The Fitness Scientist: “Even A Little Alcohol Is Hurting Your Health!”, “Late Night Screen Time Linked To Cancer!”, “Working Shifts Kills You 15 Years Early!” – Kristen Holmes

0:00:01 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:00:02 Hey, what you doing?
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0:00:24 Discover low and no cost energy saving tips
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0:00:28 Matching tracksuits?
0:00:30 Please no.
0:00:32 What the research says is that people who are having sex
0:00:34 within a few hours when they sleep
0:00:37 have better markers of sleep and recovery.
0:00:39 So does masturbation not have the same implications?
0:00:42 Well, what was so interesting about this research
0:00:45 is that Kristen Holmes is the vice president of performance
0:00:46 science at WU.
0:00:49 Who has access to health data from hundreds of thousands
0:00:51 of people and her groundbreaking research
0:00:53 will tell you the secrets of achieving perfect health
0:00:54 and performance.
0:00:56 The key to your health is your circadian rhythm,
0:01:00 which are physical, mental, and behavioral changes
0:01:02 that happen in a 24-hour cycle.
0:01:04 One of the most known circadian rhythms
0:01:06 is being asleep during the night,
0:01:09 and it has massive health consequences.
0:01:12 For example, we know that shift workers, on average,
0:01:13 are going to die 15 years sooner.
0:01:16 But if you’re awake for two hours between 10 PM
0:01:20 and 4 AM, two days per week for 25 days of the year,
0:01:23 you qualify as a shift worker.
0:01:26 You are putting yourself at increased risk for cancer,
0:01:28 cardiovascular disease, mental health issues,
0:01:30 you can have trouble having children.
0:01:31 I mean, that’s terrifying.
0:01:32 We know that.
0:01:34 We haven’t adapted to blue light.
0:01:35 The light we get from screens.
0:01:38 Yes, if you’re viewing light between the hours of 10 PM
0:01:41 and 4 AM, it actually has a pro-depressive effect.
0:01:42 So this goes on and on.
0:01:44 And a lot of people are like, I have to go to bed at 1 AM
0:01:45 because I’m a night owl.
0:01:46 Total BS.
0:01:47 You’re making a choice.
0:01:49 And if you want to perform consistently,
0:01:51 increase your tolerance for stress
0:01:53 and take control of your life.
0:01:54 You need to–
0:01:56 we want to eat most importantly.
0:01:58 We need to–
0:02:01 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:02:10 Kristen, why do you do the work that you do?
0:02:15 I am irrationally passionate about human flourishing
0:02:19 and the framework’s policies, basically,
0:02:21 determinants of human flourishing.
0:02:24 And I’ve kind of dedicated my life
0:02:29 to understanding how the physiology and psychology work
0:02:34 together to help people take control of their health
0:02:38 so they can understand how to apply their energy
0:02:40 and attention in a way that’s truly rewarding.
0:02:41 What is your job title?
0:02:43 I’m the vice president of performance science,
0:02:46 principal scientist at Woop, which
0:02:49 is a physical monitoring technology company.
0:02:51 And what does that mean?
0:02:54 So I’m trying to make sure Woop is a thought
0:02:56 leader in human performance, so trying
0:02:59 to see around the bend to understand what’s
0:03:03 going to be important for tomorrow in terms of understanding
0:03:06 how we can take control of the trajectory of our health.
0:03:07 What are the markers that are important
0:03:09 that we need to be tracking?
0:03:11 What are the behaviors that we need to be engaging in
0:03:14 in order to move those metrics around in a way
0:03:16 that is health-promoting?
0:03:18 I look at a lot of the high stakes, high stress environments.
0:03:21 So professional athletes, frontline health care
0:03:26 clinicians, and military operators.
0:03:32 So understanding some of these extreme professions and crafts
0:03:34 and what the physiology and the psychology looks like,
0:03:40 we can then abstract and, I think, in some ways,
0:03:44 generalize what that means for the regular population who
0:03:47 are experiencing less extreme demands on their time
0:03:50 and their energy and their cognitive bandwidth.
0:03:53 And do you conduct your own studies?
0:03:54 Yes.
0:03:58 Yeah, so I’m a principal investigator on many studies,
0:04:01 which means that I’m kind of leading those experiments
0:04:03 from kind of A to Z. And I have a team that
0:04:06 is kind of supporting that research
0:04:09 in various aspects of expertise.
0:04:11 But yeah, I mean, one of the studies
0:04:13 that we published in May was looking
0:04:15 at 1,000 paratroopers in Army Alaska.
0:04:19 So super extreme environments, harsh.
0:04:23 But the Army came to us.
0:04:27 Alaska, in general, has a very high suicide rate.
0:04:31 This base in Elmdorf, Alaska, has a lot of mental health
0:04:34 issues, a lot of suicide, and they’re
0:04:36 trying to understand what is actually going on here.
0:04:38 And we were able to run a study where
0:04:43 we showed that there’s actually one behavior, one behavior that
0:04:48 was surfaced that was the most predictive of positive
0:04:51 psychological functioning in these soldiers.
0:04:55 And that one behavior was sleep/wake timing.
0:04:59 So the more consistent and more stable the sleep/wake,
0:05:03 the sleep onset and offset of these soldiers,
0:05:07 the higher levels of positive psychological functioning.
0:05:12 So workplace resilience, less homesickness,
0:05:16 more feelings of control, more positive social networks.
0:05:19 It bubbles up in every single piece of research
0:05:20 that we do at WOOP.
0:05:24 Sleep/wake timing, I think, is the mother of all performance
0:05:25 optimization behaviors.
0:05:28 Sleep/wake timing.
0:05:30 So is this the same thing as your circadian rhythm?
0:05:32 Yeah, so this is one of the most–
0:05:34 I think when we think about circadian rhythms,
0:05:38 which is just physical, mental, and behavioral changes
0:05:43 that happen in a 24-hour cycle, and your biological clock
0:05:46 is orchestrating these rhythms.
0:05:48 OK, so I’m going to have to pause and take this right back
0:05:51 to monkey-level stuff.
0:05:53 What is a circadian rhythm, as if you’re explaining it
0:05:54 to a 10-year-old?
0:05:57 Yeah, so it’s basically physical, mental,
0:06:04 and behavioral changes that happen over a 24-hour cycle.
0:06:06 OK, so here’s my read on it.
0:06:09 Correct me if I’m wrong.
0:06:13 There’s a clock in my head.
0:06:19 Yes, the suprachiasmatic nucleus is the master clock.
0:06:21 OK, which is somewhere in my body.
0:06:23 It’s in the hypothalamus.
0:06:24 So it’s in my brain.
0:06:27 And this clock regulates every cell in my body.
0:06:29 Cell, tissue, organ.
0:06:35 OK, and it controls the release of a chemical, which
0:06:40 makes those cells, organs, every part of my body do stuff.
0:06:42 Yeah, so it is your hypothalamus.
0:06:46 So the suprachiasmatic nucleus responds to light,
0:06:48 and it responds to darkness.
0:06:48 OK.
0:06:52 OK, so that’s like the most pronounced entrainment
0:06:55 cue for this master clock.
0:06:58 And it then tells, it sends signals to every cell tissue
0:07:01 in your body as to what it needs to be doing
0:07:04 in the presence of light, in the presence of darkness.
0:07:09 And when we are viewing light at a phase of the natural light
0:07:14 dark cycle, that is, if I am awake when I should be sleeping,
0:07:18 or I am sleeping when I should be awake when my body anticipates
0:07:22 that, it causes huge amounts of stress in the system.
0:07:26 If we do this once or twice, not a big deal.
0:07:29 But if we’re doing this chronically,
0:07:35 it has massive health consequences–
0:07:40 cancer, metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease–
0:07:44 100% of mental health issues, there
0:07:47 will be some level of circadian disruption.
0:07:52 OK, so when this light information comes in
0:07:55 and tells these clocks what to do,
0:08:00 if I am going outside of my natural biological preferences,
0:08:02 that is circadian disruption.
0:08:07 And if you think about how many folks are walking around
0:08:10 this circadian disruption, it is mind blowing.
0:08:14 I mean, basically the kind of the definition that’s
0:08:19 been thrown out there is, if you are awake from the hours of 10
0:08:24 PM to 4 AM, if you’re awake for two hours between 10 PM
0:08:32 and 4 AM, for two days per week, for 25 days of the year,
0:08:38 you qualify as a kind of card-carrying shift worker.
0:08:42 And you likely have significant circadian disruption.
0:08:44 Which means that I have–
0:08:46 You are at risk for some of the–
0:08:48 and it’s not going to happen tomorrow.
0:08:52 But if you continue on that pattern that I just described,
0:08:57 you are putting yourself at increased risk for cancer
0:09:01 and cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction.
0:09:03 You can have trouble having children.
0:09:07 It impacts fertility, mental health, psychiatric disorders.
0:09:08 There isn’t a disease or disorder
0:09:12 that circadian disruption doesn’t touch.
0:09:15 So a way of thinking about this so that I and everyone else
0:09:19 can understand is there’s this master clock in our hippothalamus.
0:09:21 Look at me.
0:09:24 This master clock regulates all of the other clocks
0:09:26 throughout our entire body.
0:09:28 And there’s millions of them, basically.
0:09:32 And the thing that the master clock is using as a signal,
0:09:35 the clock in our brain, is light and darkness.
0:09:37 That’s its most reliable.
0:09:40 That’s the signal that cares about it listens to the most.
0:09:42 But there’s other signals as well.
0:09:46 And if that master clock, if I’m up at 4 AM
0:09:49 and I’m looking at a light at 4 AM,
0:09:51 that master clock is going to start firing off chemicals
0:09:53 to all the other clocks.
0:09:55 And then all the clocks are going to be out of sync.
0:09:57 Because then when I wake up, it’s light and then–
0:09:58 You’re confusing.
