I can only do so much by getting on shows or television, radio or writing a book for example. I need fantastic journalists and media and genius types to actually join and partner with me to get this message out. I too just want to thank you, Matt. Thank you for being part of the sleep mission.

I’m going to grant you now the title of being a sleep ambassador for having me on the show. Thank you very much. Sincerely, I really want to thank you. I desperately need to get this message out. This portal is a remarkable way to proclaim the virtues of sleep. Thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

Hack Your Biochemistry To Create Spontaneous Weight Loss and Improved Mental Health by Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary

In this episode we discuss how neurology's perspective on the brain fundamentally ignores the health of the entire system, we look at your gut biome’s role in depression, mood regulation and how the microbiome controls your behavior and emotions, we ask why it is so hard for people to break negative eating habits, talk about the biochemistry of addiction, the incredible importance of understanding your microbiome and gut health with Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary. 

Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary is a neuroscientist and Ayurveda expert. She has participated in over 20 clinical research studies working with new stem cell therapies for diabetic neuropathy and drug development for the treatment of ALS. Dr. Chaudhary is the author of The Prime: Prepare and Repair Your Body for Spontaneous Weight Loss, and is a regular guest on the Dr. Oz show!

• How Dr. Chaudhary’s personal experience led her down the path of integrative medicine

• The health of the brain is highly dependent on the health of the gut

• Auyerveda is the oldest recorded medical system in the world - one of the oldest forms of “lifestyle medicine"

• Why food is medicine

• The way you live dictates whether you are sick or healthy

• Disease is a result of imbalance and can be cured by changing habits

• How the Neurologist’s perspective on the brain fundamentally ignores the health of the entire system

• Dr. Chaudhary’s perspective on how eastern & integrative medicine can be integrated with western science to form a more holistic solution for health

• Tumeric is a great example of a spice that has scientifically demonstrated health benefits

• Micro-biome & gut health underpins huge medical issues

• Western medicine is just now catching up with insights from 5000 year old holistic medicines

• 90% of your serotonin comes from your gut and gut health is a major factor in depression

• Scientifically, the mind and mental health are deeply connected and directly related gut health

• Why is it so hard for people to break negative eating habits? Is it really just a question of willpower?

• The neurochemistry and biochemistry that underpins negative eating habits

• Your micro biome itself can shift your eating habits and make you desire and consume certain foods

• The science behind how addictions form in our brains (especially food addictions)

• Why 85% of people cannot change the way they are eating with willpower

• The biochemistry of addiction and food addiction & the role dopamine plays

• How food scientists have engineered junk food to produce massive dopamine spikes

• The dangers of overstimulated dopamine receptors and how they lead to addiction

• An obese person’s brain chemistry responds the same way to sugar as a cocaine addict responds to cocaine

• Environmental toxins and toxic inflammation and how they impact your body

• Enteric nervous system - the “brain inside your gut” which produces 95% of the serotonin and 50% of the dopamine in your body

• “The gut does most of the talking and the brain does most of the listening”

• Who dictates the content of what the gut says? The Microbiome

• "How smart is your gut?"

• How fecal matter transplants in mice can completely reverse genetically engineered personality traits

• Research clearly demonstrates that your micro-biome controls your behavior and emotions

• We are still in the infancy of discovering and understanding the microbiome - there is alot of “noise” that’s hard to understand

• The importance of taking an individualized approach to gut health - its not always about taking probiotics or fermented food

• The most foundational steps to implement in order to improve your gut health

• The simplest interventions are usually the most powerful

• How Tumeric has helped reduced Alzheimers disease by 75% in India

• Foods and spices are more interactive than the “unilateral” approach of western medicines - interacting with multiple cells and systems, rather than a hyper focused intervention

• We discuss a variety of herbs and supplements that Dr. Chaudhary reccomends to improve your gut health and microbiome

• The environment can interact with your genes to change genetic expression

• Dr. Chaudhary’s work as a neurologist revealed many of the same conclusions from Auyervedic medicine

• How your genes interact with the environment, including what you’re eating, to create the outcomes in your life

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

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SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

[Book] The Prime: Prepare and Repair Your Body for Spontaneous Weight Loss by Kulreet Chaudhary
[Website] The Chopra Center
[Personal Site] Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary

Episode Transcript

[00:00:06.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:12.1] MB: Welcome to the science of success, the number one evidence based growth podcast on the internet with more than a million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries. 

In this episode, we discuss how a neurologist’s perspective on your brain, fundamentally ignores the health of the entire system. How your guy biomes roll in depression, mood regulation and how the micro biome controls your behavior and emotions.

We ask why it’s so hard for people to break negative eating habits. We look at the biochemistry of addiction. And, discuss the incredible importance of understanding your micro biome and your gut health and much more with Dr. Kulreet Chaudrhary. I want to give you three quick reasons why you should join our email list today by going to successpodcast.com and signing up right on the home page. First, you’re going to get a curated weekly email from us every single week on Monday.

This is our mindset Monday email. People have been sending us emails, telling us how much they love mindset Monday, this is a quick list of articles, stories and things that have us excited right now.

Lastly, you’re going to get the exclusive opportunity to shape the show, vote on guests, change our intro music which we did recently based on listener votes for people who are on the mail list and be part of the community. Go to successpodcast.com and join the email list right now or if you’re on your phone, if you’re on the go right now, just text the word smarter to the number 44222.

In our previous episode, we discuss the darker side of h ow the US military influences human behavior. We touched on brainwashing, reading human body language, creating men sure in candidates.

How this one psychological bias can convince a stranger to murder someone and up to 80% of cases, how to profile someone and search for their weaknesses and much more with Chase Hughes. If you want to get to the darker side of influencing other people, listen to that episode.

Now for the interview.

[0:02:43.7] MB: Today, we have another fascinating guest on the show. Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary. Dr. Chaudhary is a neuroscientist and RU beta expert. She’s participated in over 20 clinical research studies, working with new stem cell therapies for diabetic, neuropathy and drug development for the treatment of ALS.

She also was the author of the Prime, prepare and repair your body for spontaneous weight loss and is a regular guest on the Dr. Oz show. Kulreet, welcome to the science of success.

[0:03:10.2] KC: Thank you so much Mat, pleasure to be here.

[0:03:13.1] MB: Well, we’re very excited to have you on today. I’d love to start out with a story that you share about your migraines and how that helped shape the journey that you’ve gone on to really dig into gut bacteria and how all that impacts our wellbeing and our neurology as well?

[0:03:31.6] KC: Sure, kind of like many stories of doctors who have gone into integrative medicine, it often takes a personal experience to kind of bypass all of the biases that you’ve been trained with and my story is no different, I was trained as a neurologist and shortly after I started practice, I developed migraine headaches which you know, for a neurologist seem like no big deal because I have all of the treatments that I could use to control them.

The doctor became the patient and I started myself on the different medications that I give to my patients and I was just absolutely horrified by the side effects, how off like, I could not figure out if the migraines were worse or the side effects from the medications were worse.

That really forced me to go back to my childhood and I turned to my mom as all good neurologist do when they can’t figure out what’s wrong with them, they go to mom.

I said, you know, I can’t seem to get this under control, I remember growing up, we were always exposed to different Ayurvedic remedies and she was the one who referred me to an ayurvedic practitioner.

You know, just as I kind of mentioned in the book, it was a bit of a culture shock at first because you know, I walk in this practitioner, is feeling my pulse to get an estimate of where my health was and the first thing he starts talking about is my digestion.

For me, I felt like you know, this is just some total quack, they don’t know anything about the nervous system because all he asked me was about my digestion. Since I had absolutely nowhere to go from there, I took his recommendations, everything I had done had failed.

So, at this point you know, what did I have to lose? I started working on my digestion and lo and behold within two months, my headaches were completely gone and so that forced me as a neurologist and neuroscientist, I had to take this seriously and look into this.

It forced me to take Ayurveda more seriously and take their perception of the nervous system as an extension of your gut health, that the health of the brain is highly dependent on the health of the GI tract and I started to study it and so that was kind of the beginning of this entire journey.

[0:05:52.7] MB: I want to dig in to a lot of those different concepts. Let’s start with, I’m sure I’m going to completely botch the pronunciation of this but ayurvedic medicine, what is that and how does it approach the human body and as a scientist and a doctor, how do you think about – 

You know, as you said, you had some sort of biases about that, how do you think about the perception or the belief that a lot of people have that it might be sort of woo-woo or out there or not really rooted in science?

[0:06:21.3] KC: Sure, we’ll start kind of with the one thing at a time so yes, first of all, what is it? The way I describe ayurvedic medicine is it’s really kind of the original lifestyle medicine on planet earth, it’s the oldest recorded medical system, originally located or originated I should say in India.

But, as we look at indigenous cultures all over the world, they had a very similar medical concept towards balance and health. I almost hesitate to even call it medical because it was really just a way of living. The basic principles of ayurvedic medicine is that food is medicine, that he way that you live will dictate whether you are sick or whether you are healthy and that there are certain imbalances that result to disease that can be reversed by changing certain habits.

If you look at really the fundamental aspects of ayurvedic medicine, it’s really not that different from a lot of the newer lifestyle medicine coming out today like functional medicine. In fact, functional medicine actually look heavily towards the history of ayurvedic medicine to help come up with some of the formulations and some of the protocols that they use. In terms of you know, how I look at it, what struck me the most, especially as a neurologist because we tend to look at the brain as this protected system in this hard scull.

That is somehow separate from the rest of the body and the biggest shift for me was realizing that the health of any one organ really depends on the health of the entire organism meaning us. You can’t look at disease in any particular area in isolation. When somebody’s sick, there’s a particular story to how the y got there and involves a lot of different systems. If you do not understand that story, you can never really get rid of the underlying disease process.

You bring up a really great question because if you would have asked me 20 years ago if I would be doing what I’m doing, I would have just laughed because I was this very hardcore scientist and people who go into neurology in particular like it because of how black and white it is.

It’s something that can be easily studied, it’s got all of these wonderful tracts and it’s a seemingly knowable system and so I would have said I would have been one of the last people to have immersed myself as deeply as I have but what is amazing really to me about ayurvedic medicine is how it sees the body and the whole person as a dynamic unit and how the environment impacts your body.

How emotions impact your body, it’s just such an unbelievably holistic way of looking at it and because it’s so holistic, there are so many different ways that you can approach an issue that takes into consideration rather than the myriad of symptoms like odd patients coming in with 10 symptoms and I see it as just one simple problem.

The last point you make is really fantastic about, well how is a scientist do you not look at this as kind of woo-woo and what’s been fascinating Mat and I wish I could have taken credit for knowing this and foresight when I first started.

But ayurvedic medicine is so scientific, it is so unbelievably comprehensive and science now is starting to catch up with it. A couple of really simple examples is just looking at the study of the spice turmeric.

I mean, it’s being studied for how many countless different diseases and it’s just a spice, it’s something that people just put in their food every single day. You know, another example is the microbiome. You know, looking at how the bacteria, particularly the bacteria in your gut affects so many different conditions particularly neurological conditions.

The funny thing is as a western scientist and seeing that we are just starting to catch up with the knowledge that was present 5,000 years ago.

[0:10:29.9] MB: That’s fascinating and I think the point that the western approach, in many ways is so dialed in to each specific component and the brain and just how it works with in many ways to the detriment of the understanding of the system at large is why some of these integrative approaches like ayurvedic medicine have really come back recently and started to be more studied and people are starting to understand.

Hey, these ancient cultures are actually on to something and there’s science behind why these herbal remedies, things like turmeric were so effective?

[0:11:05.9] KC: What’s particularly interesting for me Mat, you know, as a neurologist, expecting to see the types of shifts that I saw. What was particularly shocking was, how many psychological conditions that we’d have diagnosed people with were just simply related to their gut health.

Particularly the colony of bacteria that resided in your colon. I would have patients who would come in with you know, 20 year history of depression and I would say, you’re not depressed, you just have the wrong colonization of bacteria and it was so hard for them to believe that it could be that simple.

Sure enough, as we started implementing changes that would shift their bacteria from one population to a healthier population, the depression would simply resolve. Again, we’re just starting to find that out that 90% of the serotonin actually comes from your gut. I never learn that as a neurologist.

If 90% of your serotonin is coming from your gut and you have the wrong people, the wrong organisms growing in your gut and they’re no longer providing that serotonin, of course you’re going to have things like depression.

That was really kind of interesting to me is how deeply connected the mind is, not just when we’re talking about brain health like multiple chlorosis or Parkinson's but our mind, our mental health is directly related to our gut health.

[0:12:26.4] MB: That’s a great point and I think that’s a good segway to dig deeper into a lot of the conclusions from the prime and from your work around how gut health underpins so much more of our broader health.

I’d love to start with – before we dig into it, I absolutely want to get into how gut bacteria can impact things like depression and anxiety because those are topics we talk a lot about on the show.

I’d love to start with negative eating habits and you talk about how negative eating habits and changing them isn’t – is it just a question of willpower if I want to eat more healthily? Do I just not have enough willpower if I have an extra donut or don’t eat my kale salad?

[0:13:09.1] KC: Sure, again, this was another big surprise and this was the real advantage of having a scientific background and being involved in so many clinical trials is when I saw this happening in my practice, I immediately started to investigate deeper into this and say, well why is this?

When I first just started incorporating this information into my medical practice, you know, it seemed like the easiest thing that hey, I’ve got all of this new behaviors that reverse neurological conditions, just implement these dietary changes and you will feel better.

The result was that 15% of people couldn’t do it. 15% of people could not – only 15% could do it, 85% could not change the way that they were eating. I looked at this and you know, these were people who were extremely successful in other areas of their life.

I couldn’t say, well, it’s a lack of willpower, it’s a lack of discipline because they were so disciplined in other areas. Why would you be so disciplined in one area and unable to make a change in another?

The big difference here is the neural chemistry or the biochemistry that was underpinning why they were eating the foods that they were eating. These were not unmotivated people, I mean, they were unbelievably motivated to change because you know, they wanted to make these changes to reverse neurological conditions.

This is as motivated as a group as you could get. What I started to look at was what were the actual obstacles to change and I realized that it was a biochemical obstacle. The biochemistry of it was very well-known to the food industry who has taken full advantage of that biochemistry to make sure that people were tied into these food choices.

Really, the main reason for me writing the book was just to level out the playing field so that people understood what the biochemical challenges of changing the way that you eat in particular are.

So that you can overcome them. And a big part of this challenge again is that microbiome which dictates quite a bit of how you actually choose your foods by releasing certain chemicals that give you that high feeling when you eat certain foods that they need to survive.

If you’ve got the wrong guys in your gut, you can see how their response to a donut will suddenly make you feel so wonderful and elated versus you know, the response to vegetables that you passed by.

What happens is that as you begin to shift the bacteria first by changing the underlying biochemistry that determines which guys live in your gut, your choices for food actually begin to change spontaneously.

The worst part of it Matt is you know, the beginning you might say, okay, well the donut makes me feel good so I’m just going to keep eating it. But over time, there’s a process that happens in the brain called neuro adaptation where it’s no longer a pleasure response and you actually have to eat the donut just to feel okay.

It’s no longer a high, it’s that you actually feel low until that donut goes in. It’s a lot of the same thing that happens like with other addictions except this one is with food which for me is the most dangerous addiction because it’s the most widely available substance and it’s the most cheaply available substance and it’s something that we completely allow for the food industry to market towards us without any regulation.

[0:16:52.7] MB: So, tell me about the science behind how those addictions form in our brain and how we go from eating the donut to feel good to just eating the donut to feel okay?

[0:17:05.1] KC: Absolutely. This is the wonderful part is we’ve actually made quite a bit of progress in the biochemistry of addiction which is why we approach addiction so differently but we have not made the connection that food is also acting like an addicting substance.

Much of it has to do with the neurotransmitter dopamine in particular. Now, there’s many other neurotransmitters involved but it’s easiest to talk about the response to dopamine. Dopamine is our feel good neurotransmitter and we need it, if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t survive.

Let’s say, you know, let’s go back several thousands of years ago. If you were to find a fruit tree in the middle of spring and you aid it and you got that sweet sensation, your brain would send you a signal that hey, this is good, go ahead and eat this now because later on, in the winter, this is not going to be available.

You would get a small response of dopamine in the brain and you would feel good when you ate it. If for example, if sex didn’t feel good, we wouldn’t do it and it’s the same thing. When you have sex, you release dopamine and that’s why it actually is pleasurable.

These things are present, this release of dopamine, this messages in our brain are present to sustain the human race basically. You know, if food didn’t taste good, we wouldn’t consume it, if sex didn’t feel good, we wouldn’t do it and we wouldn’t reproduce.

Now, fast forward to our modern world, and what has happened is that – there’s an actual industry called food scientist. They have figured out what is the most powerful combination of sugar, fat and salt that produces a massive dopamine spike.

Now, you might say, well, gosh that sounds fantastic because if a little dopamine feels good, imagine how wonderful a huge spike of dopamine would feel? The problem is, whenever your brain experiences something new, so out of balance, it sees it as a stress.

Even though dopamine is supposed to make you feel good, your brain sees this massive overstimulation as a problem and it is a problem because it’s basically overstimulating your dopamine receptors.

The brain, which is an incredibly intelligent organ, looks for a way to counteract this response. You’re eating the food and going, my god, this feels so good, I never had anything taste better than this glazed donut.

Every time you eat it, your brain is now dampening your dopamine response to the stimuli. Now, what happens over time Mat is now, the foods that would naturally cause that dopamine to rise a little bit to make you feel good, they’re not doing anything.

Now, when you have like just a fruit for example, it’s not even giving you a  little bit of pleasure or now, and this happens and often times in relationships, now, even being with a partner or  having sex is n to giving you that same dopamine.

Now you have to eat more and more of that particular substance to get the same response, except it’s not a response of pleasure, it’s a response to just feel normal.

We see this process happen with multiple different addictions but what our studies are starting to show and what our images of the brain are starting to show is that when you have somebody who is obese, they respond to sugar the same way that a cocaine addict would respond to cocaine.

We’re talking about brain chemistry here. When you start to look at the underlying neuro chemistry of why we are actually eating the way we are and you look at what’s happening in the brain, what’s happening in the gut, you realize, this is not just some simple process of hey, just shift how you’re eating.

If it was that easy, we would have figured it out but instead, people are spending billions of dollars to try to reverse this but they’re doing it by doing the hardest part first which is trying to change behaviors rather than just simply changing your biochemistry.

[0:21:28.7] MB: Before we dig in to more of the interventions to potentially remap the gut and help change this biochemistry, I want to bring in the other component of this which are toxins. Tell me a little bit about toxins in our environment and how they impact us?

[0:21:45.7] KC: This is becoming one of my favorite topics because it’s becoming such a huge issue and now, what’s interesting though Mat, it’s not just the toxins in our environment, although they play a huge part but it’s also the toxins inside of our body that we’re creating by simply eating the wrong foods.

There’s a general term for toxins in ayurvedic medicine called ama. We don’t have exactly anything that corresponds to that in the western world but I kind of summarize it as toxic inflammation.

Ama, or these toxins, they come from undigested products and one of the greatest things about ayurvedic Matt is it looks not only at physical body but how these toxins accumulate both and the mind as well as in your emotions.

You can have mental ama, you can have emotional ama, it’s basically anything that has been undigested. Let’s say you went through a very stressful time, maybe experience a loss or went through a divorce or something like that.

