Sleep 2.0: Upgrading Your Nightly Reboot with Dr. Matt Walker

0:00:02 – Matt, it’s so good to see you, man.
0:00:03 – It is great to see you too.
0:00:05 – Thanks for coming out here and visiting me here.
0:00:06 This is awesome.
0:00:09 – Absolutely, yeah, it’s been a couple of years.
0:00:10 – Dude, you look amazing.
0:00:11 Your hair looks awesome.
0:00:14 – Well, yeah, I mean, for people probably not watching,
0:00:15 two points.
0:00:16 Firstly, you should probably not believe
0:00:18 and I think I say if I have a haircut like this.
0:00:21 And number two, clearly no one told me
0:00:24 that the pandemic was over and we couldn’t get you a haircut.
0:00:27 So I just had a moment and–
0:00:28 – I love it, dude, I love it.
0:00:29 – Here it is.
0:00:30 – That’s great.
0:00:31 It looks amazing.
0:00:32 – I’ll go with it for a while.
0:00:34 – I’ve threatened, probably my wife mostly,
0:00:36 that a couple of times I’ve tried to grow my hair out
0:00:38 and there’s that awkward stage you gotta get through.
0:00:40 – Oh, I went through it so.
0:00:41 – And it looks so bad.
0:00:43 And it’s like, if you can’t get through that,
0:00:43 I couldn’t get through it.
0:00:45 But you clearly got through it.
0:00:47 – That period, I think someone at the gym,
0:00:48 they came up to me and they said,
0:00:49 “You know what?
0:00:52 You look like an older version of Kurt Cobain.”
0:00:53 – Oh, wow.
0:00:54 – And I thought, “You know what?
0:00:55 You are so close with the compliment.”
0:00:56 – Right.
0:00:57 – If you’d just gone to the end part,
0:00:58 I would have loved you.
0:00:59 – A hundred percent.
0:01:02 – It was the older part that really just stuck the night.
0:01:04 So, yeah, anyway, I’m going with it.
0:01:06 – Well, I need to, in a couple of years’ time,
0:01:09 when I, it won’t be that long before I see you next,
0:01:10 but go for it.
0:01:10 – Go for it?
0:01:11 – Yeah, absolutely.
0:01:12 – I mean, I got a lot of gray though.
0:01:13 I got a lot of gray.
0:01:15 So it would be like a gray, long hair thing.
0:01:16 – What do they call it?
0:01:19 No, someone told me the silver fox.
0:01:19 – That’s right.
0:01:21 – And I’d have to do like a man bun thing.
0:01:22 Anyway, we’re getting off topic.
0:01:24 We’re starting on topic.
0:01:25 – Yeah, sleep, yeah, not her.
0:01:26 – So, Matt, like let’s set the stage here.
0:01:28 I mean, obviously you’ve been on the podcast before,
0:01:30 but for those that haven’t heard,
0:01:34 Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology
0:01:36 at the University of California, Berkeley.
0:01:38 Good old Berkeley.
0:01:40 You’re also the founder and director
0:01:43 of the Center for Human Sleep Science,
0:01:44 and you have a podcast,
0:01:47 which I highly recommend going and checking out,
0:01:48 the Matt Walker podcast.
0:01:49 Congrats on launching that.
0:01:50 What’s been the video? – Thank you.
0:01:51 – Over a year now?
0:01:53 – It’s probably getting close to two years now.
0:01:54 – Wow, okay.
0:01:57 We’ve dropped about 70 episodes,
0:01:59 and they’re a little different for folks listening.
0:02:04 They are mostly shorter monologues from yours truly.
0:02:06 That hits specific topics,
0:02:09 and it’s essentially a little bit of a bite-sized piece
0:02:13 of sleep goodness to accompany your waking day,
0:02:16 usually lasting between about 15 to 30 minutes,
0:02:20 rather than necessarily the interview interaction itself.
0:02:22 So, people can check that out,
0:02:25 covers probably what most would want to explore,
0:02:27 but I’m always looking for new topics,
0:02:29 so if people listening hit me up,
0:02:31 I will record some content for you.
0:02:32 – Yeah, fantastic.
0:02:33 And it’s obviously on all the major platforms,
0:02:34 Spotify all over the place.
0:02:37 – It is indeed, fortunately for people’s ears,
0:02:42 I will have used them with this disastrous voice.
0:02:44 – The accent always goes a long way, so.
0:02:46 All right, so let’s get started here.
0:02:48 Lots of stuff since we last caught up.
0:02:51 I have a ton of questions for you.
0:02:53 You know, science, as we know, is just always evolving.
0:02:57 And you wrote a book about sleep that was a huge hit.
0:02:59 Scared the crap out of me, personally.
0:03:00 There was a lot of scary–
0:03:01 – I had that from a lot of people too.
0:03:03 – There’s a lot of scary things in there.
0:03:05 But, you know, I’m really curious,
0:03:07 like the book’s been out for a while now.
0:03:11 You know, what do we know now
0:03:14 that is either debunked from that book
0:03:16 or has changed science-wise?
0:03:19 Because those are hard books to write,
0:03:21 because, you know, things will change
0:03:22 in your understanding.
0:03:23 – Yeah, absolutely.
0:03:24 – What has changed?
0:03:27 – I would say, I think I’ve probably changed my stance,
0:03:30 firstly, on caffeine a little bit.
0:03:32 Back then, I was, I mean, firstly,
0:03:34 when I came out the gate with this whole sleep thing,
0:03:36 I was far too dictatorial.
0:03:39 I was a disaster in terms of a public communicator,
0:03:40 because it was, very much.
0:03:42 I think someone said my TED talk
0:03:44 should have been called sleepor else, dot, dot.
0:03:46 – Right, all timers are–
0:03:48 – Yeah, you know, had one bad night of sleep,
0:03:49 and basically, I should, you know,
0:03:52 get my estate and order and say goodbye to my mum,
0:03:53 because that’s it.
0:03:57 I think I was very,
0:04:01 I think, opinionated on caffeine in terms of,
0:04:04 it’s just no good, no way that you look at it,
0:04:06 it’s just not going to help your sleep.
0:04:09 Now, I think that the more measured approach is twofold.
0:04:12 Firstly, the dose and the timing make the poison.
0:04:13 – Yes.
0:04:16 – Second, there was this really strange correlation
0:04:20 where drinking coffee was associated
0:04:23 with remarkable health benefits,
0:04:25 and sleep was associated with drumroll,
0:04:27 remarkable health benefits.
0:04:29 – There was like liver protection on the caffeine side,
0:04:31 there’s a few other things, yeah.
0:04:33 – Do the Venn diagram overlap,
0:04:34 they’re almost homologs for each other.
0:04:36 So people said, I don’t get it, Matt.
0:04:39 You’re saying that caffeine is bad for sleep,
0:04:42 but yet they seem to transact almost the same health benefits.
0:04:44 Go and square that circle for me,
0:04:46 because I can’t figure it out.
0:04:48 If you look at the data, however,
0:04:53 it’s not that caffeine itself is health-promoting,
0:04:56 it’s that the coffee bean contains a whopping dose
0:05:00 of antioxidants, and because we’re so deficient
0:05:02 in our antioxidant needs,
0:05:05 because we are not eating enough whole food supplies
0:05:09 in these days, the coffee bean has been asked
0:05:12 to carry the herculean weight
0:05:14 of all of our antioxidant needs,
0:05:17 and therefore no wonder drinking coffee
0:05:20 looks like it’s linked to health benefits.
0:05:22 Case in point, if you look at the health benefits
0:05:26 of decaffeinated coffee, they’re very similar.
0:05:28 So it’s not the caffeine it’s,
0:05:32 so now I would say, first I advocate for drink coffee,
0:05:36 try to limit it to about three cups-ish,
0:05:39 so that’s the dose, and then try to cut yourself off,
0:05:42 depending on your rate of clearance,
0:05:44 I would say on average about 10 hours
0:05:46 before you expect to go to sleep.
0:05:47 It’s not about rule of thumb.
0:05:50 – How would one, I mean, obviously we can,
0:05:54 half-life seems like on caffeine metabolism
0:05:56 is gonna be a little bit different for everyone.
0:05:58 There’s some genetics- – Good experience.
0:06:01 – Yeah, because I mean, I literally,
0:06:04 we all know this, we know somebody that can have
0:06:08 after dinner latte, or cappuccino, or espresso, right?
0:06:12 And it’s 8.30 at night, and then they’re lights out by 10.
0:06:12 – Yeah.
0:06:14 – What the hell is going on there?
0:06:15 – Isn’t it impressive?
0:06:17 – It’s very, I wish I had it.
0:06:19 – Yeah, ’cause I’m a caffeine sensitive person,
0:06:22 so first, most of us with an asterisk
0:06:25 will know what general sensitivity we are,
0:06:29 does it completely deconstruct my sleep or not.
0:06:31 You can do a genetic test,
0:06:33 and the different kits out there will tell you
0:06:34 if you’re slow or fast.
0:06:35 – So there’s a snip that’s up there.
0:06:40 – So there is a snip, and we know it comes onto an enzyme,
0:06:45 a liver enzyme, and it’s a cytochrome P450 enzyme,
0:06:52 and I think it’s the CYPA1,
0:06:54 and I’ve probably got that wrong correct in the comments,
0:06:56 but don’t worry about that,
0:06:58 you can just essentially, you know,
0:07:00 subjectively guesstimate it.
0:07:03 The range is remarkable.
0:07:08 The average adult will have a half-life of caffeine timeline
0:07:10 of about five to six hours.
0:07:12 So in other words, after five to six hours,
0:07:16 half of that caffeine is still swelling in your brain,
0:07:19 which means it has a quarter-life of 10 to 12 hours.
0:07:20 – People get that confused all the time
0:07:22 ’cause they think, oh, half-life, five to six hours,
0:07:24 this means it’s cleared by 10 or 11 hours,
0:07:25 and that’s not it.
0:07:27 We have to play the half-life game yet again.
0:07:28 – Correct.
0:07:30 – ‘Cause so for the next, there’s another half-life,
0:07:30 then another half-life.
0:07:31 – And it just goes, yeah.
0:07:33 – And so, you know, think about, you know,
0:07:35 grabbing a quarter of a cup of coffee
0:07:37 just before you took yourself in,
0:07:41 and then you think, why is my sleep not ideal?
0:07:42 – Right.
0:07:44 – Could be the reason that because you had a coffee at noon,
0:07:47 and it’s the equivalent of taking a quarter of a cup
0:07:49 of coffee just before bed.
0:07:50 So keep that in mind.
0:07:52 The range, however, the published ranges
0:07:56 go from as little as about two hours and 45 minutes.
0:07:59 So some people have a half-life of caffeine,
0:08:00 not of five to six hours,
0:08:04 but they can clear 50% of it within less than three hours.
0:08:05 – That’s crazy.
0:08:07 – You know, less than half the time.
0:08:09 Others will have a half-life
0:08:11 somewhere around about 12 to 14 hours.
0:08:14 Those are the people who, you know,
0:08:15 if they have one in the morning,
0:08:19 geez, don’t even look at another cup of coffee
0:08:20 for the rest of the day.
0:08:23 – You know, I’m the type that if I have a second cup
0:08:28 any time past 10 a.m., I’m gonna have a late, late turn in.
0:08:30 – And what time is your,
0:08:33 and your average your typical bedtime with that 10 a.m.?
0:08:36 – I would like to be lights out like asleep by 10 30.
0:08:37 – Okay.
0:08:39 – Like I would say then that means 11 30.
0:08:41 And then sometimes I’m like, oh gosh,
0:08:42 look, it’s midnight now, you know?
0:08:43 So which is a bummer.
0:08:45 – So if you give yourself a nice kind of 10 to 12 hour
0:08:47 window, so assuming, you know,
0:08:50 somewhere in the middle of the distribution,
0:08:51 you’re gonna be just fine.
0:08:52 – Yeah.
0:08:56 – So I would say I’ve changed my tune on coffee a little bit.
0:08:57 – Can you say when you change your tune,
0:09:00 or you change your tune in terms of,
0:09:02 you realize the antioxidant benefits of coffee.
0:09:04 So that’s why you’ve changed your tune?
0:09:05 – Correct.
0:09:06 – So you’re not loving the caffeine side still.
0:09:09 – I still, I think if you look at the data
0:09:12 in terms of performance enhancement,
0:09:15 yes, in caffeine naive users,
0:09:16 when you dose them with caffeine,
0:09:18 they get some great cognitive benefits.
0:09:19 – Right.
0:09:21 – But what happens over time is that your system
0:09:24 quickly adapts to the caffeine.
0:09:27 And then what you perceive as your caffeine benefit
0:09:32 in the morning is simply you coming out of withdrawal.
0:09:34 So you’ve, you’re not any better.
0:09:35 You’re not limitless.
0:09:36 – Right.
0:09:37 – You’re just getting back to baseline.
0:09:39 – Just getting back to baseline.
0:09:40 – Yeah.
0:09:41 – And gradually over time,
0:09:43 we mistake the former for the latter
0:09:47 and it’s a conflation caused by the,
0:09:49 essentially the body adapting to it.
0:09:50 – Oh, I don’t mistake it.
0:09:51 Every day I know I’m getting back to baseline.
0:09:53 I’m like, bring me back.
0:09:54 – Yeah.
0:09:57 So I would say that’s definitely one of those areas.
0:10:00 – Anything we can take to speed up the metabolism after.
0:10:02 Like if you’re like, ah, crap,
0:10:04 like I drank a little too much today,
0:10:05 can I sprint it off?
0:10:06 Can I, is there anything that we know of
0:10:09 that helps that exit?
0:10:11 – Not to enhance the exit.
0:10:13 Most people then if you look at society,
0:10:16 we just published this study in Wall Street Traders
0:10:18 and we did a two week continuous tracking of them.
0:10:21 And they essentially have a,
0:10:23 it’s an up as and down as profile.
0:10:27 So they will be hammering caffeine during the day
0:10:28 as they’re working on the markets and trading.
0:10:29 – Right.
0:10:31 – And then because they’re so wired at night,
0:10:34 there is nothing to essentially, you know,
0:10:36 dissolve it very quickly.
0:10:41 What they do then is self-medicate with alcohol as a sedative.
0:10:42 And then when they wake up the next morning,
0:10:45 because they’ve had such bad sleep because of the alcohol,
0:10:47 they’re reaching for now seven cups of coffee
0:10:49 rather than the five that were keeping them going.
0:10:52 – They’re going seven deep.
0:10:54 – It was stunning.
0:10:57 – Well, what do you say coffee is so variable?
0:10:58 You know, it’s like,
0:11:02 for me, every morning I take 23 grams of whole beans
0:11:04 and grind them and do a pour over
0:11:05 because I’m that kind of geek when it comes to that stuff.
0:11:09 Like I like the single origin, good stuff, you know?
0:11:11 When you’re studying coffee in general,
0:11:13 are you thinking like, you know,
0:11:16 seven, 11 kind of pour, pull the handle kind of coffee?
0:11:19 Like what are we, how do you figure out caffeine?
0:11:21 – Yeah, so that’s one of those places where there’s
0:11:24 just such limited data, which is–
0:11:26 – So much variability by being type two, right?
0:11:28 – Yeah, exactly.
0:11:29 – How has it been brewed?
0:11:30 What are the beans?
0:11:33 Is it, you know, a light roast?
0:11:34 Is it a dark roast?
0:11:36 You would think the dark would have more caffeine.
0:11:37 It’s usually the opposite.
0:11:39 Lighter roast actually has more caffeine in it.
0:11:42 So huge amounts of variability.
0:11:45 This is just simply saying, how many cups of coffee?
0:11:45 – Yeah.
0:11:47 – Do you have completely blunt instrument?
0:11:51 But we do see a fairly predictable correlation between
0:11:53 on days where they’re drinking more caffeine,
0:11:56 sleep is demonstrably worse, you know,
0:11:57 demonstratably worse.
0:11:58 – Yes.
0:12:01 – And that usually leads to then a self-medicating
0:12:04 of the downers in the evening, which is alcohol,
0:12:09 and the cycle just continues and you get locked into it.
0:12:10 So–
0:12:10 – So I would–
0:12:12 – How would you recommend someone,
0:12:14 is it just hydrating off of caffeine slowly over time
0:12:17 when you think about people wanting to break that cycle?
0:12:21 – Yeah, it’s, there is, you can go cold turkey.
0:12:22 – I don’t want to do that.
0:12:23 – Depending on–
0:12:24 – It would get helped, yeah.
0:12:25 – And it is miserable.
0:12:28 You will probably fall off the wagon
0:12:30 and you will lose your abstinence very quickly
0:12:32 because of the headaches.
0:12:35 I would say just gradually ramp it down.
0:12:40 Try not to signal to your brain that you’re in a state
0:12:43 of privation with the number of cups that you’re having,
0:12:45 simply just start to mix in some decaffeinated.
0:12:46 – Ah, wise.
0:12:49 – Gradually, so your brain still thinks,
0:12:52 well, I’ve had my four cups of coffee today.
0:12:53 – Right.
0:12:56 – One full on, second one, maybe half and half.
0:12:58 And here I’m talking half and half split
0:13:00 between caffeinated, decaffeinated.
0:13:01 Same with the third one.
0:13:02 And then the fourth one,
0:13:05 maybe just move into decaffeinated.
0:13:08 And then gradually titrate yourself back and back,
0:13:10 probably a better way both physiologically,
0:13:12 but also psychologically.
0:13:13 – Yes, okay.
0:13:14 – Does that make some sense?
0:13:15 – It totally makes sense.
0:13:17 And also, I’ve done this with,
0:13:20 and subbed out tea in this regard.
0:13:22 So I’ve done green tea instead.
0:13:25 What are your thoughts on tea?
0:13:28 I know the caffeine content can be a little bit less.
0:13:30 Depends on how oxidized the tea is, you know?
0:13:31 – Correct, yeah.
0:13:32 – It ranges.
0:13:33 There’s also L-theanine in tea.
0:13:36 There’s also, what’s it, ECGC in there as well.
0:13:37 – That’s right.
0:13:41 – So is that better for us in general, for sleep?
0:13:42 – If you look at the data, and again,
0:13:46 this is where the agnostic to type of tea,
0:13:49 which can be a huge factor, but this is where we’re at.
0:13:51 I mean, no one’s funding that kind of science.
0:13:53 – Did I ever tell you I was a certified team master?
0:13:54 – Are you really?
0:13:56 – Yeah, I took like years of training
0:13:57 to become a certified team master.
0:14:00 I have a tattoo of Shanong, the man that discovered tea
0:14:02 inside of my arm right here.
0:14:03 Yeah, so we could talk all day about tea.
0:14:04 I’m happy.
0:14:05 – Okay, let’s geek out upstairs.
0:14:07 – Camera, we should absolutely geek out.
0:14:08 This is pretty fascinating.
0:14:10 Okay, learning so much more about Kevin
0:14:12 as we all are folks listening.
0:14:15 So I would say that if you look at the data,
0:14:19 tea does not seem to have anywhere near the blast radius
0:14:23 that caffeine by way of coffee seems to do.
0:14:28 Largely, I think just because of a kind of dose per serving
0:14:30 caffeine dose per serving volume,
0:14:32 if you were to match the caffeine,
0:14:34 I think you’re gonna get the same
0:14:36 for the most part sleep effects.
0:14:38 – Do you think L-theanine helps offset that a bit?
0:14:40 ‘Cause that’s a more of a kind of relaxing chilling.
0:14:42 It’s also used in sleep supplements at times.
0:14:44 – It is.
0:14:45 And there’s a little bit of data
0:14:48 that does support L-theanine for sleep supplementation.
0:14:49 We can talk about that later.
0:14:51 It can take the edge off.
0:14:54 I think some of that, you know…
0:14:56 – Yeah, you don’t get the jury in it.
0:14:57 – That’s right.