0:09:59 I’m confusing my body.
0:10:01 And it’s firing off in all kinds of different ways.
0:10:03 So I need to form an alignment, which
0:10:06 means basically sleeping at the right time,
0:10:08 exposing myself to darkness at the right time, et cetera, et cetera.
0:10:10 Your body loves regularity.
0:10:14 And the problem is modernity is not set up for that.
0:10:16 We have access.
0:10:19 I think all the circadian research, unfortunately,
0:10:24 was done after the advent of electricity.
0:10:31 So we’re kind of fighting this access to constant light.
0:10:34 And we’re starting to see the, I think,
0:10:39 deleterious effects or the negative consequences of exposure
0:10:42 to light really after the sun goes down.
0:10:46 We haven’t adapted to blue light after dark,
0:10:47 after the sun goes down.
0:10:49 We have not adapted to blue light.
0:10:50 Blue light being the light we get from screens.
0:10:51 Yes.
0:10:55 There is a study that looked at the timing of light
0:11:00 and its impact on mood and brain circuits.
0:11:03 And they saw that if you’re viewing light between the hours
0:11:06 of, again, this is kind of this magic window of time, 10
0:11:11 PM and 4 AM, it actually has a pro-depressive effect.
0:11:15 So it impacts your dopamine system, reward, motivation.
0:11:20 So when we wonder, oh, why does this mental health crisis?
0:11:23 I mean, we have to look at light first.
0:11:25 And I just don’t know.
0:11:27 And I think what’s hard about the discussion
0:11:31 and hard about this behavior is that it’s
0:11:37 really hard for people to not engage with their phones
0:11:38 before bed.
0:11:40 It has its own addictive properties.
0:11:45 But we just have to understand that our relationship to light
0:11:49 will directly influence the trajectory of our health.
0:11:51 There’s just no question about that.
0:11:54 To understand this from a more sort of prehistoric
0:12:00 ancestral lens, if we go back tens of thousands of years
0:12:03 to how maybe some of our ancestors used to live,
0:12:06 they would have food at certain times
0:12:08 and they would have a light exposure at certain times.
0:12:09 They didn’t have artificial light
0:12:11 and invented that yet.
0:12:13 The modern world is very much the antithesis of that.
0:12:14 We have food whenever we want it.
0:12:19 I can order a cookie at 3 AM if I want to eat a cookie at 3 AM.
0:12:22 And I can watch a YouTube video that I have a CEO,
0:12:27 for example, like and subscribe at any hour of the day.
0:12:29 So is this kind of like a misalignment issue
0:12:32 with the way our body was designed by nature
0:12:34 and the world we now live in?
0:12:39 Yeah, we have not evolved to digest food in the middle of the night
0:12:42 or to view light in the middle of the night
0:12:45 or to be super active in the middle of the night, which has happened.
0:12:48 And it does, it creates this misalignment.
0:12:52 And I think what’s interesting if we are to kind of look at
0:12:57 individuals or societies currently that don’t have electricity,
0:13:03 it’s really interesting to I think see some of their behaviors,
0:13:05 some of their sleep/wake behaviors.
0:13:06 And this is fascinating.
0:13:10 There is a study done looking at kind of a hunter/gatherer type
0:13:13 of society who don’t have access to any electricity.
0:13:14 And when you observe their sleep/wake times,
0:13:17 they all fall asleep within 15 to 30 minutes of each other.
0:13:21 And they all wake up between 15 and 30 minutes of each other.
0:13:25 So this whole notion of chronotypes is like kind of like total BS.
0:13:27 It’s like, because I think that’s, you know,
0:13:30 I think that’s the reason a lot of people are like,
0:13:33 “Oh, I have to go to bed at 1 a.m. because I’m a night owl.”
0:13:36 No, you’re making a choice, generally speaking.
0:13:38 Now, this isn’t healthy populations,
0:13:42 not people who have circadian disorders and things like that.
0:13:45 Generally speaking, like if you were to throw everyone in this building
0:13:49 on a mountain in Colorado, and this experiment has actually been done,
0:13:52 with no electricity, we will literally all fall asleep within 30 minutes
0:13:54 of each other after 48 hours.
0:14:00 Like that is how powerful these light/dark signals are to our body.
0:14:05 And I think that just those two examples are really compelling in that,
0:14:10 you know, we have evolved to kind of wake up and fall asleep
0:14:11 in relation to this light/dark cycle.
0:14:13 So all of this stuff we say to ourselves,
0:14:14 because I say that to myself all the time,
0:14:16 I’ve told myself I’m a night owl.
0:14:17 Yeah.
0:14:19 And I’ve given myself the whole coronet touch feel.
0:14:20 Yeah.
0:14:21 That’s BS.
0:14:25 Yeah, in my opinion, the way I interpret the literature,
0:14:29 it seems that, you know, the variability that I think is talked about,
0:14:33 or how we think about it as a society in terms of there’s chronotypes
0:14:37 that are, you know, very, you know, you fall asleep.
0:14:41 You want to, you’re genetically predisposed to fall asleep at 1 a.m.,
0:14:44 and I’m genetically predisposed to fall asleep at 9 p.m.
0:14:46 Yeah, I don’t think it’s that kind of variability.
0:14:50 I think the variability maybe is an hour at the most, maybe an hour and a half.
0:14:52 Obviously, it’s age-related as well.
0:14:59 But for the most part, I don’t think this variability is as pronounced as what we say it is.
0:15:00 Sleep.
0:15:00 Yeah.
0:15:07 So conventional wisdom says it’s all about how many hours you spend sleeping.
0:15:10 We already, this has already been shown to be not true.
0:15:14 Sleep duration is important, right?
0:15:16 And we can put a pin in that.
0:15:20 But sleep regularity predicts all cause mortality.
0:15:24 And this is just recently published, actually, not by my team.
0:15:33 But looking at, it was actually UK Biobank, 60,000 people, 10 million sleeps,
0:15:36 objective measure of sleep.
0:15:42 And they found that sleep regularity predicted mortality and independent of sleep duration.
0:15:46 So it’s not to say that sleep duration doesn’t matter,
0:15:48 but that is absolutely incomplete advice.
0:15:53 How much time you spend in bed doesn’t necessarily predict how long you live.
0:15:58 It is the degree to which you stabilize when you go to bed when you wake up that predicts mortality.
0:15:59 What did they find?
0:16:00 What was the conclusion of that?
0:16:04 Was there a sort of a percentage variance in those that had irregular and regular sleep?
0:16:05 Yeah.
0:16:08 So the sleep onset, offset times, I’m not sure.
0:16:12 But actually, this is research that my team is doing and that we have not published yet.
0:16:20 So this is preliminary data, but we’re actually able to determine down to the minute
0:16:24 what is a tolerable level of variability.
0:16:31 So for the most elite athletes on the planet, the 0.001%, 18 to 23 year olds,
0:16:39 we know that 70 minutes of onset, offset variability at 70 minutes,
0:16:44 we will see a sharp decline in markers of recovery.
0:16:47 Heart rate variability, resting heart rate,
0:16:53 which is a indicator of how you will adapt to load the next day.
0:16:54 To stress the next day.
0:16:55 To stress the next day.
0:16:56 So life flow.
0:16:58 So sleep wake time is really important.
0:17:01 And we’re doing research across every age bucket.
0:17:07 And but you can imagine that if these are the most robust humans on the planet
0:17:14 and they have 70 minutes of variability, that is tolerable within that population.
0:17:20 Some are a little bit sooner in terms of the or can deal with less variability.
0:17:25 And others can deal with slightly more variability, but the mean is 70, 70 minutes.
0:17:28 So you can imagine for individuals who are more vulnerable,
0:17:33 who have less or less robust physically, mentally, emotionally,
0:17:37 their tolerable level is going to be a much narrower.
0:17:42 What’s going on inside of the body when we increase the variability
0:17:47 or that we don’t have a regular sleep and a regular wake up time?
0:17:49 What’s actually going on from like a chemical physiological perspective?
0:17:54 Yeah, so one of the things that suppressed is melatonin.
0:18:00 And circulating reductions in circulating melatonin have been shown to be linked
0:18:09 to every disorder and disease in the body, every disorder and disease in the body.
0:18:13 When we have suppressed or reduced circulating melatonin,
0:18:19 that is going to impact us on every level and make us more vulnerable to disease and disorders.
0:18:26 So that is probably one of the most important thing when we have super unstable sleep wake time.
0:18:32 We are going to have suppressed melatonin production, which leads to inflammation in the body.
0:18:37 It’s melatonin, I think, is one of the big players in the story.
0:18:38 Growth hormones?
0:18:45 Yes, yes. And typically, if you’re not going to sleep late,
0:18:52 you will not release human growth hormone as you’ll get less of a ballast of release.
0:18:53 And why does that matter?
0:18:55 That’s when all the physical restoration happens.
0:18:57 So all the regeneration physically.
0:19:01 So if we’re bypassing that, we’re basically all the work that we did in the gym
0:19:06 or everything that we did during the day, we’re just not going to recover from that
0:19:08 in the same way that we would if we were getting that sleep.
0:19:12 Is growth hormone essentially the thing that causes our muscles to grow and repair?
0:19:13 Yeah.
0:19:18 I sometimes think this because I think if I’m sometimes in my life because I’m quite busy,
0:19:23 I have to make the decision whether to go to the gym or get a great night’s sleep.
0:19:26 And the more I’ve learned about growth hormone in the body and whooping all those things,
0:19:31 I’ve started to make the decision towards sleep versus going to the gym.
0:19:36 Because my brain now goes, well, you’re not going to get the recovery and sort of restoration anyway.
0:19:36 The benefits.
0:19:40 Yeah, the benefits of going to the gym if you’re poorly slept that night.