If there was something unprocessed from that, that would actually turn into ama that gets stuck in your body. One of the main premises in Ayurveda is that it’s the accumulation of these toxins or this ama that eventually becomes the night for disease as it accumulate into the different organ systems, they start to trigger autoimmunity.

Now, take just kind of life in the modern world, you know, let’s separate that just from the environmental toxins, we’re already under a lot of stress. Let’s say you lived in a perfectly pristine environment, you would still have a toxic accumulation just because of the amount of stress that we go through and how quickly people are eating your food.

The lack of connection really with cooking anymore but now add on top of that, all of the environmental toxins that we are simply being bombarded by and the bodies having a very difficult time just simply moving these toxins out.

There’s a process that happens in the body, particularly in the lyrical bio transformation and when there is a traffic jam, meaning there’s more toxins that need to be processed than availability within the lyric to remove them, what happens is these toxins just start to float around freely in the body and this is a tremendous trigger as I mentioned before for auto immunity and just damage to the organs.

[0:24:19.7] MB: How does that tie back in with dumb gut and leaky gut syndrome and all of t hose kind of symptoms or problems?

[0:24:29.2] KC: That’s a great question. One of the organ systems that gets damaged as these toxins start to bio-accumulate. When they can’t be bio transformed, they get accumulated in the body, is the GI tract. Because remember, your gut is where a lot of the external toxins that are present in your food.

For example, if you’re eating a lot of foods that have chemicals, our pesticides and a lot of people make the assumption that the chemicals placed in our food have been tested for safety and that’s not the case at all.

A lot of the chemicals that are sprayed on our foods is the same scenario, they’re not tested for safety. Your gut is actually seeing these toxins firsthand and it directly damages the gut mucosa and the gut mucosa is where all of the magic happens from your digestion.

It’s where the enzymes are secreted, it’s where food is actually transformed into nutrients, it’s where absorption occurs and so, over time, you start to damage this invaluable membrane and this is also the home of all your healthy bacteria that want to support you.

As it becomes damaged, you have more pathogens that begin to grow there but in addition to the toxins that you ingest that impact the gut, now your liver is trying to get rid of all the toxins that you’re breathing in from the air, that you’re putting on your skin from your skincare products.

A lot of people are shocked to find out that you actually absorb 80% of the things that go on your skin. My general advice is if you can’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin but your body’s absorbing all these toxins and it’s getting processed with liver and whatever the liver can’t process is also getting dumped into the GI tract.

The GI tract becomes kind of this common final pathway where a lot of these toxins get thrown into and then your GI tract can’t remove it either. It becomes this horrific cycle and so if you are accumulating what we would call ama in the GI tract, you start to build up a bio film and this is this thick mucosal layer where all of the pathogens begin to grow and it becomes very difficult to absorb nutrients from your food.

You’re getting a shutdown of one of the most important systems that provides nutrients to the entire body but it’s actually now starting to become a source of toxic exposure both directly from the actual toxins you’re absorbing but also the toxins being released now by these pathogenic bacteria that are now inhabiting your gut.

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[0:28:37.3] MB: I think this is a good opportunity to tie in gut health back up to both sort of mental health and more broadly, general health. Tell me about, actually, before we do that, tell me about one of the key components of that which is you talk about the concept of the brain in your gut or the ENS. Tell me what that is and how that plays into this interaction?

[0:28:59.5] KC: Absolutely, so the ENS is the enteric nervous system and for some reason in neurology we don’t really study it very much but it is very much a part of the nervous system and it’s an incredibly important part and it basically is the brain inside of your gut and it helps to coordinate the production of different digestive enzymes, the functioning of different vales. If the enteric nervous system is not functioning properly there are certain valves that prevent gut bacteria from going into your small intestine for example that begin to dysfunction. 

So this enteric nervous system is this relay communication between your gut and your brain. Now the assumption was that the brain was doing most of the talking and the gut was doing most of the hearing but what our studies are showing is it’s the exact opposite that the gut is actually doing most of the talking and the brain is doing most of the hearing and so the next question should be well who’s doing all of the talking then? 

Who is dictating the content of what is being sent up through the enteric nervous system and what we’re finding is that micro biome or the host of bacteria and other microorganism that live in your gut are actually giving the content for the messages going to the brain and they do it in multiple different ways but there is a lot of neurotransmitters that are released from your gut and the neurotransmitters, you can look at them as the vocabulary words that are sent up to the brain. 

So you’re gut bacteria is actually sending 90% of the messages via the enteric nervous system to your brain. So you should start asking them, “Well how smart is your gut and that’s really the whole purpose and the prime is to make your gut a smart gut because if you have a dumb gut think about what messages are going up to the brain and it’s absolutely amazing even the studies that we have seen with animals, when you change the gut bacteria you can take a mouse that has been genetically bred to be confident and turn it into a timid mouse. 

Just simply by changing the gut bacteria through a fecal transplant from a mouse that has been genetically engineered to be timid. So there’s this personality traits that we have that we consider to be just part of us that we’re somehow inherently in control of it through willpower and it has more to do with the type of bacteria living in your GI track. 

[0:31:49.3] MB: The study about the mice I find really fascinating and I love to know more, I heard the fringes of bio hacking and other health once people talk about fecal matter transplants in humans. Is that something that you think is an intervention people should look at or do you think that they are still unproven? What is the science behind those and what do you think about them? 

[0:32:17.3] KC: Well I think it is something to consider in very, very extreme circumstances but what people don’t appreciate is how quickly your micro biome changes just simply to your own behavior. So for example, we’ve seen in studies that if you have a very stressful event your micro biome changes within 24 hours. Same thing is you start to introduce a very healthy habit your micro biome again changes within 24 hours. 

So that your micro biome is this unbelievably dynamic – it’s really like an organ, it’s like an organ with consciousness. It really is like having a second brain working with you but it very, very dynamic organism that changes and so most people who go for the fecal transplants and I know I have patients come into my office ready to do it, I said, “Okay but what have you done with your diet? What have you done to manage your stress? What have you actually done to change your micro biome?” 

And they did absolutely nothing. So those are interventions that I reserve when there’s a really severe pathogen that has completely colonize the colon and nothing else worked but that is not the case for the majority of people. For the majority of the people all you have to do is make some really very simple interventions and that’s essentially the entire program in the book. It’s just simple interventions that spontaneously change your micro biome. 

But it always amazes me that people are more willing to look into getting a fecal sample from another human being and importing that into your body before looking at simple changes they can make that will simple spontaneously change your micro biome. 

[0:33:59.0] MB: And I think the challenge is even from my own perspective thinking about there is so much out there about gut health, gut bacteria, your micro biome, probiotics, prebiotics, all of these information. It’s hard to distill or determine what are the right interventions, what are the wrong interventions and what actually produces the right results? So I love to hear your thoughts about how you delineate between those and maybe talk a little bit about some of the interventions that you found through research to be the most effective.

[0:34:31.8] KC: So that’s a great question and one of the gifts of Ayurvedic medicine is it gives very, very clear guidance for this. So what we are starting to find we are just in the infancy of understanding the micro biome and so people are in this discovery stage and what they are discovering is, “Hey I found out this works. I wonder if this works for everyone” and so they’ll make the assumption that if it works for one person, it works for absolutely everyone. 

And the beauty of Ayurvedic medicine is it’s extremely personalized, it’s extremely individualized. Even in the program in the Prime, I have suggestions for people who have more of this tendency they should do this or people who have more of that tendency should refrain from doing this intervention and so when we were talking about what is best for your micro biome, the first question that comes up is what are you talking about, which person are talking about? 

What are their tendencies and so Ayurvedic medicine makes recommendations for the micro biome that extremely individualized and there is a tremendous amount of confidence in a system that has lasted for so long. You know it’s been around just from a written standpoint for 5,000 years but even around much, much longer as an oral tradition and so a lot of the things that we are now just discovering about the micro biome has been written in Ayurvedic medicine for so long. 

But with the caveat that they explained who to give it to, when to give it to them and when not to give it to them. So instead of having to do all of these guest work and I totally agree with you and people are often times surprised when I say, “Whoa, no you should not be on any fermented food. Your gut is not in a state to tolerate any fermented foods” or I’ll have patients come in and I’ll look at some of the supplements they’ve started. 

And I’ll say, “You’re not even at a point where you can absorb or digest this” or you’ve added a supplementation for detoxification before you even entered the nutrients into your body to support the detoxification process. So there is this intelligence towards how you approach changing the micro biome, approaching detoxification and Ayurvedic medicine just has so many guidelines for that because it’s an extremely mature system. 

So as we’re starting to grapple with who should be eating what type of diet, in Ayurvedic medicine it’s already set there based on what’s your constitution, what season is it, what is your current imbalance, what were their genetic tendencies from birth and we take all of that into consideration and so what I put into the prime is basically a very, very, very foundational program that has worked for the majority of my patients which I then further personalized in the clinic. 

But it is such a foundational program for the micro biome that the majority of people can do it and again, it’s something that is done step by step by step and you don’t ever take the next step until your body is ready to do so.

[0:37:47.2] MB: So what are some of the – I know it is very individualized but what are some of the basic steps or interventions that you recommend as a starting place to implement some of these ideas and improve people’s gut health? 

[0:38:02.9] KC: Absolutely. So the absolute most foundational steps are what the entire program in the Prime are and people are usually shocked by how simple the steps are and yet how profound the results are and so one of the steps in stage one is an herb called Triphala and I am almost even hesitant to call it an herb because it is really a combination of three berries and it is something that is often times is found in the Indian diet and so we wouldn’t even consider it as a supplement per say. 

But it’s an herb called Triphala and it literary translates into three berries or three fruits and each one of these berries in it of itself has such a profound yet gentle impact on the body. Just an example is Amla or Amalaki is one of the berries and it is just one of the most powerful antioxidants on the planet. It has been shown to help to treat diabetes, it helps maintain blood sugar regulation, reduces inflammation. So just Amla on its own is so powerful but that’s just one of the three berries in Triphala. 

But when you take all three together, it just becomes this very, very powerful again but gentle tonic for the GI track and for removing all of these accumulated toxins. So that’s one of the things that we add into stage one. Another example is just a simple tea. Again, very easy to make, very gentle. It is a combination of cumin, coriander and fennel and you just take the seeds about a teaspoon of each, boil it in about four to five cups of water for about five to 10 minutes. 

Depending on how strong you like it, strain out the seeds and you just sip that all throughout the day but these three seeds, these three ingredients are amazing for healing the gut rekindling what we call Ugni or digestive fire in the GI track. So you can naturally begin to burn up the toxins in your gut and so there’s all of these simple types of interventions throughout the book that help you to essentially raise the IQ of your gut from a dumb gut to a smart gut. 

[0:40:24.7] MB: And you know I can hear a listener now thinking or saying to themselves, “How is that something as simple as coriander and fennel seeds can have such a positive impact on my micro biome?” so how do you think about that or how would you address a listener who might be thinking something like that? 

[0:40:44.8] KC: One thing that I have found in life and especially as I have gotten deeper and deeper into Ayurveda is that these simplest interventions are usually the most powerful and the more complicated we get with things, I mean if you look at just the complexity of our food sourcing now, what are often times recommendations people give when they want to get their health? They say, “Go back to eating really simple foods”. Go back to practicing really simple habits. 

So simplicity is quite powerful and given the way that we live can often times be very difficult. So even when it comes to relationships for example just the power of something like forgiveness can be so unbelievably transformative but it’s not necessarily and easy thing to do. So why would something so simple should have a great benefit? Well this is one of the things we’re asking even as a scientific community. So take turmeric for example. 

Scientists in America are starting to identify turmeric as potentially being one of the main spices in Indian cooking that has helped reduced Alzheimer’s disease in the Indian population by 75% compared to the US population. So why are these individual foods essentially so powerful? The reason is unlike our medications that have only one effect, so they go in and they have a single unilateral effect. So they will effect one particular bio chemical reaction and only in one direction. 

With these food and with these spices have the capacity to do is to change hundreds if not thousands of different biochemical reactions but not in a unilateral way. In other words, you can look at it as a scripted intelligence in food that goes in and actually interacts with your biochemistry, interacts with your DNA and describe it as have a conversation with your body to determine where is it most needed. So if we could create a pill that did that it would be unbelievably powerful. 

Another example is just simply looking at a study done with a particular type of mice that is genetically developed to have diabetes, have high cholesterol, have heart disease and all they did was feed the pregnant mice B12. That’s it, just a B12 vitamin and what they found is that the babies even though they still have the genetic mutation for all of those things didn’t have any of the disorders. So why are these simple interventions so powerful? 

Because they actually go in and interact and communicate with your body and then set forth a chain reaction that has the ability to benefit so many different cells through your body rather than just simply going in like our medications do and in fact, one particular reaction always in a unidirectional way. 

[0:44:01.2] MB: In many ways that almost mirrors the highly focused approach of western medicine to intervene and solve one particular thing as oppose to the broader holistically integrated approach that you are describing. 

[0:44:15.5] KC: Very much so and it’s interesting because as we start to study these Ayurvedic supplementations from the western standpoint like we are starting to study turmeric, Ashwagandha, Boswellia, so many of the different herbs it makes me laugh just a little bit because you know they’re finding all of these benefits but as an Ayurvedic practitioner, we would never give just a single herb. We’re always giving multiple different recommendations at the same time. 

So even though the scientists are absolutely amazed by the results, in terms of an Ayurvedic protocol it would be considered a very, very weak protocol because we always give multiple interventions at the same time that are all synergistic making it even a more powerful response. 

[0:45:02.9] MB: So one of the pieces from the book that I struggled to grasp and understand and I am curious to get your take on it, I totally follow the parts about the micro biome and how it impacts our mental health and the vital importance of really cultivating a really healthy micro biome but the part of the Doshas, that to me was the part that I really struggled with. Tell me a little bit about that and how you reconcile that piece of it with sort of science? 

[0:45:33.3] KC: Absolutely. So we’re starting to find out even in science through the field of epigenetics is that genes can be altered by the environment. In other words, you come with a certain percentage of genetic expression that would have a certain typical expression. So a certain type of physical expression but that the environment can interact with your genes to change that expression. So I look at the Doshas as essentially ways in which the ancient Ayurvedic practitioners were able to describe this process of a genetic predisposition interacting with the environment resulting in certain characteristics. 

So it’s really looking at the mind, body and emotional types as they interact with different stresses in the environment, different elements in the environment and again, what was so amazing about this and especially as I started going deeper and deeper into the field of epigenetics and again, I really look at Ayurvedic medicine as the original lifestyle medicine and so even the way that they described epigenetic changes, we see that in the different Doshas when they’re exposed to different environmental factors. 

The way that I really saw it in my own practice was even just how the seasonal changes would cause certain neurological conditions to be worst. So in certain seasons I always saw migraine headaches would suddenly become much more aggravated. In other seasons, we would see peripheral neuropathies get much more aggravated and this explains again how the Doshas were interacting with the environment to bring about certain imbalances. 

And so we actually started to proactively in our clinic send out emails to people who had migraine headaches one season prior just reminding them that this season has this impact. So it’s really nothing more, how I see the Doshas is it’s really nothing more than looking at how your genes are interacting with the environment including what you’re eating to create a certain physical, mental and emotional outcome.

[0:47:55.5] MB: So for me, I struggled with placing myself within a Dosha. I feel like my answers were very mixed with some of the different segments and so maybe that is part of the reason I struggled with as a framework because I felt that some of the answers were like spot on describing the way I felt about something but then the same answer for that Dosha for another one would be completely the opposite of the way that I think or feel. 

[0:48:20.1] KC: Part of it is most people have more than one dominant Dosha but you can also have a Dosha out of balance that it’s not your original genetic makeup and so those quizzes are really there to give you just a general introduction into the Doshas but the way that you actually answer this question is through an evaluation with an Ayurvedic practitioner. So the quizzes are just a little glimpse into that window but when you sit down with an Ayurvedic practitioner they do a full examination. 

They do a full history and then they also do what we call pulse diagnosis and through that process, that’s actually how we determine which Dosha is out of balance and which one we need to work on the most. So that’s explains why a lot of people when they take the test they’ll feel a little bit confused but again, it’s meant to be just kind of an example of how they Doshas may be expressed in your life but the true diagnostic tool is always sitting down with an actual practitioner to determine it. 

[0:49:24.2] MB: And just for listeners who have been listening to us for the last five minutes wondering what we are talking about, I’ll give my brief description but essentially my understanding is that Doshas are an Ayurvedic method that looks at different body types based on your weight and are you hot, are you cold, etcetera and prescribe specific diets around how to balance that depending on sort of different types of your body. Is that an accurate description or how would you describe that? 

[0:49:53.6] KC: That’s a partial description but the Doshas are actually tendencies in nature and because we’re seen as a part of nature, we have those particular tendencies as well but you can describe the different seasons in terms of different Doshas. You can describe different plants in terms of the different Doshas. So it goes beyond just a description of the human experience to more of a general description of nature like even the ocean has certain tendencies like being around the ocean. 

Your body will change in a certain way so it’s described in a way to have more than one particular Dosha than another. So the Doshas are really just an aspect of nature but what we attempt to do in Ayurvedic medicine is to determine which Doshas are out of balance and bringing them back into balance using different lifestyle recommendations. 

[0:50:47.3] MB: You know one of the last conclusions that I just wanted to touch on because we haven’t really directly stated this which I found fascinating about your work, you embarked on this path of Ayurvedic medicine first to discover sort of the under pining cause of many different mental health problems and neurological problems and yet one of the biggest side effects of that, the interventions that you recommended was that people actually had a huge amount of weight loss as well. Can you just talk about that then describe that for a moment? 

[0:51:18.2] KC: Sure, so I would have never guessed as a neurologist I would write a book that on the cover is advertising weight loss but what I found is my goal and the whole reason I created this program was for my neurological patients and the goal was really to change the micro biome, to remove these toxins from the body so that neurological disease can begin to heal and through the process what so many of my patients would say and these are patients that had weight to loss. 

I often get the question of, “I don’t have to lose weight. If I do this will I lose weight?” I’m like, “No, this is only if you have weight to lose that would it make you lose weight. If you don’t have weight to lose, it will just help to increase your energy and improve mental clarity and get all the other benefits” but one of the things that my patients would routinely come back and say is, “You know I started this and I lost 20” 30, 40 pounds. “If you would have told me this in the beginning, I would have jumped on even faster”. 

And so even though it’s a program for neurological repair, it was the weight loss that got people most excited and so there was a point in the process for many years I just kind of pushed it aside and just said, “Okay yeah that’s fine so you lost weight but that is really not what the program is about” and there was a point where I finally realized that if I just told people that up front just simply because of the way our culture tends to really focus on physical beauty. 

That if I told people that upfront they were even more motivated to begin. So I just decided instead of try to fight the current just to jump in and say, “Yes this will help you to lose weight” and that became one of the main reasons that people then became so compliant with it and the weight loss was not – I should say this, it’s not that it was unintended. It was just spontaneous. They weren’t trying to lose weight, it’s simply that as your body detoxes, as your micro biome changes weight comes off. 

[0:53:23.1] MB: So what would be a starting piece of homework that you would give for a listener who wants to implement some of the things that we’ve talked about today? Kind of a first piece of homework for them to begin down this path? 

[0:53:35.5] KC: Well the reason I wrote the book was it really contains all of the fundamental principles to understand why you need to do this and then gives you a tremendous amount of guidance of how to approach a program. So the book is a really starting point but for those who say, “Even the book would be too big of a step first” I would simply say start with the Triphala. It is very easily available. The brand that I use is from Mapi it’s called Digest Tone. 