0:15:01 But I would say it’s no solid data,
0:15:02 certainly no randomized control trials
0:15:04 that we can look at,
0:15:06 but I would try it,
0:15:09 see if you think it provides some degree of pacification
0:15:12 while still giving you the cognitive focus
0:15:15 that you are kind of trying to game the system for.
0:15:16 If you do, great.
0:15:18 – Yeah, you know, I’ll tell you a hack
0:15:18 that I’ve heard about.
0:15:20 I haven’t seen it backed up with any published papers,
0:15:23 but I know many tea drinkers have told me about this,
0:15:25 like professional tea folks.
0:15:26 If you take, you know,
0:15:28 tea can be steeped multiple times,
0:15:30 like high quality leaves, not like the tea bags,
0:15:32 but like real whole leaf like teas.
0:15:34 If you take the first steeping
0:15:36 and you just throw it away, pour it out,
0:15:38 apparently 80% of the caffeine
0:15:40 is released in the first release of the steeping.
0:15:42 So if you, let’s just say you’re like,
0:15:44 okay, it’s early afternoon.
0:15:46 I want a cup of Oolong,
0:15:47 but I don’t want that caffeine.
0:15:50 Steep it, pour it out, do the second steeping.
0:15:53 You can still get the same flavor profile
0:15:55 and less, way less caffeine, so.
0:15:59 – Now, what’s the etiquette regarding you steep
0:16:01 for the first brew, let’s say in the morning?
0:16:02 – Yeah.
0:16:07 – Can you then go cold, steep the second time
0:16:10 at midday for that second round,
0:16:13 essentially de-concentrated version?
0:16:15 Or is it simply just, you know,
0:16:16 – No, you’d be fine.
0:16:17 – You’d be fine.
0:16:18 – It depends on the leaf.
0:16:19 I mean.
0:16:20 – You can go sort of cold and then steep the brew.
0:16:22 – Yeah, you can let it go cold, that’s fine.
0:16:27 I would say that it depends on how delicate the leaves are.
0:16:29 I mean, there’s some teas like a Dragon Well,
0:16:32 which is a pan fried like flat tea that is,
0:16:35 you know, or a really fine Sencha or something like that,
0:16:36 where you just don’t want the leaves,
0:16:40 ’cause they kind of don’t have a lot of integrity already.
0:16:42 They’re very thin, very needle-like,
0:16:45 and they probably get a little mushy at that point.
0:16:47 Whereas in Oolong, you know,
0:16:48 you actually don’t see the full leaf
0:16:52 expand completely until the third or fourth steeping.
0:16:55 So it’s going to be tightly ball kind of round tea.
0:16:56 – Right.
0:16:57 – And so, yeah, it can really,
0:16:59 it has a lot of integrity to it,
0:17:00 and it can hold up to multiple steeping.
0:17:02 So it depends on the tea.
0:17:04 But yeah, you can absolutely do that.
0:17:06 You could have that first cup, let it sit there,
0:17:07 and then, you know, come back,
0:17:09 I’ve done that many times, come back three hours later,
0:17:11 pour some more hot water on it, and you’re good to go.
0:17:12 – And it’s a two-for-one.
0:17:13 – Yeah.
0:17:14 – ‘Cause you’re doing what you said,
0:17:17 but just trying to protect some degree of sleep and nature.
0:17:17 – Yes.
0:17:20 – But also, you know, just saving some money, too,
0:17:23 ’cause you can sometimes not be the most inexpensive of.
0:17:27 – Yeah, so when I was in the middle of China,
0:17:28 in the Yunnan province, in the middle of nowhere,
0:17:33 I was working in kind of making my own,
0:17:35 what’s called Pu’erh, which is a fermented tea cakes
0:17:38 that are out in the middle of nowhere out there.
0:17:40 And I was working with some of the tea masters
0:17:43 on their farms, and what they would do
0:17:46 is they would actually break off a big chunk of Pu’erh tea,
0:17:48 and they would put it in these vessels,
0:17:52 like these, you know, the double-pane glass,
0:17:56 insulated vessels that really keep heat in,
0:17:58 and they would let it all fall to the bottom,
0:17:59 they would have a little screen at the top,
0:18:00 and so they could just drink through
0:18:02 and leave the leaves in all day long,
0:18:06 because unlike some other teas, mostly greens,
0:18:08 that get really kind of a stringent,
0:18:10 kind of like, if you oversteep them,
0:18:13 you know, that bad taste you don’t wanna have.
0:18:16 Pu’erh, you can steep multiple times, so many, many times,
0:18:19 so what they would do is they would leave it in their vessel
0:18:23 and literally add and steep it 15 times throughout the day.
0:18:25 And so by the end of the day,
0:18:26 there’s no caffeine coming out of that at all,
0:18:28 but you’re still getting some of that flavor,
0:18:31 and so there’s a natural kind of degradation in caffeine,
0:18:34 and you’re still getting a great drink all day long,
0:18:36 which is kind of cool, yeah.
0:18:37 So that’s another little fun hack.
0:18:39 – Yeah, I would say probably, you know,
0:18:40 coffee in general is one of those things
0:18:43 that I change my mind on in terms of new stuff
0:18:45 that’s come out since the book got so much,
0:18:50 I would say probably the ability to,
0:18:55 firstly, the ability to potentially predict
0:19:00 what people are dreaming using brain scanners, scary.
0:19:01 I think the second thing would be–
0:19:03 – Wait, in that it’s gotten better?
0:19:05 – Yeah, a lot better.
0:19:07 – Predict ahead of time?
0:19:09 – Yes, using machine learning.
0:19:10 I think the second kind of–
0:19:12 – What the fuck?
0:19:14 – Wait, you gotta go deep there, so hold on.
0:19:15 – Yeah, let me give you, I’ll throw,
0:19:16 and I’ll throw a spaghetti against the wall,
0:19:18 you tell me what you wanna dive into.
0:19:23 One is the prediction of mostly what someone’s dreaming.
0:19:26 The second is the definitive, well,
0:19:28 definitive scientific proof that lucid dreaming
0:19:31 is actually real, and we’ve struggled with that
0:19:33 with sleep science for a long time.
0:19:34 Also in the dreaming realm, gosh,
0:19:36 I’m coming up with three dreaming ones,
0:19:39 and then I’ll come up with a fourth that’s not,
0:19:42 is the idea that we can actually create
0:19:44 a clinical therapy for nightmares,
0:19:46 whereas before we could never do that.
0:19:47 We now have something like that,
0:19:49 and I’d love to double click on that, too.
0:19:53 The final thing, which probably we may get to later,
0:19:56 is to speak about sleep augmentation.
0:19:58 So for the first time, we can actually augment
0:20:01 and enhance human sleep without pharmacology,
0:20:03 and I think this is one of the most exciting areas.
0:20:05 – That’s on my list of things to talk about.
0:20:05 – So we’ll come back to that,
0:20:10 but anything there that is of any interest you tell me.
0:20:12 – How much time do you got?
0:20:13 This is very cool, so–
0:20:15 – All nights as the sleep researcher.
0:20:18 – Yeah, let’s talk about the predicting of dreams.
0:20:25 Love where you just say go and go into that,
0:20:27 but first I just wanna say, for me,
0:20:29 sometimes, and I’ve heard this from many people,
0:20:33 dreams can be triggers from ordinary life, right?
0:20:34 For example, a passing of someone.
0:20:37 Someone passes away that’s near and dear to you.
0:20:39 They can make reoccurrences in your dreams
0:20:40 shortly after the passing.
0:20:43 Like that is a known thing that people report.
0:20:44 – It’s very reliable.
0:20:47 – Yeah, so what do we know about the interaction
0:20:50 between daily life and dreams,
0:20:52 and then how does that play into the prediction side?
0:20:53 – That’s a great question.
0:20:57 What we’ve known for a while now is that during dreaming,
0:21:02 we do not simply rewind the videotape of the waking day
0:21:03 and replay it.
0:21:05 If you look at how much of the waking day
0:21:07 is actually replayed at night,
0:21:12 it’s probably less than 5% is a vertical replay
0:21:13 as if we just kind of, you know,
0:21:16 we were YouTube streaming all day of our lives,
0:21:19 and then we just go back and we now compress it
0:21:21 times two speed, we do it in eight hours
0:21:22 versus the 16 we were awake.
0:21:24 No, that doesn’t happen.
0:21:29 However, the two things that are ultra reliable
0:21:31 in terms of red thread narratives
0:21:35 that run from our waking life into our dreaming life,
0:21:39 emotional concerns, people of significance.
0:21:42 Usually those two things are very coupled together,
0:21:46 of course, that is if there is a Da Vinci red thread,
0:21:48 sort of that almost bleeds through
0:21:51 from your waking life into your dreaming life.
0:21:55 And that has pointed us to now some great scientific studies
0:21:57 and we’ve done a lot of work in this area too.
0:21:59 What is the function of dreaming?
0:22:03 Not just REM sleep, because most of what we think of
0:22:05 as dreaming comes from a stage of sleep
0:22:08 that we call REM sleep or REM9 movement sleep.
0:22:10 Now, there are lots of functions of REM sleep,
0:22:14 things like regulating your body temperature
0:22:16 and getting you ready for the day,
0:22:18 nothing to do with the mental activity of dreaming.
0:22:20 The release of testosterone,
0:22:24 males and females release their peak levels of testosterone
0:22:27 during REM sleep, another physiological component
0:22:29 that we don’t think is reflected in dreams.
0:22:34 So then how can you show me that it’s not just REM sleep
0:22:38 that has a function or that dreaming per se has a function,
0:22:42 but what you dream about is meaningful
0:22:43 rather than epiphenomenal.
0:22:46 And what I mean by that is think of a light bulb.
0:22:49 A light bulb is designed to produce light.
0:22:51 It turns out that when you touch a light bulb
0:22:54 or at least an old light bulb, it would be very warm.
0:22:59 And the purpose of the light bulb was never to create heat.
0:23:02 It’s just what happens as an epiphenomenon
0:23:04 of creating light in that way.
0:23:06 And so too could be dreaming
0:23:10 that whenever we create this physiological state
0:23:12 called REM sleep for all of its functions
0:23:14 that we’ve just spoken about,
0:23:17 you also get this byproduct called dreaming.
0:23:18 And it’s completely epiphenomenal.
0:23:21 It’s just like the redness of your blood, it’s useless,
0:23:25 absolutely makes no functional benefit for your body.
0:23:28 Now, we use it in medicine now, the redness, but that aside.
0:23:31 So, but studies then pointed us to say,
0:23:34 there’s something going on about what it is you’re dreaming
0:23:39 that interrelates to what it is you’re emotionally going through.
0:23:43 And we’ve since proven that not just dreaming,
0:23:45 but dreaming of certain things,
0:23:48 gifts you emotional resolution.
0:23:51 In other words, one of the functions of dreaming
0:23:53 is overnight therapy.
0:23:56 It is emotional first aid.
0:23:58 And it’s during our dream state.
0:24:00 And I can explain, we put forward theory
0:24:03 and we’ve got now some nice data for this biologically
0:24:05 as to why it is dreaming is so good at doing this.
0:24:09 Dreaming takes those emotional difficult experiences.
0:24:12 And it almost acts like a nocturnal soothing balm
0:24:14 that just sort of takes the sharp edges
0:24:17 off those difficult painful experiences
0:24:20 so that we come back the next day or several weeks later.
0:24:25 And now we have a memory of an emotional event,
0:24:28 but it’s no longer emotional itself
0:24:31 because dream sleep has essentially detoxed
0:24:33 the emotion from the memory.
0:24:37 It’s a little bit like stripping the bitter rind
0:24:39 from the informational orange.
0:24:42 The bitter rind is the emotional wrapper
0:24:44 that’s said to your brain at the time of learning.
0:24:48 Okay, this experience, this was important.
0:24:50 And your brain uses emotion in that way
0:24:52 to prioritize and red flag memories to say,
0:24:57 give these priority, make sure that these are remembered.
0:25:00 But after that event, it’s not adaptive
0:25:01 to hold on to the emotion anymore.
0:25:02 – Right, right.
0:25:05 – So the brain holds onto the information
0:25:10 of the salient experience, but then let’s go of the emotion
0:25:13 and what gives us that ability to essentially divorce
0:25:16 the emotion from the memory is dreaming.
0:25:17 – Fascinating.
0:25:18 – And so, yeah, so that’s-
0:25:19 – This is so cool.
0:25:21 So hold on, I got a couple of things I want to comment on.
0:25:23 This will explain TMJ then as well.
0:25:25 People that clench their jaws at night.
0:25:26 – Correct.
0:25:27 – They’re going through something very emotional.
0:25:29 They’re having something that would,
0:25:32 does TMJ happen during REM sleep during dreaming?
0:25:35 – We will see it during both REM and non-REM,
0:25:38 but certainly you can see these muscular,
0:25:40 these very strong muscular pulses.
0:25:42 You’ll also see it in hands twitching.
0:25:45 If you’ve got a dog, when they go into REM sleep,
0:25:48 almost these kind of twitches and then at one point,
0:25:51 they will start, they look like they’re running.
0:25:53 That normally, by the way, only happens in dogs
0:25:57 who are older and more so males than females.
0:26:01 Same thing in humans and what happens during REM sleep
0:26:05 when we are younger, both dogs and humans,
0:26:07 and it’s seemingly all mammalian species,
0:26:09 is that when we go into dream sleep,
0:26:12 our brain paralyzes our body.
0:26:17 You are locked into a physical state of incarceration
0:26:19 that there is a signal sent down your spinal cord
0:26:21 to something called your alpha motor neurons
0:26:24 and they control all of your voluntary skeletal muscles.
0:26:26 Bang, you’ll go into paralysis.
0:26:28 And in fact, if I’m looking at the muscle activity
0:26:29 in my sleep laboratory,
0:26:32 if we were to bring you up and do a sleep recording,
0:26:34 just before you go into REM sleep,
0:26:36 your muscle tone is still quite high.
0:26:38 Now you’re lying in bed and you relax,
0:26:42 but there’s still a sort of this volumous tone
0:26:45 to your muscles and then all of a sudden,
0:26:48 I’m looking at the trace, bang, it just goes flat.
0:26:52 And you are locked into this physical,
0:26:55 what we call muscle atonia, you’re paralyzed.
0:26:57 – It’s almost a disassociative kind of,
0:27:01 so I have an episode coming on after yours here soon
0:27:02 with a doctor around ketamine.
0:27:06 And ketamine is very much like a dream state
0:27:08 when it’s used in a therapeutic setting.
0:27:13 And you’re describing a lot of very similar things here.
0:27:13 – Correct.
0:27:16 – The ability to look and see something
0:27:20 in a dream-like state, process it, let it go, release.
0:27:22 – Correct. – Come back.
0:27:25 – I don’t think it’s consequential or inconsequential
0:27:30 that both of those states, ketamine-induced brain states
0:27:33 and also the dreaming state are now linked
0:27:38 to aspects of mental health and mental wellness.
0:27:42 And so coming back to the paralysis and the dog,
0:27:45 as we get older, unfortunately, the brainstem center
0:27:47 that sends that signal down the spinal cord to say,
0:27:49 you know, you’re going to REM sleep, paralyze,
0:27:51 and by the way, the reason this happens, of course,
0:27:54 is your mind essentially can dream safely
0:27:56 without you acting out your dreams.
0:27:57 If you think that you can fly
0:28:00 and you’re living up in an apartment block,
0:28:02 probably a bad idea to try to enact that out.
0:28:04 You’ll be popped out the gene pool rather quickly
0:28:07 in that regard, so you get paralyzed.
0:28:11 And as we age, that part of the brainstem starts to degrade.
0:28:14 The signal gets a little bit lossy
0:28:17 in terms of its sort of significance,
0:28:19 and therefore we can start to act out their dreams.
0:28:22 In males, usually over the age of 50 or 60,
0:28:24 we have a disordered name for it.
0:28:27 It’s called REM sleep behavioral disorder,
0:28:28 acting out your dreams.
0:28:30 This is not sleep walking or sleep talking.
0:28:32 That’s very, very different.
0:28:34 And unfortunately, the diagnosis
0:28:36 of REM sleep behavioral disorder
0:28:39 significantly increases one’s chances
0:28:40 of Parkinson’s disease.
0:28:43 Now, it is not a deterministic thing,
0:28:46 meaning if you have REM sleep behavioral disorder,
0:28:48 it doesn’t mean that in 15 or 20 years time,
0:28:51 you will definitively get, not at all.
0:28:52 It’s just probabilistic,
0:28:57 but it can increase that risk by 50 to 60%.
0:28:58 So at that point,
0:29:00 since we don’t have many effective wholesale treatments
0:29:03 for Parkinson’s, we’ll often just work with a patient
0:29:06 to try to help to see if we can continuously track
0:29:08 some of their Parkinson’s symptomatology
0:29:10 and intervene as early as possible.
0:29:12 – Yeah, wow.
0:29:13 So many questions here.
0:29:15 One, to loop back real quick on the TMJ thing,
0:29:17 ’cause I know a lot of people suffer from that,
0:29:21 like extreme pain from clenching their teeth at night.
0:29:23 You see it just before going into REM,
0:29:24 then you’re frozen, right?
0:29:26 So you’re not gonna see a lot of it during actual REM.
0:29:28 – Correct, yeah, because that is a voluntary
0:29:29 skeletal muscle, yeah. – Right, exactly.
0:29:33 – So what does your gut tell you is happening
0:29:37 during that stage of sleep that is causing TMJ?
0:29:41 – So right now, you will get these huge bursts
0:29:44 of motor activity from the motor cortex
0:29:46 that are essentially instigating
0:29:48 all of your fictive movements in the dream state,
0:29:52 ’cause we’re all, often we’re moving a great deal.
0:29:55 And some of that can, particularly if you’re stressed,
0:29:57 that’s a time or you’re anxious,
0:30:01 we typically see higher rates of that mandibular
0:30:04 sort of clenching and the rates too.
0:30:06 However, as I said, it’s there,
0:30:08 it’s not exclusive to REM sleep.
0:30:11 We also see it in deep non-REM sleep as well.
0:30:15 So I think it’s probably got a little bit less to do
0:30:18 with the paralysis mechanisms of REM sleep
0:30:21 as it is to do with this automatic state of the brain
0:30:24 that when you are stressed and anxious,
0:30:25 there is still a remnant,
0:30:29 there’s still kind of a ghost in the machine as it were.
0:30:32 And that ghost is anxiety, which still causes.
0:30:36 And I don’t think it’s necessarily that people are doing it
0:30:37 because that’s what they do during the day,
0:30:40 they’re sort of tense and they don’t typically do
0:30:42 that very stressed either.
0:30:46 I think it’s just the expression in terms of muscularity
0:30:50 plays out most definitively at the level of the jaw.
0:30:51 And we have no idea why,
0:30:55 but that’s where it seems to, if the pressure valve pops,
0:30:58 that’s muscly where it seems to happen.
0:31:01 – So you haven’t seen any data around increases
0:31:04 in cortisol levels or anything that might be causing causal
0:31:07 for compounds that might be causal for what?
0:31:10 – For TMJ, not that I’ve seen so far.
0:31:12 That data could be out there, I don’t know of it.
0:31:16 – Okay, so you had mentioned this idea
0:31:20 of being able to stop nightmares clinically.
0:31:22 That’s fascinating.
0:31:23 And then I want to get back to the,
0:31:25 maybe we should start with the dream prediction stuff.
0:31:27 – Yeah, well, I’ll do it real quick.
0:31:29 – What’s up with the prediction stuff?
0:31:31 – It was a great study by a Japanese team.
0:31:35 And there are probably several studies in the literature
0:31:39 that when I look at them, or if I were the reviewer,
0:31:42 the first thing my reaction to them was,
0:31:44 I am so jealous.
0:31:46 I am, and the worst, most shameful reaction
0:31:49 because I just thought, this is such a brilliant study
0:31:51 and I wish I could have it myself.