0:19:45 Yeah, I think if it’s if you’re consistently getting decent sleep
0:19:50 and just getting going to bed and wake up a few more times,
0:19:54 you know, I would say it’s okay to prioritize exercise sometimes.
0:20:02 But sleep is is very important and is probably the thing that needs to be prioritized first.
0:20:04 How consistent are you with your sleep?
0:20:06 Very consistent.
0:20:07 I had that in 2017.
0:20:13 You started trying to sleep within sort of 25 to 30 minutes every single day.
0:20:14 Yeah, the same sleeping window.
0:20:15 That’s right.
0:20:22 Yeah, and yeah, it was a paper that came out by Andrew Phillips actually in the summer of 2017.
0:20:28 And it basically was a four year study that was conducted at Harvard University looking at students.
0:20:32 And they were basically students sleep and they’re trying to see, okay, you know,
0:20:40 what aspect of sleep is predictive of things like GPA and other, you know, measures of kind of flourishing.
0:20:47 And what they found is that basically sleep-wake time predicted GPA.
0:20:48 What’s GPA for people?
0:20:49 Oh, sorry, grade point average.
0:20:52 Yeah, so it’s the difference, you know, the more regular, you know,
0:20:56 it’s the difference between getting an A and a B by just stabilizing sleep-wake time.
0:21:01 And so at that time, I was working with, you know, tons of collegiate athletes.
0:21:10 So NC2A athletes, professional athletes, so EPL, you know, NBA, NFL, MLB, you name it,
0:21:13 like the biggest high performers, like in the world.
0:21:17 And I started tracking this, you know, just manually.
0:21:22 At the time at WOOP, we didn’t actually track this, this wasn’t automated.
0:21:24 I had to, like, you know, kind of do this in Excel.
0:21:29 And then sure enough, you know, sleep-wake time started predicting all these performance metrics
0:21:30 that people care about.
0:21:34 And we started rolling in some subjective measures.
0:21:36 We had internal load, we had external load, of course.
0:21:39 So all those objective measures, but I started rolling in some subjective measures.
0:21:46 And sure enough, sleep-wake time just continued to ladder up to all these performance variables
0:21:47 that people care about.
0:21:51 So I started, of course, you know, because I have access to all of these data.
0:21:54 I started, I’m like, “Shit, I need to, I need to, like, start stabilizing my sleep-wake
0:21:55 time.”
0:22:01 And sure enough, summer 2017, I just, like, that’s basically, like, my non-negotiable.
0:22:06 And yeah, I mean, I haven’t been sick since 2017.
0:22:10 I had a little tiny head cold that lasted 48 hours.
0:22:15 But since then, I literally have not had a sniffle, a stomach ache.
0:22:20 I didn’t get COVID, like, I literally have not been sick.
0:22:27 And you know, I do a lot of other things well, but that has been the single biggest change.
0:22:29 Just sleeping and waking up at the same time.
0:22:30 That’s it.
0:22:31 What is your routine there?
0:22:32 How do you ensure that happens?
0:22:36 Yeah, so the key to that is stabilizing when I wake up.
0:22:39 So even when I travel, and I do travel, and I travel internationally, I travel to the
0:22:45 West Coast, I try to maintain my home time zone as much as I can, as long as I can fulfill
0:22:49 my business commitments and social, you know, there might be a social element as well.
0:22:53 But for the most part, I stabilize when I wake up.
0:22:55 So I keep that consistent.
0:23:00 Even if I can’t go to bed at the same time, I ensure that I wake up at the same time.
0:23:06 And that basically sets my circadian rhythm, so I will then feel sleepy at the right time,
0:23:09 and I can kind of keep that virtuous cycle going.
0:23:17 If I have short sleep, I just basically try to build in a nap prior to 1.30 for 30 minutes
0:23:18 to an hour.
0:23:19 So I don’t accumulate sleep debt.
0:23:21 This is another thing that we can talk about.
0:23:27 Sleep debt is wild in some of its correlations, like psychological safety and executive function.
0:23:33 But yeah, so that’s how I manage short sleep, but I always try to wake up at the same time.
0:23:36 So I’m getting that bolus of light at the same time every single day.
0:23:38 And what time do you wake up and go to sleep?
0:23:46 So I go to bed around, I kind of get into bed usually around 9.15, 9.30.
0:23:55 I read for a half an hour, 45 minutes a book, printed page, dim light, and then I fall asleep
0:23:56 usually around 10.
0:24:02 And then I wake up like at 6.14, no, I’m just kidding, like around 6, around 6.
0:24:08 You know, whenever I talk about these subjects, the rebuttolike is one you might be able to
0:24:09 predict.
0:24:12 It’s from a group of people that I can’t yet relate to.
0:24:13 Yeah.
0:24:15 Do you know who I’m talking about?
0:24:16 Parents.
0:24:17 Oh, yeah, yeah.
0:24:22 Well, shit, I’ve had two kids, so I totally understand the whole parenting thing.
0:24:23 So yeah, I mean, there’s no question.
0:24:27 There are going to be times in your life where you’re literally a shift worker because you’re
0:24:34 caring for a sick parent or a sick child or you just literally have kids and they’re young.
0:24:35 You’re a shift worker.
0:24:42 I mean, there are things you’re making decisions to go out and socialize in times that maybe
0:24:44 aren’t optimal for kind of human functioning.
0:24:48 But yes, there’s no question that there are periods in your life where it’s going to be
0:24:50 harder.
0:24:55 That said, there are some things that you can do to mitigate some of the negative effects
0:24:58 of both direction and timing.
0:25:03 And one of those things is dialing in your feeding window, which is another kind of circadian
0:25:04 behavior.
0:25:11 So the timing of when you eat is pretty important and can at least check some of the boxes in
0:25:16 terms of its impact on metabolic functioning and heart health and things like that.
0:25:18 So let’s talk about that then.
0:25:19 Meal timing.
0:25:24 What do I need to know about when I should be eating, what I should be eating and the
0:25:28 implications that has on my circadian rhythm, my body clocks?
0:25:29 Yeah.
0:25:30 So it’s in the literature.
0:25:33 There’s time restricted eating and there’s time restricted feeding.
0:25:36 And time restricted feeding generally, if you’re reading the literature is going to
0:25:41 refer to mouse models, time restricted eating will refer to human studies.
0:25:43 Mouse models being studies they did in mice.
0:25:44 Sorry.
0:25:50 Yeah, mice studies done with mice are just time restricted feeding and humans would be
0:25:52 time restricted to eating.
0:25:57 And not to confuse us with intermittent fasting, which I know is a hot topic and people love
0:26:02 talking about it, time restricted eating basically has a circadian component.
0:26:05 So it’s really about the timing of when you’re eating your food in relation to the light
0:26:06 dark cycle.
0:26:09 Intermittent fasting is basically just reducing calories.
0:26:15 And so time restricted eating does not have a calorie component to it.
0:26:17 It’s more about the timing.
0:26:22 And there’s been some, a lot of interesting studies that have been done that show if you
0:26:33 eat within kind of eight to 12 hour window, you will have much better metabolic outcomes.
0:26:36 And this is pretty, this is well-established.
0:26:43 And if we see in the whoop data that if you stop eating three hours prior to when you
0:26:53 sleep, to when you fall asleep, markers of sleep and recovery are exponentially better.
0:26:56 So timing of meals really does matter.
0:27:03 And there’s no question that we know this from other research, you’re more primed to
0:27:07 metabolize food closer to when you wake up in the morning.
0:27:14 So earlier in the day, you’re going to be much more primed to utilize the nutrients that
0:27:15 you’ve digested.
0:27:20 So does that mean we should be eating, we should have sort of an earlier eating window?
0:27:21 Yes.
0:27:22 Yes.
0:27:23 You know, Brian Johnson.
0:27:24 Of course.
0:27:25 Yeah.
0:27:26 I know he stops eating at 11 AM.
0:27:27 Which is crazy.
0:27:28 Which is insane and not super practical.
0:27:33 I think if you can stop eating around when the sun sets, you’ll position yourself to
0:27:35 improve your metabolic health.
0:27:39 And I would go so far to say that, you know, regardless of what it is you’re eating, because
0:27:43 a lot of folks cannot afford to, you know, eat high quality food.
0:27:44 That’s just a reality.
0:27:51 And a lot of those folks do suffer from, you know, at higher rates of cardiometabolic dysfunction.
0:27:58 But if we can just consolidate our eating window to eight to 10 hours, we get ourselves
0:28:02 like 60% of the way to our kind of metabolic goals.
0:28:05 Again, it’s not to say that content and quality does not matter.
0:28:07 It absolutely does.
0:28:16 But if we can’t focus on that for whatever it might be, consolidating our eating window.
0:28:21 So eating every single one of our calories between, you know, an eight to 12 hour window,
0:28:24 we will improve our health.
0:28:25 And what’s your eating window?
0:28:27 So I do about 10 hours.
0:28:28 Okay.
0:28:29 Yeah.
0:28:32 So I definitely, I pretty much don’t eat after the sun goes down.
0:28:34 When you say the sun goes down.
0:28:35 Sunsets.
0:28:36 Yeah.
0:28:37 Is that like 5 PM?
0:28:38 I mean, now it’s early.
0:28:39 Yeah.
0:28:40 So I give myself like an hour.
0:28:41 4 PM.
0:28:42 Window.
0:28:43 Yeah.
0:28:44 Like right now it’s, it’s definitely early.
0:28:49 But for the most part, I can kind of get away with it based on my lifestyle.
0:28:53 So ideally between sort of 7 AM and 4 PM.
0:28:57 And then just make sure you’re not eating, you know, two to three hours before you fall
0:28:58 asleep.
0:28:59 Yes.
0:29:06 That’s the big key, I think is, is you want a nice big buffer between, yeah, when you,
0:29:11 when you have your last calorie and when you go to sleep, because that they’re both.
0:29:16 So digestion is a parasympathetic activity, right?