It’s just Triphala and just start with that. Start with one tablet in the evening and then start with two tablets in the evening if you feel like you need to go up to two and just start with the tea recipe. Just those two simple interventions have such a profound healing effect and I think for most people once they start that, they say, “Hey this is actually working and I am not working hard at it. It’s taking me a total of a few minutes a day to implement this. I want to learn more”. 

[0:54:39.9] MB: And where can listeners find you and the book and all of these resources online? 

[0:54:45.5] KC: The book is very readily available on Amazon and I have a website, drkulreetchaudhary.com and I usually post all of my information there and I do consultations at the Chopra center and I will be there from now until next May and so you can call the Chopra center in Carlsbad California to schedule an appointment and then starting next May, I will actually be moving to India to head up an international team of physicians and scientists and ayurvedic wellness center where we’re going to be doing even deeper research into how to repair the nervous system using some of these even more ancient techniques from ayurvedic medicines.

I’m very excited about that and I’ll continue to write but from now until next May, I will be available at the Chopra center.

[0:55:41.4] MB: Well, Kulreet, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all of this wisdom, there are some really interesting takeaways and I think the fundamental conclusion that our gut impacts our brain health and our mental health.

So much more than we know or realize is really powerful. Thank you for coming on here and sharing all of this.

[0:56:04.0] KC: It was my pleasure and Matt, I have to thank you. You asked really intelligent questions and I always appreciate it when somebody comes in armed with these very well-thought out questions. It really made this quite a bit of fun for me.

[0:56:19.7] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners master evidence based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story or just say hi, shoot me an email. My email is matt@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener email. 

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Thanks again and we’ll see you on the next episode of The Science Of Success.

The Neuroscience Behind Building a Sustainable Healthy Lifestyle with Foodist Darya Rose

In this episode we discuss why dieting actually predicts weight gain over the long run, how you can build a “healthstyle” of habits that can accumulate small advantages and create a healthy lifestyle over time, how “habit loops” are formed and how you can leverage neuroscience to create habits that stick, the concept of Mindful Eating and how it can transform your relationship to the meals you eat, and more with our guest Darya Rose. 

Darya Rose is a neuroscience Ph.D and the author of the book Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting. Darya is the creator of Summer Tomato a blog where she teaches others to form healthy food habits by combining neuroscience, mindfulness and nutrition. She has been featured on the Today Show, Oprah, Time Magazine, and was recently named one of the 100 Most Influential People In Health and Fitness.

• How Darya dug into the science behind healthy lifestyles and what she discovered

• How everything Darya learned about health and nutrition was wrong

• How Darya defines “dieting” (and why that’s so important)

• Why dieting actually predicts weight gain over the long run

• How your current relationship with food impacts your long term health (and how you can shift it)

• What the “biggest loser” gets wrong about dieting and weight gain

• Why dieting is “torture” and is “set up so that you cant’ win”

• The psychology behind why dieters often regain weight

• What it means to “moralize” your food choices and why you should avoid it

• Why you should lose weight more slowly

• How “dieting” can confuse your hormones and negatively impact your satiety cues

• You are the sum of your habits

• How do you build a “healthstyle” of habits that can accumulate small advantages and create a healthy lifestyle over time

• How “habit loops” are formed and how you can leverage neuroscience to create habits that stick

• Why growth mindset is essential to changing your habits and living a healthy lifestyle

• The critical importance of rewards in building habits (and the different types of rewards)

• Rewards must be internal and innately linked to whatever you’re doing

• “Home court habits” that you need to develop to live in a healthy place and stay there sustainably

• Why you should eat your veggies!

• Why Darya says that "Sitting is the new smoking"

• The importance of sleep and maintaining your circadian rhythms to building a healthy lifestyle

• Why Mindfulness is a critical part of a healthy diet

• Mindful Eating and how it can transform your relationship to the meals you eat

• The definition of “mindfulness” - being aware of your present physical experience, thoughts, & feelings (emotional feelings in the body) and being AWARE that those are happening without judgement

• Why you should focus on chewing your food more and eating more slowly

• How to battle junk food cravings

• The importance of real food, how do define it, and how to find it

• The 80/20 principle and how it applies to healthy living

• Create a habit journal and recognize how the things you are doing often

• And more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Website] Summer Tomato

• [Book] Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting by Darya Pino Rose

• [Podcast] Foodist

• [Challenge] The 5-Day Mindful Meal Challenge

Episode Transcript

[00:00:06.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success with your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:12.7] MB: Welcome to The Science of Success. I’m your host, Matt Bodnar. I’m an entrepreneur and investor in Nashville, Tennessee and I’m obsessed with the mindset of success and the psychology of performance. I’ve read hundreds of books, conducted countless hours of research and study and I am going to take you on a journey into the human mind and what makes peak performers tick, with the focus on always having our discussion rooted in psychological research and scientific fact, not opinion.

In this episode, we discuss why dieting actually predicts weight gain over the long run. How you can build a health style of habits that can accumulate small advantages and create a healthy lifestyle overtime. How habit loops are formed and how you can leverage neuroscience to create habits that stick. The concept of mindful eating and how you can use it to transform your relationship to the meals that you eat, and much more with our guest, Darya Rose.

The Science of Success continues to grow with more than 850,000 downloads, listeners in over 100 countries, hitting number one in New and Noteworthy, and more. I get listener emails and comments all the time asking me, “Matt, how do you organize and remember all this incredible information?” A lot of our listeners are curious how I keep track of all the incredible knowledge I get from reading hundreds of books, interviewing amazing experts, listening to awesome podcast, and more.

Because of that, we’ve created an epic resource just for you; a detailed guide called How to Organize and Remember Everything. You can get it completely for free by texting the word “smarter” to the number 44222. Again, it’s a guide we created called How to Organize and Remember Everything. All you have to do to get it is to text the word “smarter” to the number 44222, or go to scienceofsuccess.co and put in your email.

In our previous episode, we discussed why you can’t outthink your emotions, the relationship between trauma and our mind-body connection. How to start listening to your emotions, the power of hypnosis, and how to drop into your body to experience what you’re truly feeling with Rene Brent. If you want to really tap into your emotions, listen to that episode. 

[0:02:33.7] MB: Today, we have another fascinating guest on the show, Dr. Darya Rose. Darya is a neuroscience Ph.D. and the author of the book Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting. She’s also the creator of Summer Tomato, a blog where she teaches others to form healthy food habits by combining neuroscience, mindfulness, and nutrition. She’s been featured on the Today Show, Oprah, Time Magazine, and has recently named one of the hundred most influential people in health and fitness. 

Darya, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:03:01.7] DR: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

[0:03:03.2] MB: We’re very excited to have you on. For listeners who may not be familiar with you and your story, tell us a little bit about yourself. 

[0:03:09.2] DR: Oh, I’m such a geek. Basically, I grew up in Southern California during sort of the Baywatch era in the 90s, and my mother was a chronic dieter, and I just thought that that’s how women were supposed to live. I started dieting at age 11. I didn’t have a weight problem, I just was doing what my mom did, which was having chocolate milkshakes for breakfast that are supposed to make you lose weight, which is awesome if you’re an 11-year-old, but it started a bad cycle. Where I went through, basically, every diet under the sun; low fat, low carb, cabbage soup, grapefruit, you name it. Eventually, I started running marathons. 

In the other part of my life, I went to college, studied molecular biology and neuroscience and then went on to get my Ph.D. in neuroscience and this whole process took 15 years. At some point, I’m like — I feel when most people think about health and weight loss, they think that if they had more will power, they’d be better at it. I’m like one of those type-A people with really strong will power and I would do the diet, and I would do them for years, and I would do them well, and they would work for a little while, but I was so unhappy. 

Eventually, I was just, “I’m doing everything right. I’m doing everything the authorities and every realm are telling me to do, and I’m still miserable, and I still don’t have the results I want. I’m still unhappy with my body.” I decided that — I was on a second year in my Ph.D. program and at this point I could actually read a scientific paper and understand it, which is hard to do. It takes a lot of training to get there. I just was like, “I’m going to solve this problem, and I’m going to stop reading the glossy magazines, and the diet books, and I’m going to read science.” 

I would spend my nights and weekends reading everything I could get my hands on. At first, I was looking for the perfect diet. Eventually, I realized that dieting doesn’t work, that everything I had tried with, actually, the reason I was struggling, dieting is actually a better way to gain weight than to lose weight. That what I really need to do is stop all that nonsense. Focus just on real food and building tiny habits around sort of good, normal, healthy things that my grandma would tell me to do, and that would work. 

I didn’t really believe it at first, because it just sounded too good to be true, but I tried it and my life completely changed. I was not hungry for the first time in my life. I enjoyed food for the first time in my life. Even while being happy, I slowly lost weight. Over the course of the year, I ended up oozing — Gosh! I hit my goal weight and then I went something five or seven pounds below that. I was so shocked by how everything I learned was wrong and how easy and wonderful it was to do the right thing. I was like, “I have to tell people about this.” I started a blog and wrote a book.

[0:05:56.7] MB: I’d love to kind of hear — You talked or you touched briefly on the idea that dieting actually can predict weight gain. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that and maybe talk about some of the data that demonstrates why dieting isn’t that effective as a strategy. Also, just for listeners who could have sort of some different concepts about this, how do you define the concept of dieting?

[0:06:19.7] DR: Great question. I define dieting as a restrictive limit on your food intake. It usually involves some exercise as well, but not always. For me — Just to be clear, and this is actually a really subtle point that is often missed in the dieting industry. You can lose weight on any diet temporarily. They work temporarily, but I don’t want that. I don’t want to just do something for a little while and then look good in one picture and then be done with it. I want to solve this problem. 

When I talk about success, I’m talking about long term success. One of the first — By long term, I mean two, three years. One of the first pieces of information in found when I was researching this stuff was that over — I think it was the study that really blew my mind. It was something like over a three-year period, having dieted during that period were the predictor of weight gain than weight loss. They, and they were actually worse off than people who never dieted at all. It was actually net bad to diet. 

It’s a shocking thing to hear. I’ve been dieting my entire life. Basically, everyone believes that if you want to lose weight and get healthy, you have to stop eating fat, or stop eating carbs, or whatever, and that’s just not true. It’s crazy.

[0:07:38.9] MB: In some ways, this is kind of the distinction between the concept of diet as the noun versus dieting, the action as a verb, and there’s a big difference in terms of having sort of a healthy diet versus pursuing dieting as an activity that’s kind of a fab driven thing that doesn’t necessarily produce real sustainable results. 

[0:07:58.0] DR: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that distinction is so incredibly frustrating to me that I came up with a new word called health style, which for me that means it’s a combination of focusing on your health, but also creating a lifestyle for yourself. It’s more individualized and it’s also more of something that you do always, rather than something you’re doing temporarily.

[0:08:23.5] MB: How would you describe the average person, or maybe the average American’s relationship with food today?

[0:08:31.1] DR: The average American. Who’s that? I think that most people have — Actually, kind of a messed up. When I say most people, I’m talking about what I see in the media and what I hear when I talk to people about health. I see two things. I see a sort of rejection of the idea of restriction by a large group of people. They’re like, “You know what? Screw it. I love food too much.” That they’ll take that to a really unhealthy level, where it’s just like anything goes all the time.

On the other side, I see if this belief that if you want to have a result different than that, it requires a tremendous amount of suffering. Whether that’s denying yourself things you want, forcing yourself to eat bland, boring things you don’t like, forcing yourself. The Biggest Loser is a great example. The way that show is, it’s like people who — They start out just not caring at all and just really having this issue where they hadn’t really dealt with it in a longtime. Then, deciding to do something about it and going to the entire opposite extreme where they’re working out seven hours a day and eating 1,100 calories when they should be eating three or four times that for their body size and just creating this super — It breaks my heart. It’s like such a broken way of dealing with a problem.

That’s why I do what I do, is because I find that I know that doesn’t work. There’s data that it doesn’t work. On top of it, it’s torture. It’s a torturous way to live. It sort of set up so that you can’t win. You’re either miserable, because you’re starving and not doing anything you like, or you’re miserable because you’re obese. Those are the choices. I say, “Screw that.”

[0:10:17.6] MB: How would you think about the kind of distinction, I know this is a concept you’ve talked about in the past, between the dieter’s brain and the normal brain?

[0:10:28.6] DR: That’s a really a good question. There are a lot of reasons that dieting is more likely to, long term, cause weight gain. There’re issues of metabolism and stuff and that everybody kind of talks about that. One of the big things that people don’t talk about as often is the psychology that comes from restricting yourself a lot. For instance, somebody who has dieted tends to have a moralization of their food. There are foods that are good and foods that are bad. If you eat the good food, then you are good. If you eat the bad foods, then you are bad. 

When you would go ahead and eat — Basically, you could eat good all day long. In psychology, what happens is, eventually, that takes will power. If you’re eating morally, if you’re moralizing your food choices and you’re trying to be good, that takes will power. 

That’s funny. Actually, when you think of food that way, it actually even undermines your true liking of the food. You might actually like the food you’re eating, but if you’re doing it to be good, you still are using up will power to do it. What happens at some point, you get tired, you get stressed. Your will power breaks down. If you’re a dieter and you’ve been doing this, what happens is you swing the other way, it’s like a rebound effect, and you tend to binge, or eat a lot of foods that are fat, or whatever. We’ll rationalize, it’s like, “Oh, I deserved it. I was good. Now, I get to do what I want.” 

It becomes a mental habit on somebody who’s a dieter, and so it’s very difficult at that point to renegotiate your relationship with food and it can be a really big problem and it’s something that needs to be unlearned. That’s one of the reasons that dieting, in particular, can set you up to eat worse in the long run in some sense.

[0:12:22.4] MB: One of the main reasons dieting can backfire is the idea of this ego depletion, or zapping, or tapping your will power. 

[0:12:30.3] DR: Right, exactly.

[0:12:31.3] MB: I know you’ve also talked about it. Actually, I love to explore just briefly so listeners can kind of understand the metabolic response to dieting, and I know there’s been research that’s come out looking at, I think, things like The Biggest Loser and how your body kind of rebounds from calorie restriction like that. I’d love to hear a little bit about that if you can kind of explain that piece of the science as well.

[0:12:53.4] DR: I wish — We don’t really know yet. One of the — In the case of The Biggest Loser where — These people were put through really, really intense starvation, essentially. They were — God! I read somewhere that it was 3,500 calorie per day deficit, calorie deficit. That’s so much more they were burning than eating, which is so insane. That is so insane. 

They were working out a lot, but when you’re working out that much, it’s really difficult to build muscle if you’re also starving. Generally, your metabolism is it’s determined by your muscle mass and also your hormones. It’s hard to say exactly why in their case the metabolism ended up in such a negative place where it did. Basically, even if they gained weight, their metabolism didn’t rebound. They still had the metabolism of somebody who weighed less. People that weight more tend to have a higher metabolism. These people, they weighed a lot, they had a high metabolism. They lost a lot of weight. Their metabolism went down accordingly, but then when they regained the weight, their metabolism didn’t rebound with the weight. It’s basically a cycle where they would gain even more weight, because their metabolism was slower even though they’re bigger. I don’t think science has a good answer for that. 

A bit part of it is that, generally, if you’re not eating enough, you’re not going to be able to maintain your muscle mass when you lose weight. If you lose your muscle mass, your metabolism is going to slow down. One of the things I recommend is just losing weight slower and doing it in a way where you aren’t forcing your body to burn muscle in order to lose weight. 

[0:14:39.7] MB: That makes a lot of sense. Building up your base metabolic rate is a great way to create a more sustainable long term healthy body as supposed to these crash and binge diet strategies. One of the other things you’ve talked about is how dieting can also impact our — I’ll probably say this word wrong, but our satiety queues. I’m not exactly sure if that’s how you say it. Could you kind of explain that concept and share that idea?

[0:15:08.3] DR: Yeah. The way that your body knows when to sleep, when to eat, when to rest, when to be active is through a series of hormones that as a group we — Or as a phenomenon, we refer to it as circadian rhythms. Basically, there are hormones that tell you, “Oh, it’s time to wake up.” This is what jetlag comes from, it’s like your body has as clock and if you throw it off, it gets really confused. It’s best to eat and sleep and things at the same time. 

If you’re not following those queues and you’re not eating when you’re hungry, you’re not sleeping when you should be sleeping, if you’re all over the place, it makes it very difficult for your body to know what it wants. When your body doesn’t know what it wants, your brain is confused and so you can sort of be hungry all the time, because there’re no queues that it can follow to know better. 

You can train yourself so that you — When you train yourself to ignore when you’re hungry, it also means you ignore when you’re full. It can be very difficult to recalibrate that. It’s something that takes — You have to relearn how to do that if you’ve been dieting a longtime. Yeah, you’re setting yourself up to undo any possible chance you have of natural self-food regulation. You have to relearn it if you’ve been dieting for a long time. Just a bummer.

[0:16:40.8] MB: We’ve looked at a couple of the ways that dieting is sort of ineffective and doesn’t really help us achieve long term health. I’m curious — You touched on it earlier. What’s kind of the alternative, or what’s the strategy that you recommend if pursuing dieting isn’t really going to be an effective way to lose weight and be health?

[0:16:59.7] DR: Excellent question. In my research, when I was reading all these papers and I was learning that everything I had been doing for 15 years was a better way to gain weight than to lose it, I was like, obviously, disheartened and frustrated. Then, I had another question. I was like, “Okay. Not everyone has this problem. Not all humans have this problem that I have. I’m particularly crazy.” 

I was wondering what is it that people who are naturally been or have always been thin, what do they do? What do they eat? It turns out they never diet. Most of them have very simple rules that they have in their own brain to just keep them sort of inline. They focus on real food. They don’t worry about macronutrients, carbs, fat, whatever, and they  just sort of do little trials to figure out what works for them and they just live that way. Those are all habits. 

This is a very different approach, because habits don’t require will power. Habits are things that they’re like little loops that you create in your brain that happen automatically in response to some sort of trigger. Whether that trigger be something in your environment, like you see something on TV, or it’s the time of day, or something like that, or internal trigger, like, “I just work up in the morning, my circadian rhythms are telling me I’m hungry,” type of thing. 

When you can take habits, and if you have enough of them that build health; eating vegetables, getting regular activity, physical activity, sleeping well, eating mindfully, eating at certain times of day. Then, you can build up — This is exactly what a health style is. I think your heath style is all those habits, all those little habits that add up to a health or unhealthy person.

What’s cool is you can just tackle these one at a time, and each one of them is so much easier than starving yourself or never eating sugar again, or something really hardcore that most diets will do and recommend. It allows you to find little tiny things you love. Also, you can personalize it. If you’re not the type of person who likes the gym, let’s say, which is a lot of people. Maybe you like hiking, or maybe you like swimming, or maybe you like playing basketball with your friends. There are a lot of other things you can do to have all those habits add up to work for you. 

What’s awesome is habits, the way they form in your brain, the way the little automatic loops form, is that you have to — It’s paired with a reward. The way it works is there’s the trigger, whatever is telling you to do some action. Then, there’s the action. Then, there’s a reward associate with that action. If your brain makes that connection, it’s like, “Whoa! Cool,” and that reward will sort of reach back and — This is why it’s a loop. It reached back and reinforces that rigger so that the next time you get that trigger, your brain is like, “Yeah, let’s do that again.” Until, eventually, that just becomes automatic, like autopilot.

With health habits, that’s what you want. That’s really good. The key there and how this is totally fundamentally different dieting is that you have to like it. It has to be something you like. Otherwise, it won’t become a habit and you won’t be able to take will power out of the equation. 