0:31:52 – Yeah.
0:31:54 – And then I let it go because I’m way too old
0:31:56 to have that kind of hubris.
0:31:58 And then I usually say, it’s a fantastic study,
0:32:00 we should publish it, just do these things.
0:32:01 Here’s what they did.
0:32:04 They took people who were awake
0:32:06 and they put them inside of a brain scanner
0:32:07 and they started to show them
0:32:10 lots of different categories of objects.
0:32:15 So cars, houses, men, women, dogs, sports equipment,
0:32:18 you name it.
0:32:22 And they saw hundreds of these images
0:32:24 in distinct categories.
0:32:27 All the time, the researchers were scanning their brains.
0:32:31 And then the researchers used those categorical trials.
0:32:34 Now, they were seeing a soccer ball here,
0:32:36 football for me, a football here,
0:32:40 then they were seeing a woman on the street here,
0:32:41 then they were seeing a house here.
0:32:44 So all of these categories were all jumbled up.
0:32:45 They’re all single trials.
0:32:47 But then you can use machine learning
0:32:50 and the brain scans themselves.
0:32:53 And you can go back and say, okay, for category A,
0:32:55 let’s call it sports equipment.
0:32:57 What is it?
0:32:58 What’s the pattern of brain activity?
0:33:00 Show me the signature.
0:33:01 Parts of the brain that are lighting up.
0:33:05 Okay, now for females, show me that signature.
0:33:06 And it’s different.
0:33:09 And then show me it for sports cars.
0:33:10 Okay, it’s different too.
0:33:12 Excellent.
0:33:14 So now we’ve got definitive,
0:33:16 for each individual this is,
0:33:21 I’ve got “Heaven Roses” distinct brain map of sports cars.
0:33:22 I mentioned it because I think
0:33:24 we both have the same predilection.
0:33:25 So there it is.
0:33:28 There’s that category signature of brain activity.
0:33:32 Now what they did was put those participants back
0:33:34 at a later point inside of the scanner
0:33:37 and then they just had them sleep.
0:33:38 And when they went into REM sleep,
0:33:40 they started scanning their brain.
0:33:41 Excellent.
0:33:44 So now we’ve got dream sleep, brain data.
0:33:45 Right.
0:33:48 Then they woke those individuals up
0:33:51 and one group of the scientists in the team
0:33:53 took dream reports from them.
0:33:56 The other half of the experimenters
0:33:58 who were essentially blind to that,
0:34:02 so now you’ve got essentially what the dream contained
0:34:02 from each of the,
0:34:05 so you’ve got ground truth experientially
0:34:07 of what these people dreamt about.
0:34:10 But then the other half of the research team went back
0:34:12 and they just used these templates that they created
0:34:15 from waking brain activity truth.
0:34:17 And they went searching.
0:34:20 So it’s a little bit like a forensics DNA scene.
0:34:21 You’ve got this segment of DNA
0:34:23 and you’re just going to go around the scene
0:34:25 and see if you can find a match.
0:34:29 And for the, let’s say it’s the male category,
0:34:30 they didn’t find a match.
0:34:32 For the houses category, they didn’t find a match.
0:34:35 But for the sports equipment they did,
0:34:37 for the females they did,
0:34:39 for the sports cars they did.
0:34:42 So all of a sudden what they were able to do
0:34:44 with high statistical accuracy
0:34:48 was predict the content of the dreams
0:34:49 of those individuals.
0:34:52 A, without even knowing what it is
0:34:54 that those individuals said that they dreamt,
0:34:57 they could tell just from the brain scans.
0:34:59 And the more frightening part was
0:35:03 even before they woke up and reported that dream,
0:35:05 the scientists from the data
0:35:07 could already tell what they dreamt about.
0:35:11 But here’s the little sleight of hand that I’ve just made.
0:35:14 I can predict what it was that you were dreaming,
0:35:18 but I can’t predict the precise content.
0:35:23 So was it a, you know, was it a Porsche GT3 RS
0:35:25 or was it a classic Aston Martin
0:35:26 in terms of the sports car?
0:35:28 We’re not at that level yet.
0:35:32 So I can’t definitively say, okay, you know,
0:35:35 you Kevin knows you were dreaming about a female.
0:35:37 I can’t really tell which female,
0:35:39 which, you know, ethically lots of people
0:35:41 may prefer at this stage,
0:35:44 but we’re getting ever closer to essentially
0:35:47 not just mind reading with brain scans,
0:35:49 but dream reading.
0:35:51 And that brings up a huge ethical concern
0:35:52 because for two reasons.
0:35:56 Once my dreams were my own, no one else’s.
0:35:58 They were ownership of me.
0:36:02 Now, of course they consented to the study,
0:36:03 but that’s debatable.
0:36:05 The second is dreams for the most part,
0:36:09 unless you’re lucid, are involuntary.
0:36:13 I don’t get to decide what it is that I dreamt about.
0:36:15 Now let’s say I dreamt about doing something terrible
0:36:17 to someone that I would wake up
0:36:20 and I’d be shocked at myself.
0:36:22 But now, all of a sudden,
0:36:25 if people were able to stick a cap on and read out,
0:36:26 you know, your partner comes through in the morning
0:36:29 and they’re looking at their iPad and saying,
0:36:31 Lord, I can’t believe what you dreamed about last night.
0:36:33 – Yeah, I mean the fidelity for that though
0:36:36 is gonna be way, so many years out.
0:36:38 – But you know, what we’ve realized is that the fidelity
0:36:41 for so many things in AI and machine learning
0:36:44 so has ramped to a surprising degree
0:36:46 beyond our expectations.
0:36:48 So that was the city.
0:36:49 So I will stop there
0:36:50 ’cause I won’t rant any further.
0:36:55 – So is it curious, when they read the brains
0:36:57 and they saw the sports cars, let’s say,
0:37:00 was that applicable across individuals
0:37:02 or just for that person?
0:37:05 Meaning did everyone’s brain light up in the same region?
0:37:08 – There was a lot of overlap.
0:37:10 But what they were clever to do,
0:37:11 and this is what sort of machine learning does,
0:37:16 is it gives you the ability to create bespoke brain templates
0:37:18 for each individual.
0:37:20 – Right, so there had to be a calibration period.
0:37:22 You couldn’t just walk in and put on a cap
0:37:23 and be like, oh, that’s a sports car.
0:37:27 – Yeah, exactly, because it’s not quite that.
0:37:32 Now, there may be generic-ness inherent across so many people
0:37:35 for sports car brain dream activity
0:37:37 that we’ll get there in the end.
0:37:40 But what they wanted to do was go out the gate strong
0:37:44 and say, look, if you and I are both going to Savile Rome,
0:37:46 we’re gonna get a suit tailored.
0:37:51 Your suit dimensions are going to be not dissimilar to mine,
0:37:53 but not the same as mine.
0:37:55 And so as a consequence, that’s what they were trying to do.
0:37:57 They were really trying to get individual,
0:38:00 unique snowflake-specific,
0:38:02 and that gave them the greatest statistical power,
0:38:03 if that makes any sense.
0:38:06 – Yes, so I know that there’s been, in the past,
0:38:08 kind of these benchmarks for what we wanna hit
0:38:11 in terms of minutes of deep versus REM versus light,
0:38:16 you know, to have a quote-unquote, great night’s sleep, right?
0:38:20 Are we leaning more towards also potentially content-based
0:38:22 benchmarks for high-quality sleep?
0:38:24 Could it go there or?
0:38:26 – You also, you should come and do a sabbatical.
0:38:30 So there was an abstract published,
0:38:34 probably about a year ago, from the MIT Media Lab.
0:38:36 They did something genius with machine learning.
0:38:40 They got individuals to report their dreams
0:38:42 day after day after day.
0:38:44 And they were also reporting,
0:38:47 okay, how did I feel the quality of my sleep was?
0:38:47 – Yes.
0:38:50 – Last night, in terms of my waking day function.
0:38:53 And then, using some clever machine learning,
0:38:56 they ripped through all of the dream reports,
0:38:58 and they tried to say, is there anything
0:39:02 about the informational content of what you report
0:39:04 that you were dreaming about,
0:39:07 that predicts the degree of sleep quality
0:39:10 and/or waking day restoration caused
0:39:11 by that prior night of sleep?
0:39:12 – Yes.
0:39:15 – Lo and behold, number one, yes.
0:39:18 Number two, what were the things more specifically
0:39:21 in the dream itself that were most predictive
0:39:24 of the degree of feeling of restoration?
0:39:27 The emotionality of it and the emotional components of it
0:39:30 would predict better, feeling better.
0:39:33 – Less emotion, more emotion, sad emotion, happy emotion,
0:39:35 like how did we break that apart?
0:39:39 – Yeah, it seemed to be just the more emotionally relevant
0:39:42 content to that individual, the greater,
0:39:45 essentially the emotional resolution you were getting
0:39:49 from your sleep, which gave you a better subjective feeling
0:39:49 the next day.
0:39:52 – What would you classify, give me a concrete example
0:39:55 of something you classify as emotionally relevant material.
0:39:59 – So let’s say that you, let’s say that I was coming here
0:40:03 and now I, you know, you and I, we are very relaxed together,
0:40:05 friends and so I wouldn’t have been stressed
0:40:08 by coming to this, but let’s say that last night,
0:40:10 I was going to do someone else’s podcast
0:40:12 and I didn’t know what our chemistry was like.
0:40:14 – Yeah.
0:40:17 – And I knew that it was usually an adversarial type
0:40:20 of interviewing and it was kind of a gotcha program
0:40:22 and stupidly.
0:40:25 Now there, I probably would have been dreaming
0:40:29 about some scenario where I come in,
0:40:31 they say we’ve suggested that we were going to cover
0:40:32 these sort of topics.
0:40:36 Ah, we’ve chosen to do a completely different set.
0:40:38 And we’re also going to focus on, you know,
0:40:43 two recent studies that seem to debunk two classic theories
0:40:44 in sleep science.
0:40:47 And in fact, we’ve got one of the authors here on the phone
0:40:49 and we’re going to, that was my dream.
0:40:52 And I was like, oh my goodness, this is, you know,
0:40:54 how are you going to weather this storm?
0:40:57 That would be one of those things were firstly,
0:41:00 that’s a sort of me trying to deal with the anxiety
0:41:01 the next day.
0:41:04 And if I go through it and I come up with a resolution
0:41:06 and I think, you know, it wasn’t so bad.
0:41:08 In fact, you know, people ended up thinking
0:41:10 that it was a really useful debate
0:41:12 and we were constructive in the end
0:41:13 and everyone was friendly.
0:41:16 And I just feel better about, you know,
0:41:17 the upcoming events and I feel better
0:41:19 about the waking day as a consequence.
0:41:23 – Okay, but if you had more of the quote unquote
0:41:25 nightmare version of that where it’s like
0:41:26 things didn’t go well.
0:41:29 – It was still a very emotionally intense dream.
0:41:32 You wake up, wouldn’t you say that?
0:41:35 Cause I’ve had these moments where high anxiety,
0:41:37 lots going on and horrible nights sleep.
0:41:40 Mostly probably cause I was not actually getting,
0:41:42 I was probably having a lot of micro waking moments
0:41:44 and other things that were going on.
0:41:45 So it can backfire.
0:41:47 – It can backfire if it’s too high.
0:41:50 And so I think everyone has had the experience
0:41:53 where you’ve got to wake up for an early morning flight.
0:41:56 You’ve got a six to five a.m. flight.
0:41:59 And you’ve got to wake up at 5.45.
0:42:00 – And you just cannot fall asleep.
0:42:01 – Yes, yes, yes.
0:42:01 – Firstly, you cannot fall asleep.
0:42:02 – Yes.
0:42:03 – Second.
0:42:04 – And then you wake up just before the alarm too.
0:42:05 – Isn’t that freaky?
0:42:09 That my alarm is set for 5.45 and I wake up at 5.43
0:42:11 and I am awake.
0:42:12 – Yes.
0:42:12 – You know, normally I’m not,
0:42:14 I don’t wake up until about 7.30.
0:42:16 But boy am I wired.
0:42:19 You know, forget the ASMR so I’m ready to go.
0:42:24 But what we know is that that type of what we call
0:42:29 anticipatory anxiety produces much more shallow sleep
0:42:31 across the night.
0:42:35 And the reason I bring this up is because we all,
0:42:40 we all baggage ourselves with a diluted low level version
0:42:44 of anticipatory anxiety every single night.
0:42:45 – Right.
0:42:46 – And it’s called our phone in the bedroom.
0:42:47 – Yes.
0:42:49 – What most people do,
0:42:51 and I’ve been guilty of this before too,
0:42:53 the first thing you do when you wake up,
0:42:55 what is it that we do?
0:42:56 We don’t sort of get out of bed.
0:42:58 We don’t do breathing exercises.
0:43:00 We don’t go and brush our teeth.
0:43:03 First thing we do, we swipe the phone open
0:43:07 and this tsunami of the world just hits you.
0:43:07 – Yes.
0:43:10 – And you essentially are training your brain
0:43:14 to have an anticipatory anxiety event every single morning.
0:43:17 Now it’s a low grade version of running flight,
0:43:19 but it’s one of those nonetheless.
0:43:22 And there’s good data that it will dissipate
0:43:26 the quality of that deep sleep in a non-trivial amount.
0:43:27 – Wait, it’ll dissipate even though it’s-
0:43:30 – Sorry, it decreases the amount of deep sleep that you get.
0:43:31 – The night that you’re about to-
0:43:32 – Correct, yeah.
0:43:33 – Given that you know-
0:43:35 – Like shallow state.
0:43:36 And your brain almost,
0:43:39 it’s almost as though your brain is on guard.
0:43:41 Where it’s just saying, you know what,
0:43:44 I don’t think I can let Kevin go too deep
0:43:45 in terms of his sleep tonight.
0:43:46 – Okay.
0:43:48 – I’m just gonna keep him in the shallow state
0:43:50 because there is anxiety afoot.
0:43:51 I know it’s happening in the morning.
0:43:53 – So it’s a micro anxiety of like,
0:43:54 okay, let me give you an example.
0:43:57 Like some horrible war has broken out.
0:43:58 It might be there.
0:43:59 And it’s gonna be right next to my bed
0:44:00 when I wake up in the morning, right?
0:44:01 ‘Cause I’m gonna like open it up
0:44:03 and I’m gonna see that first thing.
0:44:05 Subconsciously, somewhere there,
0:44:07 there’s a micro anxiety of having the device
0:44:09 and that information so readily available
0:44:11 that close to me.
0:44:12 – Correct.
0:44:12 – That is creating-
0:44:13 – With expectation.
0:44:15 You just think, okay, every morning.
0:44:16 – So phone in the other room.
0:44:17 – Phone in the other room.
0:44:18 – And then do you have like a one hour,
0:44:21 no touch policy in the morning?
0:44:23 – That genie of technology is out the bottle
0:44:25 and it’s not going back in however much I protest.
0:44:27 So I wish it would too.
0:44:29 But I think the thing is,
0:44:32 try to create just guardrails, boundary conditions.
0:44:35 Do the experiment for me for just one week.
0:44:39 For 15 minutes after you’ve woken up,
0:44:41 try not to use your phone.
0:44:43 Just 15 minutes.
0:44:45 That’s all you have to do.
0:44:47 So as soon as you finish brushing your teeth
0:44:48 or whatever it is,
0:44:50 as soon as you finish going through to the kitchen,
0:44:53 turning on the coffee pot or the kettle or,
0:44:57 then when you start brushing your teeth,
0:44:59 okay, then open your phone.
0:45:01 Just don’t do it first thing in the morning.
0:45:04 ‘Cause your brain, your prefrontal cortex,
0:45:05 like a classic car engine,
0:45:07 it’s not even up to temperature right now.
0:45:10 So you become incredibly limbic
0:45:12 in terms of your kind of Neanderthal brain reactions.
0:45:15 And you can get one of those emails that says,
0:45:17 oh my God, Kevin, on this,
0:45:20 the deal that we made just that there’s a huge legal error.
0:45:23 And all of a sudden, your eyes aren’t half open.
0:45:25 And you shoot it and you hit the email,
0:45:27 that’s gonna be a very different email
0:45:31 than the email that you would send just 30 minutes later.
0:45:34 So you’re giving yourself the prefrontal cortex chance
0:45:35 to get back online.
0:45:36 – Couldn’t agree more.
0:45:37 A couple of hacks I have on that front
0:45:39 is that Apple has these screen time features
0:45:41 now built into iOS.
0:45:43 Android has something similar.
0:45:48 I give myself a hard fixed 30 minutes on Instagram every day.
0:45:51 And I hit the limit and then I’m done.
0:45:51 And then I’m done.
0:45:54 And you can also say time of day as well.
0:45:56 So you could say, like, don’t allow me to use this before.
0:45:58 You know, and so it’s like,
0:45:59 for me that probably be like,
0:46:01 don’t check the stock market or something like that,
0:46:02 you know, like one of those apps.
0:46:06 But like, there’s, I think putting those guardrails in place.
0:46:08 And even if you have to override it one day, you know,
0:46:09 ’cause there is a button to do it.
0:46:10 – That’s completely fine.
0:46:13 – It puts just enough to keep you to like, yeah.
0:46:18 – I would ask most people for most of the time
0:46:21 when have you ever woken up
0:46:24 and absolutely non-negotiably needed
0:46:28 to do something on the phone within 15 minutes
0:46:32 of waking up and just be honest with yourself,
0:46:34 we can all probably name that one event
0:46:36 that happened seven years ago.
0:46:38 So, you know, is it really work?
0:46:40 And even then, you know,
0:46:43 if it was just 15 minutes later that you responded
0:46:45 with that have made great difference,
0:46:47 probably not as much as you think.
0:46:50 So it’s just not worth it for your sanity.
0:46:52 – Yeah, 100% agree.
0:46:54 Okay, so let’s keep moving.
0:46:55 I got a bunch of great stuff on here.
0:46:57 – I’ll be much more quick with my results.
0:46:59 – No, rapid five the next hour.
0:47:02 – No, no, this is great, I love it.
0:47:04 So, you know, obviously your job
0:47:06 is to dream up these experiments,
0:47:10 these crazy ideas, like these what if scenarios.
0:47:12 You’re dependent upon a funding,
0:47:14 a lot of these you have to write grants for.
0:47:17 There’s people that get to say yes or no,
0:47:19 thumbs up or thumbs down and, you know,
0:47:22 the wilder stuff sometimes can get the thumbs down.
0:47:26 And it’s a shame because it’s some of the more risky science
0:47:28 that I actually think like, gosh,
0:47:32 we should be doing that when it seems like sometimes
0:47:33 playing it safe is an easier way
0:47:35 to get approval for some of these things.
0:47:36 – That’s right.
0:47:39 – Is that true in your realm of–
0:47:40 – It is very much true.
0:47:42 Now, I think NIH does a fantastic job
0:47:44 of trying to distribute their funds
0:47:46 in a disease-specific related manner.
0:47:47 – Yes.
0:47:49 – But we also know that there are these things
0:47:52 called blue sky research projects.
0:47:55 And I mean, you could go as a technology historian,
0:47:58 you could go all the way back and you could look at,
0:48:00 you know, blue sky basic research
0:48:04 that only 20 years later created a revolution in technology.
0:48:06 And for 20 years, it just seemed to be
0:48:08 a waste of blue sky dormant money.
0:48:10 It’s the same in science too,
0:48:12 that you need some of those breakthroughs
0:48:16 either because people don’t see it as a lucrative,
0:48:19 you know, enterprise,
0:48:23 or they just don’t see it right now.
0:48:25 Following a lot of research funding,
0:48:27 understandably so because it’s so,
0:48:29 that it’s just not enough of it.
0:48:34 It has to be so evolutionary and not revolutionary.