0:29:20 So that means, so your autonomic nervous system has two branches, your parasympathetic and
0:29:25 your sympathetic, your parasympathetic is your rest and digest, right?
0:29:28 We also want to be in a parasympathetic state when we’re sleeping.
0:29:35 So when we are digesting food, we’re basically kind of confusing our system in terms of where
0:29:37 it should apply its resources, right?
0:29:42 So it basically diverts resources away from, you know, the sleep and the restoration.
0:29:44 And that’s where, you know, if you have a big meal, you’ll notice your heart rate is
0:29:46 really is a lot higher, right?
0:29:48 And your stress score is higher, right?
0:29:50 Some of the features on, on the whoop app.
0:29:53 And when you are not having to digest, you’ll see your stress score is lower.
0:29:56 You’ll see your heart rate is lower.
0:29:59 Your heart rate variability would be higher in those situations.
0:30:04 We want to make sure that when we’re sleeping, we are not diverting any resources away from
0:30:05 sleep.
0:30:06 I mean, alcohol is another one, right?
0:30:11 If you just metabolize alcohol, you’re diverting, you know, significant resources away from
0:30:16 the regeneration and the recovery that needs to happen during sleep by bouncing you out
0:30:18 of deeper stages of sleep.
0:30:20 So same sort of effect happens with food.
0:30:24 And we see this, you know, at population levels on the whoop app, it’s just very apparent
0:30:31 that meal timing and alcohol are really the two biggest disruptors to a good night’s sleep.
0:30:34 So interesting because I’ve always wondered there was a time in my life where I routinely
0:30:38 ate super late at night because I would work very, very hard during the day.
0:30:40 I would basically forget to eat.
0:30:44 I’d get home maybe nine or 10 at night.
0:30:50 I would then order the food at nine or 10, which means it comes at 11 or 12.
0:30:52 And then I’d eat 11 or 12.
0:30:53 Yeah.
0:30:54 It’s very stressful for your system.
0:30:55 Yeah.
0:30:56 Tell me about it.
0:31:01 The interesting thing that I started to notice was when, when I did that, I woke up feeling
0:31:02 like I hadn’t slept.
0:31:03 Yeah.
0:31:04 I’ve always wondered why.
0:31:11 So I arrived at the zone sort of self-constructed conclusion that if I put food into my body
0:31:15 at midnight, it basically keeps my body on for a couple of hours.
0:31:16 Yeah.
0:31:17 That’s exactly right.
0:31:18 That’s a perfect way to describe it.
0:31:23 I would see the, exactly that in the whoop data, which is, I would see that my heart
0:31:26 rate went up to about 70 beats per minute for the first three hours.
0:31:30 It was almost like my body was, was still walking around or something to start on.
0:31:33 And then three or four hours in, it would start to fall again back to, I don’t know,
0:31:34 45, 50.
0:31:35 After you’ve metabolized the food.
0:31:36 Yeah.
0:31:40 And we know, you know, there’s a really nice study that looked at basically everyone is
0:31:44 eating the exact same meals and they’re relatively the same age.
0:31:47 Like there’s a really beautiful design.
0:31:51 And they basically looked at folks who are eating after 3 p.m. and folks who are eating
0:31:52 before 3 p.m.
0:31:59 And the folks who ate a bulk of their calories before 3 p.m. had significantly better metabolic
0:32:02 outcomes and lost more weight.
0:32:07 So again, there’s no calorie restriction component here, you know, they’re all kind
0:32:13 of eating similar diet, similar macronutrient distribution, similar calorie content.
0:32:17 And it’s the folks who were eating a bulk of their calories prior to 3 p.m. who had
0:32:18 the best outcomes.
0:32:19 Exercise.
0:32:24 One of the issues that I have sometimes in my life, today is one of those days where,
0:32:28 because I was up very early this morning, it meant that I didn’t go to the gym this morning,
0:32:33 which means I’m probably going to get home after being in the studio, being in the office
0:32:39 today, at maybe 7, 8 p.m., and I’m super hungry then, usually, right?
0:32:41 And I also need to work out.
0:32:44 So sometimes what happens is I choose to work out first and then obviously it makes the
0:32:45 meal late at night.
0:32:49 But there’s also days in my life where I end up working out and I’m known for this at like
0:32:52 11 or 12 p.m. at night.
0:32:58 And there was this old train of thought that that was a good thing to do because people
0:33:01 would say, “Oh, you’re going to be tired when you get in bed.”
0:33:03 But that doesn’t seem to be what happens.
0:33:04 Yeah.
0:33:05 Do you feel more energized?
0:33:06 I feel more energized.
0:33:07 Yeah.
0:33:08 Well, not surprising, right?
0:33:13 You know, adrenaline, cortisol, like all of the kind of hormones and chemicals that
0:33:19 you’d need to kind of get to a place where you can exert that energy are kind of flowing
0:33:23 through the system and it takes time for them to go back to normal levels.
0:33:27 So to kind of get back to homeostasis is going to take some time.
0:33:34 And so, yeah, I mean, it would make sense that you’re kind of activated after exercise.
0:33:41 So for some folks, there is a lot of individual variability, I think, with exercise timing.
0:33:45 Some people are impacted more, but I honestly think that it has more to do with the light.
0:33:49 You know, usually if we’re in a gym, it’s generally well lit, right?
0:33:55 You’re not in a dark gym, so you’re getting exposure to light, which is going to make
0:34:01 you feel like more activated and it’s, again, telling your body that it’s time to be awake
0:34:02 and alert.
0:34:07 On that point of light, there’s a school of thought that says you should look at lights
0:34:09 when you wake up in the morning.
0:34:11 My partner always gets up in the morning, walks out into the balcony and sits out there
0:34:12 for 10 or 20 minutes.
0:34:13 Oh my gosh.
0:34:14 I love that.
0:34:15 Yeah, she’s the best.
0:34:16 This is so annoying.
0:34:18 She gets everything right.
0:34:20 I love it.
0:34:26 Yeah, but for sure that you want to get light within, you know, 100,000 lux is pretty much
0:34:31 what you want to get within, you know, five to 20 minutes of waking up to tell your body
0:34:32 it’s time to go.
0:34:33 100,000 what?
0:34:34 Oh, lux.
0:34:37 So just like photon energy.
0:34:42 So pretty much if you’re outside for five to 20 minutes, it sounds like your girlfriend
0:34:44 is like nailing this protocol.
0:34:49 You’ll get all of the photon energy that you need to tell your system that it is time to
0:34:50 be awake.
0:34:53 Can’t you just go looking into a lamp or something?
0:34:57 It will just take longer because it doesn’t have the same light intensity, but if you’re
0:35:01 waking up, you know, prior to when the sun gets up, yeah, turn all the lights, you know,
0:35:03 you want to try to mimic day as much as possible.
0:35:06 And then once the sun does come up, it’s good to get outside.
0:35:11 And before you get in bed, you referenced that you read books versus being on an iPad
0:35:15 or screens, et cetera.
0:35:22 Does the same philosophy and principle apply to light exposure before sleep as to food exposure
0:35:23 before sleep?
0:35:24 Oh, no question, right?
0:35:25 Absolutely.
0:35:29 We want to try to restrict light basically after the sun goes down.
0:35:33 We want to dim our home environment to the degree that we can.
0:35:37 We want to try to minimize all artificial light in the lead up to bed.
0:35:39 All artificial light?
0:35:40 Yes.
0:35:41 Yeah.
0:35:42 We want to dim as possible.
0:35:45 So, you know, there are a lot of night, like blue light blocking glasses, the filters that
0:35:50 you can put on your iPad and your phone, activate all of those.
0:35:55 But again, like we don’t, we want to protect our melaton release, right?
0:36:00 And for all the reasons I kind of have explained, when we don’t have it is linked to every disease
0:36:01 and disorder, right?
0:36:03 So we know this.
0:36:05 So we want to protect our melatonin release.
0:36:10 And the only way we can release melatonin is by darkness.
0:36:16 We need to be exposed to darkness in order for that master clock in our brain to know
0:36:18 that it’s time to go to sleep.
0:36:24 And again, be able to tell our body, our tissues and organs and cells and our body what it
0:36:25 needs to do at that moment.
0:36:30 When I was at the Woop headquarters in Boston not so long ago, I saw them working on sleep
0:36:31 masks.
0:36:34 And I think I’ve always been quite dubious about sleep masks.
0:36:37 You know, you get on those planes and they hand you a sleep mask in the little bag.
0:36:41 I always put a bunch of weirdos, you know, like putting that, strapping that thing to
0:36:42 your face.
0:36:43 Yeah.
0:36:44 Embarrassing.
0:36:45 I’m one of those weirdos now.
0:36:46 Yeah.
0:36:47 I mean, it’s hard.
0:36:51 Even the little dot on your, you know, from your alarm clock or your TV is going to emit
0:36:53 enough light.
0:36:58 We’re so sensitive to light, artificial light.
0:37:01 So natural light, like the moon, totally fine.
0:37:06 But any other type of light is really going to impair our ability to get into these deeper
0:37:10 stages of sleep where all the restoration and regeneration happens.
0:37:11 Do you use a sleep mask?
0:37:12 I do.
0:37:13 Yes.
0:37:14 What’s your sort of routine there?
0:37:20 Um, yeah, just when I start to feel sleepy, I just put it on and go to bed.
0:37:22 Do you listen to anything when you go to sleep?
0:37:23 No.
0:37:24 I don’t.
0:37:28 Is there, are you aware of any research that might indicate that listening to serial
0:37:32 killer documentaries at 3 AM?
0:37:41 I think in principle, anything that activates you stimulates you cognitively or makes you
0:37:42 energized.
0:37:43 You probably want to avoid reading.
0:37:44 Yeah.
0:37:45 Interesting.
0:37:46 But I think there’s a group of us out there.