It’s a total reframe around how to approach your health, because instead of thinking, “What do I have to do? Which torturous thing do I have to subject myself to today, or this moment?” Instead, you think, “You know what? I never liked exercising before for X, Y, Z reasons. I’m going to try something different, because I know I like that, and hopefully make it stick.” You have to create this world where you actually like the things you do. 

What’s amazing is even this whole process itself becomes a loop, because once you start realizing how much you like certain things or you start building healthy habits, you start to feel better. Then, you really like those habits. Then, you start to see results in the mirror and then you really like those habits. Instead of this sort of negative loop of failure, it’s like this positive loop of success and joy. It’s so different. 

I describe it, and it sounds amazing, but I can’t even tell you how life changing this is, especially if you’ve done the dieting thing. It’s like such a transformative way to live and experience your health and your body and food. It’s just so amazing. 

[0:21:33.1] DR: I think it’s a great concept, the idea that we should transition from health kind of being — Or this health style as you call it, being something that we should do or feel obligated to do into something that we want to do. It’s kind of being pulled and drawn towards it instead of pushing the boulder uphill. 

I’m curious, I can almost heart listeners asking. For example, somebody who — Let’s just use broccoli as an example. Somebody doesn’t like broccoli, or whatever. How do you build that habit? How do you train yourself to like healthy lifestyles if you are sort of in a place now where you don’t like working out and you don’t like eating kale, and you don’t like all of these things that — How do you train yourself to become somebody who likes those certain things?

[0:22:22.3] DR: Really good question. Yeah, this all sounds amazing in theory and the devil is in the details for sure. There are a lot of answers to that question, and I take many approaches for people. I like the example of broccoli. You don’t like broccoli. Fine. There is many things that I would tell someone if they just were, “I don’t like broccoli. I can’t do this.” 

I would say, “First of all, there is a lot of vegetables. Are there any you like at all?” Most people have a few that they like in certain ways, and that’s great. I tell them to start there. Start adding things that you like that are good. By good, I mean whole foods, unprocessed foods, and real foods is actually what I like to call them. One of the things that’s interesting is that people don’t actually realize — Most people don’t even taste their food. Most people eat on autopilot. 

While a lot of people that haven’t started on this journey yet, they think they don’t like kind of food. Most people, once they approach it with a growth mindset, which is the idea that this is something I can learn to like, or learn to do, they end up completely falling in love with real food and wondering how they ever liked all those other things that they used to eat. I’ve talked to thousands of people who have had that experience. 

On the one hand, I would say, “Just start with what you like and build on that,” to “approach this with a growth mindset.” One of the things that was revolutionary from myself, personally — I started in the exact same place, by the way. All I ate was processed food and I didn’t really understand — I didn’t know to cool. I didn’t know how to do any of that stuff. One of the things I discovered — I was lucky and I happened to live in San Francisco at the time and they have these amazing restaurants and amazing farmers markets and I didn’t understand why, at certain restaurants, the food was so good, because I grew up in a suburb eating chain restaurants. 

I learned — Because this is the culture in San Francisco. I learned that the reason is because they focus a lot on ingredients. Specifically, they buy seasonal ingredients that are grown from farmers who really care. They actually care, a carrot is not a carrot is not a carrot. Carrots grow in season from heirloom varieties that were built, or that were bred for taste rather than transport taste completely different than sort of the stuff I grew up eating from the grocery store.

When you start to understand that, “Oh, I hated brussels sprouts when I was a kid, but that’s because my parents were serving over boiled frozen ones that were totally out of season.” You try a different one and you realize it’s like a completely different experience. Then, you go from, “Oh! I just don’t like vegetables,” to “Oh! I only like seasonal vegetables,” or “I’m fund of — I like root vegetables more than I like leafy greens today. Maybe in the winter, when leafy greens are more sweet and less bitter I’d like those.” 

That is bringing a certain growth mindset to the idea of changing your habits. Also, a certain amount of knowledge and skill, the knowledge being that like you have to know what it’s in season, and that’s something you can learn. That’s something you can adopt and learn and work on. It does certainly help to be able to cook and create to be able to transform foods from raw ingredients into something you enjoy eating as well. It’s another factor. 

There are a lot of ways to approach building habits, and it’s not about forcing yourself to do anything. It’s about being creative to learn how to love this stuff. I’ve seen so many people do it. So many people do it. Most of them — People don’t go back from this stuff. It’s that good. It’s not like you do it for a little while and you’re like, “That habits kind of fizzled out.” No. This really sticks, because it’s so life changing. 

[0:26:18.2] MB: I know you talked about rewards kind of being one of the key pillars of forming a habit loop. Can you give me a specific example of how pursuing kind of some of these healthy habits can create rewards that, let’s say, somebody who’s listening who their average meal of pizza and beer, something like that, gives them a lot of happiness. How can they create some rewards that will really anchor in this habits and what do those rewards look like?

[0:26:45.2] DR: Great question. There are rewards — Very simplistically. They come in two forms. There are rewards that are sort of external to your psyche. Let’s say you work really hard at something and then you get a price, like money, or a vacation, or something. Those work for some activities, but they do not work for forming habits. External rewards are not good. Don’t tell yourself, “If I eat this broccoli, I’m going to put $5 in my vacation travel plan,” or whatever. You have to have the reward be internal and innately linked to whatever activity you’re doing.

An example is, yeah, you have to enjoy the taste of the food you’re eating, or you have to feel really good after eating it, that helps too. It’s funny though, we tend to have a lot of assumptions, put it that way, around what is rewarding and the reason we do things. The reason for that is because we feel — We feel a certain way, and then our brains rationalize and make up a reason for it. Often times, those reasons are wrong. 

For example, your pizza and beer example. You might think that you love pizza and beer because it tastes so good, and that might be true. However, if you ate pizza and beer for every meal, you would start to feel like crap and you wouldn’t want to eat that all the time. That’s one thing. We tend to lie to ourselves and believe that we would if we let ourselves eat whatever we want. That’s usually not true. 

Another thing is context and the environment you’re eating and your mental state is essential in your perception of your experience. It could be that the reason you think you love pizza and beer so much is because you always have it with your friends on Thursday night football when you watch it with them and you have a good experience and it’s not necessarily the food. The food is fun and that can be a part of it, but it could just be that that experience is so valuable for you that trying to force yourself to eat like a salad or something instead if just silly, but it’s not necessarily because the pizza is so good. It’s because you don’t want to ruin that experience of camaraderie with your friends. 

You sort of have to be willing to step back a little bit about your assumptions about why you do things and what you want and really question and test, even, those assumptions. You can do little experiments on your own to see what the rewards really are, and they’re not always the first thing you think. Often times, we eat because we think we’re craving chocolate in the middle of the day. Really, we just need a break from work because we’ve been focusing really hard for three hours and it’s been a long day. You may tell yourself, “I need to go to the cafeteria and get a snack or something.” Really, you just need a little break.

You can do little experiments to test that, but if the — Then, you can discover what the reward for whatever habit you have actually is. Another thing that comes up a lot is the difference between good habits and bad habits. This is a way to both break not so healthy habits and build healthier habits, is really truly understanding what your triggers are and what your reward is. 

[0:30:10.8] MB: You’ve touched on a few of these and kind of mentioned it, but I’m curious, what are the core healthy habits that you recommend people work on incorporating into their lives so that they can move towards this health style, this healthy lifestyle?

[0:30:26.3] DR: Yeah, great question. I call these home court habits, and these are sort of the habits that you need — The set of habits you need to sort of get yourself personally to a health place and stay there. I want to start with the caveat that everyone is different. Not everything works for everyone and everybody has to learn how to make these things work for them. I can give you some broad habits that often — I’ve talked to thousands of people about this stuff and what often works for people. 

Eating more vegetables is really a big one. Vegetables are incredibly healthy, they keep you from getting — I think, they keep you from getting sick. As much, they keep you feeling good. They obviously are low calorie, high nutrient density, and it’s a positive. It’s something you can do more of. It’s not that hard. Eating more vegetables is a big one. 

The next thing that kind of comes from that is what do you cut out then if you’re eating more of something? I recommend people, if you’re going to make cuts in things, to choose process foods. Processed grains, like flour, processed sugar, processed meat, processed oils. Those are all places that you can cut back on, but I would focus mainly on eating more vegetables. 

Learning to cook is a big one, because cooking, it gives you so much control over what you eat and also whether or not you like it, being able to actually make something that taste good. This is actually one of the biggest habits — The most impactful habits. One of the most impactful habits someone can have. It’s a tough one, because a lot of us didn’t learn to cook growing up, which is why I created a program around it. 

Yeah, cooking is a big one. You need to have some sort of physical activity, and being sedentary is really counterproductive. It’s quite unhealthy. It’s been recently shown to be as bad as long term smoking, actually, long term sitting. It doesn’t have to be crazy. I definitely recommend strength training for looking great. It makes you look great and it does help build your metabolism up, like we talked about earlier. Even just walking 10,000 steps a day, or something around there, can have a big impact. What else? 

For me, big habit is I need to have a grocery store, or a farmers market where I can get high quality vegetables, because if I can’t get high quality vegetables, I don’t want to cook, because cooking is no fun when it doesn’t taste as good or the vegetables are low quality. For me, that’s a big one. Other people don’t care as much. They’re perfectly happy to just cook whatever. 

Sleep is a big one. If you are exhausted and tired, you’re not going to have the energy to cook. You’re not going to have the energy to get activity, physical activity. Sleep is a big one. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. 

One that doesn’t get talked about actually is maintaining your — Just thinking about a little more about your circadian rhythms; trying to go to bed at the same time each day, trying to wake up at about the same time each day, trying to eat at approximately the same time and not all over the place. It’s much easier to work with your body than work against your body. The more things you have working on your side, the easier it will be. 

Another big one that doesn’t get talked about a lot either is mindfulness. This can sound like a little hippie, or a little woo-woo, but it’s actually incredibly powerful. One of the reasons is what I mentioned earlier, it’s hard — Most of us just go through our entire day on autopilot. We get trigged. We do stuff. We don’t even really think about why. We don’t really — We have this illusion of freewill, but most of us are just plowing through our day being triggered and just doing things and not being very conscious of it at all. That’s especially true of your eating habits, and your eating decisions. Most of us don’t make those very consciously.

Mindfulness gives you a tool to do that, to pay attention to your thoughts, pay attention to your feelings, pay attention to your experience and your perception and not judge it and just be aware of what’s going on. Because if you’re aware of it, of what’s happening, then you have a chance to change it if you’re not. 

People wonder why they have bad habits, and maybe you’re stress eating, or emotional eating, or has something to do with something your mom said when you were a kid, or something, and they think breaking that habit isn’t possible, but it will be. It’s very, very hard to change something like that if you don’t actually know what’s going on and you don’t know what your brain is really trying to get.

I encourage people to practice mindful eating and, generally, mindfulness, mindful practices in their own lives to develop that skill, because it’s really is a skill that you need to have to make this sort of progress if you want to break really difficult habits and things like emotional eating and things like that. Yeah, those are the home court habits that I talk to people the most about and that I find that people have the most life-changing results with that they can incorporate some smattering of those habits.

[0:35:30.3] MB: We’ve definitely talked a lot about meditation on the show previously, and are huge fans of it. How would you define specifically mindfulness, because I know it’s relate but not necessarily kind of exactly the same. Specifically, what do you mean by the phrase mindful eating?

[0:35:46.9] DR: Yeah, this is tricky. The way I personally — I’ve done a lot of work on this. I was a dieter, and dieters do not eat mindfully. Dieters eat fast when they eat, because there is guilt and shame around it. You’ve spent so much of your life starving. When you do let yourself eat, you start of go really fast and just dig into it. I had a lot of difficulty with this particular habit, but I had read so much about the benefits of it. It helps you enjoy your food more. It helps you eat less naturally. It helps you make better decisions. Just all sorts of things that you want. We want these things.

Gosh! Is it hard to develop this habit. I’ve been working on it for — I had been working on it for five years before I really feel like I got a handle on how to do it. I also went into a meditation retreat, silent meditation retreat for 10 days. After all these attempts, I finally have — I have my own working definition of what mindfulness is. 

I think of it as being aware of the present moment, and that includes your physical experience, whatever you see, touch small, taste, whatever. Your thoughts; whatever your thinking in words. Your thoughts tend to manifest in words in your brain. Silently, obviously, but when you think to yourself things, maybe you tend to use words. Then, feelings, which is usually a sensation in your body, maybe attention or rush of adrenalin or some heat in your body, or some tension and some part of your muscles, or something. Just simply being aware that those are happening. It’s really hard to do, because what happens is when you get a thought, or you get a feeling, the feeling almost is immediately translated into a thought, and you want to follow it, like, “That’s an interesting thought. I wonder why that is,” blah-blah-blah and you get hooked on the thought. 

The practice of mindfulness, for me, is being aware that that happens, and when you recognize it being, like, “Oh, I’m stuck in that thought,” and going back to paying attention to not what’s in your head, but your present experience, and just doing that over and over again as a practice so that you are aware when you get pulled into a loop, get pulled into some sort of trigger. Really hard to do.

It’s also really difficult, particularly difficult around food. We tend to practice mindfulness during meditation. That’s what we’re told to do often. Meditation is hard, because it’s hard for people to just sit still, because they need to practice meditation. In some ways, it’s easier, because you know what you’re supposed to be doing, you’re just supposed to be sitting there. 

Eating is more active, right? Your eyes are open. You have to physically feed yourself. You have the experience of eating the taste, the texture, the flavor, the smells and paying attention to all that at once is difficult. Also, on top of it, a lot of us have so much mental baggage around — An emotional baggage around food, and body image, and all these stuff. It’s a challenge. 

Actually, if anybody is interested in mindful eating, I actually just recently started something called The Mindful Meal Challenge, it’s like a five day challenge and it’s free on Summer Tomato, if anybody wants to check it out to practice this. It’s fun to start with eating, actually, because it’s something we all do three times a day, at least, and it’s so integral to our experience and our health. That just taking some time to learn about how to do it and what it actually feels like to do it and realizing how hard it is and how if you just sort of vaguely try to eat mindfully, you’re just trying to be mindful. You’re almost inevitably going to fail, because there are so much distraction built into our brains.

It’s a really cool thing if you can do it. I do highly recommend practicing, setting aside time in your day to practice. Whether it’s during food, or meditation, or anything like that, or even your shower, just mindfully showering. Just to have that time to observe what your brain does on its own, because I think you’ll find — Most of us find our brains are totally nuts. They’re so undisciplined and so scatter brained. Being aware of what you tend to do is very illuminating. 

[0:40:08.2] MB: I know this kind of ties into the idea of mindfulness, but how do we battle things like a craving for junk food? 

[0:40:16.4] DR: Interesting. A craving is a trigger and a feeling. It’s a feeling that’s been triggered from something. Step one is being aware of it, and rather than just anxious, going to the pantry and eat a bag of cookies. That is not what you want to do first. You first want to be able to be, “I feel a craving.” That’s what it is and have a name for it, recognize it that it’s a feeling. 

The second thing is you don’t want to battle it. You can’t control your feelings. They don’t obey the rules of physics like a physical object does. What happens if you try to just make it go away or you try to ignore it, is it — First of all, it won’t go away, it will manifest in some other weird way and you will continue to experience this again and again and eventually you’ll break down. 

A better way to approach a craving is to just take a minute, take a deep breath, close your eyes and feel it. Just feel what it feels like. Locate it in your body. Usually, there’s a place in your body. You can locate attention, or maybe your heart is raising a little bit, of maybe you get a tingly somewhere, or maybe — Who knows? There are a lot of different ways. You get a little sweaty, or something. There’s a lot of physiological ways our bodies respond to feelings. Just feel it. 

Instantly, you’re probably going to want to judge it as negative and recognize that your brain wants to do that and just go back to the feeling, go back to experiencing it, like, “Is it in my chest? Is it in my arms? Is it in my fingers? Is it in my jaw?” Just focus on just taking a deep breath and breathing into that feeling and just trying to be okay with it. 

If at some point you decide you still want to proceed with your binge or whatever, that’s okay too. don’t beat yourself up for it, because it’s hard to break something like that that’s been trained and conditioned for a long time. The first step is pausing, and being aware of what’s actually happening. Usually, there’s a reason, and that’s something you can look into or think about in another time of your day. What is it that’s tripping you? Is it stress? Is it body image issues that your mother created when you’re a teenager? Is it an identity think, you like you feel like you have to be somebody for — Something for somebody and you feel like you’re failing? What is it? 

Understanding that, usually, if it’s an unhealthy craving, if it’s an emotional eating type of thing, realizing that it’s something that’s understandable and not feeling like it’s something you have to fight, but something you need to understand. I think that’s a big step. 

Also, cravings can also be nutritional. That’s another thing. For example, for years, I didn’t eat carbs, forever. Then, I would start of go off the diet, or when I went back to certain more normal, I had sugar cravings all the time. One thing I realized — Or one thing that happened to me was when I started eating more real foods that contain carbohydrates that I wouldn’t let myself eat before. For example, rice, or potatoes, or something like that. When I allowed myself to eat those, my sugar cravings completely disappeared. I didn’t think my body just wanted some more nutrition. There was a nutritional component that was missing there. 

Step one is making sure you have good nutrition. Step two is really understanding what’s triggering you, if it’s an emotional habit, emotional eating habit, and accepting it for what it is, not fighting it. Maybe work on addressing the original issue and maybe not try to treat it so much with food eventually. It’s hard. It’s a hard thing to do.

[0:44:04.8] MB: I know we’ve talked about it a little bit and you’ve used the term a couple of times. I’m curious, how do you define or think about kind of the idea of “real food” and what is that and how can listeners distinguish between that and, I guess, whatever the opposite of real food is?

[0:44:20.3] DR: Processed food. Yeah. I think of real food as anything that obviously comes from nature. Plants grow out of the ground. Fish swim in the sea. Birds — I guess, chickens don’t really fly, but an animal product. Those are all read food. Processed foods are foods that, often, they start as real foods, but then they’re processed into oblivion. One of my favorite examples is a flake, like a corn flake. 

Corn is a real food, but when you look at a cornflake, it didn’t grow on a tree. You know what I mean? It’s brought out of the ground looking like a flake. That means it’s been processed. If you can picture how it was created and it didn’t involved a factory, then you’re on the right track. 

[0:45:02.8] MB: Perfect. I think that’s a simple and kind of easy heuristic to use. I’m already categorizing things in my mind.

[0:45:09.4] DR: By the way, I’m not militant about any of these stuff. It’s like you can processed foods. I do. I eat pizza, and I eat sugar, and I eat all sorts of things. One of the critical things to understand is that you just don’t want those to be your main habits. You want your main habits. It’s kind of like the 80-20 principle. You want breakfast, lunch, and dinner, especially on weekdays. That’s something you do all the time. You want to those to be based on real foods. A lot of vegetables and real foods. 

If it’s brunch on your birthday, or whatever, go have whatever you want. Have the most on French toast. If you’re, most of the time, eating real foods, you can totally make room for those processed treats, or whatever you want, especially if you love them, or your evening pizza and beer night with your football buddies. It’s fine. 

I just wanted to bring that up, because it’s not about never eating anything. In fact, saying that anything in your life is off limits is generally a bad move, because it’s going to result in one of those psychological rebounds. You don’t want to be using will power, just craft the things that matter the most, your daily habits, from real foods. 