0:48:37 And so they’re not going to fund something
0:48:41 that is really maybe even just two or three steps
0:48:42 further down the pipeline
0:48:46 than the data currently would indicate could be a success.
0:48:47 – Yes.
0:48:49 – So it’s, okay, this next grant,
0:48:52 is it for the most part 95% certain
0:48:55 that it will turn out the way that you predict it is?
0:48:56 Great, that’s a safe bet for us.
0:48:57 – Right.
0:48:59 – Is it 50/50?
0:49:01 We’re not going to give you a multimillion dollar grant
0:49:02 to do that.
0:49:03 – Well, and the sad thing is sometimes when that happens,
0:49:05 you don’t even get to see it published.
0:49:07 And then when it’s not published,
0:49:08 no one’s learning from that information,
0:49:10 which is a huge bummer in my mind.
0:49:11 – Correct.
0:49:16 – So a question for you then would be two-fold,
0:49:20 what is one thing that you believe to be true
0:49:24 that is not yet scientifically validated?
0:49:27 No gotchas later.
0:49:30 So kind of like a hypothesis that you might have right now.
0:49:32 And then the second piece of that is,
0:49:35 what is one experiment you wish you could do,
0:49:38 but yet they would not receive funding for
0:49:42 that put it at like the 100K or less kind of mode.
0:49:44 – Gotcha, okay, yeah.
0:49:48 – I think, and maybe I’m just going to use you
0:49:50 ’cause you’re such a brilliant mind to sort of,
0:49:53 I’ll say there’s maybe one venture opportunity,
0:49:56 one commercial opportunity,
0:49:59 and then one kind of blue sky research.
0:50:00 – Cool, I’ll tear ’em.
0:50:04 – The venture opportunity is I would take the $100,000
0:50:06 and right now I’ve been doing basic science
0:50:07 for most of my life.
0:50:10 I’ve seen the desperation for sleep out there
0:50:11 in the public.
0:50:12 I am now going to transition much more
0:50:15 to creating technology and devices
0:50:17 to actually change human sleep for the better.
0:50:21 That’s where I’m going to be probably moving
0:50:23 at least 50% of my research program.
0:50:23 – Oh, amazing.
0:50:26 – So I would take the $100,000.
0:50:27 When was the last time you heard
0:50:29 of a Sleep Incubator program?
0:50:31 – Sleep Incubator program, I don’t think I ever have, yeah.
0:50:33 – No one has, why don’t we?
0:50:34 – Yeah.
0:50:35 – ‘Cause it’s a third of our lives.
0:50:36 – Yeah.
0:50:37 – I would take the $100,000.
0:50:40 I’ve got a plan for a Sleep Incubator program.
0:50:43 Develop new entrepreneurs into the space.
0:50:45 The space is very lucrative.
0:50:45 – Right now.
0:50:48 – We need amazing entrepreneurs
0:50:51 to come up with fantastic ideas
0:50:53 for products and services.
0:50:56 But it has to be led by the guide of science
0:50:59 because there is so much snake oil out there
0:51:00 when it comes to sleep-shot.
0:51:02 – Oh yeah, especially on the southern side.
0:51:06 – Yeah, you know, it’s, sorry, my MSFPS.
0:51:08 It’s complete nonsensical.
0:51:10 So I would like to create that
0:51:13 to produce integrity and authenticity
0:51:15 around some kind of a Sleep Incubator program.
0:51:18 That would be sort of one component.
0:51:22 I think the second one, which probably is more
0:51:25 of a technology device,
0:51:28 I’m getting very interested in this tired
0:51:30 but wired phenomenon.
0:51:33 Most people in society, they’re struggling with sleep
0:51:35 because they’re so stressed and anxious.
0:51:37 And it is an epidemic.
0:51:39 It’s just, people say, I’m so tired.
0:51:43 I’m so tired, I’m so wired that I can’t fall asleep.
0:51:44 – Right, right.
0:51:46 – There is some really interesting technology
0:51:48 that we’re starting to play around with
0:51:50 that tries to hit something called the Vegas nerve.
0:51:53 – Oh, I’ve been using some of the stimulation devices
0:51:54 out there. – Correct.
0:51:57 And there’s, there are some ones that are implanted
0:51:59 and no one wants to do invasive.
0:51:59 – No.
0:52:01 – Some ones on the wrist that, you know,
0:52:05 but we’re actually looking at a novel entry point
0:52:10 that is non-invasive that will directly stimulate
0:52:11 the Vegas nerve.
0:52:13 And for those who don’t know the Vegas–
0:52:14 – Novel entry point sounds very–
0:52:15 – Yeah, don’t worry.
0:52:19 It’s, there are no rectal probes involved.
0:52:21 Nothing along that type of line.
0:52:25 It would be a very, it would be an easy thing to do.
0:52:26 – Okay.
0:52:27 – And not dissimilar to sort of–
0:52:28 – Have you tested this yet?
0:52:32 – We’ve, we’ve got a little bit of preliminary data,
0:52:34 but we’re going to try and hopefully get a big start.
0:52:36 But again, it’s getting funding for it.
0:52:38 – What’s the funding on that one?
0:52:40 – So right now it’s probably going to be
0:52:42 to do a pilot study about 100K.
0:52:45 And the goal here for folks is that the Vegas nerve
0:52:47 essentially is a way that you can communicate
0:52:50 between the brain and the body’s nervous system.
0:52:52 And the Vegas nerve, when you stimulate it,
0:52:55 it shifts you over from this kind of fight or flight branch
0:52:57 of your body’s nervous system
0:52:59 into this more quiescent, restful branch
0:53:00 called parasympathetic.
0:53:02 – Parasympathetic versus the sympathetic.
0:53:04 – Versus the sympathetic is nothing.
0:53:06 It’s terribly named in that regard.
0:53:08 It’s very agitated, but. – Yeah.
0:53:11 – And so that feeds a signal back up to the brain.
0:53:15 And when you are tired, your brain wants sleep,
0:53:18 but the body’s nervous system is fight or flight sympathetic.
0:53:21 You’re so wired, you can’t fall asleep.
0:53:25 And I want to disengage that using a device before sleep.
0:53:27 And so I’ve seen a lot of devices,
0:53:29 potentially snake oil out there,
0:53:32 that try to say that they can stimulate this.
0:53:34 I’ve seen everything from necklaces,
0:53:36 to behind the ear devices, to kind of you name it.
0:53:38 What makes this one so unique and different
0:53:40 from what we’ve seen out there in the market?
0:53:42 – I think it’s probably going to be the location.
0:53:44 It’s going to be one of those locations
0:53:45 that are out there right now.
0:53:49 But I think the way it sounds very easy to do,
0:53:52 let’s say that you’re just going to stimulate on the wrist.
0:53:54 And you think, well, it’s just stimulation on the wrist.
0:53:56 – And by the way, so people that know it,
0:53:58 is it typically a vibration that it’s a simulation?
0:54:00 – It’s usually electricity.
0:54:01 – Electricity, okay.
0:54:03 – So we’re inputting small amounts of voltage,
0:54:06 because if you want to communicate with the nervous system,
0:54:09 speak in its currency, which is electricity.
0:54:11 Although there are different ways you can do that too.
0:54:14 So, but it’s actually a high-dimensionality problem
0:54:16 because how long do you stimulate?
0:54:17 There’s one dimension.
0:54:19 Where do you stimulate on the body?
0:54:20 There’s a second dimension.
0:54:24 What is the intensity of the stimulation
0:54:26 in terms of the voltage?
0:54:31 What are the wave frequencies of the electrical stimulation?
0:54:34 Is it just a full, just you’re off
0:54:36 and you’re on for a while, then you’re off,
0:54:38 or is it an alternating current that it’s,
0:54:40 and if it’s an alternating current,
0:54:43 is it going up and down many times a second or very slow?
0:54:46 All of a sudden, you’ve got seven or eight
0:54:47 experimental groups.
0:54:49 It’s actually a very hard problem to crack.
0:54:50 – How are you reading this?
0:54:54 So you got this, it could be brain activity, essentially.
0:54:55 – So you can use brain activity,
0:54:57 you can use other metrics in the body,
0:54:59 such as heart rate or heart rate variability.
0:55:00 – Oh yeah, interesting.
0:55:02 So heart HRV will go up if you’re properly stimulating it.
0:55:05 – Properly stimulating it, heart rate can typically go down,
0:55:06 doesn’t always have to.
0:55:09 Heart rate variability typically goes up,
0:55:11 which is a good sign, not like heart rate
0:55:13 sort of higher during the day, that’s usually stressed.
0:55:15 We think of it as bad, heart rate variability,
0:55:17 the opposite, higher it is.
0:55:18 – This could help a ton of people.
0:55:22 – So that’s another idea that I’ve got brewing.
0:55:27 I think the third idea that I would love to try and do
0:55:34 is examine how to placate the bad things
0:55:36 that happen when you are sleep deprived,
0:55:40 because I can bang the drum about getting to bed
0:55:42 and just getting it in bed for eight hours.
0:55:45 And again, I can do that for the next 10 years,
0:55:47 just like I’ve done for the previous 10 years.
0:55:49 And there will always be either circumstances
0:55:51 where you’re not getting enough sleep, jet lag,
0:55:54 classic example, even I can’t necessarily
0:55:56 completely solve jet lag for myself.
0:55:57 – Yeah, and then also, that’s just–
0:56:00 – New parents, stressful times at work,
0:56:02 or I’m just someone.
0:56:05 So let’s just assume then that we can’t solve
0:56:08 all of that sleep deprivation.
0:56:09 You can throw your hands up and say too bad,
0:56:14 or you can say, well, but what’s the concern here?
0:56:16 The concern here is the downstream consequences
0:56:16 of a lack of sleep.
0:56:18 Really, the lack of sleep per se,
0:56:21 it’s the impact that it has on your brain and your body.
0:56:24 Recent data in animal models and in fruit flies
0:56:26 has been stunning.
0:56:28 What they’ve been able to demonstrate
0:56:32 is that a collection of different antioxidants
0:56:38 can prevent the mortality consequences
0:56:39 of total sleep deprivation.
0:56:44 So in other words, if you sleep deprive rodents
0:56:48 or fruit flies, they will often die.
0:56:49 – Yes.
0:56:51 – If you sleep deprive them enough, you will kill them.
0:56:53 – Well, you’ll kill humans.
0:56:55 There’s that, what is that horrible disease?
0:56:58 – It’s called fatal familial insomnia,
0:57:02 and it’s genetic disorder, and ultimately it leads to death.
0:57:04 – It sounds like probably the worst way to die.
0:57:07 – It’s up there with things like probably, you know–
0:57:08 – You mentioned it.
0:57:12 – ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s diseases, it’s called here.
0:57:14 – So people that don’t know what it is,
0:57:15 correct me if I’m wrong here,
0:57:17 but people just, they can’t fall asleep until they die.
0:57:20 – Originally what happens is that an insomnia sets in.
0:57:22 It becomes worse and worse and worse.
0:57:24 At some point they go into what seems to be
0:57:29 an enfeebled dementia state, and then ultimately they pass.
0:57:34 Now, it’s hard to argue that it’s the definitive lack
0:57:36 of sleep itself in the human model
0:57:38 because we can’t do the studies to show that.
0:57:41 It’s what we call a prion protein disease.
0:57:43 You’ve probably heard of like mad cow disease.
0:57:43 – Yes, yes.
0:57:46 – It’s one of those Grydsfeld-Yakov disease.
0:57:48 It’s another one of those, what we call a prion protein,
0:57:50 where these proteins go rogue
0:57:54 and they start to misfold in their confirmation shape,
0:57:56 and they will start to cause brain degradation.
0:57:57 – Gotcha.
0:57:59 – But let’s go back to the idea of saying,
0:58:02 okay, I’m just under conditions of sleep deprivation
0:58:06 for the next month, or I’m a frequent flyer,
0:58:09 whatever it is, it’s not really the lack of sleep
0:58:11 that bothers me, it’s all of the terrible things
0:58:13 that you’ve been telling me that are gonna happen.
0:58:16 So then why don’t I solve for the terrible things
0:58:19 rather than trying to stop the sleep deprivation itself?
0:58:20 That’s another way of doing it.
0:58:21 – Sure.
0:58:23 – And these studies, they were,
0:58:26 and it was almost seemingly that they stumbled upon it
0:58:29 ’cause they were using lots of different compounds to say,
0:58:33 is there anything that can salvage the life of these animals
0:58:36 in these total sleep deprivation experience?
0:58:38 – You gotta tell me what the compounds are.
0:58:42 – And the compounds were different forms of antioxidants.
0:58:45 – Like, PQQ, – Vitamin C,
0:58:46 – Turin.
0:58:47 – Elatonin.
0:58:48 – Elatonin.
0:58:49 – Interesting.
0:58:51 But the problem is that you have to create
0:58:55 this combinatorial set to get the best outcomes
0:58:59 because what they were finding is that different organ systems
0:59:02 were sensitive to different antioxidants.
0:59:07 So back up Matt, sleep deprivation is having a multi-organ,
0:59:09 multi-cognitive network,
0:59:11 emotional network devastation of your system.
0:59:12 – Right.
0:59:14 – How would you measure that?
0:59:16 That’s gonna be very hard to measure in humans, right?
0:59:18 – Well, not so much because we can do blood biomarkers.
0:59:20 I can measure your cardiovascular system.
0:59:23 I can measure your hormonal profiles.
0:59:25 I can measure your blood sugar responses.
0:59:26 Upstairs in the brain,
0:59:28 I can measure your functional brain connectivity
0:59:30 with my brain scanner.
0:59:31 I can measure your cognitive performance,
0:59:32 your learning and memory.
0:59:33 – That’s a great point.
0:59:35 – I can measure your emotional state.
0:59:37 I can measure your immune factors,
0:59:39 your inflammatory factors.
0:59:43 We can now map at fairly low-ish cost
0:59:47 a good amount of the human being in terms of physiology.
0:59:47 – Oh, that’s cheap.
0:59:49 Those are all cheap.
0:59:52 – I mean, brain scans are a couple of grand.
0:59:53 – The blood draw.
0:59:55 – The blood draw, you know, all of these things.
0:59:57 They’re not that difficult to do.
0:59:59 So all of a sudden I can map you,
1:00:02 you know, Kevin Rose, the biological organism
1:00:04 with some degree of fidelity
1:00:06 that’s acceptable for the experiment.
1:00:08 Then I can put you through experimentally
1:00:09 a night of sleep deprivation.
1:00:11 And then I can do it again.
1:00:13 And one of those conditions,
1:00:16 I’m going to dose you with the proprietary blend
1:00:18 of antioxidants that we’ve come with.
1:00:22 And I’m going to see if I’ve been able to de-risk
1:00:25 out of your system the consequences.
1:00:29 And then we’re going to map which of the ingredients
1:00:33 produced the sort of placation,
1:00:35 the protection against sleep deprivation
1:00:37 for different systems in your brain, in your body.
1:00:40 – So that’s the, so if you’re going to really ask me,
1:00:41 I love devices.
1:00:42 I love the idea.
1:00:45 I want to create a sleep incubator program,
1:00:47 but this to me, because then I could create
1:00:49 a proprietary blend.
1:00:51 I know it has to be a for-profit.
1:00:54 You can’t, you know, got to make money to fund the studies
1:00:55 ’cause I’m not going to sell snake oil.
1:00:58 If my mom’s buying this for like 50 bucks
1:01:00 or 100 bucks per bottle, you know,
1:01:02 then that’s her hard earned pension money.
1:01:03 So I’m going to create it
1:01:05 and I’m going to need money to do that.
1:01:06 So yes, you monetize it.
1:01:09 It’s a for-profit system, but then all of a sudden
1:01:12 I’m going to try to do something for the public.
1:01:14 I’m not going to publish a paper
1:01:16 that sits in a library somewhere
1:01:19 that based on the mediocrity of my own science
1:01:22 that only leads to seven people reading it.
1:01:23 I want to do something for the world.
1:01:27 – I mean, but this has to be a true placebo blind.
1:01:29 Like you have to go all the way, right?
1:01:30 – But you start off.
1:01:34 You don’t have to start off full on RCT randomized control.
1:01:38 Sort of placebo control crossover design, multi-armed.
1:01:42 You can just start a crawl, walk, run approach.
1:01:42 – Sure, sure, sure.
1:01:45 – And so it would be easy to blind people.
1:01:46 They wouldn’t know what pill they’re getting.
1:01:47 – Right.
1:01:49 And so for the deprivation side,
1:01:52 would it be just I’m going to wake you up
1:01:53 and make you watch Netflix
1:01:54 and to make sure you don’t fall asleep?
1:01:57 – The first thing we do is we do it in the extreme
1:02:00 and then we come back full night of sleep deprivation.
1:02:02 So let’s say transatlantic flight.
1:02:04 You’ve got a miserable seat.
1:02:06 Could not sleep awake.
1:02:08 You hit the ground in London the following day.
1:02:11 Now you have to be awake for all of your business meetings.
1:02:14 You’re going on 30 hours of no sleep so far.
1:02:16 – Well, how do you replicate that in a lab though?
1:02:17 – So then we just keep you awake.
1:02:21 So we have monitored staff and we will just watch you.
1:02:23 – Your poor staff better be taking some of this too.
1:02:25 – Well, the nice thing is we do split shift systems
1:02:28 with the staff.
1:02:32 They get to sleep and we will have EEG electrodes on
1:02:33 so we can make sure that we can stay.
1:02:35 – How much is the study?
1:02:37 – I mean, it depends on the extent of it.
1:02:39 – Go crawl, I think is what you said first, right?
1:02:41 You said walk, crawl. – Crawl, walk, run.
1:02:43 – Yeah, so what’s the crawl version gets you?
1:02:45 – I mean, the crawl could be, you know, 150K
1:02:47 that we could do a small pilot study
1:02:48 of the young individuals.
1:02:50 – And of what, how many patients do you think?
1:02:53 – I mean, for brain scanning studies, if you’ve got,
1:02:55 it depends on the effect sizes that you’re expecting,
1:02:57 but usually we need about 25 people
1:02:58 to really go through that.
1:03:01 Now, don’t forget that that’s a hugely labor intensive
1:03:03 study ’cause they’ve got to go through two rounds
1:03:06 of sleep deprivation, full 36 hour monitoring
1:03:08 from a massive amount of staff
1:03:10 together with all of these brain scanners and, you know,
1:03:13 so it’s going to be a sizable study,
1:03:16 but it’s probably going to, I mean, I’d have to, you know,
1:03:19 go down on paper, but I think you could probably
1:03:21 do a version of it for, you know, 150,
1:03:23 maybe north of 150, not too much more.
1:03:24 – So this is really cool.
1:03:25 I like-
1:03:27 – And that would be, you could see a bunch
1:03:30 of like investors to say, okay, I can see now
1:03:32 that this a proprietary blend.
1:03:33 – Well, once you have the blend,
1:03:35 you can get it funded for the, anyone else.
1:03:36 – Correct. – I’ll fund that tomorrow.
1:03:37 They’re done.
1:03:38 Like, that’s easy.
1:03:41 It’s the study part that is the gamble, right?
1:03:42 So-
1:03:43 – But isn’t it worth it?
1:03:44 – Oh, it’s totally worth it.
1:03:45 – Because if you could try to help individuals,
1:03:49 you know, we are in this global state of sleep deprivation,
1:03:51 and there is so much disease, sickness,
1:03:53 and suffering as a consequence of that lack of sleep.
1:03:55 And if I can at least downscale
1:03:59 some of the disease part of that equation, why not?
1:04:01 – Well, the crazy, one thing I wanna ask you though,
1:04:03 is like, you mentioned melatonin, that’s typically,
1:04:08 you know, that is going to induce sleep
1:04:10 in most individuals, depending on the dose.
1:04:12 By the way, it seems that some of the doses these days
1:04:13 are just outrageous.