0:37:52 I’m yet to meet them, but I know that I’m not alone that like to listen to horror and
0:37:59 thriller and serial killer stuff at, um, you know, very late at night and it helps us to
0:38:00 sleep.
0:38:01 Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.
0:38:05 If you perceive it as helpful, it probably is, you know, and I think that’s where, and
0:38:10 if your objective data shows that you’re getting, you know, the requisite time in these deep
0:38:13 stages of sleep, then go with it.
0:38:18 I think, I think what is actually, there’s definitely the cold, dark, quiet, right?
0:38:19 You need your room to be cold.
0:38:20 You need to be cold.
0:38:21 Dark, you need to be quiet.
0:38:22 So there’s environmental stuff.
0:38:26 You need to, um, you know, stop eating a few hours before bed.
0:38:30 Ideally, um, you need to have stable sleep, big time, ideally, these are all things that
0:38:33 are going to drive getting into these deeper stages of sleep.
0:38:37 But the other thing that you probably do really well is you manage stress throughout
0:38:38 the day.
0:38:44 You know, like you, I think that’s another, like the things that we do during the day,
0:38:47 how we, you know, whether or not we’re living our values, right?
0:38:49 Do our behaviors align with the things that we care about?
0:38:51 Are we thinking about the things that we want to be thinking about?
0:38:54 Are we managing our relationships effectively?
0:39:02 So all the things that can manifest as stress, negative stress, um, will invariably rear
0:39:03 its head during our sleep.
0:39:08 But if we’re managing those things during the day proactively and relatively well, generally
0:39:12 speaking, like sleep should happen, you know, pretty naturally.
0:39:16 There’s a huge group of people who listen to podcasts like this.
0:39:21 And as they listen to these podcasts, they just feel more depressed about their situation.
0:39:26 You know, because they believe they’re trying their very best and they’re still struggling,
0:39:28 especially as it relates to sleep.
0:39:32 I think I’ve always wondered what the message one can send to them.
0:39:37 And also, you know, I think there is a huge component of sort of personal responsibility
0:39:41 and choice that you speak about as well, and that I believe in as well.
0:39:47 But what is the most compelling message for those people that do have a choice?
0:39:51 They know deep inside, much of it is a lack of discipline.
0:39:53 They know they could not watch YouTube.
0:39:55 They know they could put their phone away at 9pm.
0:39:57 They know they could not eat the cookie super late at night.
0:39:59 They know they could shoot deep down.
0:40:02 They know they could make a different set of choices, but they listen to these podcasts
0:40:03 over and over again.
0:40:07 Whenever I have the health experts on, maybe they even take notes, but they just don’t
0:40:09 do it.
0:40:15 What is the most compelling thing you can say to those people that do have a choice,
0:40:22 and continually choose a bad option to get them pushed over the fence to the positive
0:40:26 circadian rhythm, body clock loving side?
0:40:34 Yeah, so if people are trying to develop new habits, you have to understand how that new
0:40:37 habit links to your values.
0:40:40 So the things that you believe in, the things that you say you care about, right?
0:40:47 If I know growth and impact are my two most important values, presence is another one.
0:40:50 What do I need to do every single day to back into that?
0:40:57 So I can align my behaviors with the things I say I care about, and I think when folks
0:41:05 are struggling, they don’t really know who they want to be in the world, and they don’t
0:41:08 maybe understand exactly what it is that they value.
0:41:12 They’re fuzzy about their desires, about their values.
0:41:16 And I think when you’re fuzzy about your desires and the things that you value, and if you’re
0:41:21 flinging yourself in all sorts of directions, emotionally, physically, mentally, right?
0:41:27 And I think that’s kind of the project is figure out what you care about, and then align
0:41:30 your behaviors and create outlets in your life.
0:41:38 And that frankly might mean getting rid of people who don’t support those values.
0:41:48 And I think we’re way too lenient on our circle of friends in the sense of, you know,
0:41:56 I think we keep people around in our life who don’t necessarily help us become a better
0:41:58 version of ourselves.
0:42:00 Have you had to shed some people?
0:42:03 Yes, absolutely.
0:42:05 Why did you shed them?
0:42:08 Because it didn’t really support who I wanted to be.
0:42:11 Who did you want to be?
0:42:18 I wanted to be able to wake up at a very simple level with as much joy and energy as I could.
0:42:23 And I wanted to be present for my kids.
0:42:45 So I think folks are engaging in behaviors that, I think, you know, create a situation
0:43:00 where — yeah, I don’t know how to say this, but I think, you know, for me, you know, I
0:43:06 grew up in a household where, you know, my mom was an alcoholic, you know, it was a tough
0:43:18 environment, and she ended up dying of cirrhosis, and it’s not easy, so being in that kind of
0:43:19 environment.
0:43:29 So I think for me, you know, you end up — it’s crazy how when you live that life, you end
0:43:34 up repeating those patterns.
0:43:42 And I think, you know, I had to, you know, even though for me, personally, I made choices
0:43:47 where, you know, I really have never drank alcohol, right?
0:43:54 Because I saw how it destroyed my family, but yet I was still hanging around with people
0:44:00 who were engaging in these behaviors, and it just was impacting me at my core.
0:44:06 And it didn’t mean that I didn’t love those folks, but I had to get away, you know, and
0:44:12 a lot of this was, you know, related to, you know, I was in an environment at a university
0:44:18 where, you know, that was just like the norm, like, it is just wild to me how educational
0:44:26 institutions normalize binge drinking at a level that is just so destructive.
0:44:34 And, you know, and just to be — I supposed to just be around that all the time, like,
0:44:40 was just really not allowing me to show up daily as the person that I wanted to be, even
0:44:42 though I wasn’t engaging in that behavior.
0:44:50 Like, it still, like, it just, yeah, it just made me feel like I couldn’t be the version
0:44:52 of myself that I wanted to be.
0:44:59 So yeah, it’s just a lot of hard decisions, you know, but I let go of a lot, you know,
0:45:06 to be able to create an environment and infrastructure that supported who I wanted to be in this world.
0:45:14 When I talk about being able to change your behavior and break a habit, it is nothing
0:45:19 in the context of someone who is ensnared by an addiction of sorts.
0:45:23 It’s not, it’s a completely different conversation.
0:45:29 What is it like growing up with a mother who you observe at a very young age?
0:45:30 You were how old?
0:45:32 I mean, my whole life.
0:45:33 Your whole life?
0:45:35 Yeah, like she.
0:45:43 As a child, when you see a parent someone you love that is sort of gripped by addiction,
0:45:44 what is that like?
0:45:55 Yeah, I mean, I think at a fundamental level, you just feel depraoritized, I think, generally.
0:46:03 You know, like you, you know, I think you feel, you know, you’re unsupervised number
0:46:05 one.
0:46:10 There isn’t a lot of supervision, you know, so you end up like really having to defend
0:46:12 for yourself.
0:46:13 My dad worked a lot.
0:46:20 You know, he was definitely workaholic, such a good man, so much integrity and, and, but
0:46:25 I think that was his form of escape, but it kind of leads, you know, you got to figure
0:46:28 out how to eat, you got to, you know, you got to figure out how to do a lot of the basic
0:46:30 stuff on your own.
0:46:39 So you develop a lot of independence, I think, but it, it’s hard to, you know, form emotional
0:46:45 attachments, I think, as an adult, unless you really work through that, you know, because
0:46:50 you’re, you’re afraid that you’re not going to be taken care of.
0:46:54 What did you come to understand about your mother’s addiction and what she was struggling
0:46:56 with, if anything at all?
0:47:04 Yeah, I mean, I think what was so sad about that time period is, is, you know, I think
0:47:05 it was well understood.
0:47:13 You know, I think a lot of those behaviors, I think, to degree are normalized, and I don’t
0:47:18 know that they’re the connection between depression, you know, she was, it’s no question.
0:47:22 She had massive seasonal effect disorder, which is one of the reasons why I’m so interested
0:47:28 in, you know, kind of everything related to, to light and, and just the opportunity there
0:47:34 for, for, for health, but, you know, she had major depressive disorder and, you know, was
0:47:37 not diagnosed properly.
0:47:38 I don’t even remember.
0:47:44 I have no idea if she ever even went to the doctor to, you know, to try to get treated.
0:47:53 So, you know, I think the, the biggest thing that I learned is that we can actually make
0:47:54 choices.
0:47:59 And I know that there are, you know, when you look at regions of the brain, we understand
0:48:03 that people are predisposed, but I think there’s a lot of things that we can, we can actually
0:48:10 control to reduce our vulnerability to, to some of these diseases.
0:48:15 How has that experience defined and shaped you when you look back and connect dots?
0:48:22 Yeah, I mean, I just, I always, you know, I was very competitive, high level athlete
0:48:27 representing the U.S. and, and so there’s definitely trying to understand my own body
0:48:32 and my psychology so I could perform my potential, but there’s no question that like this whole
0:48:38 everything that like underpins the work that I do is, is trying to, to understand, you know,
0:48:48 how we can improve our own situation so we can, you know, self-actualize and, and live
0:48:49 our potential.
0:49:02 And, so that was, I always, you know, felt so bad, you know, for my mom.
0:49:03 Why?
0:49:12 You know, that she wasn’t able to become the version of herself, like I wasn’t able to
0:49:27 realize her potential, and she had so much, I can’t believe you did this to me.
0:49:31 Would you like a tissue?
0:49:32 Thanks.
0:49:39 You’re very, you’re a very special person and it all makes, makes a ton of sense why
0:49:43 you’ve got such an incredible, incredible drive and mission to you.
0:49:47 I didn’t, I didn’t know any of those, what you just said, but I’ve never talked about
0:49:48 that publicly.
0:49:56 So I’m just, yeah, what a, what a wonderful way to channel such an imaginable pain to
0:50:02 then sort of fix, you know, hundreds of thousands of people’s other lives and help them get
0:50:05 closer towards their own potential.