[0:46:22.4] MB: I think that’s a great point, and it’s not about sort of a strict elimination of X, Y, or Z, it’s more about kind of the weighted average of your activities should skew towards things that are real food and things kind of support a healthy lifestyle, but not to the extent that you are tapping your will power and creating suffering in your life and avoiding all the things that make you happy and make you enjoy your experiences. 

[0:46:49.2] DR: Yeah, exactly. 

[0:46:50.4] MB: What’s kind of one piece of homework that you would give to somebody who’s listening to this interview as kind of a concrete starting place for them to implement some of these ideas? 

[0:47:00.7] DR: One of the things that I recommend for a lot of people who are just getting started is to keep a little habit journal. We’re specifically talking about food and physical activity, because a lot of the times, like I was saying, we don’t really know what we’re doing all the time. We’re just not aware of it. Recognizing the things that you do often. 

Again, the things that you do not that often don’t matter so much. The things that you do often is you could sometimes find the biggest wins in there. You can sometimes find, “Oh my gosh! I eat a muffin every day for a snack after lunch, and that is 600 calories.” If you added up, 600 calories after lunch every single day at work, that’s 3,000 extra calories a week. That’s more than an entire extra day of food. 

You don’t even necessarily want the muffin, you just kind of want to take a break from work and want to socialize with your friends, grab an orange, or an apple, and cut that down to an extra 800 calories a week. That can be a huge win. You’ll lose 10 pounds in a couple of months doing a swap like that. Sometimes, it’s that simple to identify that, or just eat more vegetables. I always encourage everybody to eat more vegetables. 

[0:48:13.3] MB: Where can people find you, and your book, and your blog online? 

[0:48:17.6] DR: Yeah, come over to summertomato.com, and that’s where you can find pretty much everything. My book is called Foodist, my podcast is called Foodist. If you’re interested in getting started, like I said, the mindful meal challenge that I recently launched is a great intro to — And it’s free just to this whole world, and it’s fun, and people really enjoy it and it’s five days, so it’s not that hard.

[0:48:39.6] MB: Awesome. We’ll make sure to include links to Summer Tomato, links to Foodist, both the book and the podcast and the Mindful Meal Challenge in the show notes.  

[0:48:47.5] DR: Thank you so much. 

[0:48:48.6] MB: Awesome. Darya, thank you for coming on the show, it’s been a fascinating conversation and I’ve really enjoyed hearing your wisdom and learning all these different concepts. 

[0:48:57.1] DR: Absolutely. I appreciate your thoughtful questions. 

[0:49:00.2] MB: Thank you so much for listening to The Science of Success. Listeners like you are why we do this podcast. The emails and stories we receive from listeners around the globe bring us joy and fuel our mission to unleash human potential. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an email. My email is matt@scienceofsuccess.co. I love to hear from you and I read and respond to every listener email.

The greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to a friend, either live or online. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please, leave us an awesome review and subscribe on iTunes, because that helps more and more people discover The Science of Success. I get a ton of listeners asking, “Matt, how do you organize and remember all these information?” Because of that, we’ve created an amazing free guide for all of our listeners, You can get it by texting the word “smarter” to the number 44222, or by going to scienceofsuccess.co and joining our email list. 

If you want to get all these incredible information, links, transcripts, everything we’ve talked about and much more, be sure to check out our show notes at scienceofsuccess.co. Just hit the show notes button at the top. 

Thanks again, and we’ll see on the next episode of The Science of Success.

Improving Sleep, Giving Up Alcohol, and Reading a Book a Day with James Swanwick

In this episode we explore one of the biggest things disrupting your sleep, examine strategies for getting a better night’s rest, dig into sleep cycles, talk about the 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge and break down how to read books more effectively with James Swanwick.

James is an Australian-American entrepreneur, former SportsCenter anchor on ESPN and host of The James Swanwick Show podcast. He is the creator of the 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol; and creator of blue-blocking glasses Swannies which improve your sleep. Forbes magazine voted him one of Top 25 Networking Experts. Swanwick has interviewed celebrities including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We discuss: 
-The #1 reason you don’t get a good night’s sleep
-Melatonin and your sleep cycle
-The importance of a good night’s sleep
-Why you shouldn’t read your smartphone in bed
-The 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge
-How to build rapport and have a conversation with anyone
-How to read a book in 15 minutes
-Why you retain only 10% of what you read (and what to do about it)
-The 3 main lessons in radical honesty
-How to build a framework to retain everything you learn
-Why knowledge is NOT power
-We discuss "social skydiving" and how you can do it
-And Much More! 

If you want to get a better night’s sleep - check out this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth by Brad Blanton

• Calm App

• F.LUX app for computer

• Social Skydiving: The Art of Talking to Strangers by Brad Bollenbach

• Swannie's Glasses

• The 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge

• jamesswanwick.com

• Find James on Snapchat, Instagram & Twitter: @jamesswanwick

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	Today we have another awesome guest on the show, James Swanwick. James is an Australian-American entrepreneur, former Sports Center anchor on ESPN, and the host of the James Swanwick Show podcast. He is the creator of the 30-day no alcohol challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol, and creator of blue-blocking glasses Swannies, which improve your sleep. Forbes magazine voted him one of the top 25 networking experts. James has interviewed celebrities, including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. James, welcome to The Science of Success.

James:	Matt, so awesome to be here! Let’s do it!

Matt:	Well, we’re very excited to have you on the show. So, for listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you kind of start out and tell us a little bit about you and your story?

James:	Yeah. Well, I am Australian. I’m from Brisbane, Australia, and I moved to the U.S. in 2003, so I’ve been here about 16 years now. I started off as a newspaper journalist, started off right out of high school when I was 17, did that for six years, moved over to London, became a sports reporter for Sky Sports, did something really stupid and fell in love with a British woman who broke my heart, Matt. That was pretty awful. So, I was so heartbroken I said, “I’ve got to get out of this country.” So, I said, “You know what? I’m just going to go to America.” I got on a plane, I flew into Los Angeles Airport, didn’t really know if I was going to go left or right out of the airport, ended up living in a hostel for 90 days, the Hermosa Beach Hostel, and then started interviewing movie stars. I just phoned Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Fox, and said, “Hey, I want to interview movie stars. How do I do it?” One of the movie studios called me back, was Sony Pictures, and said, “Yeah, I’ll tell you how to do it.” And then two weeks later, I was interviewing Jack Nicholson in the Armitage Hotel in Beverley Hills. He was promoting that Adam Sandler movie Anger Management. And then two weeks later I interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger for Terminator 3, and then I built a whole business around it. Lost a lot of money in 2008, 2009 when the financial crisis hit, quit alcohol in 2010, and now I create these blue light blocking glasses which help people sleep as well as, you know, the 30-day no alcohol challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol. That’s pretty much my story, yeah.

Matt:	Very exciting. Well, you obviously have a very diverse background. One of the things, as you mentioned, with Swannies is you’re an expert in sleep and how to help people get better sleep. I feel like sleep’s often very misunderstood. What do you typically see are some of the common reasons that people don’t get a good night’s sleep?

James:	Well, the main reason today, in 2016, as we’re recording this, is the overuse of electronics. So, we have people sitting in bed at nighttime with the lights off checking their Instagram or their email or their Facebook, or they’re sitting at nighttime watching a TV show or they’re on their computer working late at night. Now, every single electronic display... Well, not every single one, but most of them, they admit this blue light, and blue light is why you can see the screen on your computer, why you can see the screen on your iPhone, or whatever smartphone you have. The problem is that that blue light at nighttime suppresses your body’s creation of the hormone melatonin, and melatonin is what we humans need to be able to prepare for sleep, fall asleep, and go into that deep, restorative sleep. So, the biggest problem I see today is there’s too much night at night. We’re looking at car lights, street lights, kitchen lights, bedside table lamps, and then we’re looking at our smartphone and our computer and our iPads and our TV screens, and that is harming our ability to sleep well.

Matt:	And I think I’m definitely guilty of that. I look at my smartphone before I go to sleep pretty much every night, just kind of sitting in bed, whether it’s checking Instagram or whatever it might be. I’m curious. Melatonin’s obviously a critical part of getting a good night’s sleep. Can you talk a little bit about why that is the case?

James:	Yeah. Well, melatonin is basically your body’s natural hormone which makes you sleepy, and then it enables you to get into that deep restorative sleep. So, if you think back to cavemen days, back before we invented the lightbulb, so think about it. When the sun goes down, what would happen? The cavemen would start to get sleepy. They’d sit around a fire and then they’d go to sleep. But now, as soon as we invented that lightbulb 100 or so years ago, all of a sudden now we’re sitting in this night light all the time, which is suppressing our melatonin. So, naturally, our body wants to go to sleep when the sun goes down, but, in today’s modern world, we’re sitting in light for four, five hours, and it’s just preventing our body from naturally creating melatonin. Now, you may still be able to fall asleep quickly even looking at an electronic device or being out in light or underneath your kitchen light, but unfortunately, your body takes 90 minutes to start producing melatonin, which means you need to trick your body and your brain into thinking that it’s nighttime, which is why if you were a pair of blue light-blocking glasses like the ones that I’ve created, or you use f.lux, the app on your computer, or you just don’t look at your electronics 90 minutes before you go to sleep and you don’t sit underneath these fluorescent lights, then your body can start creating melatonin, you start to get sleepy, you go into that deep REM restorative sleep, you spend longer in that REM sleep, and then that way you wake up feeling refreshed and energized and clear-headed.

Matt:	So, have you ever taken melatonin supplements or do you know if those are effective or not?

James:	You know what? I have. I have a good friend of mine called Ben Greenfield, who’s one of America’s top personal trainers and health experts, and he told me that melatonin, like taking a whole bunch of melatonin, isn’t actually the best thing for you. You’re actually better off taking more magnesium than you are melatonin. So, I always bow to his good judgment on that. I can tell you this. When my sleep was not great, I tried everything. I mean, I was trying Xanax and Valium, all these prescription pills, and yes, it knocks you out and you go to sleep, but the side effects of those things are just awful. So, to answer your question, a little bit of melatonin is fine, but melatonin supplements in actual fact are not as effective than if you just take a supplement with a little bit of melatonin in it. So, too much can actually have an adverse effect.

Matt:	Very interesting. I was just curious about that because I’ve seen before sleep strips and that sort of thing that are made out of melatonin. You put them on your tongue and you’re supposed to fall asleep. So, I’m curious. How many hours a night do you sleep?

James:	I always get between, at the least amount, seven hours, and most of the nighttime it’s about eight, eight and a half hours. So, everyone is different, they say generally speaking if everyone gets eight hours of quality sleep, you’re going to be healthy, or that’s as healthy as you can be. You know, I met Arnold Schwarzenegger at his home about four weeks ago in Los Angeles, and I was talking to him about his sleep. He only sleeps six hours a night. He said that he goes to sleep at ten p.m. every night and he wakes up at four a.m. every morning, goes and does a workout, comes back, rides his bike, and then he starts the day, and then he says that he has a little 15-minute powernap at mid-afternoon. So, some people only need six hours. He says, “You know what? I only need six hours. That’s good enough for me.” I’m like, “Okay. That’s good enough for Arnold Schwarzenegger, that’s fine.” But, for the most part, eight hours is what our bodies need to repair itself, and for me, it’s anywhere between seven and eight and a half hours.

Matt:	I’m always curious about that, because I feel like there’s sort of an ongoing debate between people who say you’re more effective if you spend the time and get high-quality sleep versus the people who say, you know, sleep is for the weak and you can sleep when you’re dead and I’m going to sleep for four or five hours a night.

James:	Well, look. Everyone is different, and people who say “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” probably don’t realize that they’re actually causing a lot of damage to themselves for the most part, generally speaking. Like I said, it’s important to really always use the disclaimer that everybody is different. You should sleep as much as your body needs. Some people need ten hours. Some people can get by just on six hours. But if someone’s all bravado and showing off and going, “Yeah, I only need four hours sleep a night. I’m so clever,” well, I would question that. I would look at what is that costing you. Like, you might be having four hours sleep a night and thinking that you’re okay, but your body is not. It’s possible that your body is not able to restore itself. Because what is sleep, Matt? I’ll tell you what sleep is. It’s your body restoring itself. It means you’ve used up glucose in your brain throughout the day, you’re thinking, you’re working. You need to sleep to repair and build back up those glucose levels in your brain. You go to the gym, you’re walking, you’re exercising, you’re lifting weights. Well, what is sleep? Sleep is where your body restores the broken muscles, or it replenishes your body from the exercise or the exertion that you put it through. So, the duration of time, the longer that you can sleep and the longer that it’s deep REM sleep, as opposed to just broken sleep, the more your body’s going to be able to repair itself.

Matt:	And, you know, I’m definitely in the camp as well. I try to get seven or eight at least hours of sleep a night, and there’s a lot of research as well, kind of on the cognitive side, in terms of the negative impact of lack of sleep and the long-term importance to things like creativity, memory function, et cetera, when you don’t get enough sleep.

James:	Yeah. I mean, you think about it. If your sleep isn’t great and you wake up feeling tired and irritable, then maybe you snap at your kids or your friends or your boss or your colleagues, and maybe because you snap at your friends and your colleagues, then your relationships are suffering. And when your relationships are suffering, you find refuge in food or alcohol. And when you find refuge in food and alcohol to make yourself feel better, you start to put on a few more pounds. And when you start to put on a few more pounds, your self-confidence goes. And when your self-confidence goes, you start to stay up a little bit later, eating crappy food, trying to make things work, and then you don’t sleep as well, because now you’re stressed. And because you don’t sleep as well, you wake up feeling tired and lethargic the next day. So, people don’t really understand how critical sleep is. If you’re waking up feeling tired, irritable, lethargic, maybe it’s because you’ve been using your electronics too much at nighttime, maybe it’s because you’re stressed, that just has this spin-off effect that can just perpetuate over time. And I’ll tell you the main thing...well, not the main thing, but one of the things that it does do to you, a lack of sleep. It really harms your looks. You get so much better looking when you sleep. In fact, they did this study that said people who don’t get enough sleep have 45% more wrinkles in their face from people who slept perfectly. They did a study in the U.K. And what is your skin? Your skin is your outward nervous system, right? So, whatever’s going on inside your body, you wear on your skin. So, if you’ve got wrinkles, you’ve got bags under your eyes, you know, a lot of times it’s just to do with poor quality of sleep.

Matt:	So, aside from Swannies or some sort of blue-blocking glasses, what are some of the other things that you’ve seen that can help people get better sleep?

James:	Yeah, well, definitely getting morning sunshine. Like, the first thing when you wake up in the morning, go outside and get some sunlight. And the reason for this is it sets your circadian rhythm to the right time. So, your circadian rhythm is your internal body clock, and your internal body clock wants to know when it’s daytime, just like it wants to know when it’s nighttime. So, if you can get up when you wake up and go outside and just get sunlight on your skin, get it on your face, the receptors in your skin is going to tell your internal body clock, “Guess what? It’s daytime.” Now, why is this important? Because that way, it then knows in about 12 hours’ time that it’s going to be nighttime, because your body knows how much sunlight there is, how much nighttime it should have. So, even though it sounds peculiar, it’s like, well, you want to sleep better? Make sure you get out in the sun early first thing in the morning. It’s absolutely what you should do. So, what I like to do now is... I live in a two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, just a block north of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, and I have a little balcony out the front of my apartment. So, when I wake up in the morning, even though I might be like, eh, just slow to get up, I deliberately go outside onto my balcony for just two minutes and I just stand there in the sun, and creating that habit of just getting two minutes in the sun is making sure my circadian rhythm, my internal body clock, knows that it’s morning, so then fast-forward to ten p.m. at night, my body knows that it’s time to start shutting down. My body knows that it’s time to start getting sleepy, because I gave it sunlight first thing in the morning.

Matt:	So, for listeners that may not be familiar with what the circadian rhythm is, can you just explain that concept briefly?

James:	Yeah. Circadian rhythm really is just your internal body clock. It’s just like your body knowing that it’s daytime and your body knowing that it’s nighttime. So, when you expose your body to sunlight in the morning, your circadian rhythm is saying, “Okay, I got it. It’s daytime. Right. Time to start raising my cortisol levels. It’s time to start getting energetic. It’s time to start being awake. It’s time to start moving.” And then at nighttime, when the sun goes down, when the sun literally sets and all of a sudden it’s dark, and maybe the moon comes up, your internal body clock is noticing that. Your internal body clock is going, “Oh, okay. There’s no sunlight. Right. It’s nighttime. Therefore, it’s time for me to start producing melatonin,” which we talked about. “It’s time for me to start getting sleepy. It’s time for me to get ready to restore itself from all the things that I’ve been doing during the daylight hours.” So, your circadian rhythm is simply your internal body clock that knows whether it’s daytime or whether it’s nighttime.

Matt:	Got it. So, changing gears a little bit away from sleep, I’d love to dig into the 30-day no alcohol challenge. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

James:	Yeah. Well, I was always just a social drinker. I used to drink a few beers during the week and on the weekends I might have a glass of wine with some beers and maybe a gin and tonic. Sometimes I got drunk. Sometimes I went a little crazy, but never anything troublesome. I was never an alcoholic. I was just a good, solid social drinker. But I got tired of waking up every morning...not every morning, but on the mornings after I was drinking, I got tired of feeling tired and lethargic. So, I remember in 2010 I was in Austin, Texas at the South by Southwest festival, and I woke up with a hangover, and I’d only had a couple of gin and tonics the night before, but I just had this splitting headache. And I went into an IHOP, an International House of Pancakes, to have a hangover breakfast, and I’m sitting there, I’m about to eat these pancakes, and I’m looking around at all these people eating pancakes with whipped cream, and I was just like, ugh, I feel like death here. This is not good. So, I said to myself, James, enough. Just take a 30-day break. See if you can go 30 days without drinking and let’s see what happens. And so, I did. I went 30 days without drinking. I lost 13 pounds of fat. I lost my beer belly. My skin got better. My wrinkles disappeared. I slept better. I got more productive. I started attracting a hire caliber of person into my life. And I felt so good that I went, you know what? I’ll just see if I can keep going. And I did. I haven’t drunk since 2010.

Matt:	That’s amazing. That’s really, really cool. You know, I think the reality is, if you really think about it, alcohol is essentially poison, right? And you’re just taking real small doses of poison to kind of trick your nervous system into feeling more relaxed or loose or whatever the feeling is that you’re looking for.

James:	Yeah. I mean, it’s a poison. It’s a toxin. And here’s the thing. It takes seven to ten days for the poison to leave your system. So, you have a glass of wine tonight or you have a beer tonight, the toxins from that drink are still going to be in your system a week to ten days from now. So, imagine how that’s just holding you back. And look, I want to be really clear. I’m not telling people to quit alcohol forever. I mean, I designed and created this program called “30-Day No Alcohol Challenge”, and it’s really designed to just have people quit for 30 days. Because what happens is that after 30 days, people realize. They go, oh my God. All this drinking, it’s costing me a lot of money, it’s costing me my sleep, it’s costing me my looks, it’s costing me lost opportunities. And when people do that and they go through my 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge program and they come out the other side, a lot of them will go back to drinking, but they’ll do it at a far reduced rate than compared to when they began, and a lot of people also just stay quit, just like I did. They just never go back, because all of a sudden they’re feeling energized and clearheaded and productive, and if they were single beforehand, all of a sudden these amazing partners start walking into their lives. Why? Because people who don’t drink or who drink very little and drinking isn’t a necessity for them tend to be more health conscious, tend to be more happy...tend to be happier, I should say, tend to be more open, tend to smile more. And so, like attracts like, right? You start attracting those types of people into your life. So, yeah, when I created the 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge, it wasn’t to say alcohol is the devil, don’t drink it ever again. It was, let’s just quit drinking for 30 days, re-explore our relationship with alcohol, see how we feel, and then from there, drink at whatever rate you want or quite drinking entirely.