1:04:16 – In psychedelic terms, the doses of melatonin,
1:04:17 or what we call heroic.
1:04:18 – Heroic, yeah.
1:04:20 Which is like, when I see five migs out there,
1:04:22 I’m like, who’s taking that?
1:04:23 But people do.
1:04:26 – Some people are saying, you know, I’m on 20 right now.
1:04:27 – That’s insane.
1:04:29 So, but anyway, let’s get back to that.
1:04:32 Yeah, so, would you think that melatonin
1:04:35 can have protective effects that aren’t related to sleep?
1:04:38 Meaning like, oh, so you’re saying,
1:04:40 there’s a good chance, like as part of this antioxidant,
1:04:41 I’m just making this up,
1:04:42 as part of the compounds you’re putting together.
1:04:43 – Yep.
1:04:46 – The pillow I swallow has, I don’t know,
1:04:48 250 micrograms of melatonin in it.
1:04:49 – Right.
1:04:52 – It’s like, it actually does cause me to sleep
1:04:54 at that dose even, which is great.
1:04:56 It’s probably what people should be taking
1:04:57 if they’re taking melatonin.
1:04:57 Is it something?
1:05:00 – Yeah, anywhere between 0.5 to about two milligrams.
1:05:01 – Yeah, that’s crazy if you’ll do 20.
1:05:06 But anyway, so let’s say that is,
1:05:07 so you’re thinking that might be protective,
1:05:09 even if they’re awake.
1:05:10 – Correct.
1:05:10 – Wow.
1:05:11 – That’s the reason that we’re taking it.
1:05:14 In fact, now we’re turning the tables on melatonin.
1:05:15 – And you’re taking it during the day?
1:05:16 – Taking it during the day.
1:05:18 At a micro dose, though,
1:05:20 that will not produce sleepiness.
1:05:21 So that’s the goal.
1:05:24 But then you’ve got to create this cocktail.
1:05:26 And if you look back at melatonin,
1:05:30 melatonin is not just a mammalian thing.
1:05:32 Melatonin was around long before we mammals
1:05:34 came onto the planet.
1:05:35 – In forms of what?
1:05:36 – It’s implants.
1:05:37 – Oh, it’s implants naturally.
1:05:40 – And the reason is because it’s really good
1:05:42 at mopping up something called free radicals.
1:05:43 From what?
1:05:45 UV damage.
1:05:45 – Wow.
1:05:46 – Amazing.
1:05:49 – Melatonin was the original antioxidant.
1:05:50 It seemed to one of them.
1:05:51 – Amazing.
1:05:51 – For plants.
1:05:53 Because when we say antioxidants,
1:05:54 what are we talking about, by the way folks,
1:05:57 there are these things called free radical species
1:06:01 that are just sort of charged specific molecules
1:06:03 in the body that are rogue.
1:06:07 And they do DNA damage and some other bad things
1:06:08 inside of your body.
1:06:10 But thankfully coming to the rescue
1:06:14 are the mopping services of antioxidants.
1:06:16 That’s why antioxidants are so healthy for us
1:06:19 because they mop up the free radical damage
1:06:21 that can be otherwise deleterious.
1:06:23 And your body has created this system for it.
1:06:27 And that system was created long before mammals
1:06:29 popped online, as I said, in plants
1:06:32 because they would suffer from free radical creation
1:06:34 due to UV damage.
1:06:37 So lo and behold, melatonin came online
1:06:40 and started to mop up the free radical UV damage.
1:06:43 So melatonin would be one of the components,
1:06:45 but there are lots of other.
1:06:46 The melatonin created sleepiness,
1:06:48 that’s not gonna be ideal because you’re already
1:06:49 trying to stay awake.
1:06:52 So you’re gonna have to come up with
1:06:55 a decent first pass blend based on the literature.
1:06:57 And I think there’s enough literature now
1:07:00 where I can kind of squint my eyes,
1:07:03 get a little blurry, and then say–
1:07:04 – Let’s try this.
1:07:05 – Humans, what do we think?
1:07:07 – Okay, so let me ask you a question
1:07:09 and I’m gonna go out on a crazy limb here
1:07:11 and propose something and we can always
1:07:13 cut it out of the podcast if it doesn’t work.
1:07:17 So I haven’t announced this yet,
1:07:19 but by the time this podcast is out, it’ll be out there.
1:07:23 I am taking my 115,000 newsletter subscribers,
1:07:25 moving them over to Substack.
1:07:27 And like Sam Harris did recently,
1:07:29 he moved over to Substack as well.
1:07:30 He created a private community that is
1:07:33 like a paid membership-only community.
1:07:35 And it’s nice because it’s a more intimate conversation
1:07:37 with the people that really care about your content
1:07:38 and blah, blah, blah.
1:07:39 We can talk about this offline.
1:07:40 – Yeah, yeah, I should probably do something.
1:07:41 – You probably should, actually.
1:07:42 It’s quite cool.
1:07:47 I’m gonna launch that by the time this is out
1:07:49 and it is gonna be a paid thing.
1:07:52 But I don’t really, I feel very lucky
1:07:53 that I’ve made some good investments in life.
1:07:54 I don’t need this to,
1:07:56 I don’t want to nickel and dime people for anything.
1:07:57 But I also wanna do some fun stuff
1:07:59 with this kind of capital, right?
1:08:01 So I think what I’m gonna propose,
1:08:03 tell me what you think of this.
1:08:06 If anyone signs up for that that’s listening to this,
1:08:08 I’ll just take that money,
1:08:12 give it to you free of charge and fund this study.
1:08:15 If we don’t get the 150K, let’s just say we get 50K
1:08:16 worth of people signing up,
1:08:18 I’ll just make up the difference myself.
1:08:22 We’ll get this done and we’ll see what we can make.
1:08:23 And if you were one of the people
1:08:24 that signed up during this time,
1:08:26 maybe they can be an early tester
1:08:29 once we actually get it into some type of form
1:08:31 that beta testers can try and as a–
1:08:33 – Bloody hell, this would be amazing.
1:08:34 – Would you be down with that?
1:08:35 – I’m so down with that.
1:08:36 – Okay, sweet.
1:08:39 – And maybe what I can do is on my,
1:08:41 maybe on my podcast and we can see if we can get
1:08:45 a number of even other people’s sort of podcasts,
1:08:48 we’ll see if we can just crowdsource some additional funds
1:08:52 and just see if we can bring people who are just
1:08:55 health, society and sleep,
1:08:59 conscious and supportive to the table.
1:09:01 And again, it doesn’t, if you get,
1:09:05 people are just saying, okay, here’s my five bucks
1:09:08 for today’s coffee or in this modern age,
1:09:11 it’s usually $15 per day or whatever the habit is.
1:09:13 I could have just throw five bucks at this
1:09:17 and you don’t need much of a spread
1:09:20 of people to jump on board to finally start to get there
1:09:23 and we could maybe not just do a crawl version,
1:09:26 but we could do a little bit of certainly a crawl walk.
1:09:27 – Yeah, I love this.
1:09:31 I’m all about, I just funded another study at UCSF,
1:09:32 I haven’t announced it yet,
1:09:37 but it’s just pure philanthropic side with Clotho.
1:09:38 Do you know that?
1:09:39 – Yeah.
1:09:40 – Clotho.
1:09:41 – Yep.
1:09:41 – So, do you know, Dino?
1:09:42 – Yeah.
1:09:43 – So I just–
1:09:45 – Peter T, I actually did a fantastic podcast on it.
1:09:47 – That’s how I learned about it.
1:09:47 – Clotho, you did?
1:09:48 – And I was like, okay.
1:09:49 – Really important.
1:09:51 – And so I reached out to Dino, the principal researcher.
1:09:52 – She’s great.
1:09:53 – She’s so awesome.
1:09:54 – That she nailed that podcast.
1:09:55 – Ah, so good.
1:09:58 And so anyway, I helped fund a study of hers,
1:10:01 not through this method, but just on my own.
1:10:02 And I asked her, I was like,
1:10:04 what is the thing that no one else will fund
1:10:07 or is it gonna take you a year or two to get funding for it?
1:10:08 Let’s do it today.
1:10:09 – Yeah.
1:10:10 – ‘Cause when you’re talking about curing
1:10:11 in this particular case for people that don’t know,
1:10:15 go watch Peter T’s interview with her.
1:10:18 It’s around a dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
1:10:19 via this compound called Clotho,
1:10:21 which is naturally occurring in the human body.
1:10:22 And it’s fascinating.
1:10:24 But anyway, long story short,
1:10:26 let’s do more crowdsource stuff.
1:10:27 Like why not?
1:10:27 – 100%.
1:10:31 And in fact, if any pharma company is out there,
1:10:35 any of the big ones out there who would also want to join in,
1:10:38 you know, I’m not necessarily averse to that too,
1:10:40 because, you know, it would be sweetening of the pot
1:10:41 and the pie.
1:10:43 And you’re probably going to have to have partners
1:10:45 if you want production, whatever it is,
1:10:47 I think we should just bring as many people
1:10:49 to the conversation on the table.
1:10:50 – Yeah.
1:10:51 – And then, you know, figure out
1:10:54 what is the most appropriate way for the public
1:10:58 to, you know, ultimately have a product supported
1:11:02 and validated what’s in the best interest.
1:11:04 And then if you’ve got the luxury of lots
1:11:06 of different hands wanting to feed them out of it,
1:11:07 then that’s great.
1:11:09 – Okay, so we’ll do this for,
1:11:10 if you go to KevinRose.com,
1:11:12 anyone that signs up this month,
1:11:14 I’ll take 100% of that proceeds and plow it into this.
1:11:17 I’ll make up the difference in my own capital,
1:11:19 your website, people can go there as well.
1:11:21 – Yeah, my public, my foundation,
1:11:24 it’s the Global Sleep Science and Education Foundation.
1:11:28 And if you just go to whywesleep.org,
1:11:29 you will get there.
1:11:30 – W-H-Y.
1:11:32 – Yes, W-H-Y.
1:11:32 – Yeah.
1:11:34 – Why We Sleep.
1:11:37 So not Y as in the letter, but W-H-Y.
1:11:38 Why We Sleep, same title as the book.
1:11:40 So it’s whywesleep.org.
1:11:42 And there you will also be able
1:11:46 to do a personalized sleep test
1:11:49 that we’ve created based on what we think
1:11:51 is now a global sleep index,
1:11:54 which can be fun to do.
1:11:56 And just give us a little bit of money
1:11:57 if you would be so kind.
1:11:59 – Yeah, people don’t realize like $5
1:12:00 is a huge deal in aggregate, right?
1:12:01 – Yeah.
1:12:02 – Like it is a big deal.
1:12:03 – Yeah.
1:12:04 And if there are other people out there
1:12:06 who have pockets that are a little bit deeper
1:12:08 and you’ve been touched by sleep
1:12:10 or you know the importance of sleep in your life
1:12:12 or that I could help you with your sleep
1:12:14 from a personal perspective, please reach out to.
1:12:15 – This is gonna be fun.
1:12:17 And we gotta do the other one too,
1:12:17 the Vegas Nerve one.
1:12:18 That one I want to use as well.
1:12:20 – Yeah, that one is pretty, right?
1:12:21 – We’ve got a lot to talk about.
1:12:22 – Yeah.
1:12:24 – And especially at the true ventures front
1:12:26 where I’m a venture capitalist.
1:12:27 There’s a lot of stuff we can do together.
1:12:28 Okay, I’m very excited.
1:12:30 All right, so let’s keep moving.
1:12:31 This is gonna be like a three hour show,
1:12:32 but that was a really fun one.
1:12:33 – Love it.
1:12:35 – You did mention nightmare prevention.
1:12:36 I’m sure there’s some people out there gonna be like,
1:12:40 “Oh my God, please don’t forget that one.
1:12:41 “What’s the latest on that?”
1:12:43 – Real quick, there is something called
1:12:49 Image Rehearsal Therapy or IRT for short.
1:12:53 And it works by essentially updating
1:12:57 the word document of the nightmare.
1:13:02 And some probably, gosh, it was maybe 15 years ago.
1:13:05 My group, we were able to publish
1:13:08 the first human data of a strange phenomenon
1:13:10 in human memory.
1:13:14 You would think that the way that we create memories
1:13:16 is that you essentially have an experience,
1:13:19 the brain imprints the information,
1:13:20 and then it’s locked in there,
1:13:22 like a fly that’s set in amber
1:13:25 as a fossil for the rest of the time.
1:13:27 But imagine the word version of that,
1:13:29 that you open up a report
1:13:31 and you start working on it day one,
1:13:32 and then you hit the save button,
1:13:35 and we hit the save button on our memories too at night
1:13:37 during sleep, it just takes a lot longer biologically
1:13:40 to hit the save button versus digitally.
1:13:42 But then imagine the next day if you were to come back
1:13:44 and you double click on that report again
1:13:46 and you open it back up and it says,
1:13:48 “I’m sorry, you can’t edit it, you can’t change it.”
1:13:50 You think, “Well, hang on a sec, that’s ridiculous.
1:13:52 “Why would you create an informational storage system
1:13:55 “that wasn’t editable every time you reactivated
1:13:59 “or reopened up that informational file?”
1:14:01 And we used to think that memory worked
1:14:03 in that type of hard-coded way.
1:14:06 You make a memory, you save it,
1:14:09 and then it’s that memory for the rest of time.
1:14:12 What we found was that once you learn information,
1:14:14 you sleep and you consolidate that information,
1:14:17 you hit that digital, that biological save button.
1:14:20 But then when you reactivate the memory,
1:14:24 meaning when you replay or bring back to mind the memory,
1:14:26 so if I would say, “Last night for dinner,
1:14:30 “what was it that you had, Kevin, for your evening meal?”
1:14:32 You’d be able to tell me what that meal was.
1:14:35 Now, every time you reactivate that memory,
1:14:38 you double-click it, bring it back to conscious mind.
1:14:42 It’s actually open up for ability to change,
1:14:45 for editing, for revising, for modifying.
1:14:48 Now that can lead to things like false memories
1:14:51 or inaccurate memories, but it’s a very clever system
1:14:52 because if I were to say,
1:14:55 “What’s your favorite meal to have of an evening?”
1:14:58 You know, five years ago, it may have been one thing,
1:15:00 but with experience and time,
1:15:02 you’ve constantly been reactivating
1:15:05 the my favorite meal file, and you’ve been updating it,
1:15:07 and now it’s more appropriate.
1:15:09 – I still like pepperoni pizza, to be honest.
1:15:11 – You know what, there’s nothing wrong with that.
1:15:15 Come on, there’s a hashtag fish and chips for the bread.
1:15:17 But I would say, we discovered this mechanism
1:15:20 called Re-consolidation, so when you reactivate it,
1:15:23 you can edit it, and then you resave it during sleep
1:15:24 the next night.
1:15:25 – Is that like under hypnosis,
1:15:28 or how do you get to a state where that’s more malleable?
1:15:31 – All you need to do is consciously recall the memory.
1:15:33 And then what happened most recently
1:15:34 in the past couple of years,
1:15:36 people realized we can use this therapeutically,
1:15:40 that with a nightmare, you can have someone
1:15:42 who is very good at repeating,
1:15:45 bringing back to mind what that nightmare is,
1:15:46 and that nightmare never changes.
1:15:48 It’s what we call recurring nightmare.
1:15:51 The place when you want to go and get help for this
1:15:54 is saying, we all have nightmares,
1:15:55 but if this repeating nightmare,
1:15:59 this repetitive nightmare is causing you daytime distress
1:16:03 and sort of waking life disability mentally,
1:16:04 that’s the time to go and get seen too.
1:16:06 – What about people that have different nightmares,
1:16:08 but a lot of nightmares?
1:16:09 – Well, you have to take,
1:16:12 we’re using this method each one individually,
1:16:14 and what you do is working with a therapist.
1:16:16 You then sit back down, you say,
1:16:19 I’d like to relive the nightmare.
1:16:21 And let’s say it’s because I got into
1:16:23 a really bad car accident,
1:16:25 and I was trying to pump the brakes,
1:16:27 the brakes were not working.
1:16:28 Someone rear-ended me,
1:16:29 I went straight into the intersection,
1:16:31 horrible, just bad, bad, bad.
1:16:34 And I’m having a repetitive nightmare of that event.
1:16:36 The therapist says, let’s relive that,
1:16:39 but now instead, I want you to imagine the scenario
1:16:43 where you’re pumping the brakes and the brakes re-engage.
1:16:45 And in fact, you’re able to turn the steering wheel
1:16:48 and you just bring it to the right side of the road
1:16:49 into the safe lane,
1:16:52 and you don’t go out into the junction.
1:16:54 And then when you come up with this
1:16:57 basically inert neutral end scenario,
1:17:00 you send them away and you ask them,
1:17:03 maybe it’s a timer every day for just 10 minutes,
1:17:06 they have to rehearse the new ending over and over.
1:17:09 So they are reactivating the trauma memory,
1:17:12 but they are now trying to edit the document
1:17:17 with a revised or sort of safe non-trauma ending.
1:17:20 And then at night, gradually what we see,
1:17:22 the more that they do that,
1:17:24 the less and less intense
1:17:26 and the less frequent their nightmares become
1:17:29 to the point where you extinguish the nightmare entirely.
1:17:30 – Single nightmare
1:17:33 or what if someone is having multiple different nightmares?
1:17:35 – So each scenario,
1:17:37 you’re going to have to treat in an individual way.
1:17:38 – But they might have some kind of theme to them,
1:17:39 probably some on their line.
1:17:40 – They may have a theme where there’s basically
1:17:42 cross-pollination.
1:17:45 But we typically don’t see people having
1:17:49 a broad confetti collection of multiple nightmares.
1:17:53 It’s usually one or three, maybe max.
1:17:56 So you can still do it in a digestible bite-size manner
1:17:58 with targeted therapy.
1:17:59 – Fascinating.
1:18:00 So tell people what that was called again.
1:18:02 – It’s called IRT,
1:18:05 which stands for Image Rehearsal Therapy.
1:18:07 Most therapists probably won’t know about it.
1:18:10 It’s a very new technique in sleep science,
1:18:12 but it’s now being demonstrated
1:18:13 to be really quite effective.
1:18:14 – Are there organizations or websites
1:18:17 that will recommend therapists that are trained in this?
1:18:20 – Probably we can certainly put them in the show notes
1:18:23 that may be some board-certified sleep medicine
1:18:27 and also clinical psychology websites
1:18:29 where you can look up to see.
1:18:31 I think what I would do is,
1:18:35 I would point people to a collection of researchers
1:18:37 that we can put in the show notes
1:18:40 that are doing some of the most cutting-edge work on this.
1:18:42 And they may be good contacts to reach out to.
1:18:45 And those people are usually very helpful
1:18:47 to try to recommend to say, “Yes, go see this person.”
1:18:50 – And maybe be involved in a study or something as well.
1:18:50 – Absolutely.
1:18:52 – Okay, so let’s do some rabbit-fire stuff.
1:18:53 – Love it.
1:18:55 – Can I throw some compounds at you and you say yay or nay?
1:18:56 – Yep, let’s do it.
1:18:57 – And you can give a couple,
1:18:58 obviously a little bit more color.
1:18:59 – Yeah, that’s a little filigree.
1:19:01 – On the concierge medicine side,
1:19:04 gabapentin is like the go-to for sleep.
1:19:06 They’re like giving it out like candy.
1:19:07 ‘Cause it’s really hard.
1:19:09 You can’t really, it’s very hard to overdose on it.
1:19:10 You can take like 30 of them.
1:19:12 Like, you know, you take three of them or 30 of them
1:19:13 or whatever else.
1:19:14 – Typically use of paint.
1:19:16 – 30 of them, but like, talk to your doctor,
1:19:16 but you know what I’m saying.
1:19:18 – Yeah, gabapentin, good or bad.