0:50:16 Yeah, I, and I never want to like project my values onto other folks, but, but I think
0:50:21 that’s always been like at the core of like why I do what I, I do is, and the reason why
0:50:28 I coached for so long is I just love seeing people like realize their potential or understand
0:50:32 their potential knowing that we’re always, of course, a work in progress.
0:50:41 But I just like, I want like everyone to be able to wake up and feel, you know, be energetic
0:50:46 and be able to like really, really live the things that you care about, you know, and
0:50:53 just an understanding, I think the path to that, you know, requires some work, you know,
0:50:57 in terms of making sure that you’re attending to some of these non-negotiables that we’re
0:51:02 talking about. And I think sometimes it takes folks time to connect those dots and there’s
0:51:09 a lot of wonderful learning that comes with that. But I think if I can kind of help accelerate
0:51:15 some of that wisdom and keep people from experiencing, I think some of the pain that I felt, you
0:51:16 know, it’s worth it to me.
0:51:22 It’s the most incredible, incredible thing that you’ve committed your life to because
0:51:26 mean you’re both aware that there’s going to be a ton of people who are either on a
0:51:31 path towards such an addiction or are currently enthralled by such an addiction and the work
0:51:36 that you’re doing, the message you’re spreading is going to prevent and lift some of those
0:51:40 people out of that situation, which has a wonderful karmic effect on the world. And
0:51:46 I think if there’s anything that we can convert our pain into, it is exactly that.
0:51:52 I want to talk about alcohol. I’ve recently quit drinking alcohol. I think it was about
0:51:56 three to four months ago now. It was so interesting. I had a conversation with some of my friends
0:52:02 and my best friends. I said this on a podcast a couple of months ago. And one of my friends
0:52:08 was an alcoholic. So he managed to quit alcohol and he’s writing a book about it. And then
0:52:12 as I look across the group of my other friends, none of them are alcoholics, but they’re all
0:52:16 sort of casual drinkers. And we were sat there together around this table having dinner and
0:52:21 he was telling us about this book. He’s writing about quitting alcohol. And I was thinking
0:52:28 that book that he’s writing doesn’t necessarily resonate with me because I’ve never felt
0:52:33 like I’ve had an addiction or really to be honest, any problem with it. I was such a
0:52:38 casual drinker. I would have maybe one glass of wine a week if that. There’s probably months
0:52:44 I’ve gone without any alcohol at all. So I couldn’t think of a reason to quit. So really
0:52:48 I was saying to him, is there another book that someone else could write for me that
0:52:52 just takes those people that are those casual drinkers that are right on the fence and just
0:52:56 gives us a reason to nudge over the other side. And because I have this podcast, I thought,
0:53:02 you know, I’ll just try and quit and see if, see what the implications are for my life.
0:53:09 Alcohol, health, circadian rhythms. What do you, what’s your perspective on all of this?
0:53:16 Well, I like to think about it. I love this, the principle of non neutrality, right? And
0:53:23 this is how I like to think about behaviors and how I’ve kind of always thought about
0:53:31 it is if you’ve got a series of behaviors, we talked a lot about sleep and you know,
0:53:36 physiological things and you’ve got the psychological things and they’re either going to support
0:53:40 your values kind of who you want to be in this world or they’re not. And I think that’s
0:53:45 the lens with which I look at alcohol, you know, in what way is this supporting my values
0:53:53 of growth and impact and presence and compassion and tolerance, you know, the things that are
0:53:58 like core to who I want to be in this world. And I think when you look at it through that
0:54:02 lens, the choices become really clear to me. If you’re honest with yourself and you have
0:54:10 some degree of self-awareness, understand what you care about, I think choices become
0:54:18 a lot clearer. Like there’s way, way more clarity about how to live your life in the
0:54:21 micro, which is really what we’re talking about. There’s just many choices throughout
0:54:25 the day. Does it, does it, does it support who you want to be in the world or does it
0:54:32 not? And there’s very little gray actually. And the gray are excuses in my view. And we
0:54:38 can rationalize and make stuff up, you know, all day long, right? To, to, to make ourselves
0:54:46 feel better. But when you can step back from all of that and look at it really, you know,
0:54:52 taking yourself kind of out of the equation and look at it from a very objective standpoint,
0:54:57 you know, I think a choice like alcohol becomes very clear.
0:55:07 It helps me to socialize, Kristen. Yeah. If you need alcohol to bond or to, you know,
0:55:14 form a connection, there’s probably something else going on that is unaddressed and from
0:55:25 my perspective. Is there such a thing as such a small dose of alcohol that it doesn’t matter
0:55:28 in your opinion? Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on who you
0:55:36 are. And I think there’s a lot of individual variability there as, as well. I know resveratrol
0:55:43 is, is something that’s talked about a lot. And there’s, you know, suppose there’s in
0:55:50 wine and grapes, there’s resveratrol and that’s been linked to enhanced health and well being.
0:55:54 But I think you’d have to drink like 10 bottles or something to get the amount of resveratrol
0:56:02 to actually make a, to make a dent. I don’t think that’s the argument. So yeah, I don’t
0:56:06 know that really any amount of alcohol is going to be, is going to be helpful. And we
0:56:12 know from the literature that just one to two drinks per week will can have, you know,
0:56:18 negative implications on, on health. So it’s actually, I don’t know that any, like even
0:56:21 in a moderate amount of alcohol is good for you.
0:56:24 What’s the implications for our circadian rhythms that we’ve been talking about?
0:56:28 Yeah, it’s mainly because it impacts sleep. It’s going to impact when you go to bed and
0:56:33 when you wake up. So I think that’s the biggest, the biggest impact. And I think, again, when
0:56:42 we go back to melatonin, you know, it’s when you’re disrupting that, that sleep onset offset,
0:56:48 that’s going to obviously have all the downstream negative effects that we, we’ve already spoken
0:56:52 about. So I suppose if we’re drinking, we were staying out later, so we’re exposing ourselves
0:57:00 to light. So yeah, there’s lots of, we’re going to be eating later. There’s other behaviors
0:57:06 that accompany drinking that kind of, you know, pile on the, the negative effects.
0:57:10 I was reading some research from the sleep foundation. And it says that a 2007 study
0:57:16 with 29 young adults found that moderate doses of alcohol up to one hour before bedtime reduced
0:57:22 melatonin production by nearly 20%. That’s the study on alcohol and melatonin in young
0:57:30 adults. A 2018 study of 4,908 Finnish participants found that sleep quality was, was reduced by
0:57:41 9.3% after one glass of wine and by 24% after two glasses of wine and by almost 40%, 39.2%
0:57:46 after three or more glasses of wine or an equivalent amount of alcohol. Yeah. Which
0:57:52 is really, really staggering that your sleep quality will, could dip 40% after three glasses
0:57:53 of wine.
0:57:58 Oh yeah. It’s, I mean, we see it is, we just finished this analysis actually looking at
0:58:02 alcohol and markers of recovery. So heart rate variability and heart rate and literally
0:58:07 with every drink, it is just, there’s a linear relationship in the decline, like in it is
0:58:15 significant. So I mean, yeah, it’s, we’re talking even one drink will produce clinically
0:58:19 significant reductions in heart rate and heart rate variability.
0:58:26 This was maybe the most compelling motivator for me to quit alcohol was when I got my
0:58:29 weeb the first time and then I think it was someone’s birthday or something. So we went
0:58:33 out and I had a glass of wine or something. I woke, I woke up the next day, looked at
0:58:36 my heart rate variability, which is the, a measure of how well I’m going to be able
0:58:39 to deal with stress and load and all those things the next day, how well my body’s going
0:58:44 to be able to deal with life. And it was flashing red, which is like a warning. And it says
0:58:48 on there, when I clicked on the flashing red thing, it was like, did you have a really
0:58:55 stressful day? Are you sick? Or did you drink alcohol last night? And I felt so targeted.
0:59:00 I was like, how does this thing know that I had one glass of wine last night with my
0:59:05 friends? Why is something flashing red with inside of me? People keep diaries on weeb,
0:59:09 don’t they? They keep like the journal. I think they do. Yeah. So it’s a goldmine of
0:59:13 information. Really? Yeah. What have you learned from that in terms of alcohol? I imagine that’s
0:59:20 where a lot of the conclusions. Yeah, we see a 6% reduction in next day recovery after
0:59:24 alcohol on average. So this is, you know, one drink to tendering, you know, it’s just
0:59:32 basically looking at the average is 6%. Okay. So the average of recovery. So if someone’s
0:59:36 had it, if someone was binge drinking, they could have a 30 or 40% reduction. Yeah. But
0:59:43 it kind of, and we might, and that specific data point might, we might have controlled
0:59:49 for, you know, the 30 drinks or, you know, it’s probably somewhere in the range of five
0:59:54 drinks, you know, per night. And the average recovery reduction is 6%. And that’s relying
0:59:59 on self-reporting, right? So I wonder if there’s biases. There might be, yeah. People that
1:00:05 had 10 drinks think they had four. Yeah, exactly. I don’t remember how many drinks I had. So
1:00:09 yeah, or your drinks I had. Interesting. Super interesting. The other thing we obviously
1:00:15 drink is coffee. Yes. Caffeine. Surely there’s a correlation between circadian disruption
1:00:19 and caffeine. Yeah, so that’s definitely one of the circadian, it definitely can disrupt
1:00:26 circadian rhythms if we’re having caffeine, you know, within 8 to 12 hours, I would say,
1:00:31 of when we intend to sleep. It’s going to impact our sleep onset, of course. And even
1:00:38 if we’re, you know, tired enough where we have, you know, we’re sleep deprived, we might
1:00:43 fall asleep, but it will invariably end up disrupting or fragmenting our sleep. So we’re
1:00:46 not kind of getting into that deeper stages of sleep or not achieving the sleep quality
1:00:51 that that is going to, you know, allow us to wake up feeling restored and refreshed.