Matt:	So, I’m sure a lot of people listening to this would think that either they can’t for social reasons or they wouldn’t be able to have fun if they quit drinking. What do you say to somebody who’s thinking that?

James:	Yeah. Well, it’s the most asked question I get from who are thinking about drinking. In fact, I just finished writing a book called 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge and dedicated a whole chapter to it. Most people think, oh my God, I’m going to be a social recluse if I don’t drink alcohol, but what I teach in my book and in the program is how to socialize without alcohol and still have fun, still have the most fun of anyone. So, what I attempted to do is, before I go out and I’m not drinking, I’ll just say to myself, I’ll make a commitment: “James, I’m going to have the most fun tonight. I’m going to meet the most people. I’m going to be the most engaged. I’m going to be genuinely interested in everyone that I speak to. When people challenge me about not drinking and people say, ‘Go on, just have one,’ I’m going to laugh and joke. I’m going to make a joke like, ‘Yeah, I’m just going to get drunk on this soda water tonight,’ and I do it with a cheeky little grin. Or, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna get drunk on this water tonight! I’m going to dance on the tables! I’m going to crazy!’ Or, ‘Nah, I’m not drinking tonight. I’m too strong in mind.’“ And I just say it with a grin. I say it in a cheeky manner. And when I do that, nobody cares. Like, nobody cares that I’m not drinking. Some people may still go, “Go on, just have one, just have one,” but I just smile and I just say, “No, I’m okay. I’m just going to get drunk on this water.” Or, “No, I’m good. I’m good. I’m going to go crazy. I’m already drunk. I’m already drunk on this soda water I’m drinking. Ha ha ha ha ha.” Just make a little joke about it. And when you do that, people just leave you alone. People don’t care. So, commit to having the most fun, be genuinely interested in other people, dance, laugh, joke, do all those things, and do it while sitting on water, ice, and a piece of lime.

Matt:	You know, I don’t think I quite did exactly sort of the 30-day no alcohol challenge, but I have sort of paused my drinking for several-week periods a couple of different times, and one of the tricks that I’ve always used is whenever I’m out with people and they complain or try to make comments about, “Oh, you know, you’re being lame, you’re not drinking,” whatever it is, typically what I’ll say is, “Whatever energy level... If you ever call me out and say that my energy level isn’t the highest energy level person here, I’ll immediately ramp up to whatever that energy level is.”

James:	I like that. That’s good. So, you’ve almost, like, got accountability from a friend of years.

Matt:	Exactly, yeah. And I basically say, that’s sort of my stop gap in the sense of, you know, if anybody calls me out, I’m happy to jump up, dance around, get crazy if... You know, whatever the energy level of the top person there is, I’ll match that energy level or exceed it. That’s my commitment if I’m not drinking.

James:	That’s awesome. Yeah, I love that. That’s great. I mean, I do a lot of those videos on my Snapchat. I have a Snapchat and thousands of people around the world follow me, and when I’m out and about with friends or socializing, I’m always taking videos of me having fun without drinking, and just the fact that I’ve got people watching holds me accountable, almost. I mean, I’m never tempted to drink, it’s just I want to... It holds me accountable to making sure I’m having the most fun of anyone in my group, and some of them may be drinking. So, I like your strategy. It’s great. It’s got accountability and it’s like a fun little challenge, and then it just kind of wakes you up out of whatever mental slumber you may be in during your night out.

Matt:	Definitely. You know, the other thing that... Are you familiar with a term called “social skydiving”? Have you ever heard of that?

James:	No, I haven’t. Tell me about it.

Matt:	So, I think I talked about this in a previous episode of the show where we talked about embracing discomfort, but basically, social skydiving is the concept of, in any social context... It’s sort of pulled from this sort of pick-up artist community or whatever, that whole world, but it’s the idea that basically, when you’re out or when you’re in an uncomfortable situation or a situation where you don’t really know anybody, you basically pick the most intimidating looking group of people, and you immediately walk into their conversation with nothing, no plan of what you’re going to do other than just saying, like, “Hey, what’s up?” And you just keep doing that over and over again, and it’s very scary to do it the first couple times, but you realize pretty quickly that you don’t have to have a plan, you don’t have to come in and be cool or whatever it is. You can kind of just learn how to interact with people and push yourself out of your comfort zone and the fear that you’re not going to be able to talk to people.

James:	Yeah, I love that. That’s awesome. Social skydiving. So, yeah, if someone’s listening right now and they know that they want to reduce alcohol because it costs a lot of money or they’re tired or they’re lethargic or they’re carrying a few extra pounds or you feel like you rely on alcohol as a social crutch, do what Matt’s suggesting there. Do the social skydiving. Just go out one night, don’t drink, commit to not drinking, commit to only drinking water or soda water, and then just go and put yourself in groups of people in social situations and see what happens. A lot of times, you feel like there’s going to be some kind of awkwardness happening, but it actually isn’t. It’s like, you go in there and you say, “Hey, I’m James. How you doing?” And people go, “Oh, hi. I’m Steve,” and blah blah blah. And you go, “What’s your story?” And then people start having a conversation and then, before you know it, you’re off on different conversational tangents, you’re making new friends, people respect you because you’re the one who opened the conversation first. Yeah, it’s cool. I mean, Forbes magazine put me in the top 25 networkers, which was very nice of them, in 2015, and part of that reason was because I’ve taught so many people how to just walk into any social situation and just engage people right away and be the most popular person in the group or in the room. But I’ve never heard social skydiving before. I like it, Matt. Thank you for introducing me to that phrase.

Matt:	Definitely, and for listeners who are curious, I read probably a year or two ago a really good blog post about the concept, so I’ll throw that in the show notes. And I’m curious. I’d love to drill down on the idea of engaging people in any social situation. You said you’ve taught a lot of people how to do that. What are some of the tips or secrets that you teach people?

James:	Well, I’ll tell you what not to do. Don’t say when you meet someone, “Oh, what do you do?” It’s just such a boring, dull question, and it implies that you don’t really care about who the person is. You really only care about what they do for a living so you can see whether they can help you or not. A far better question is, “Tell me your story. What’s your story?” Because that’s such an open-ended question, because then the person that you’ve asked the question to might say, “Oh, yeah, you know, I just moved here from such-and-such and it’s awesome,” or, “Yeah, I’m friends with John who’s event this is,” and blah blah blah. And asking that question shows the person that you’re asking the question to that you’re actually genuinely interested in them as a person, rather than what they do for a living. So, what I like to do is I’ll go into any group and I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m James. How you doing? Oh, yeah, nice to meet you. Yeah. What’s your story? Tell me what you’re passionate about right now. What’s going on your world right now?” They’re great questions, and they spark interest in conversations. And not only do they spark interest in conversations, but the person who is interested in other people makes other people super interested in them. So, you want to walk into a room and be the most popular person, have everyone going, “Who’s that guy? I want to hang out with that guy,” be genuinely interested in the people that you talk to. I don’t mean be interested because you heard a podcast with James Swanwick on Matt’s podcast at one time and he said, “Oh, be interested.” No, I said be genuinely interested, which means be curious about people. If someone starts to tell you about their life, listen. Find commonality with which you can talk to them about. If someone says, “I’m going skydiving this weekend,” then you can say to them, “Oh, I remember when I went skydiving. It was great,” or, “I could never do that. I really admiring you for jumping out of a plane and skydiving,” or, “Tell me more.” I tell you what, the best thing that you can say to anyone, really, is, “Wow. You’re really interesting. Tell me more.” Who wouldn’t love to hear that? But the only way that you can deliver that phrase is if you’re genuinely interested in what the other person has to say, and that person can see and feel you being genuinely interested.

Matt:	And I think there’s a bunch of research about the field of rapport building and communication where they actually discover basically that the most effective way, or one of the most effective ways, to build rapport with someone is to ask them questions about themselves, and that actually makes them like you more.

James:	Absolutely. People’s favorite topic is themselves, so invite them to talk about themselves. And don’t be doing it just because that’s what the studies say. Do it and listen intently and find curiosity and find enjoyment in listening to people talk about themselves, because people are interesting and fascinating if you just ask them enough questions. You might be on a bus and you might look at people on the bus and just go, “I don’t want to know those people.” Maybe you don’t like the look of someone. Maybe someone just doesn’t look like your type of person. Strike up a conversation with that person anyway and ask them questions. I bet that you find something fascinating and interesting about them.

Matt:	So, shifting directions a little bit, I’m curious... I’ve heard that you read a book a day. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

James:	Yeah. I learned how to speed read. I learned how to read an entire book in anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour, I can do it. Most of the time it’s an hour because I like to take my time. [Chuckles] Some people are probably thinking, wow, that’s crazy! But I actually... I’ll tell you how I do it verbally, but if you want to just watch a longer version of it, on my YouTube channel—which is just my name, James Swanwick—if you type in “how I read a book a day”, there’s actually a lengthier, 51-minute video where I actually show people reading an entire book. But, yeah, what I do is I buy books all the time now. I look at... I read the back of the book. I read the chapters. I scan... I skim through the book for five minutes initially, and I’m looking at the first sentence of each of the paragraphs. I’m getting an idea in my head what the main point of the books...the book is, and then I’ll go back again and then I’ll go through and sort of systematically take my time a little bit more. So, I’m not reading every single word of the book. I’m just picking up two or three main lessons from the book, because studies have shown that seven days after people read a book, they’ve only retained 10% of what the book taught. So, with that in mind, I’m not going to spend a month reading a book when I can spend one hour reading a book. I’m just going to retain what I can. I’m going to write it down. I’m going to get the lesson or the main lessons from the book, and I’m going to go and use it in my own life. So, I have a bookshelf here. I don’t have a television in my apartment. My living room faces a bookshelf and I have a bookshelf filled with books, and so when I sit down on the living room sofa at the end of a day, my mind...my eyes see the books. I go and pick up a book and I can read, you know, a book in 15 minutes to an hour.

Matt:	I think that’s a really important point. And if anybody listening thinks back about a book you’ve read, typically you can...you know, even longer than a week past, right, you sort of have maybe at most four or five core concepts that you sort of pulled away from that book that were the really big takeaways.

James:	Less. I’d reckon one or two.

Matt:	Yeah, exactly, you know what I’m saying? Best case scenario. And so the reality is, instead of... What you’re saying is basically instead of spending all that time to only harvest the two to three key things you’re actually going to remember, just short-circuit that process and only pull those things out to begin with.

James:	I mean, it’s so true. And what I do now is I underline key parts of the book with a pen. A lot of people are like, oh, don’t damage the book! I’m like, well, what’s the point of the book in the first place? It’s to, like...to get knowledge from it. So, underline key points, and then when I finish a book, towards the back, in the back...you know, within the back part, I’ll just write out the three main notes that I got. So, I’m showing this to Matt now on the video as we’re recording this. You can see my notes. I’ve got a book here called Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth. So, I read that book in an hour. There you go! That’s cool! So, you’ve got some great notes, too, Matt. And I read that book in an hour, and at the end I’ve written down the three main lessons that I got from it, and here... I’ll just read them to you. Number one: to be radically honest. Number one: reveal the facts. Two: honestly express current feelings and thoughts. Three: expose your fiction. That’s all I gotta know! That’s all I gotta know from the entire book, which is basically be honest as much as you can, and when you’re going to be radically honest and have awkward conversations with people, step one: reveal the facts; step two: honestly express your feelings and thoughts; and step three: expose the fiction. So, that’s a... That is a 275-page book. I didn’t need to read every single damn word of the book to understand that to tell...understand how to tell the truth. So, I just skimmed through it. I took my time in certain chapters. I took the main points in my head. And I’ll tell you: Just because I jumped on this call with you, Matt, I had a conversation with one of my staff who helps me with 30-day no alcohol challenge and with my Swannies glasses. And I had a very, very honest conversation with him, where I...I didn’t fire him, but I...I certainly left him in no uncertain terms that his performance needs to be...to be better. And it was an awkward conversation, but because I had expressed to him that I was doing it for part of this radical honesty thing and I asked the same for him in return, it was a wonderfully professional conversation, and now we have a strategy and a plan to move forward. So, again, I didn’t need to read every single word of the book. I just needed to, like, read it in 15 minutes to an hour, got the main point, and now I’m utilizing it in my life.

Matt:	I’m also a huge fan of taking notes within a book and I very deeply underline and put notes in the margins and create my own index and all kinds of stuff, and I showed you that a second ago on the video of one of the books I have that has a bunch of notes in it. And listeners actually email in all the time asking, you know, “How do you store all this knowledge? How do you read all these books and pull information from them?” I’m curious. If you’re reading a book a day or four or five books a week, whatever it might be, how do you actually retain and utilize all of that knowledge on an ongoing basis.

James:	Well, like I said, I write down the three main points in the back of the book, and then I actually have a whole week scheduled in my calendar, one week out of every month, I go back and look at books that I’ve already read and I read over it again. So, for example, I’m looking at my bookshelf now. I have a book by Oprah Winfrey that she wrote called What I Know for Sure. Now, I don’t remember the three things that I wrote in the back of the book, but I remember one of them, and one of those things is never say a bad word about anyone else. Like, avoid saying bad things about other people. And I remembered that because I wrote it in the back of the book and because one week every month I go back and I quickly read the back of those books to retain the information. So, there’s another book there, Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game, which came out about two years ago. It’s a big, thick, huge book. And that book actually took me an entire afternoon to read. It was a little bit more specific, but I did read it in about three or four hours. I’m looking at it right now. Let me tell you something. The main thing that I got out of that book that I wrote in the back of the book when I first read it was, “Get a fiduciary.” A fiduciary is an independent account, someone who can give you financial advice without them taking a commission or without them pushing certain financial products on you. Guess what? I have a fiduciary. I have a fiduciary in Omaha, Nebraska. His name is Patrick, and he helps me with my wealth management. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t had read Tony Robbins’ book, Money: Master the Game. I didn’t even know what the word “fiduciary” meant when I read it. So, that’s an example of you read a book, you write notes, or one or two or three notes inside the back page, you go back one week out of every month and you just look at the back pages or look at your notes of all the books that you’ve done, and it reminds you, it refreshes you, it keeps you on track.

Matt:	I think that’s a great tool, is to basically have sort of scheduled time where you specifically are going back and reviewing whether it’s book notes or, really, any sort of critical piece of information that you’ve studied in the past.

James:	Yeah.

Matt:	And that’s something that... Personally, I create a lot of sort of like almost my own version of CliffsNotes or whatever whenever I read a book. It’s more lengthy than the three-word...the three kind of idea summary, but probably that’s a bad thing because it’s harder for me to go back and review them, and oftentimes I feel like I want to do that, but don’t schedule the time. So, I think I’m going to start trying to just concretely schedule review time, and that’s a good takeaway personally, for me, from that advice.

James:	Yeah. I mean, I’m looking at my calendar now—I have Google Calendar—and I have...on the first of every month I have “financial life overview”. So, every...on the first day or two of every month, I do a complete analysis of my finances. And then I have this week here where it’s like “review books”. Here it is here. It’s on the 22nd. It says, “Review previously read book week.” [Chuckles] It’s right there. So, it’s big and I’ve set the settings in my Google Calendar for it to pop up monthly. “Review previously read book week” is exactly what I call it. So, yeah. And then when you do that, it just keeps reminding you. It keeps reinforcing it. It keeps pushing. Because the danger is people are like, oh, yeah, I read a lot of books. I go to a lot of seminars. I go to a lot of conferences. And that’s great, but knowledge isn’t power; applied knowledge is power, which means you actually have to take action based on knowledge that you’re getting. So, the way that I do it is I write down the main point—one or two points, or three points—of a book; I go back, I review it every three or four weeks; and then I take action.

Matt:	So, just to clarify, when you say you sort of have the 22nd as the review book week...

James:	Mm-hmm.

Matt:	...how much time within those...within that week are you spending reviewing books, like, on a given day?

James:	So, it can be as little as seven minutes. I like to do this thing called “four by seven”. So, when I wake up in the morning, I’ll do seven minutes reading a book or reviewing previously read books; I’ll do seven minutes writing in my five-minute journal about things that I’m grateful four; I’ll do seven minutes just freestyle writing in a diary that I have about my goals; and then the other seven minutes might be meditation. I might put on the Calm app—C-A-L-M—and just do seven minutes of meditation. That takes 30 minutes. I mean, it takes 28 minutes, but, like, taking a little break in between each seven-minute block, you know, makes it come out to about 30. And if you do that consistently every day, that is a lot better than if you, like, only once a month are you reading books or only once a month are you meditating. Just I try to make it so easy, like, so manageable that I can do it as a habit, and when I do that, everything just progresses. So, to answer your initial question, seven minutes sometimes is all I’ll need to just review three or four books because I’ve got my notes in the back of the book. Like, let’s do... We’ll do another example right now — Radical Honesty. Okay, let’s time me. Ready? Put the stopwatch on and tell me how long this takes for me to review this book. Ready?

Matt:	All right. Timing you.

James:	Go! All right. Let me look at the back. Number one: Reveal the facts. Two: Honestly express current feelings and thoughts. Three: Exposing the fiction. Okay. When am I having an awkward conversation this week? All right, I’ve gotta have a conversation with John about that, so when I do that I’m going to tell him the facts. All right. Then I’m going to tell him what I feel and what my thoughts are around those facts, and then I’m going to, three, expose the fiction. Okay. Great. So, reveal the facts, express current feelings and thoughts, and expose the fiction. Okay, cool. I’ll use that in my conversation with John later this week. Awesome. Okay. Let’s grab another book. What book we got here? Oh, look! It’s James’ 30-day no alcohol challenge book! Awesome! Let’s have a look at this. And then I’ll just do the same thing. I’ll go back over the books and I’ll just keep doing it. I’m looking at another book here called Wealth Warrior by Steve Chandler. I’ve got notes in the back of that book, so I might go back there and go, oh, look. When I read that book six months ago when I was on the plane from New York to Los Angeles, I wrote in there such and such. Did I implement that? Oh, I didn’t. Okay, I gotta implement that. And so forth. Rinse and repeat.

Matt:	So, I think it was, like, just over 30 seconds that it took you to review that, for vigilant listeners that were curious, unless I mistimed it, but...

James:	There you go. So, that’s all it takes. Like, that’s all it takes. And now I’ve got a... Like I said, before I jumped on this interview call, I had that awkward conversation, but it wasn’t...it was awkward and professional at the same time because I’d read the book Radical Honesty; because I’d reviewed my notes beforehand; because I knew how to have the conversation which didn’t make my staff member feel threatened or upset. It was done in a way that I learned how to do it from a book.

Matt:	Fair enough. So, for people who are listening in, what are some additional resources kind of aside from the stuff we’ve talked about so far that you might recommend digging into or checking out, whether it’s books or websites or whatever it might be?