1:19:22 Good in the sense that makes you fall asleep faster,
1:19:24 you spend less time awake at night,
1:19:27 and it can increase the amount of deep sleep.
1:19:29 – I get a hangover from it though.
1:19:30 – But that’s the problem.
1:19:32 There are no free lunches in biology.
1:19:35 And often people say they get those sleep benefits,
1:19:38 but during the waking day, they’re just groggy
1:19:39 and they just are dragging.
1:19:40 – I’d rather have a bad night’s sleep
1:19:41 than I hang out with them.
1:19:43 – To be honest, I’ll, so they start off that way
1:19:45 and then they can’t take it.
1:19:47 Maybe you can try to find the sweet spot,
1:19:49 but for the most part, it’s tough.
1:19:51 The other drug that’s in that same family
1:19:54 is called pregabalin.
1:19:54 – I’ve had pregabalin as well.
1:19:56 It’s more addictive though, right?
1:19:57 – It can be more addictive.
1:19:59 And pregabalin and gabapentin,
1:20:03 they are typically not used as a sleep aid in that regard.
1:20:05 They’re used to treat a sleep disorder
1:20:07 called restless leg syndrome,
1:20:09 which is a terrible, terrible sleep disorder.
1:20:13 So I would say objectively, can it improve sleep?
1:20:16 Yes, do most people tolerate it well?
1:20:19 Ultimately, not so much.
1:20:22 – Yeah, but no, like I remember when we were talking
1:20:25 years ago, and we were talking about some of the big,
1:20:26 sleep drugs that were out there,
1:20:29 the ambience and the bad stuff.
1:20:30 Those were linked to cancer.
1:20:32 Those were linked to all kinds of bad things.
1:20:34 Have something gabapentin?
1:20:35 – Not so much.
1:20:37 – Okay, so a little safer profile then.
1:20:39 – Okay. – Although absence of evidence
1:20:40 is not evidence of absence.
1:20:42 – Sure, understood.
1:20:46 Melatonin, 250 migs, half a mig,
1:20:48 you still recommend it for people that need it?
1:20:50 – I would say if you,
1:20:53 I think we’ve got melatonin a bit wrong with sleep.
1:20:56 I’ve been on record and I think the meta-analyses
1:20:57 are very clear that overall,
1:20:59 it’s just not a useful sleep aid.
1:20:59 Why?
1:21:02 It helps tell your brain when it’s time to fall asleep,
1:21:05 but it doesn’t generate sleep itself.
1:21:06 I don’t know if that’s completely correct.
1:21:10 I think there is a sub-cloud cluster
1:21:12 of the population for whom they are
1:21:15 melatonin-sleep-generating-sensitive
1:21:16 and then the rest of the people
1:21:18 doesn’t change their sleep at all.
1:21:21 – It does work with me, but I, right, exactly.
1:21:22 – I wake up in the middle of the night,
1:21:23 so it doesn’t,
1:21:25 I had to try and find the extended release formula
1:21:27 and I don’t even know if that’s really working,
1:21:29 but some companies do put out an extended release
1:21:32 and then I often find it’s way too heavy of a dose,
1:21:35 so I do get the brain fog action the next day.
1:21:36 – So it doesn’t sound like it’s,
1:21:38 do you recommend it to anyone?
1:21:38 Like, is there–
1:21:40 – I would say the only time I would use it
1:21:43 is when you’re traveling to try to deal with jet lag,
1:21:46 to help with the tricking of your brain
1:21:48 to think it’s nighttime when your body,
1:21:51 24 hour clock, is still saying,
1:21:52 oh my God, I’m still stuck in California.
1:21:53 – Right.
1:21:55 – It’s like eight hours behind if I’m in London.
1:21:57 So no, I wouldn’t.
1:21:59 Pediatric use of melatonin,
1:22:03 I would be very careful if I were a parent.
1:22:05 It’s, again, they’re sold like gummies
1:22:08 in the purple aisle of the health food section
1:22:10 of your local supermarket,
1:22:13 and if it’s the healthy supermarket,
1:22:15 you think everything’s good and fine.
1:22:18 What if I told you that if I went into a school system
1:22:21 tonight and I spoke to the parents and the teachers
1:22:24 and said there is a bioactive hormone
1:22:27 that I would like you to start dosing your children with,
1:22:28 I would like you to give them a dose
1:22:30 that is super physiological,
1:22:33 meaning it’s maybe double, triple,
1:22:35 maybe 10 times more than their bodies
1:22:38 would ever naturally release.
1:22:40 It’s also a hormone that can disrupt
1:22:45 the maturation of their sexual development.
1:22:48 And I would like you to start dosing them
1:22:50 in excess every single night.
1:22:52 Who’s with me?
1:22:54 – Holy shit, and that’s what this is.
1:22:55 – But in some ways, that’s what it is.
1:22:57 Now, I don’t mean to be scaremongering.
1:22:58 Melatonin, just like a pentine,
1:23:00 it’s actually a very inert drug.
1:23:02 It’s largely safe.
1:23:05 The only thing is that in the past 10 years,
1:23:07 there was some data that came out that
1:23:09 admissions to emergency rooms
1:23:12 for melatonin poisonous overdosing
1:23:16 has increased by 503% in the past 10 years.
1:23:17 – That’s crazy.
1:23:19 I didn’t even know that was a thing.
1:23:20 You could take too much of it.
1:23:21 – People get admitted.
1:23:25 – So on, gosh, so many questions about that.
1:23:29 So on the melatonin side, the antioxidant potentials
1:23:30 is there.
1:23:32 – Antioxidant potentials, I think the amount of it,
1:23:35 ’cause it’s not regulated by the FDA here in America,
1:23:41 it can be as little as 70% less than what it says
1:23:45 to 478% more than what it says on the bottle.
1:23:46 You’ve got no idea.
1:23:49 Try to get a brand that has a QRI code
1:23:51 that you scan on the side that takes you
1:23:54 to a third-party independent laboratory test.
1:23:56 And you can check the purity, make sure it’s–
1:23:57 – Consumer Lab is good like that.
1:24:00 I don’t know if you know that website, consumerlab.com.
1:24:02 They’re really good at the third-party testing.
1:24:05 So I already know the answer.
1:24:06 Well, let’s just start with this one.
1:24:08 GABA’s thrown into everything these days.
1:24:10 All sleep supplements of GABA.
1:24:11 Is it, does it work?
1:24:14 – The data is pretty unreliable.
1:24:16 – Yeah, that’s a first of GABA.
1:24:17 – I’ve heard the bioavailability is like, man.
1:24:21 – Yeah, and how effective those
1:24:25 compounds are actually getting into the brain itself,
1:24:27 crossing the blood-brain barrier.
1:24:30 I think it’s, I think there are other things
1:24:33 that you can do to try to promote sleep.
1:24:35 I mean, the thing with all of these supplements,
1:24:37 and I’ll steal a phrase from our dear friend, Peter Atea,
1:24:39 when you’re trying to look for supplements
1:24:41 to help with your sleep,
1:24:44 you are majoring in the minors
1:24:46 and you are minoring in the majors.
1:24:49 Focus on regularity,
1:24:51 making sure you go to bed at the same time,
1:24:52 wake up at the same time,
1:24:55 give yourself the right amount of time in bed,
1:24:58 get your stress and your anxiety
1:25:01 managed in a variety of different ways,
1:25:04 do some exercise, get some daylight.
1:25:08 Those things in terms of their effect size on your sleep
1:25:12 will dwarf anything in terms of supplements.
1:25:14 Now, I think there is a time and a place for supplements
1:25:17 where you can actually, if you’re good and you’re optimized,
1:25:20 how can we get you even further down the path?
1:25:21 Then let’s think about supplementation
1:25:22 that could be wonderful.
1:25:23 But for the most part,
1:25:25 if you are a mess with your sleep
1:25:27 and you’re reaching for supplements
1:25:28 as your first line treatment,
1:25:30 you’re missing the big picture.
1:25:31 – That’s a great point.
1:25:36 I’m assuming the hardcore ones like the Benzos,
1:25:38 like Xanax Valium, do those?
1:25:40 – They’re not really now advocated in sleep science
1:25:41 for a number of reasons.
1:25:44 They are short term if they’re going to be used at all
1:25:45 and we’re talking weeks,
1:25:48 most people have been using them for years.
1:25:50 Second, they…
1:25:51 – They knock people out.
1:25:51 – They knock people out.
1:25:53 But there are a class of drugs
1:25:56 that are called the sedative hypnotics
1:25:57 and sedation is not sleep.
1:26:01 So when you take a Valium or Xanax,
1:26:03 I’m not going to suggest that you’re awake.
1:26:05 You are clearly not awake.
1:26:07 But to say that you’re in natural sleep is an equal fallacy.
1:26:08 – That’s a good point.
1:26:10 – But I would say that overall,
1:26:14 if you are suffering from major anxiety or stress,
1:26:17 that’s where it’s typically administered
1:26:19 in clinical sleep medicine.
1:26:20 It’s a very short time period.
1:26:21 The reason that it’s short
1:26:24 is because you develop dependency very quickly.
1:26:26 Second, overdose potential,
1:26:28 unlike Gabapentin or Melatonin, very high.
1:26:32 Number three, its interactions with other medications
1:26:33 are stunning.
1:26:36 I mean, Valium probably has over 500 other medications
1:26:38 that it deleteriously interacts with.
1:26:40 – Yeah, yeah, let’s stay away.
1:26:44 – No need to go there if you don’t have to.
1:26:47 – Are you still a fan of sleep temperature?
1:26:48 Drop in the temperature?
1:26:50 – Huge, I think temperature is still,
1:26:52 even though there’s some great companies out there now
1:26:55 using it, and full disclosure,
1:26:57 I myself and Peter Ateer and Andrew Hubman,
1:26:59 we all just joined the scientific advisory board
1:27:00 for AteSleep.
1:27:01 – I love AteSleep.
1:27:02 – I think they’re a brilliant company
1:27:05 and I really like the founder, CEO, Matteo,
1:27:06 I think they’re trying to do good,
1:27:07 so I’ll get behind a product.
1:27:10 I could be a scientist where I think other people would say,
1:27:11 well, you’re selling out by joining,
1:27:16 and you can armchair all you want,
1:27:19 critical about sleep products out there as a scientist,
1:27:22 or you can actually say, wouldn’t it be better
1:27:25 if I got my boots dirty in the trenches
1:27:26 with those companies,
1:27:29 and I try to make them better companies with sound science?
1:27:30 I’ve chosen to go that route.
1:27:32 – I’m glad you have.
1:27:33 – To go back the other route,
1:27:36 and I understand why people would criticize me for that,
1:27:39 I get it, but that’s the path I’ve chosen,
1:27:43 so yes, I’m still big on very bullish on temperature,
1:27:44 you can do cheap versions of it,
1:27:46 you can do a warm bath or a hot shower before bed,
1:27:48 it’s a great de-stresser.
1:27:50 – Is it gonna ask you about that sauna usage before bed?
1:27:52 – That’s another study I’d like to do.
1:27:54 There are actually no good studies,
1:27:55 so if there’s a sauna company out there
1:28:00 that wants to put some money behind a pilot study,
1:28:03 shoots us a couple of the infrared saunas,
1:28:06 we’ll install them in the sleep lab.
1:28:09 I do think it probably has a great benefit.
1:28:10 I just know of no data,
1:28:13 so how can you back it up one way or the other?
1:28:15 No one’s done that study, love to do it.
1:28:17 – When people are programming their eight-sleep,
1:28:19 and for people that don’t know, you get an iPhone app
1:28:20 and it lets you drop the temperature
1:28:21 on each side of the bed,
1:28:23 which is nice ’cause Daria has hers, I have mine.
1:28:25 I know that sleep onset,
1:28:26 I’m correct if I’m wrong here,
1:28:29 but actually warmer to get started
1:28:30 can actually help you fall asleep,
1:28:33 but then colder is better for the deep sleep,
1:28:34 do I have that right? – Yeah, that’s interesting.
1:28:36 So the story of temperature and sleep
1:28:38 is a three-part stanza.
1:28:42 You have to warm up to cool down to fall asleep,
1:28:45 you have to stay cool to stay asleep,
1:28:48 and you have to warm up to wake up.
1:28:50 And so the first part doesn’t make sense.
1:28:52 Why do I have to warm up to cool down?
1:28:55 I have to warm the surface of your body
1:28:56 to act like a snake charmer,
1:28:59 to draw the hot, trapped blood
1:29:02 from the core of your body out to the surface.
1:29:03 I can do that with a warm bath, a shower,
1:29:06 or a mattress that’s set at neutral,
1:29:08 a little bit above neutral, thermo-neutral.
1:29:09 – I put mine at four on the eight-sleep.
1:29:11 – That’s great, that’s fine too, that’s lovely.
1:29:14 And what that means is that all of the blood
1:29:16 races to the surface. – It feels so good,
1:29:17 when you get in bed in a nice, warm bed, yeah.
1:29:19 – Cheap version, back in the day, hot water bottle
1:29:22 with your feet great too, ’cause they’re very vascular,
1:29:25 that’s the reason that you put your hands or your feet on it.
1:29:28 All of a sudden, you get this huge decrease
1:29:29 in your core body temperature
1:29:31 when you get out of the bath or the shower,
1:29:33 or you get into the smart mattress,
1:29:34 and that drops your core body temperature
1:29:36 so you fall asleep faster,
1:29:40 then you need to stay cold at the core of your body
1:29:43 to stay asleep and get deep sleep,
1:29:44 and that’s why the mattresses
1:29:47 have this particular thermal signature,
1:29:48 and they will drop you even further,
1:29:50 and then you have to warm up to wake up
1:29:51 to the reason why most of us use
1:29:53 a hot drink in the morning.
1:29:56 Your caffeine, you can say, look, Darya,
1:29:58 I left the dishes in the sink, I’m so sorry again,
1:30:00 I did it last night, I just need,
1:30:02 give me five minutes with a cup of coffee
1:30:04 and I’ll be a better version of myself,
1:30:07 but please don’t say anything to me right now.
1:30:08 Five minutes later, you’re better.
1:30:11 You’ve got nothing to do with the caffeine, why?
1:30:13 Caffeine doesn’t hit a peak plasma concentration
1:30:15 until about 12 to 17 minutes later,
1:30:17 so what are you feeling?
1:30:19 The warm liquid itself already starts
1:30:21 to increase your core body temperature
1:30:22 and the brain temperature,
1:30:25 and that’s where you get a first wave of a benefit
1:30:27 from your hot cup of Joe in the morning,
1:30:29 then you get the second benefit
1:30:30 of the caffeine hitting itself.
1:30:31 – Wow, that’s very cool,
1:30:34 and I woke up a couple times too cold,
1:30:36 so there has to be a sweet spot there,
1:30:37 ’cause then when you wake up too cold,
1:30:39 you’re like, “Fuck, I’m cold.”
1:30:41 – So you can take it too far and actually,
1:30:46 once you go down to about 14 degrees Celsius,
1:30:49 I’m trying to do the Fahrenheit math in my head right now,
1:30:52 you can go both too warm and too cold.
1:30:55 The warming up is also tricky, by the way,
1:31:00 that if you go too hot, so warming up to wake up
1:31:01 is not just about warming up to wake up,
1:31:04 it’s about warming up to get more REM sleep,
1:31:06 and I can actually, we’ve found it very difficult
1:31:08 to change human REM sleep with lots of different methods
1:31:10 for us to change deep non-REM sleep,
1:31:12 very difficult to do REM sleep.
1:31:14 We’ve been playing with some techniques now
1:31:17 where we get you to a temperature sweet spot
1:31:19 where we enhance your REM sleep,
1:31:22 even before we enhance the awakening process
1:31:25 that finally terminates this thing called sleep itself.
1:31:27 The tricky part is that I have to get you
1:31:31 to thermonutrality to boost REM sleep,
1:31:33 meaning it’s a Goldilocks phenomenon.
1:31:34 I can’t get you too hot,
1:31:37 I can’t get you too cold, just the right amount,
1:31:39 and when I hit your thermal neutrality,
1:31:42 you’ll match your body temperature, essentially,
1:31:44 then all of a sudden,
1:31:46 I can enhance REM sleep as a consequence.
1:31:48 – Oh, interesting, wow, okay.
1:31:49 – So I’m still very bullish.
1:31:51 If it’s bearish or bullish,
1:31:53 I’m very bullish on temperature and sleep.
1:31:55 – Awesome, I won’t waste your time
1:31:57 with a bunch of other things.
1:32:02 There’s obviously magnesium and a bunch of other compounds.
1:32:05 – Magnesium, I’d very quickly say, for the most part,
1:32:10 if you are older, suffering from insomnia
1:32:12 or magnesium deficient,
1:32:14 magnesium can help improve your sleep.
1:32:17 Usually, oxide over citrate,
1:32:19 citrate doesn’t seem to have much of a benefit.
1:32:22 Problem is, oxide, tough on the tummy.
1:32:23 – Yes.
1:32:26 – Magteen or magnesium L3 and A.
1:32:27 – Yeah, the one that gets in the brain better.
1:32:29 – The one that gets in the brain better.
1:32:30 What’s the data on sleep?
1:32:33 – Drum roll, basically none.
1:32:33 – Yeah.
1:32:36 – And so there, I would say, if you go into my head,
1:32:39 if there was a form of magnesium I would suggest,
1:32:42 it would probably be magnesium L3 and A.
1:32:44 Any data for me to support that statement?
1:32:45 Not right now.
1:32:48 – And then in terms of any other supplements
1:32:49 that we were just not even mentioning
1:32:50 or are on my radar,
1:32:53 any other molecules to watch on the horizon?
1:32:54 – Not supplements.
1:32:57 I’m getting very interested in cannabinoids
1:33:01 and particularly targeting the CB1,
1:33:04 so you have a CB1 receptor, a CB2 receptor.
1:33:08 CB1 is the receptor that is more dominant in the brain.
1:33:13 And I’m getting very interested in agonists,
1:33:16 essentially stimulating the cannabinoid system
1:33:21 with synthetic CB1 receptor compounds
1:33:24 to see if we can improve sleep.
1:33:26 So I would say if there’s anything on the horizon,
1:33:27 that’s it.
1:33:30 We definitely do not advocate for THC in sleep,
1:33:32 the data there, and we don’t know how to go into it.
1:33:34 It’s just not great.
1:33:35 – How about CBN?
1:33:36 CBN was a hot one for sleep.
1:33:38 – Not enough data to play out.
1:33:43 We’ve got not enough data on CBD, let alone CBN.
1:33:46 I would say that there is a little bit of data though
1:33:49 on THC and sleep apnea.
1:33:54 They were finding that the THC actually above and beyond,
1:33:56 not just CBD, but the THC itself,
1:34:00 actually seemed to reduce some of the heavy snoring
1:34:01 in the sleep apnea events.
1:34:06 Now, I don’t think the benefit there outweighs
1:34:09 the current standard of care, the current standard treatments,
1:34:12 nor do I think it’s worth the downsides
1:34:15 that nevertheless still come with THC.
1:34:18 But could you produce an analog,
1:34:22 find out what it is that is benefiting the snoring
1:34:25 in the sleep apnea without the downsides
1:34:29 of typical kind of whole spectrum THC.
1:34:33 And therefore take away that need for certain other types
1:34:34 of sleep apnea interventions
1:34:37 that some people can find adherence to.
1:34:41 Although I would say that now the sleep apnea devices,
1:34:42 they’re so great.
1:34:44 I mean, a company called ResMed leads the way.
1:34:46 They are doing stunning things.
1:34:47 I have no affiliation with them,
1:34:49 but don’t worry if you’re fearful
1:34:52 of sleep apnea treatment, they will see right.
1:34:53 – Amazing.
1:34:54 Okay.
1:34:56 A couple more, I know you’ve already given,
1:34:57 what time is your flight out?
1:34:57 Are you staying for a minute?
1:34:58 – Oh no, I’m staying.