1:00:56 So timing of caffeine is really important. All of this conversation makes me have a huge
1:01:01 amount of empathy for shift workers. And when I say shift workers, I don’t, I don’t mean
1:01:09 people work in, you know, warehouses. I mean, doctors, nurses, firefighters, the police,
1:01:17 truck drivers, people that are baking. Yeah, anyone who’s up between the hours of, you
1:01:20 know, for more than two hours between the hours of 10pm and 4am is considered a shift
1:01:25 worker. So it’s, yes, there’s a lot of, a lot of individuals walking around to our shift
1:01:31 workers, but people who are, you know, literally up during the biological night, you know,
1:01:37 it’s a huge sacrifice. We know those folks on average are going to die 15 years sooner.
1:01:43 And as, you know, shift work is considered a carcinogen by the World Health Organization.
1:01:48 It’s, you know, shift work is those folks make an enormous sacrifice.
1:01:52 They’re going to die 15 years sooner. On average.
1:01:58 I mean, that’s terrifying. I know.
1:02:01 Is anybody, is anybody trying to solve for that? Yeah, I mean, that’s a lot of the work
1:02:06 that I do is looking at shift work, you know, and trying to understand, you know, what other
1:02:13 levers, you know, can we deploy to offset some of the, the, the impact of being awake
1:02:18 during the, the biological night, and, you know, time to eat as a lever, you know, really
1:02:27 thinking about when we’re eating protein, you know, when we’re viewing lights, you know,
1:02:34 what do the, what’s the cadence of, of, of, you know, on/off. So we minimize the disruption
1:02:39 to circadian rhythms. I mean, the fact is like the roster size at these hospitals are
1:02:46 just simply not big enough to be able to, I think, deploy schedules that mitigate some
1:02:53 of the, the risk associated with this disrupted circadian rhythm. But it is frightening.
1:02:57 And, you know, there is a lot of work to try to understand how we can mitigate some of
1:03:04 the, the negative effects, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a tough problem to solve.
1:03:08 It’s not just, I guess it’s not just that those individuals will die, you know, on average,
1:03:13 15 years earlier, but their quality of life, I imagine, won’t be as good because if they’re
1:03:20 not sleeping consistently. Yeah, I mean, depression, suicide. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s higher,
1:03:27 you know, for, for folks in, in these professions, you know, who are having to operate counter
1:03:34 to the naturally dark cycle. So let’s talk about that in mental health depression, suicidality.
1:03:37 What’s the correlation there between. Yeah. So there’s a lot of interesting research.
1:03:42 I mean, you know, one is just, you know, we talk about just the layperson. So getting
1:03:47 outside of shift work, we come back to shift work. You know, if you look at this, most
1:03:54 folks experience social jet lag, right, which is basically characterized as, you know,
1:04:01 a big difference between our weekday sleep schedule and our weekend sleep schedule, right?
1:04:08 So pretty much anyone, you know, between 20, 20 to 30 probably is, you know, kind of falls
1:04:13 into this bucket of having social jet lag. But one of the things that we want to, a research
1:04:19 study we saw looking at specifically a social jet lag in college students, they saw that
1:04:28 for every hour of variability between weekday and weekend schedules, they saw a 17% increase
1:04:35 in non-suicidal ideation. So these folks aren’t committing suicide, but they’re fantasizing
1:04:40 about committing suicide. And that increases 17%. And this was more pronounced than individuals
1:04:47 who were already vulnerable. So kind of coming back to circadian disruption being present
1:04:52 in a hundred percent of mental health issues, we can see where shift workers would be extremely
1:04:58 vulnerable, right, to mental health issues, given that their variability, and we look
1:05:03 at the WOOP data, it’s basically random in terms of looking at their sleep wake time.
1:05:09 It’s so variable that it’s like, we can’t even see a pad. It’s random, which is frightening.
1:05:12 Why is that frightening?
1:05:21 Because the more variability you have, like the more psychological and physiological negative
1:05:24 consequences there will be.
1:05:28 Is there a correlation here between how we deal with stressful events in our lives as
1:05:30 well? Because I’m assuming there must be.
1:05:36 Yes, absolutely. Managing stress throughout the day, and the degree, or even during the
1:05:46 night, can definitely increase your tolerance for stress. So deploying breathwork, for example,
1:05:55 as on-demand self-regulation tool to pay down in the moment stress can be, and to activate
1:05:59 the paracentric branch of the nervous system, can be really powerful. So I kind of call
1:06:04 these mini moments of deactivation. So doing that proactively for folks who are in these
1:06:11 high stakes, high stress environments is an amazing strategy. Because lots of those folks,
1:06:17 again, if you think about just baseline, when you are engaging in shiftwork and you’re awake
1:06:23 during the night, your system is humming at a kind of a stress level that is above what
1:06:30 would be normal. Like your system is having to work so much harder to maintain homeostasis
1:06:34 because you’re doing exactly the opposite of what your body wants to do.
1:06:39 So all the kind of biological preferences are being bypassed when you’re up during the
1:06:46 biological night. So to pay down some of the stress, these mini moments of deactivation
1:06:52 are absolutely critical for that population. So that means just literally taking 30 seconds
1:06:56 where you’re doing the physiological side, for example, which we know has emerged as
1:07:01 being the most efficacious breathwork technique in the moment to reduce not only in the moment
1:07:06 anxiety and stress, but actually, you know, your perception of anxiety and stress, like
1:07:13 in the future, the physiological side, it’s basically a double inhale followed by an extended
1:07:22 exhale. Perfect. It’s exactly right. So basically, like when you’re crying, it’s, you know, you
1:07:27 kind of do that double inhale followed by an extended exhale. But that like reduces stress
1:07:34 in the moment in a really powerful way. If you do that, you know, five, 10 times, you
1:07:41 end up activating the parasympathic branch. So you’re reducing your heart rate. And, and,
1:07:46 and, you know, kind of doing that throughout the day is a great way to mitigate negative
1:07:47 stress accumulation.
1:07:52 There’s a pretty unfortunate paradox, a pretty tragic paradox in the fact that our shift
1:07:58 work is some of them like doctors, especially are the people that we need to be most focused
1:08:03 firing on our cylinders exactly. Yeah. But those are the people that are from what I’ve
1:08:07 learned today about the circadian rhythm, most likely to suffer with things like focus
1:08:12 and sleep and all of those things that are imperative to showing up well. Yeah. I mean,
1:08:17 there’s a relationship, you know, we know that with every 45 minutes of sleep deprivation
1:08:23 accrued on the platform, we see a 5 to 10% next day decrease in mental control, mental
1:08:29 control, executive function. So we measure this with an M back and a stoop. So these
1:08:36 kind of performance tests to measure executive function. And we see for every 45 minutes
1:08:43 of sleep debt accrued, we see up to 10% decrease or decline in next day executive function.
1:08:47 And what does executive function mean for people that are? Our ability to make decisions.
1:08:54 Okay. Use the word they’re sleep debt. What is sleep debt? So that’s basically what you
1:08:59 need versus what you actually got. And that’s highly individual, right? And that’s one
1:09:04 of the kind of beautiful things on the platform is that we learn your, your body, we learn
1:09:09 how efficient sleeper you are, we learn what your optimal sleep wake time should be. And
1:09:14 we basically tell you how much time you need to spend in bed. So a lot of the work that
1:09:19 my, my team has done specifically at whoop is to try to understand, you know, what is
1:09:25 this relationship of sleep debt to other performance metrics that we care about, right? That tell
1:09:30 us a story about someone’s ability to kind of function in their environment. And one
1:09:38 of the studies that we did was looking specifically at business executives. So CEO types. And
1:09:44 we, we basically looked at is this, this one is a six month study looking at two different
1:09:51 cohorts, but, you know, I think equal distribution between men and men and women. And, and what
1:09:55 we saw was for every 45 minutes of sleep to debt accrued in these business leaders, we
1:10:03 saw a 5 to 10% decrease in next day executive function. So the leaders ability to make decisions
1:10:10 in the presence of sleep debt, you know, gets, gets worse the more sleep that you accrue.
1:10:16 We did a follow up study and this one was wild. So we basically looked at it was roughly,
1:10:23 it was about 70 business executive CEO types. And we looked at all of their objective markers
1:10:29 of sleep debt being one of them. And we look at the psychological safety of their direct
1:10:32 reports during team meetings.
1:10:38 And define psychological safety for your, how, how safe you feel to show up in your
1:10:47 environment as your true most authentic self. And what we saw is again, for every 45 minutes
1:10:53 of sleep that the leader had, there was a significant decrease in psychological safety
1:10:59 of the direct reports. So they felt less safe in their environment to show up as their
1:11:05 true self when their leader had 45 minutes of sleep debt accrued. And, and some of these
1:11:09 folks were carrying a couple hours of sleep debt. So, and there was a linear relationship
1:11:13 between the amount of psychological safety and the amount of sleep that the leader had.
1:11:18 So what was so interesting and I think compelling about this research is that the leader had
1:11:24 no idea they couldn’t perceive their own cognitive, physical, and emotional declines, right?
1:11:30 But that’s what’s so insidious about sleep deprivation is that you can’t really tell
1:11:38 when you’re operating at a lower level. You just adapt to that lower level of functioning.
1:11:43 But everyone around you can feel it, right? Just with how you hold your face, how you
1:11:50 emote, the kind of eye contact you make, how tolerant you are. And you, and you think about
1:11:56 how sleep deprivation, you know, it did, and I think this is really what this research
1:12:02 surface is. It’s just, it’s not just sleep deprivation just doesn’t impact me, right?