James:	Yeah, well, I like... I’m not really one for meditation, but I do force myself... I use the word “force” in a liberal kind of way. I like Calm — C-A-L-M. You download that app and you can choose, like, a two-minute meditation. Even a two-minute meditation for people with ADD like me is actually enough to really calm your mind down and stay focused and get clear, and you can do that a few times during the day. I really like to do that. The other thing is just a little habit hack that I have. So I stay consistent with my exercise, what I do is I get my exercise clothes ready the night before and then I’ll lay them out on the floor right where I get out of bed each morning, so when I wake up in the morning I see the exercise clothes, I have the visual cue, I’ll put the clothes on; therefore, it’s very easy for me to then continue walking out the door and go to the gym and do some exercise. What most people do is, unfortunately, they go to bed not having prepared their clothes and they say, oh, I’m going to go to the gym in the morning! Then they wake up and they’re like, eh, it’s too much of a pain to try and find my shorts and get my shoes together and all that kind of stuff, and they don’t...they don’t go. It’s just, oh, I’ll go to the gym tomorrow. So, little things like that where you make it super easy, and even like me with having a bookshelf where my TV would ordinarily be makes me pick up books rather than watch television. Little things like that can really be a huge help to transforming your life and improving your productivity.

Matt:	So, what would one piece of homework be that you would give somebody listening to this episode?

James:	If sleep is important to you, which it should be, I would definitely download the free app. It’s called f.lux — F-period-L-U-X. Download that onto your computer screen, and what that does is that it reduces the brightness level of your computer screen as the sun goes down. And as it moves into the nighttime, it just reduces the brightness level. Now, that helps a lot. If you have an iPhone and you’ve downloaded the latest software update, use... it’s called Nigh Shift. It’s the Night Shift feature and it’s the same thing. Towards, you know, like seven, eight, nine, ten o’clock at night, it starts to reduce the brightness levels so you’re not exposing yourself to as much blue light. Having said that, neither of those two things help you block out the blue light from your kitchen light or your TV screen or your bedside table, so if you... I would definitely recommend getting a pair of blue light-blocking glasses. You don’t have to get mine. I have a brand that I created called Swannies. I would definitely wear your Swannies about an hour before you go to sleep so you’re blocking the blue light from your cell phone; you’re blocking the blue light from your overhead lights; you’re blocking the blue light from the traffic and the street lights. And if you do that, you’re going to create more melatonin; you’re going to get sleepier; your sleep will likely improve. Just on that sleep thing: If you do want to... I did write a book called 7 Ways to Sleep Better, and if you want to just get that book and read up a little bit more on that, and you’re in the U.S. and you’re listening to this, if you text the number 44222 right now and put in the word “sleeptips”—one word—I’ll text you back details on where you can get that free book, which is just called 7 Ways to Sleep Better. It only really works if you’re in the U.S., by the way. If you’re outside of the U.S., just go to swanniesglasses.com—S-W-A-N-N-I-E-Sglasses.com—and you can get the free book, 7 Ways to Sleep Better, there.

Matt:	Awesome. Well, James, thank you very much for being on the Science of Success and I’m sure the listeners are really going to get a lot out of this interview and have some great tips to be able to improve their sleep.

James:	You’re welcome, Matt. Thank you for having me. And just a reminder: If you want to send me a message or ask me any more questions about sleep, then you can just find me at jamesswanwick.com, or even just send me a direct snap on my Snapchat or Instagram, which is just my name, @jamesswanwick.

How To Put Your Body In Relaxation Mode, Reduce Stress, and Develop Body Awareness with International Yoga Expert Tiffany Cruikshank

In this episode we explore the boundary where eastern and western medicine meet with international yoga expert Tiffany Cruikshank – we discuss how cultivating body awareness can put your nervous system in “Relaxation mode,” how meditation impacts your metabolism, the lessons Tiffany has learned from more than 25k patient visits, and how to jump in and start yoga TODAY as we demystify and examine some of the science behind the practices of Yoga!

Tiffany is an international yoga teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years, an author, health and wellness expert, the founder of Yoga Medicine, and she is internationally known for her focus on fusing the two worlds of eastern and western medicine together and apply it to the practice of yoga in an accessible and relevant way. We discuss:

• How to put your body in "relaxation mode"

• The science behind the parasympathetic nervous system (and why its so important)

• How to cultivate a mind-body connection and develop body awareness

• How to get started simply and easily with yoga today

• The impact meditation has on your metabolism

• The differences between yoga and meditation

• The lessons Tiffany has learned in more than 25,000 patient visits

• And more!

If Yoga has interested you and you don’t know where to start - or you just want to learn how to become more relaxed - listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• Tiffany Cruikshank's page on YogaGlo (see here).

• Tiffany Cruikshank's website, "Yoga Medicine" (see here).

• [Book] Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship) by Paramahansa Yogananda (see here).

• [Book] Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing by Yoga Journal and Timothy McCall (see here).