1:35:00 Yeah, I flew in from Austin, so I am–
1:35:01 – Okay, sweet.
1:35:02 – I’m sticking around.
1:35:04 – Okay, so a couple more things here.
1:35:08 Let’s just say you’ve had a really,
1:35:09 you’ve had no sleep.
1:35:11 You’re kind of like tossing, turning.
1:35:12 It’s not working.
1:35:14 You know, we’re rolling around to five a.m.
1:35:16 It’s almost like, do I call it?
1:35:18 Do I just get up and do my thing?
1:35:20 Do you try and rush in that one hour,
1:35:23 or do you just go for the day
1:35:25 and then build more sleep debts
1:35:27 so you have a better night’s sleep the next night?
1:35:28 Or is there just no day to have one way or the other?
1:35:31 – No, there is some advice that we can give.
1:35:35 I would say that if you’re in that last hour before bed,
1:35:37 and you are just tossing and turning, and you know,
1:35:39 I know what I do, I cannot pass this.
1:35:40 – Like it’s just in a full night’s sleep of no sleep, yeah.
1:35:44 – I just, like, my arm’s gonna go off at 6.30.
1:35:45 It’s 5.30.
1:35:47 I’ve been awake for 15 minutes,
1:35:51 and I just know myself, I’m not gonna nail this.
1:35:53 Then I would say pull a rip cord,
1:35:56 and then, but after a bad night of sleep,
1:36:01 there are four things that I’m going to tell you to do.
1:36:06 Firstly, do not go to bed any earlier
1:36:07 that following evening,
1:36:10 because your body is not naturally ready for bed
1:36:12 at an earlier time.
1:36:15 And so you may then lie in bed tossing and turning
1:36:17 and set yourself up for yet another bad night.
1:36:18 – Oh, yeah, gotcha.
1:36:21 – Next, don’t try to, after a bad night of sleep,
1:36:23 say, okay, now only I’ve been awake
1:36:25 for the first half of the night.
1:36:28 It’s now 5, you know, it’s now 5 a.m.
1:36:31 I’ve got another hour and a half before my alarm goes off.
1:36:33 I’m just gonna sleep late.
1:36:35 Don’t sleep any later, because if you sleep later,
1:36:38 you’re not going to build up enough wakefulness
1:36:39 across that following day.
1:36:41 And yet again, you’ll set yourself up
1:36:43 for another bad night of sleep.
1:36:44 Don’t hammer the caffeine.
1:36:46 Just know it’s gonna be a rough day.
1:36:48 Don’t take more than you normally do
1:36:50 and don’t nap during the day,
1:36:52 because then you just, once again,
1:36:55 you’ve been building up all of this healthy sleepiness,
1:36:57 especially after the bad night of sleep.
1:36:58 And then you go and nap
1:37:00 and you just take away some sleep.
1:37:02 When do you nap then?
1:37:06 I would say if you are not struggling with sleep
1:37:09 and you can nap regularly, naps are great.
1:37:11 We’ve done lots of studies with them.
1:37:15 Bottom line, I would say best protocol practices,
1:37:17 no more than 20 minutes,
1:37:20 between somewhere, based on the data that we analyzed,
1:37:22 somewhere between 16 and 22 minutes,
1:37:25 is enough of a nap to get some nice attention,
1:37:27 alertness, energy benefits,
1:37:30 a little bit of memory and mood benefit,
1:37:32 but not so long that you go so deep
1:37:34 that you wake up with this sleep hangover
1:37:36 and then it takes you another hour
1:37:38 before you feel even back to normal.
1:37:40 Oh my God, I’ve been there, that’s brutal.
1:37:41 So you’ve got to sort of,
1:37:43 now the longer you nap, the more benefits you get
1:37:46 and is it worth the trade off of the sleep hangover?
1:37:47 Who knows?
1:37:49 I would say optimal nap protocol,
1:37:50 limit it to 20 minutes,
1:37:52 try it and do not nap,
1:37:55 assuming an average bedtime after 2 p.m.
1:37:56 If you really want to do it properly
1:37:58 in the way that we do with professional athletes,
1:38:01 we’ll sometimes do the caffeine nap or the napachino
1:38:03 where we just before lights out,
1:38:07 you swig an espresso at 1 p.m.
1:38:09 Go down for your nap,
1:38:11 20 minutes later you wake up,
1:38:13 normally it’d still be a bit groggy,
1:38:15 but 20 minutes later is right around the time
1:38:17 when you’re hitting your peak plasma concentration
1:38:17 of caffeine.
1:38:20 So you eject yourself out of the nap
1:38:22 without any hangover with the caffeine
1:38:25 and we’ll only use it very strategically
1:38:28 with athletes or high performers in terms of business.
1:38:29 It is not a strategy to be doing.
1:38:31 That’s so scary.
1:38:34 It’s like the octane version of a nap.
1:38:36 That’s amazing, okay, so.
1:38:37 Sorry, I’ll be more quick.
1:38:39 No, no, no, this is good.
1:38:41 You know, I know you had some involvement
1:38:43 with Aura back in the day.
1:38:43 Sleep trackers.
1:38:44 Still involved with them.
1:38:45 So you’re still involved with them.
1:38:50 Okay, so what’s your take on sleep trackers in general?
1:38:53 I mean, I know you’re involved with Aura.
1:38:54 I’m an advisor to Aura too.
1:38:58 So again, take what I say with the grain of salt.
1:39:00 I would say that just two things.
1:39:01 The reason I joined them was twofold.
1:39:04 Firstly, I think the form factor is great.
1:39:07 I don’t like things that I strap on my head
1:39:09 or that I put across my chest, even wrist watches.
1:39:12 You know, when we go to sleep, we take things off.
1:39:13 We don’t put things on.
1:39:14 Right.
1:39:16 And therefore, I think that’s why I like a ring.
1:39:18 It’s very unobtrusive, so it’s low friction,
1:39:20 no friction, same with a mattress.
1:39:22 It’s great, it’s no friction.
1:39:25 The accuracy, because I know kind of how the sausage
1:39:27 is made in the factory, I think is probably
1:39:30 about best in class for a wearable sleep tracker
1:39:31 out there right now.
1:39:34 How close is that to like clinically grade like?
1:39:38 Yeah, so I mean, it depends on what classifier you’re using.
1:39:40 If it’s what we call a two-class algorithm,
1:39:44 meaning wake from sleep, it’s probably up in the 80% region
1:39:48 relative to my $50,000 worth of sleep laboratory equipment.
1:39:52 Once we do a four-class algorithm, wake, light non-rem,
1:39:55 deep non-rem, or rem, four classes,
1:39:57 then you’re kind of getting into the 70s,
1:40:00 kind of mid-70s in terms of accuracy.
1:40:05 And you think, well, that means it’s like 25% inaccurate,
1:40:07 but keep in mind, here’s this thing,
1:40:12 a ring that for $400 plus a subscription each month,
1:40:17 you can get me 70, 80% of the way there
1:40:21 versus my $50,000 spaghetti monster
1:40:22 in the sleep laboratory.
1:40:24 That’s bloody incredible that these are species
1:40:26 have been able to develop technology like that.
1:40:30 So the other thing I would say about sleep trackers,
1:40:34 their absolute accuracy is the 70 to 80%,
1:40:36 meaning for any one night relative
1:40:38 to my gold standard sleep laboratory,
1:40:41 it’s going to get 70 to 80% of the way there.
1:40:45 However, it’s relative accuracy is much higher,
1:40:50 meaning that if, so the way to state this
1:40:53 would be the following, follow weekly trend lines,
1:40:54 not nightly headlines.
1:40:55 – Right, right, right.
1:40:57 So you’re looking for directional movements over time.
1:40:58 – Correct, why?
1:41:02 – Because this thing, even though it’s 75, 80% accurate,
1:41:06 it’s consistently inaccurate night to night to night to night.
1:41:09 So if I’m seeing deviations in my data,
1:41:12 it’s not this because it’s consistently that way.
1:41:16 It must be me, that’s why I look for trend lines.
1:41:18 And the final thing I would say is there is discussion
1:41:20 out there regarding sleep trackers
1:41:23 of getting very anxious about your sleep.
1:41:25 And I get this, we have a condition for it now
1:41:28 in sleep science, it’s called orthosomnia.
1:41:31 You’ve heard of in medicine, ortho means straight.
1:41:33 And so orthodontics, orthopedics, orthodontics,
1:41:34 get your teeth straight, orthopedics,
1:41:36 get your bones straight.
1:41:37 This is about getting your sleep straight
1:41:40 and getting so anxious about it that it freaks you out.
1:41:42 Two pieces of advice if you’re going through that
1:41:43 with a sleep tracker.
1:41:47 Number one, if it’s bad, just take it off, stop using it,
1:41:48 put it in a drawer, we’ll return to it
1:41:50 when we fix your sleep.
1:41:52 Number two, don’t take it off, keep it on,
1:41:56 but only check your data once every two weeks,
1:41:59 be disciplined or check it once every week
1:42:00 or once every month.
1:42:04 And that way you’re not waking up to the daily headline
1:42:06 that you kind of already know yourself,
1:42:09 I just didn’t sleep well, thanks very much, that’s great.
1:42:11 You’re telling me I didn’t, I kind of knew that.
1:42:13 – Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of why I took off
1:42:15 my glucose tracker, ’cause I was just like,
1:42:17 I know when I eat the pizza what’s gonna happen.
1:42:20 Like it’s like, you don’t at least know it.
1:42:24 And there’s something about objectively knowing it
1:42:27 in a way that you would guesstimate it before
1:42:31 that still probably has a course correcting set of hands
1:42:35 on your decision making, even though you’ve now taken it off,
1:42:38 you had to get to that corrected mentality
1:42:40 by having worn it first.
1:42:44 So I still think there is value prop ad in that regard.
1:42:46 – Yeah, that’s great advice.
1:42:50 All right, so a couple of last things, weighted blankets,
1:42:52 fan or no?
1:42:55 – Current fan for people who have insomnia,
1:42:57 I think the data is looking interesting,
1:42:58 there was a study that was done
1:42:59 and they used weighted blankets,
1:43:02 they showed that there was a 60% reduction
1:43:05 in insomnia severity symptoms.
1:43:07 What was also interesting is that with continued use,
1:43:10 they made, there was about a 40% maintenance
1:43:12 of that insomnia benefit.
1:43:15 It’s looking even more promising for kids
1:43:20 with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.
1:43:25 Those two conditions go hand in hand with sleep problems
1:43:28 and weighted blankets seem to have some benefit there
1:43:29 in those populations too.
1:43:31 Problem with all of these studies is,
1:43:34 how do you create placebo for a weighted blanket?
1:43:36 So I think there’s a lot of placebo effect going on,
1:43:38 but I also think that there is,
1:43:41 it comes from a literature on pressure sensitivity
1:43:44 on the body and an anxiolytic effect,
1:43:47 not an anxiogenic, an anxiolytic effect.
1:43:50 So I think there’s, right now I would say,
1:43:53 certainly for the cost of entry,
1:43:56 if you are experiencing sleep problems, give it a shot.
1:43:57 – They’re quite cozy in the winter time too.
1:43:58 – They’re cozy in the winter time,
1:44:00 I know people who swear by them.
1:44:04 And don’t forget in the end, you’re just after better sleep.
1:44:05 As a scientist, I care, but you shouldn’t,
1:44:07 which is the placebo effect,
1:44:10 which is the most reliable effect in all of pharmacology.
1:44:12 So I’m short of an adrenaline shot to the heart,
1:44:15 but other than that, epinephrine, you’re right up there.
1:44:17 Use it. – That’s amazing.
1:44:20 Okay, so a bit of a curveball at you.
1:44:25 So sex, or if you don’t have a partner,
1:44:28 I guess what’s a PC way that is to say like–
1:44:29 – Self-stimulation?
1:44:34 – Yeah, waxing the dolphin, however you want to say it.
1:44:36 Does that help you sleep better?
1:44:39 – Sitting across from the table has never been
1:44:41 any more different than this moment in time, Kevin.
1:44:43 – I was trying to say it like a British way or something,
1:44:46 like it’s not a term, like–
1:44:49 – The dolphin and the wax, yeah,
1:44:51 we’re moving on to probably hot wax on the nipple,
1:44:54 crashing on, yeah, I think we all could.
1:44:55 – We get the point now.
1:44:57 – You’re an absolute gem, sir.
1:45:00 – We get the point, does that help with sleep?
1:45:01 – Yes and yes.
1:45:06 So sex before sleep, as long as it is accomplishing orgasm,
1:45:09 obviously, you know, consensuals–
1:45:09 – Right, right.
1:45:11 – It’s appropriate, all of that good stuff.
1:45:16 The benefits there are in the 60 to 70% improvement
1:45:18 in subjective sleep quality.
1:45:21 So sex before sleep that leads to an orgasm
1:45:24 is typically associated with, on average,
1:45:26 about a 60 to 70% improvement
1:45:28 in the quality of your sleep that night.
1:45:29 – You said subjective, though.
1:45:30 – Subjective.
1:45:31 – So that hasn’t been studied in the lab.
1:45:32 – So we haven’t got objective data
1:45:34 because of probably the pragmatics of it
1:45:37 being a bit more tricky to do in the laboratory.
1:45:40 If you are not currently with partner,
1:45:42 are you completely S out of luck?
1:45:43 – Right. – No, you’re not.
1:45:45 – That was my point about the dolphin.
1:45:46 – Yeah, exactly, self-stimulation
1:45:48 with the wax and the dolphin,
1:45:51 you can get about 40 to 50% of the way there
1:45:55 in self-stimulation, too, if it accomplishes orgasm.
1:45:56 – Right.
1:45:59 – And at that point, I mean, it’s, you know,
1:46:01 you’re making kind of money hand over fist
1:46:03 in terms of the benefits for sleep.
1:46:05 – I feel like this is a study Aura could do,
1:46:07 or any, I mean, obviously it’s a pretty,
1:46:11 it depends on how comfortable people are at time to say,
1:46:14 “Yeah, I just masturbated myself to sleep tonight.”
1:46:18 A lot of people use masturbation as a sleep aid.
1:46:19 – Yeah.
1:46:21 – You know, it’s very clear that it’s there.
1:46:22 – That’s crazy.
1:46:24 Okay, that was a good one to get out there.
1:46:27 How about–
1:46:27 – No pun intended.
1:46:29 – Yes, there’s that.
1:46:31 – Last question, we’ll talk about how we–
1:46:33 – We are both wearing pants below this table, by the way.
1:46:34 – That is correct.
1:46:37 We were fully clothed if you’re listening to the audio,
1:46:38 the version.
1:46:39 That’s right.
1:46:41 What’s a proper way, someone’s saying,
1:46:43 “Okay, listen, I’ve tried a lot of these things.
1:46:45 “I’m still having issues here.
1:46:47 “Where did it, who do they reach out to
1:46:50 “and how can they have a proper sleep study done?
1:46:52 “And is there any benefit to that?”
1:46:55 Like, if you brought someone into the lab,
1:46:57 not to say it would be in your lab,
1:47:00 but say it more of a commercial lab for a sleep study
1:47:04 around average consumers with insomnia issues.
1:47:09 If someone comes in and goes under and gets studied
1:47:12 and they get a report, what are they gonna learn
1:47:15 that’s any different than them just, you know,
1:47:17 doing standard stress management
1:47:18 and all the other things we talked about?
1:47:21 – If it’s insomnia, we typically don’t do a sleep study.
1:47:21 – Oh, interesting.
1:47:23 – We can actually get the, for the most part,
1:47:26 by taking a history and doing questionnaires.
1:47:28 And then we’ll get you to do a sleep diary
1:47:29 and fill different things out.
1:47:33 But insomnia is made in terms of its diagnosis,
1:47:35 not by a sleep study itself.
1:47:40 If it is about snoring very much, it is a sleep study,
1:47:43 but usually it’s an at-home sleep test.
1:47:44 – And that’s for apnea, Mark.
1:47:46 – And that’s for apnea, that’s for breathing related problems.
1:47:47 – Understood.
1:47:48 – So that heavy snoring,
1:47:53 which can be a representation of sleep apnea.
1:47:56 If it’s for something like restless leg syndrome
1:47:57 that we spoke about where you just get this kind of
1:47:59 creepy crawly feeling in your legs
1:48:02 and you just have to move them and it’s awful.
1:48:05 People get in the triceps as well, it’s just miserable.
1:48:07 There we will typically do a sleep study
1:48:10 where we bring you into the laboratory
1:48:13 and we’ll measure you with all the electrodes and the wires.
1:48:17 I don’t know of any outfit right now
1:48:19 that is doing it paid out of pocket.
1:48:20 I’ve thought about this though,
1:48:23 because I think there is a growing trend
1:48:25 of people wanting to be self-quantified.
1:48:30 And there was, I won’t name names just for privacy sake,
1:48:35 but a mutual friend, it turns out, of ours,
1:48:36 and their sleep tracker was saying
1:48:39 that they were not getting a lot of deep sleep.
1:48:41 – Yeah, mine did that for a while too
1:48:42 until the algorithm was updated.
1:48:45 – Now, one of them was the algorithm getting updated,
1:48:47 but we then said, okay, well,
1:48:49 but you say that you’re restored and you’re fresh
1:48:52 and you’re a healthy person, no signs of obesity
1:48:55 or blood sugar problems that would be representative
1:48:56 of a lack of deep sleep.
1:48:59 So I sent a couple of my team out
1:49:03 and we’ve now got our spaghetti monster set of equipment.
1:49:07 Now that is ambulatory, so we can go to people’s home.
1:49:09 We will just go to your home at your bedtime.
1:49:12 We wire you up and then we just kind of cast you off
1:49:14 and we go back to hotel.
1:49:16 You sleep the night, probably not great,
1:49:19 but it’s all about getting the brainwave activity data.
1:49:21 It’s not about getting the perfect night of sleep
1:49:22 that is representative.
1:49:24 Then the next morning you tell us
1:49:26 when you want us to be back, we come back,
1:49:27 we take the electrodes off
1:49:29 and then we can do that a second night and a third night
1:49:30 and usually people don’t tolerate much more
1:49:33 than a third night, but that’s enough data.
1:49:36 And then we can go back to my laboratory
1:49:38 and we deconstruct your brainwaves
1:49:41 using all of our fancy in-house sort of algorithms
1:49:43 and high processing computer power.
1:49:45 And what we found was that in fact,
1:49:48 this person did have a deficiency.
1:49:49 So when you go into deep sleep,
1:49:52 you have these big, powerful, deep, slow brainwaves
1:49:54 and they’re just gorgeous
1:49:56 to see huge synchronized brainwaves.
1:49:58 Sure enough, on average,
1:50:01 across the range of those deep sleep brainwaves,
1:50:04 which go from as little as going up and down
1:50:07 just half, 0.5 Hertz per second.
1:50:08 So in other words, they’re going up and down
1:50:13 maybe just once every two seconds, very, very slow,
1:50:15 or just once every second, which is one Hertz,
1:50:17 or twice every second, which is two Hertz.
1:50:19 That’s very, very slow brain activity.
1:50:21 That’s deep sleep.
1:50:22 And sure enough, on average,
1:50:24 the range that we have of deep sleep
1:50:29 is 0.5 Hertz to four Hertz for oscillations per second.
1:50:32 Sure enough, on average, they had deficient deep sleep.
1:50:36 But when we split it down in terms of individual bins,
1:50:39 the four Hertz bin, the three Hertz bin, the two Hertz,
1:50:42 they had whopping amounts
1:50:44 of ultra-slow deep sleep brainwaves,
1:50:47 which is in fact probably the best
1:50:49 of all deep sleep brainwaves. – Ah, interesting.
1:50:54 So they were a super deep sleep brainwave, ah, as it were.
1:50:58 But the ring was still summing across, you know,
1:51:00 the typical kind of range.