• [Science of Success Episode] Unleash The Power of Meditation (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we have another awesome guest on the show, Tiffany Crookshank. Tiffany’s an international Yoga teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years. An author, health and wellness expert, and the founder of Yoga Medicine. She’s also internationally known for her focus on fusing the two worlds of Eastern and Western medicine together, and applying it to the practice of Yoga in an accessible and relevant way.  Tiffany, welcome to The Science of Success.
Tiffany:	Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt: 	Well, we’re super excited to have you on here. To kind of kick things off, I’m curious, tell me: How did you get started in the field of Yoga?
Tiffany:	I was actually really young. I was a little bit of trouble maker in my early teens and my parents sent me off to a wilderness rehab program, kind of to get me back into shape. It was a really empowering experience for me; learning how to survive, and there were herbalists out there that took me on plant walks and kind of taught me how to use the plants around me, and it kind of began my investigation into holistic health and really wanting to help others in health and wellness.
As soon as I got home I saw this little sign that said “Yoga” and a phone number. At the time there weren’t really any Yoga studios, and eventually I remembered, and I went. And, being an athlete- growing up and being really athletic- the physicality was really interesting to me, but there was always something kind of “more” that I don’t really know that I knew, or was really even conscious of at the time, but there was something really intriguing to me. And, as a fourteen-year-old girl at the time, it was these moments of also just being comfortable in my skin, but also being able to explore with my background. 
And in healthcare, as well, is kind of this intermingling of how Yoga can also be really an adjunct to our healthcare. 
Matt:	And, kind of dove-tailing off of that, tell me a little about how your unique blend of sort of Western science and Eastern medicine helps inform your study of Yoga.
Tiffany:	Once I got really interested in Yoga and herbal medicine, I quickly finished up my high school and started college at sixteen, and went off to college and did my premed in nutrition, and then went off to Chinese medicine school. I was really intrigued by how the art of Chinese medicine, and this kind of ideal balance and health; and did my Chinese medicine and then went off to do a specialty in sports medicine and orthopedics.
When I started seeing patients, one thing I noticed really quickly was that the people, the patients who came and saw me- I had many of them who were Yoga students as well- got better so much quicker than my patients who weren’t Yoga students. And so one day, finally, a light went off and I was like, “Well, maybe I should start giving some- what I called at the time- Yoga prescriptions to my patients who were not Yoga students”. And I did, and it was usually only one to three poses that they would do each day on their own for a few minutes, and found that their response was really great. Their response to my treatments improved and things seemed to be going a lot easier. So I… over time, over the past twelve years or so of running teacher trainings, I’ve slowly integrated that into what I do training other teachers.
One thing that I’ve always enjoyed as a healthcare practitioner, as well as a Yoga teacher, is for me what’s really important is people understanding how things work. We know now the power of the mind and how important it is in health and healing, and then being able to bring that into our work, whether as patients or students, just in this understanding in how East and West meet. How we can kind of look at this Eastern philosophy of Yoga, or Chinese medicine, in a Western mental context, and kind of bring in anatomy and physiology. Not only to make it more effective, potentially, but also really so that our students and patients are- or my students and patients at the time could really make sense of it. I really think that’s an important part of your body’s ability to integrate, and also respond to treatments. 
Matt:	So, I’m a total novice about this. I’ve taken like one Yoga class in my entire life. What kind of differentiates Yoga from other forms of exercise?
Tiffany:	You know, I’d say the biggest thing is… especially now because Yoga’s changing and there’s so much that’s getting pulled into this modernized Yoga, which is great, but I think the big over-arching theme is this “mindfulness”. You know, that it’s not just calisthenics or cross training- which we do see a lot of cross training stuff in Yoga now, and Pilates and calisthenics- and it really is a mindfulness that’s over-arching it. There’s a purposeful awareness of the body and the breath. And, this kind of “orchestration” of how the mind and the body connect, and reconnecting that awareness in the body. And, as a healthcare practitioner, I think it’s really big part of using Yoga in the medical sci- kind of, communities, because it’s, for me, the foundation of working with patients. You know, it’s really difficult, as a healthcare provider, to work with people who have no body awareness. Right? To come in and be like, “I don’t know, my shoulder just hurts,” and not be able to answer any questions. One of the great things, if nothing more- and I think there’s a lot more to it than this- that Yoga just gives you this body awareness that I think is helpful both within your context of your relationship with your doctors, but also as kind of like an owner’s manual to your unique body. Whether that’s finding a diet that works for you, or finding an exercise protocol that works for you, or so many other things, you know? So that we can really notice, “What is this mindful awareness that is Yoga?” in some context, outside of our Yoga practice as well. 
Matt:	Tell me more about the concept of body awareness.
Tiffany:	Yeah, I mean, it’s just a general phrase that we use to talk about really becoming intimate with the experience of sensations that happen under your skin. Which, really isn’t very different form meditation. I’m a huge fan of meditation, and I think meditation can be- it is a part of Yoga, it is a branch of Yoga as well, but it’s this ability to translate that into movement; into how we are in our world and our relationships; to be able to feel the sensations in my feet when I’m standing or hanging out in the grocery line; or to be able to feel this experience in maybe my back even, while I’m sitting at my desk. And, you know, body awareness to me also implies a lack of judgement. Yes, you know, obviously we want to be able to take these cues in Yoga and be able to move away from pain, and stay safe in our world and our lives, but there’s also this ability just to observe and to notice how these things influence us. 
One of the pillars of Yoga philosophy is this ability to kind of… what we talk about is soften the fluctuations of the mind. These ups and downs. You know, the high points and the low points, so that we can find some place in the middle where we can really just be reflective and be able to notice. Whether that’s body sensations, or meditating, or playing with our family.
Matt:	So, meditation is something that I’m a huge advocate of, and we’ve had a number of episodes and guests in the past talk about meditation. One of the questions- or one of the things I’m really curious about- and you just touched on it is: How does Yoga sort of relate to meditation? And also, how is it different from meditation.
Tiffany:	Well, I think, first off, most people in the Yoga world would agree that meditation is a part of Yoga; is a type of Yoga. Though, now-a-days meditation can kind of live in its own world sometimes, as well. I don’t think you have to- many people think of Yoga as the Asanas, or the physical postures that we put our bodies into, but meditation is, to most people in the Yoga world, considered a branch of Yoga. 
In really traditional Yoga, the way it’s been taught in the past, is that the first step is really learning the Asanas. These physical postures: downward facing dog, or upward facing dog, or triangle pose. With Yoga medicine we do a lot of training our teachers of how to apply this as more… not physical therapy per say, but more of a physical practice to be able to tune the body in a way that’s more therapeutic. The whole purpose of the Yoga then was to create this sense of body awareness, but also comfort in our bodies. Which, you know, is a constant fine-tuning process as our bodies change depending on the circumstances we put them in, but it allows us to kind of train the body to be able to sit. And, the next step would be the breathing practices. So, the breathing practices are made to train the nervous system so that eventually the final practice is meditation. 
Traditionally the Asanas, the physical postures, are really kind of like… you could think of them like the gateway to mediation. Some traditionalists might say, “If you’re able to meditate and sit, great! Maybe you don’t need the physical postures. Maybe you don’t need the Yoga.” I think, in our modern world, that all of it has different important things. You know, this was back in a time when the purpose of Yoga was to become enlightened. I think there’s many translations of what that might mean in a modern day context as well, but I think the different branches of Yoga- the physical, the breathing, and the meditation- all provide us with very different things that all feed off of each other as well. 
Matt:	And that reminds me of the book, Autobiography of a Yogi, which he kind of talks about the concept of Yoga, which was written many, many years ago and really today seems more like he’s talking about meditation than Yoga. I guess I’d never really conceived of it as that meditation’s essentially a type of Yoga. In which case, then I practice every day. 
Tiffany:	Yeah, that’s an old school text. I mean, there’s some far out stuff in there. My first [00:13:03] was actually from the yogananda lineage, which is “Autobiography of a Yogi”, and I think a lot of it’s still very relevant as well, but it is looking at the meditation, and a lot of the older practices. The oldest practice of Yoga they can find really is around meditation. Before they started to see the Asanas- the physical postures- coming about.
Matt:	So, focusing a little bit on the Asana side of the equation, what are some of the health benefits that you see from people who practice Yoga on a regular basis?
Tiffany:	Well, I think in a modern context the physical practice is really relevant because… one big thing, I think many of us are sitting in desks for long periods, or maybe in cars, or maybe that’s carrying babies around, or kids around. We have very awkward scenarios that we do, and maybe your job is very different from that, but we have repetitive movements that we have to create, whether you’re an athlete or a desk worker, that have our bodies really changing to accommodate this. And you know, this experience in our body, the sensations, really change how we see the world around us. They change our perspective. They change how we both interact with ourselves as well as the people around us. So, I think just the physical postures themselves, if nothing more than to just feel more comfortable in your body, is a really important part of that.
We look at this ability to have balance of both elasticity of the soft tissues. The ability to be pliable and have the right amount of range of motion, but also strength in the tissues to stabilize and support the joints for the integrity of the long-term health of the joints. To me, I think Yoga for most people, because whether they’re an athlete or a desk worker, we have very repetitive movement that we do, or stationary postures that we take, that Yoga kind of challenges us to move in new ways. Which, when we look at it from a physical medicine standpoint is really important. That our bodies are moved and challenged and stretched and strengthened in different ways so that the deeper structures of the joint aren’t getting worn, or irritated, over time from constant movement in the same patterns. I think there’s a lot more to it, but I think that’s one big part of it for the physical practice.
Again, I’m sure as a meditator yourself, there’s this sense of when you can sit more comfortably, and a lot of the Yoga postures are focused around hip openings so that there’s this ability to sit comfortably so that you can meditate. So that you’re mind’s not constantly going, “Ah my back! My back! My back!” There’s these moments of just being able to sit comfortably.
Matt:	And I think that… going back to the idea of many people today are sort of knowledge workers, or desk workers, there’s a phrase that gets thrown around that “sitting is the new smoking”. So, it seems like Yoga may be a really beneficial tool to help your body recover from the fact that you’re sort of have these repeated stresses again and again of sort of sitting, typing, that kind of thing. 
Tiffany:	Absolutely. One of the things we really love- I love to teach our teachers, and we really specialize in with Yoga medicine, is really fine-tuning it for the individual. So if there are physical injuries, or repetitive motions, or illnesses, that the practice really should be applied in a very different way for each person. That really not only helps with the physical therapy side of things, but also really this mind-body connection.
The breath, the nervous system, the ability to kind of retrain how the nervous system perceives both stimulus, as well as our awareness of ourselves in our bodies, and our awareness of ourselves in the world around us. And this regulation of parasympathetic tone, which is so- I mean, gosh we could talk another hour just on that- and how important that is in the Yoga, both in the effects we see so much in the research now in Yoga- a lot of it is really looking at how it affects the parasympathetic nervous system.  We know that the parasympathetic nervous system really has effects on this global system of the body, whether we’re talking organs, or muscles, or cognitive function. And, so we see pretty potent effects from that work as well.
Matt:	Dig in a little bit more about the concept of the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s not something that we’ve talked about before on the podcast, and I’m sure listeners would love to kind of understand that concept fundamentally. And also, maybe some of the research behind how that’s related to Yoga. 
Tiffany:	Yeah, it’s actually something we’ve known for a long time, and many people probably have taken anatomy and physiology in college, or otherwise probably have learned about it at some point. These simple such systems of the nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is broken down into parasympathetic and sympathetic. It’s getting a lot more hype in the media, on the internet now, but this idea, the sympathetic is really more of the fight-or-flight, and the parasympathetic is this relaxation mode. What’s important though, is the fight-or-flight was really designed to get us out of trouble. When there was a bear coming we would run really quickly, or maybe in a modern day context lifting a car off of someone, potentially. These really serious significant situations where our body releases stress hormones to really help us respond to significant situations by putting more energy and blood in our muscles. By taking it out of the organs to really deal with this acute stressor. What that means though is that all of the other functions of the body are really put off for a while; they’re put on hold. So, it’s really helpful at the time, but when our bodies need to slow down and do things like digest our food, extract nutrients, sleep at night, heal, repair, detoxify. All these really important processes that happen inside the organs, inside the body that we don’t see, that we don’t really feel so much, need to happen in that parasympathetic mode, and do happen during that parasympathetic mode. 
So, it’s an interesting conundrum, I think, because in our modern world we’re so focused on our to-do list, right? We all are. I am the same. We’ve got things we’re trying to accomplish each day, or maybe our goals even potentially for the year, or our lifetime. We’re constantly checking off what we’ve done, and it’s really difficult to check off- who puts on their to-do list, “Today I did nothing?”; “Today I just sat and relaxed”, but  the reality is that time when we slow down, that time when we’re relaxing a little bit more- whether that’s still doing a little bit of work on our computer or not- but those times when we can find that relaxation mode is when our bodies can actually take care of themselves and start to process, not only nourishment, but also elimination of waste or toxins in the body that you need to get rid of. So it’s a really malleable part of our bodies that happen internally that we don’t see, and so it’s hard to put a value on them. You know, it’s hard to say, “Gosh, I really need to spend more time just relaxing.” I think many of us are getting that now as we start to understand how important stress is, but when we look at the nervous system and this parasympathetic versus sympathetic, being able to relax is really important. I like to think of it like a light switch, it should be something where our bodies can flip back and forth just like flipping a light switch from going and doing and creating, which is also a very important mode- sympathetic mode is still also significant- but then we should be able to flip right back into parasympathetic. That’s where we often run into trouble is we lose what we call “parasympathetic tone”, which is just like a muscle in the body that needs to be built up through learning, and training, and really experiencing this relaxation mode over and over again so that our bodies can flip back and forth from our worktime day, to being able to sleep at night, to slowing down to eat, to slowing down during our day for those moments of relaxation where the body can really nourish itself. Just a simple Yoga practice can be great at that, it doesn’t really need to be anything fancy.
Matt:	So, Yoga is a potential tool that you can use to kind of build that parasympathetic muscle…
Tiffany:	Absolutely, and I think just having body awareness. It starts to tune the nervous system in to what’s happening inside of the body versus all of these external stimulus. Which is part of the traditional path of Yoga is to take your mind away from all these distracting stimulus to be able to draw it to one point so that whether you’re trying to focus on your work and improve cognitive function, you’re able to focus on the one thing at hand, or be able to relax and allow your body to digest. There’s this sense of pulling our body awareness into itself so that our bodies can focus on what’s important. 
The body awareness within a Yoga practice of just being able to show up to Yoga class- whatever class that might be. Or, maybe you’re working with a teacher and lie on your back and go from- maybe you’ve gone from a long day at work and you lie on your back and all of a sudden you notice it: “Wow, I was really tense.” It’s not so much about having to relax, but part of it is just noticing those sensations, “Wow, I really hold a lot of tension here all day long.” Before the nervous system can change it has to notice that there’s something wrong. So, the body awareness is the foundation of that, and then learning what it feels like to relax; learning this parasympathetic response-this relaxation response- through even just gentle Yoga practices, restorative poses, yin practices, breathing practices. Meditation, obviously, is a part of retraining the parasympathetic nervous system. However, for people who are maybe more tense, or stressed out, or unable to relax, it can be much harder to start in meditation, for many people. 
Matt:	So, that dovetails into another question I had about the different types of Yoga, and I’ve done a single bikram Yoga class before, for example. I’ve done one or two sort of regular Yoga classes. What are the different sorts of Yoga practices, and are there different benefits from the different types? Or, I guess, could you kind of go into that a little bit? 
Tiffany:	Absolutely, I mean there’s a lot of difference from one style to another. There’s the more vigorous styles of “bikram” or “hot Yoga”, “vinyasa Yoga”, “power Yoga”, ashtanga Yoga, which are really more movement based, definitely more strength based and, and more active, I guess, then some of the other forms. Definitely within those they’re going to have different attributes. I’d say, for someone who’s looking for more active practice, who feels like movement is really helpful for them… I like to teach my teachers a brainy understanding of why and how to use things, but with my patients and my students, and my teachers as well, I think one thing is really important- of utmost importance- is that you recognize how your body feels both during and after these practices to know how to apply it. 
So, if you go to an ashtanga or a vinyasa class, or one of these more vigorous classes; bikram class; and you feel really tired afterwards, it might be that your body really just needs something more mellow. People who need to move, who’ve got to let some energy out and need to exercise, often feel really invigorated after a really vigorous movement based practice. But, obviously there’s differences between teachers and levels, and each one of those. So, if you’re new to Yoga and you just want to start with it, find a place that offers some beginner’s classes to help you learn the proper alignment and form and things… and just trying one out to find one that you like. 
There’s the other side of it, which is more the relaxation side of it, which is more mellow practices for people who need to destress, who need to relax, who need, in many ways, more of the parasympathetic stuff that we talked about. Restorative Yoga is one where you’re using a lot of props to support the body so that you can really relax and notice the breath; notice the sensations. Yin Yoga is a type of Yoga where poses are held for three to five minutes in order to really affect the connective tissue. Which is really great for range of motion; for people who are really tight. And then there’s pranayama practices that really focus on the breathing. And then all sorts of combinations in between there. 
There’s many different styles. Iyengar’s a great one; Iyengar’s also very alignment based. Kind of more of a set system developed by a man named “Iyengar”, and is very alignment focused. Hatha Yoga is kind of a general term for really any of the Asana practices, but also can be used as a term for more moderately paced that have some movement, and also some relaxation and body awareness, which can be like a nice middle ground if you’re not sure where to begin. But, I really recommend that people sample out; not only teachers because every teachers going to be slightly different, as well as styles. And if you’re new, to try and find beginner friendly classes because it is helpful to get a little extra insight. There’s so many people practicing Yoga now days that the intermediate classes often skip over a lot of the beginning stuff assuming that people know that and have heard it. Then you ever really feel like you understand it. It’s nice to kind of understand what you’re doing first in a beginner class, or even just working one-on-one with a teacher for a little while, but there’s a lot of variation out there within those as well. 
Matt:	And that’s something personally, I’ve felt a little bit of… almost “overwhelm” of being interested in Yoga, but also being like, “Well, I don’t know if this class, or that class, is the class I should take.” I’m curious, for someone who’s listening… or someone like me, even, who maybe wants to get started, but hasn’t really ever done it, what is the best first step for somebody to take?
Tiffany:	I would say just to be really simple. If you’re looking for something more active, I’d look for something that’s vinyasa based; that’s kind of a very big category of Yoga that you can find in most places. If you’re looking for something more mellow, looking for more restorative or yin. Then just searching Yoga in your area and reading the descriptions. I think you learn a lot from someone’s bio. The beauty of Yoga now days is in most places there’s a lot of options, so you can find a teacher who sounds interesting to you. But, it should be enjoyable to some extent, though it might be more difficult and challenging, whether that’s to relax or to,  in the more vigorous classes too; in a physical sense.
Find something that feels helpful to you, which is going to be very different from one person to another, and to kind of let your gut guide you on that one.
Matt:	In terms of other exercise styles; other types of exercise; would you say there’s certain things that maybe work well in conjunction with Yoga? Or certain things that you might want to gravitate towards?
Tiffany:	There’s a lot of different takes on that. I think, you know, I do a lot with athletes and training teachers to work with athletes. I think it’s – for any sport- can be a really great adjunct because most sports have repetitive motions, or injuries associated with them, and working through different ranges of motion, restoring range of motion, as well as working the smaller-maybe deeper-muscles that really help to stabilize a joint in a different way than they would in their sport-kind of like a cross training mentality- can be really helpful. We see a lot of help with Yoga as cross training for athletes.
You know, if you have a specific sport, especially if you’re high caliber athlete, or you have a really specific injury, I think you really should be working one-on-one with a teacher so that it can really be accommodated to your unique body. If you can find someone who can work with you one-on-one that’s always preferred, especially for specific things, but you get a lot out of a group class as well. Being able to just go through a general practice; that can be helpful too. 
As far as specific exercise, I think it’s nice to find what you like. Something I really believe in as a healthcare provider is that I always encourage my patients to find something they enjoy. I think exercise is more valuable, in a health sense, if you can enjoy doing it. The benefits of it will be much more than if you’re one of those people that just feels like they’ve got to go pound the pavement for however any miles a day, and they feel like that’s just what they have to do to lose weight. But, there is some benefit from the enjoyment of something. Whatever that exercise might be. 
Matt:	As an experienced Yoga instructor, when you see people starting out, what do you typically see people struggle the most with?
Tiffany:	I think the hardest thing is the unfamiliarity with it. Most people come and do Yoga class, and especially nowadays that Yoga has become so popular and common; most people, when they’re new, they go into Yoga class-and maybe even a beginner class-and they’re surrounded by people who know the words; they know the names; they’re comfortable. They have their Yoga clothes on and they’re comfortable. Someone who’s new might come in in shorts and a tee shirt and not really be able to move so well. It’s finding clothes that are comfortable to move around in, which doesn’t really necessarily have to be spandex, but something that’s comfortable for you to move around in. You know, it’s getting comfortable. 
If it’s a vigorous class-sweating-not everyone loves sweating. And then most people who come to Yoga are a little bit tighter, and though it’s really not about being flexible, it’s kind of being okay with not being the best in the room, and not having to touch your toes. Not having to do the pose this perfect way, but being able to just kind of not worry about what the people are doing around you, and listen and tune in to your body, and breathe, and be in the experience rather than be distracted by all of the things around you. To just allow yourself to enjoy it as it is; to not have to be able to do the poses a certain way, but be able to really appreciate the experience for whatever that might be as a beginner. Whether that’s even just starting to understand what they’re saying and looking around and kind of figuring it out, and then getting more comfortable with it. That takes, for some people, a few classes, for some people, many classes. For most people, though, even just after one or two classes they’re starting to get the hang of it and feel more comfortable there. 
Matt:	Tell me a little bit about the concept of Yoga medicine.
Tiffany:	For me, as a healthcare provider, I saw a really big gap. I really wanted to- I saw a lot of other healthcare providers wanting to provide Yoga to their patients. I think it’s a great adjunct to so much. I think our medical system is so overwhelmed by people with pain, in particular, but also ongoing care. People, even with a physical therapist, often only go for four to ten visits, and that’s a lot more than they go to their doctors or anyone else they see, potentially. Even as an acupuncturist, there’s something really great about having continuous care with people as a Yoga teacher, or sending them off to have continuous care with a Yoga teacher- with someone who can check in with them on knowing that Yoga is really great because our health is not an endpoint, it’s a constant state of fluctuation depending on the circumstances we’re in, our environment, our work, our families; emotionally. So it’s a nice kind of ability to have these tune-ups for our lives; for our health.
As a healthcare provider I saw the biggest missing link there was for people to be able to find Yoga teachers that they could refer to. In the Yoga world, it’s fantastic now, we have so many different types of Yoga and so many great things out there, but as a healthcare provider I’ve always wanted to send my patients to someone who could talk to them on a- in a Western sense. Who understood the anatomy and the physiology, and was going to be able to work with their unique body rather than- maybe as a doctor you might send someone to a Yoga teacher, they might end up going and chanting. Which could be great too, could be very helpful, but I think as a doctor you want to have some idea of who you’re sending them to.
My whole purpose with Yoga medicine was to create some kind of continuity; of reliability; for a resource for doctors to be able to refer their patients to; to work with them on an ongoing sense. Especially now that we have so much research around the effects of Yoga on the nervous system, on disease and illness and injuries, and the body in general. For me, the really big missing link was them being able to have a referral source. 
So, on our website we’ve got our “find a teacher” site where people can go and type in their zip code, and it’s really transparent. They can see all the teachers around them; they can see exactly the training they’ve completed with us so that if they have a shoulder injury, or their patient has a shoulder injury, they can find a teacher who’s done the shoulder module. They can see exactly what they’ve studied and how much they’ve trained with us, and where they are, and how to get ahold of them. We’ve got over a thousand teachers on there, or so now, all over the world. So, o it’s a really great resource for people to connect with teachers more one-on-one. Which, in a medical sense, as a healthcare provider, it’s really difficult to be like, “Just go to a Yoga class”, because as you know now, from this talk so far, there’s a huge expanse of differentiation between different types of Yoga practices, and one might be really helpful for your patient, and one might be not helpful- it might even make things worse, potentially. I think for the most part Yoga’s going to help many people in a general sense, but when you have a significant injuries or illnesses, or high caliber athletes really wanting results and needing help, I think it’s really important to have someone you can work with one-on-one who also is really familiar with the body from both an Eastern and a Western perspective.
Matt:	Within your practice, what results- or maybe some specific examples, or stories, of things that you’ve seen- from prescribing people Yoga, for lack of a better term?
Tiffany:	I’ve used it for a lot of different things. Most of my specialty is in sports medicine, so most of what I’ve worked with has been injuries. I was at the Nike World Headquarters for six years or so and started their acupuncture program there, and taught Yoga there. So a lot of it has been with orthopedic injuries, physical injuries, but definitely seen people with long-term sleep problems; I’ve worked with people with fertility issues; athletes. I lived in New York for a while and saw all sorts of interesting celebrities and things. I would say 70% of my practice, though, is orthopedics. People with back pain is a big part. Anything from herniated discs, to chronic lower back pain that’s been undiagnosed; hip issues; surgical patients who have had a lot of surgeries and not been able to find any relief there. I’ve seen, I think, 25,000 or so patient visits over the past 12 years or so.
Matt:	Wow!
Tiffany:	Yeah. It’s been a big mix.
Matt:	You also touched on-a moment ago- the research, and some of the science behind the effects of Yoga on the body. I was wondering if you could share a few of the findings, or some of your favorite examples that you’ve seen…
Tiffany:	A lot of my current res- the work that I’ve been doing really looking at research lately has been really around meditation; because of my latest book on meditation. Really, to be honest, the research that we see around the actual physical practice is actually much less. Most of the research is around really simple things like breathing practices and meditation, and really its effects on anything from eating disorders, to people’s experience going through cancer protocols- really more of the side effects, to  eating disorders-bulimic, bulimia- anxiety, depression… there’s a lot of them. 
I think recently I’ve been looking-and really interested in- a lot of the research around how meditation really affects our relationship, both to food and to metabolism. My book, “Meditate Your Weight”, is really about how meditation affects the metabolism, and not just the obvious one. I think the big part is looking at how it affects the nervous system for the parasympathetic mode. That stress response is a big part of the cortisol release, and really intimately influences the metabolism and how our bodies hold on to fat, or release fat, in the body. But also, a lot of the research that we’ve seen around people’s relationship to food and how we eat, and how we feed ourselves. Looking at research around people who have eating disorders like bulimia and their ability to do a really simple practice like meditation, where they’re just simply noticing, without judgement, without any desire to fix or change. Just starting to notice our natural tendencies. Research around people’s food choices and how having the regular meditation practice can really influence that.
There’s a lot around meditation. In fact, you’re probably familiar with it. I definitely would say there’s less around the physical practice, which is coming. We’re actually starting. We’ve just hired someone at Yoga Medicine from Brown University who is leading our own research branch within Yoga medicine where we’re running our own research experiments looking at more the physical practice of Yoga because that is definitely an area where research is lacking comparatively to meditation. I think it’s time for it to come of age.
Matt:	For listeners who are curious about meditation, we have done a very in depth episode on it in a podcast in the past so that’s definitely something to check out. We also had a great interview with a meditation teacher and entrepreneur, Vishen Lakhiani. So, if those are things that you’re interested in, I highly recommend checking both of those episodes out.
I’m also curious, Tiffany, tell me a little bit about how meditation impacts metabolism. That’s something I’m fascinated with. 
Tiffany:	The first part was what I was just mentioning around the connection to the parasympathetic response, and the stress response, and the cortisol release. You would see a lot around the cortisol and insulin response, and how our holds on to fat. How it really tells our body how to process the food that we take in. There’s a big part of it around that simple response that I’ve already talked quite a bit around, the parasympathetic response, which is really tied into that stress response, and the cortisol, and the hormonal response of stress, in both an acute and a chronic sense. As we start to get into more of that stress response, which is the sympathetic response, the fight-or-flight mode that I talked about before, we see this release of cortisol, this release of insulin, and how our body then starts to hoard fat and hold onto fat. It has a very difficult time releasing fat. And by fat, I’m talking about adipose tissue, not to be confused with the fat that we eat, but also how we process the fat that we eat. So, by really teaching the body to kind of steer clear of that stress response; that chronic stress response. I found for myself- my first book was on optimal health, it was called “Optimal Health for a Vibrant Life” and it was really looking at Yoga and nutrition home remedies, and a lot of the things I’d used with my patients, and one thing I found afterwards-after working with people for a while with that- was that there was a pretty good segment of people who were seeming to really do all the right things. With the internet, and media now, we have so much access to eating well and exercising, but that weren’t really changing; that weren’t able to lose weight; weren’t able to feel healthy. I think, for me what I noticed was that a big part of it, in my experience was one, the stress- there was this common theme of stress in many of those people- with most of those people- and their ability of then to kind of slow down and relax and integrate this parasympathetic response.
The beauty of meditation for me is that it’s not just that. There’s this very physical, chemical component to it of looking at the regulation of the nervous system and the stress response, and cortisol and insulin, but what we’re looking at, really primarily, is not just that but really how we relate to food. How we nourish ourselves. This mindfulness that meditation allows us to really examine, “Why am I eating this?” You know, to even just to take a second before you sit down for a meal and notice how you feel. Notice what you need in your body. It sounds kind of esoteric and vague, but to be able to check in and notice, “Do I need to eat this plate of sugar or bread”, or whatever it might be? “Is this going to feel good?” “How do I feel after I eat?” Again, the key is really without judgement. They have actually done a lot of research around this ability to slow down and savor food, and feel more satisfied connected with a meditation practice, and helping us understand what real physical hunger and fullness feel like. Dealing with things like cravings; helping us just look at those cravings that come up and notice what it is our body is actually needing.
To me, meditation also really helps people- there’s so many diets out there, and it really helps people understand for themselves what’s really helping. This concept of eating the right diet is really more of a brainy mentality versus actually experiencing what feels best in my body, because there’s a diet that works for everyone. Knowing which one to choose can be a lot. So, really understanding not only that, but our relationship to food, our relationship to our body image; how we see ourselves. This concept pf people that have been really overweight for a long time, and lose weight. Maybe they had to shift to go through a doorway or move differently in their day, and they still move in those patterns. The counter side of that is people who can’t lose weight, who can’t wrap their head around this new concept of change; this concept of them in a different body weight. So, looking at our self-concept, how we see ourselves, what we expect of ourselves… and it’s very different than going through counseling- which is fantastic; I think very helpful; but it’s this common thread of being able to observe without judgement, without having to fix. Without even having to change, but being able to see how our habits- how they reflect on our bodies and our minds, and our spirit. To have the option to change if we want, or not, if it feels like it’s something we don’t want to change, or isn’t helpful. But, the option just to be able to observe.
I think there’s multiple layers to how meditation really influences us. Not only for our metabolism, but for health in general, which is always to me of the utmost importance. More important than anything is just: How do we feel better? How do we allow ourselves to be healthier and more functional, and more connected to the people around us?
Matt:	Really insightful, thank you so much for sharing that. I think that was an amazing description of not only the power of meditation, but also specifically in the context of health, and body image, and eating.
What would one piece of homework be that you would give to somebody listening to this episode? 
Tiffany:	I think, with our understanding, we’ve talked a lot about the nervous system on this call. With our understanding of the nervous system that we’ve talked about- with the parasympathetic mode and the sympathetic- one of the most important things we start to learn now with this concept of neuroplasticity-which is simply the concept that the brain and the nervous system can change. We used to think that once they were created- the neural connections were created in the body that was it. Now we know that they can change, what’s really important to that, whether you’re practicing Yoga, or meditation, or just starting to be more mindful in your day, is that we do it really regularly. So, whether you find a Yoga pose that you like, or a meditation practice that you like, the small things that you do really regularly- meaning every day, even if that’s for three or five minutes a day- are going to be much more significant, much more powerful in whatever kind of change or transformation you’re looking for, or healing process you’re looking for, or health, will be much more impactful than the things that you do for long periods of time infrequently. So, whether it’s something really simple like lying on you back for a few minutes every evening when you get home from work, and just taking a few minutes to just breathe deeply. To maybe count inhale for four counts and exhale for four counts, and just take a moment to relax and allow your body to kind of slow down.  Maybe it’ll help with your sleep, or just your ability to relax, or how you feel in your body; or maybe that’s meditating. But, to find just a few minutes that you can tap into that a day will be much more helpful than just going to one Yoga class a week or a month. But, the Yoga class once a week or a month can be a great way for you to learn that process, as well. So, small things done regularly make a big impact. Finding something that you can daily is really helpful.
Matt:	And what are some other books and resources you’d recommend listeners check out who want to dig in and do some more homework about this topic?
Tiffany:	There’s one that’s a really great book called Yoga as Medicine, which is a great book. There’s an orthopedic doctor who talks about using Yoga for different remedies. There’s- gosh, there’s so many Yoga books, I’m not really sure even where to begin, but that’s probably a good one that comes to mind. One of the things I really like to reinforce with people is that there can be this barrier of feeling like you have to learn a lot, or know a lot, before you start things. I’m such a big fan of the “just do it”-not just cause I worked at Nike- like, jump in and start trying it and see what works for you. I wouldn’t say there’s any specific books that stand out. There’s so many now, I’d kind of go and kind of graze through the shelves and see what you like, but more importantly I would go and experience the classes and find something you like so that you get out of the brainy mentality and really into your body.
Matt:	It’s all about that body awareness.
Tiffany: 	Yeah, I think its key. We spend a lot of time at our computers, and in our brains, and I’m such a huge fan of books and reading- I’ve got so many- but, I think for many people in the modern day world, getting away from that and just getting into your body can be more helpful. 
Matt:	Where can people find you online?
Tiffany:	All of my information is on justtheyogamedicine.com website. Most of our social media’s under Yoga Medicine as well. They can follow us on Instagram, or Facebook, or… mostly those two, I guess. On the Yoga Medicine website we’ve got a “find a teacher” tool there for patients, or students, or doctors, as a reference, and all sorts of information on there as well… articles and things for people.
Matt:	Awesome! Well, Tiffany, thank you so much for being a guest on the show, and I know listeners are going to have a ton of really informative takeaways about Yoga and meditation from this interview.
Tiffany:	Thank you, Matt. It was great to chat.