1:51:02 And therefore, there wasn’t the ring, it turns out,
1:51:05 it was a different sleep tracking device.
1:51:09 But the sleep tracking device was kind of getting fooled
1:51:12 as we would be if we just broke your brainwaves down
1:51:15 in a big bucket altogether.
1:51:17 But if we really thin-slice that bucket,
1:51:19 we see you’re not deficient at all.
1:51:22 You are in the 98th percentile for the ultra-slow
1:51:26 of the slow brainwaves, you are radically healthy.
1:51:27 You’re great.
1:51:30 So that’s why I think there can be benefits.
1:51:32 And I think if there are sleep-curious folks out there,
1:51:35 I have thought about probably, and I should do this,
1:51:37 ’cause again, I think it’s best done with good science,
1:51:39 is setting up a company.
1:51:42 And it’s usually, to begin with,
1:51:44 it’s not going to be democratically available
1:51:46 ’cause it’s gonna be high-cost.
1:51:49 So it’s going to be concierge, kind of medicine,
1:51:50 white-glove treatment.
1:51:52 You want us to do a sleep study.
1:51:53 You want us to break down all of your data.
1:51:57 You want us to tell you where do you sit relative to the globe
1:52:00 ’cause we’ve now got hundreds of thousands of hours
1:52:02 of data on sleep recordings.
1:52:05 We can say, “Where are you for your age, for your sex?
1:52:07 “In what percentile do you rank
1:52:09 “for all of the different sleep stages?”
1:52:11 And it’s basically just like me
1:52:14 giving you a sleep bio assessment.
1:52:18 – I think there’s probably a market for that.
1:52:19 – There’s definitely a market for that
1:52:20 ’cause we do that already.
1:52:23 I mean, so as a part of a Tia’s group,
1:52:27 we’ll do VO2 max testing and then retesting.
1:52:29 We’ll do DEXA scan for bone density testing
1:52:31 and then retesting every year.
1:52:34 There’s something to be said about having that baseline
1:52:37 so that we can track it over time and see what’s changing.
1:52:39 And then also, if you’re doing any interventions,
1:52:40 you can jump in and say,
1:52:42 did this have an impact one way or the other, right?
1:52:44 – And also just temporarily tracking
1:52:45 your decline in sleep.
1:52:48 We’ve done some studies where if you’re rapidly declining
1:52:51 in your deep sleep at a sharp angle,
1:52:53 it’s not a good sign in terms of dementia risk.
1:52:55 Now there’s people like Richard Isaacson
1:52:58 at the Einstein Institute in New York
1:53:01 who are developing some really radical new
1:53:04 anti Alzheimer’s disease lifestyle
1:53:06 and supplement treatment and exercise regimens
1:53:08 and kind of programs.
1:53:11 So if we can already see like a crystal ball,
1:53:14 the prediction power of your sleep declining
1:53:17 because we’re doing this service for you every two years
1:53:18 and you probably wouldn’t need to do it
1:53:20 more than every two years.
1:53:23 All of a sudden then, crystal ball like,
1:53:27 we can instigate prevention rather than stage treatment.
1:53:30 I think there is big value and I should probably,
1:53:31 I should probably bite the bullet
1:53:34 and it’s yet another thing I should probably do.
1:53:38 – You need a full staff, even beer staff.
1:53:41 So let’s talk real quick before we wrap
1:53:43 your brain stimulation device
1:53:44 and where you think the state of brain stimulation
1:53:46 is on sleep.
1:53:48 – I am really bullish about brain stimulation in general.
1:53:50 I think this is a new approach.
1:53:53 As I said, that’s that when I was writing the book,
1:53:55 there was just very nascent data.
1:53:57 I’m not going to sort of go too much on record.
1:54:01 So I have, I created a new startup company.
1:54:04 It’s called stimscience.com and you can go there
1:54:06 and we’ve released our first product.
1:54:11 I think there are at least three new modalities
1:54:15 for non-pharmological enhancement of human sleep.
1:54:18 One is electricity and we’re trying to do that
1:54:19 with this company.
1:54:21 And as I said, we’ve got our first gem product out there.
1:54:22 I think we still need a lot more data.
1:54:26 If I were leading the company, which would be a disaster
1:54:30 ’cause I’m a scientist, I would probably wait for 10 years
1:54:33 of a million hours of sleep data
1:54:34 before I released the product.
1:54:36 And then at that point, 20 other companies
1:54:38 have already beaten you to it.
1:54:41 So I get releasing early.
1:54:43 So electricity is one way that we’re doing it,
1:54:45 which is creating electroseuticals
1:54:47 rather than pharmaceuticals.
1:54:49 And I think that that’s definitely an approach
1:54:53 that I’m invested in, both in terms of time
1:54:54 and scientifically.
1:54:57 I think the next one is acoustic stimulation.
1:54:59 And there’s some really interesting data
1:55:04 that if you start to play acoustic sounds
1:55:07 at that slow brain rhythm.
1:55:10 So maybe just like 0.5 Hertz or just one Hertz.
1:55:12 So in other words, you just hear this like
1:55:14 throb of a sound every second.
1:55:16 That’s a one Hertz throb.
1:55:20 And then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
1:55:23 If you do that and you just start playing it,
1:55:25 there was a study that came out of Germany
1:55:27 and they showed that it does improve the speed
1:55:28 with which you fall asleep.
1:55:31 And it seemed to increase the amount of deep sleep
1:55:34 just statistically significantly.
1:55:36 The problem is that that’s not a very smart way to do it
1:55:37 nor is it with electricity.
1:55:39 That’s the way that they used to do it
1:55:41 with the initial studies
1:55:44 that they would actually just start.
1:55:46 Once you went into deep sleep,
1:55:47 they just started stimulating the brain
1:55:50 at the average slow brain wave frequency,
1:55:52 let’s say two Hertz.
1:55:54 But the problem is your sweet spot
1:55:56 of deep slow wave brain wave activity
1:55:59 may be 1.257 Hertz.
1:56:02 Mine may be 3.29 Hertz.
1:56:05 So now we’ve developed a closed loop system
1:56:07 where we’re measuring your brain waves
1:56:11 and then we’re stimulating you right at the stroke of midnight
1:56:14 for your particular next brain wave.
1:56:15 So think of it like this.
1:56:17 Let’s say that I say to you, you’re a drummer
1:56:21 and I want you to drum just like a salsa beat for me.
1:56:22 And you kind of think, okay,
1:56:26 I kind of know the general tempo of a salsa beat.
1:56:27 So I’ll just start screaming.
1:56:29 Now it turns out that in the next room,
1:56:30 I’m trying to see if you’re matching
1:56:33 this particular salsa track.
1:56:35 And you’re close, but you’re not quite there.
1:56:36 Why?
1:56:38 Because you’re ignorant of what the actual beat is.
1:56:41 That was the early sort of version of all of this
1:56:43 of acoustic stimulation, of electrical stimulation.
1:56:45 You’re kind of guesstimating to say on average,
1:56:48 the brain is going up and down at this oscillation.
1:56:52 So let’s give sound at that kind of average sweet spot
1:56:55 or electricity at that average sweet spot.
1:56:59 But now we can measure real time the brain waves
1:57:01 and we can predict when the next one is coming
1:57:04 and we can strike it right when we think it’s going to happen.
1:57:06 – Do you have one device?
1:57:08 – So we actually have, for our device,
1:57:12 it’s called a transcranial direct current brain stimulator.
1:57:14 So it’s not magnetism, it’s electricity.
1:57:17 So TDCS, transcranial direct current stimulation,
1:57:20 it’s basically just current electricity
1:57:23 inputted through your cranium and it’s a movement
1:57:25 through our electrodes into your brain,
1:57:27 hence the transport of the electrodes.
1:57:29 But we have electrodes on there too.
1:57:31 So we’re inputting and we’re listening.
1:57:32 We input and we listen.
1:57:33 Hence it’s a closed system.
1:57:34 – Is this working?
1:57:35 – It’s working.
1:57:36 So we have an algorithm.
1:57:39 – So what consumer device is this?
1:57:41 – It’s a, it’s called Somni.
1:57:42 – Oh, so this is what Somni is doing?
1:57:43 – Correct.
1:57:45 – Okay, I never knew the science behind Somni.
1:57:48 – Well, the clever part, it’s not clever if it was me,
1:57:52 but we don’t typically want to wear these things.
1:57:54 So it turns out that when we developed
1:57:56 a version of the stimulation,
1:57:59 once we took the stimulation off your head,
1:58:02 it kept on going for about two hours.
1:58:04 It has a blast radius of about 90 minutes to two hours.
1:58:07 So think of it like a child on a swing.
1:58:10 They’re waving their legs and the swing is not moving,
1:58:12 but you as a parent, you start swinging them.
1:58:14 You’re swinging them and you’re building up the momentum
1:58:18 and then you stop swinging them and they keep swinging
1:58:20 because you’ve got momentum.
1:58:22 That’s the approach that we took, which was very different.
1:58:24 That’s what differentiates us in the market.
1:58:25 – Interesting.
1:58:26 – So you’re brushing your teeth for 10 minutes
1:58:27 or you’re lying in bed.
1:58:29 You just kind of, you know,
1:58:31 you can listen to a meditation track while you do it
1:58:33 and you just have the stimulation.
1:58:37 So this is me now swinging your brain artificially
1:58:40 and then we stop and then we just see if your brain
1:58:42 gets going just like the child on the swing.
1:58:46 Our better way would be I’m trying to fertilize the soil
1:58:47 of your prefrontal cortex,
1:58:50 which is where we generate most of our deep sleep.
1:58:52 So that when you go into sleep,
1:58:54 the soil is that much more fertilized
1:58:58 and you germinate much more powerful deep sleep brainwaves.
1:59:01 And you don’t have to wear it during sleep
1:59:02 ’cause most of us don’t wanna wear it.
1:59:05 – I’m kind of confusing ’cause like you’re not seeing the,
1:59:07 you’re not actually having a closed loop
1:59:08 on the deep sleep frequencies.
1:59:11 – Well, we are because when we’re stimulating,
1:59:14 we’re measuring your brainwaves during that 10 minutes
1:59:15 as you’re brushing your teeth.
1:59:17 We’re trying to then almost,
1:59:19 we’re almost trying to fight back
1:59:22 against the fast frenetic brain activity.
1:59:25 We are still trying to essentially read out
1:59:27 your brain activity during the stimulation.
1:59:29 – Sure, but that’s not gonna be deep sleep activity.
1:59:32 – Well, but what we can do is we can essentially be
1:59:35 getting you, we’re pushing you towards that.
1:59:36 We’re essentially saying–
1:59:38 – So you know what the ramp looks like.
1:59:38 – Correct.
1:59:39 – And so you’re like, hey, I’m gonna hit you
1:59:42 at the second inning where we know where you were going.
1:59:46 – So we can’t give away exactly what frequencies we use,
1:59:48 but they’re not actually quite the deep sleep frequencies.
1:59:52 So it’s like me saying, I’m going to help you
1:59:54 row through the gears to get onto the on ramp
1:59:58 once you hit highway cruising speed.
2:00:02 And were the people who are going to give you a helping hand
2:00:05 to move through that H box pattern of the gears
2:00:08 nice and smoothly, we’re getting you onto the on ramp
2:00:09 in a quicker manner.
2:00:12 And then once you’re cruising speed,
2:00:13 take it off and you’re good to go.
2:00:14 – That’s amazing.
2:00:17 – So there’s that electricity, there’s acoustic stimulation,
2:00:18 which I think is great.
2:00:22 Then came on the scene, kinesthetic stimulation.
2:00:27 Why we didn’t think of this so long ago, I don’t know,
2:00:31 because you can go back in biblical readings
2:00:34 and what would people do to get a child to sleep?
2:00:36 They would typically rock them in a manger.
2:00:37 – Right.
2:00:40 – So if your baby is awake and you’re trying
2:00:42 to get them to sleep, you usually typically take them
2:00:45 in your arms and you just start kind of like rocking.
2:00:46 – You wrap them tight.
2:00:47 – Wrap them tight.
2:00:48 – Yeah.
2:00:48 – Kind of like rock them.
2:00:51 – They sell devices that literally auto rock the baby.
2:00:52 – They will rock.
2:00:55 And all of a sudden, why is this working?
2:00:58 Why have we known this as a human species?
2:01:01 And what is the speed with which we typically rock?
2:01:03 It turns out to be almost the sweet spot
2:01:06 of deep slow brainwave activity.
2:01:10 You start rocking them really quickly as a disaster.
2:01:12 You just rock them really slowly.
2:01:13 – Yeah, my mom used to rock me to sleep
2:01:16 in a rocking chair actually as a child, yeah.
2:01:18 – And my guess is that the frequency
2:01:21 of which you would rock you is very similar to the brainwave.
2:01:25 So this is one of those studies where I reviewed the paper
2:01:27 and I just, why did I think of that?
2:01:30 It gets back to, it’s not too far from the waxing.
2:01:31 – Wait, so how does it work?
2:01:32 So you got to get a bed that’s rocking me?
2:01:34 – Well, yeah, so it’s not too far from the waxing
2:01:36 of the dolphin, but it’s a little bit more.
2:01:36 It’s close.
2:01:40 So what you do is you get a bed frame
2:01:45 and you get chains and you show the bed frame to the ceiling.
2:01:47 Now, so we’re kind of moving down the,
2:01:50 we’ve gone from dolphin to sort of the BDSM.
2:01:55 But now what they did was they put a little arm pushing device
2:01:57 next to it, which was connected to a pulley.
2:02:01 And that arm would start to rotate the bed
2:02:05 at actually a very slow frequency at about two, five hertz.
2:02:10 So it’s actually only rocking once every four seconds.
2:02:12 So it’s a very slow rock.
2:02:15 Sure enough, it enhanced the amount of deep sleep
2:02:17 that those people are getting.
2:02:19 It improved something that we also call sleep spindles,
2:02:22 which are these short bursts that ride like surfers
2:02:24 on top of the deep slow brainwaves.
2:02:26 And those two things combined, we know help memory.
2:02:28 And sure enough, in one of those studies,
2:02:31 that deep sleep enhancement through rocking
2:02:33 improved memory by about 10%.
2:02:36 And you think, well, 10%, but are you kidding me?
2:02:37 The 10% is amazing.
2:02:41 If you took us, you know, a test it as a kid in school
2:02:45 and you kind of got, you know, a C plus,
2:02:48 and I say, I’m not gonna just give you an extra 10%,
2:02:49 you’re solidly in B territory.
2:02:50 Yeah.
2:02:52 I’ll take 10%, that’s not bad at all.
2:02:56 So when you move this to the consumer application,
2:02:58 could you embed, I would take it,
2:03:00 you obviously get rid of all the chains and everything else
2:03:03 and you embed this inside of some type of floating
2:03:04 apparatus in a bed frame.
2:03:05 The company has done it.
2:03:06 No way.
2:03:08 And they put little feet on the stands of your bed
2:03:10 that sit on the floor.
2:03:10 And those feet are programmed.
2:03:11 And they move the whole bed.
2:03:14 Wi-Fi, but they’ve got motor, they’re motorized.
2:03:16 Plug into your phone and you can determine
2:03:17 the rocking frequency.
2:03:18 Does it work?
2:03:19 And it rocks, no data.
2:03:20 What’s the name of it, do you know?
2:03:23 I don’t even know if the company still exists anymore.
2:03:24 I can’t even remember the company.
2:03:25 Ah, man.
2:03:27 But I clearly got no affiliation,
2:03:30 but I, you know, I don’t know about that one.
2:03:32 I don’t think it’s going to create,
2:03:35 I mean, if you looked at the,
2:03:38 the distance traveled with this rocking method
2:03:40 versus these little feet that kind of do,
2:03:43 like maybe a couple of inches, you know,
2:03:45 it’s probably not going to be.
2:03:50 There is, so I wanted to try to do this too.
2:03:52 It’s a crazy idea.
2:03:54 I took a patent out and I’ve never transacted on it.
2:04:00 There is a device that you can put in the ear
2:04:04 and it will stimulate the vestibular system in the ear.
2:04:08 And it can, that’s why sometimes you’ll get C-sickness.
2:04:10 And when you get back on land,
2:04:12 because you’ve been stimulating this kind of vestibular
2:04:13 system in the ear.
2:04:14 And you still feel like things are moving.
2:04:15 You still feel like things are moving.
2:04:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:04:18 So I, through this stimulation device,
2:04:21 I can fool your brain into thinking you are rocking it,
2:04:24 any frequency I like, but you’re not.
2:04:26 You’re dead still in bed,
2:04:28 but your brain thinks that you’re rocking
2:04:29 and that you’re swinging.
2:04:30 Have you tried this in?
2:04:34 I’ve got, well, I haven’t even created a version
2:04:35 of the technology.
2:04:37 No, I just thought, you know what?
2:04:39 I’ll take the patent out and then at some point, if,
2:04:42 you know, so I’ve got, I’m terrible.
2:04:45 I’ve got so many ideas coming out,
2:04:48 all sorts of orifices that will never get transactive,
2:04:49 but anyway.
2:04:50 I love it.
2:04:52 This has been fun.
2:04:52 Awesome.
2:04:54 You’re such a brilliant interviewer.
2:04:57 You’re so, you’re so good.
2:04:59 You’ve, you’ve, you’ve got all the amazing acts
2:05:01 and ideas to have the, the, the, the, the,
2:05:02 I shy of the dolphin.
2:05:04 I think it was too bad at all.
2:05:06 No, no, no, we absolutely have to keep.
2:05:07 Awesome.
2:05:09 So, so I, I do want to say a couple of things.
2:05:13 Obviously, Matt Walker podcast definitely go sign up for that.
2:05:14 Thank you.
2:05:16 Where else did we, we gave people link them up
2:05:18 in the show notes to a lot of the relevant stuff
2:05:23 we talked about today, including the why we sleep.org.
2:05:26 Yep. That’s why the, so I started, as I said,
2:05:30 the new public charity, the goal of which is to try to solve
2:05:35 the global sleep loss epidemic by way of science funded science
2:05:37 and also by way of sleep education.
2:05:41 I think I have done a completely book shot approach
2:05:44 to trying to educate society in terms of sleep.
2:05:47 I need to do it in a formal manner and we’re going to create
2:05:51 this foundation, this trust, this public foundation
2:05:52 and we’re going to create a team
2:05:55 and we’re going to start banging out some really great
2:05:56 informational content.
2:05:59 For example, you know, I know of no first world government
2:06:01 that has ever had a public health campaign regarding sleep.
2:06:03 We have them for safe sex, drink driving.
2:06:05 We have them for food, for movement.
2:06:06 Why don’t we have it for sleep?
2:06:08 I think it’s a travesty and we’re going to provide
2:06:10 that to governments.
2:06:12 The World Health Organization spoke with them.
2:06:14 They don’t have a basic sleep educational module
2:06:16 for different age ranges that is translated
2:06:18 into 37 different languages.
2:06:19 Why not?
2:06:21 It’s a basic human right.
2:06:22 Every species will go through it.
2:06:24 Every child will sleep.
2:06:25 We should be educating them.
2:06:27 Where are the materials for teachers to teach it
2:06:28 in the classroom?
2:06:29 We don’t have those too.
2:06:31 Why don’t we lobby Congress to make changes
2:06:34 in terms of resident workouts for medical professions?
2:06:36 This is the type of mission that we have.
2:06:37 – Oh, 100%.
2:06:40 – If anyone wants to get behind that,
2:06:42 please reach out either to me personally
2:06:44 or you can go to whywesleep.org.
2:06:46 That is our mission as a foundation.
2:06:47 – Awesome.
2:06:49 Matt, thank you so much for being on the show.
2:06:50 – You’re so welcome.
2:06:51 It is just a privilege.
2:06:52 It’s lovely to hang out with you again.
2:06:53 – It’s good to hang out.
2:06:55 Just great chatting on mic too, always.