1:12:06 It’s going to impact every single person I come in contact with. And from a business
1:12:13 perspective, just from a sheer like numbers perspective, Google did a study called Aristotle
1:12:17 and they looked at cycle, they looked at a bunch of different metrics related to team
1:12:22 performance. And what emerged in that study is being most predictive of team performance
1:12:27 was the degree to which the team had psychological safety felt safe in their environment to kind
1:12:35 of show up as their true self. And they brought in to the tune of $4.5 million more than teams
1:12:38 who are lacking psychological safety.
1:12:43 So this is like a really important concept that I don’t think a lot of people talk about.
1:12:48 But when we go back to this concept of the principle of non neutrality, right? And what
1:12:55 are behaviors that promote, enable you to live your values and kind of show up as your best
1:13:01 self as consistently as possible, minimizing sleep debt is right there at the top of the
1:13:02 list.
1:13:07 And as it relates to sort of accident and injury, is there correlation between sort of injury
1:13:12 of oneself and accidents you commit on others correlation between that and sleep debt?
1:13:18 It’s very well established that the more sleep debt you’re carrying, you know, the more accident
1:13:27 prone you are, you know, the more risk you’re going to take. And yeah, we see this in the
1:13:32 medical field, we see this, you know, in, you know, just car accidents. And yeah, it’s
1:13:34 the list goes on and on.
1:13:39 Car accidents. A 2016 study by the Foundation for Traffic Safety found that drivers who
1:13:47 reported that they usually sleep four to five hours per day had 5.4 times the crash rate
1:13:53 of drivers who usually sleep for seven hours or more a day, which is horrifying.
1:14:01 Yeah, I know it’s, yeah, I mean, when we think about, you know, sleep, it’s, it’s, we’re
1:14:08 not getting better at it as a society. And I think we’re kind of coming at this conversation
1:14:12 from the wrong lens, you know, we’re telling folks just to spend more time in bed without
1:14:17 addressing the behaviors that are actually enable us to fall asleep and stay asleep.
1:14:22 You know, that’s to me, that’s, that’s the conversation. And, and it’s not about spending
1:14:27 more time in bed. And yeah, that might be what needs to happen. But it’s, it’s about,
1:14:32 you’re not going to get there for folks who, who are not thinking about all the circadian
1:14:36 things that we’re talking about. And, you know, some of the environmental stuff, the
1:14:42 cold, dark, the quiet, yes, that matters. But, but at a foundational level, I think folks
1:14:48 are not engaging in the behaviors that are going to enable us to pay down the sleep deprivation.
1:14:52 The other study that I found that was super interesting was that a 2021 study found that
1:14:58 less than seven hours of sleep is associated with increased risk of injury. And if this
1:15:03 is sustained for at least 14 days, the risk of muscle and bone injury is 1.7 times, almost
1:15:09 two times higher. So if someone that goes to the gym a lot and likes to work out, if
1:15:14 I have a high sleep debt, then I’m much more likely to get an injury, almost two times
1:15:18 more likely to get an injury if that’s sustained, which is crazy.
1:15:25 Yeah, it is. Yeah. And you know, I’m so grateful that I think folks are finally realizing that
1:15:32 sleep is the greatest natural performance and answer that we have on this planet. Yeah,
1:15:37 it’s, and that is certainly super evident in all the research that we’re doing.
1:15:40 What about sleep and sex?
1:15:47 Sex with a partner is a health-promoting behavior. And we have found that in our research.
1:15:48 What research have you done?
1:15:54 Yeah, I mean, we just, we actually haven’t published it yet. So this is preliminary data,
1:16:01 but people who are reporting that they’re having sex before bed. So within a few hours
1:16:07 of when they intend to sleep with a partner, have better markers of sleep and recovery.
1:16:09 You said with a partner very intentionally there.
1:16:15 I did. Yeah. We don’t, we don’t see the same effect when folks are, are having sex without
1:16:16 a partner and reporting it.
1:16:18 How do you have sex without a partner?
1:16:23 I mean, that, all right, I should say a partner, like a spouse or a boyfriend or, you know,
1:16:27 someone you’re consistently with. So we’re not, we’re talking about, I guess, not one
1:16:29 night stands. Sorry, I should have clarified it.
1:16:31 I thought you meant with, without a human at all.
1:16:34 Oh, got it. Yeah. We’re talking, I’m talking about human sex here. Yeah.
1:16:37 Does masturbation have the same implications? Do I have?
1:16:39 We didn’t, we didn’t see big effects with masturbation.
1:16:42 Are people reporting that they’re on loop?
1:16:42 They sure are.
1:16:43 They are.
1:16:48 I should say that it is completely optional to track. So people can opt in to track these
1:16:54 things. Again, it is completely de-identified. We have no ability to know who’s doing what
1:17:00 in terms of journal tracking and behaviors. But yeah, so we don’t actually see any big
1:17:06 effects with, with masturbation and any markers of sleep and recovery. So no, no strong, no
1:17:07 strong effects there.
1:17:12 We said something earlier about exercising before bed. Now, if I have sex before bed,
1:17:21 and you know, it lasts a long time, is that not then going to produce a ton of adrenaline
1:17:23 and wake me up again?
1:17:31 So after, so it depends. If you ejaculate, then you will then release oxytocin, which
1:17:40 is kind of a calming chemical. So guys, typically after they ejaculate, feel sleepy because
1:17:42 of the release of oxytocin.
1:17:45 But then that goes back to my point about masturbation. Don’t you release oxytocin when
1:17:46 you masturbate?
1:17:49 Yeah. I think, I think that oxytocin is about connection.
1:17:50 Okay.
1:17:56 Right. So it’s, it’s, that’s, I think that’s, and that might be why we see these strong
1:18:04 effects when you’re having sex with a partner or a spouse is that you’re, you’re getting
1:18:08 this benefit of this, this beautiful connection with your partner and spouse, provided it
1:18:10 goes well.
1:18:15 And then you release this oxytocin, which is, you know, kind of makes you feel connected
1:18:23 and safe. And so all of those, I think those, that kind of condition helps, I think you
1:18:25 fall asleep and potentially stay asleep.
1:18:29 It does make sense. Cause I do get very, very tired after I’ve had sex with my partner.
1:18:31 And I’ve always wondered why that is.
1:18:38 I don’t know that women, it seems to have women want to maybe stay up and snuggle and
1:18:47 talk a little bit more after sex. So, but, but guys, it seems get sleepy and fall asleep.
1:18:52 And or want to run off or a bit of a stereotype that goes back quite far prehistorically. The
1:18:55 other thing I would love to talk to you about, because it’s become a huge obsession in my
1:19:00 life is this word, I guess it’s not a word, it’s an acronym, HRV, heart rate variability,
1:19:05 but become absolutely obsessed with it. Maybe a little bit too obsessed with it, one might
1:19:08 argue. I just check it every day. So the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning as
1:19:15 I look at it, just to understand how my body has recovered from the night before. What
1:19:17 is HRV?
1:19:23 It’s most simply the time interval between heart beats and it’s a function of the heart,
1:19:28 but it originates in the autonomic nervous system. And as we talked about, the autonomic
1:19:34 nervous system has two branches, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. Parasympathetic, the
1:19:38 rest and digest, sympathetic is fight or flight. And they’re both competing to send signals
1:19:44 to the heart. When you are super recovered, your heart is going to be responsive to both
1:19:51 branches of that autonomic nervous system in a very kind of dynamic way. So whatever
1:19:56 you want to do and what’s happening in your environment, you’re able to basically make
1:20:02 a match the more recovered you are, if that makes sense. So you’ll be able to respond and
1:20:07 react to environmental stress in kind of a more high-performing way, I suppose is the
1:20:17 best way to say it. So heart variability is kind of a measure of that ability to adapt
1:20:19 to your environment a functional way.
1:20:27 And a high heart rate variability, which is more varying beats, heart beats is better.
1:20:31 Yeah, more variability, the better. So a higher heart rate variability should be correlated
1:20:35 with a better adaptation to environmental stress.
1:20:40 So a low heart rate variability would sound something like this. Boom, boom, boom, boom,
1:20:46 boom, boom. Very, very consistent, not good. A high heart rate variability will sound like
1:20:55 boom, boom, boom, boom. So really varied. Perfect. It’s a beautiful description.
1:21:02 That variation is better. You’d think that if something was consistent, it would be better.
1:21:07 I know, in all other cases it is. But in the case of heart rate variability, it’s very counterintuitive.
1:21:12 What’s great is heart rate variability is modifiable to a degree.
1:21:15 What’s a good, what’s an average heart rate variability?
1:21:19 So it’s all based on genetics. It’s really tough, right? Because I don’t know what your
1:21:26 heart rate variability was when you were born, right? So I don’t know what your potential
1:21:31 for heart rate variability is. And I think that’s the only thing that I think we can
1:21:37 say and I think how people need to think about it is when you come on to the root platform,
1:21:40 for example, you’re going to get your heart rate variability. You’re going to develop
1:21:46 a baseline. And I think what people need to understand is that every behavior you’ve,
1:21:52 every choice you’ve kind of made leading up to that moment is going to determine your
1:21:58 baseline heart rate variability. So if you drank and take drugs and have a lot of childhood
1:22:05 trauma, that might actually yield a lower baseline heart rate variability relative to
1:22:13 your own potential, right? So it’s very hard to compare because of all of that, but then
1:22:18 just genetics, heart size, gender, like all of those things, biological sex, all of those
1:22:24 things have an impact on your heart rate variability, on your baseline. So you don’t want to compare.
1:22:28 There’s no good that said, I think the higher the better, generally.
1:22:30 What’s the average?
1:22:35 It depends on age. So it decreases, every year, your heart rate variability is going
1:22:41 to decrease a bit. I think it’s like three to four percent or something, which is kind
1:22:47 of a lot. The average on the root platform from the 20 to 30 year olds is somewhere in
1:22:56 the tune of kind of 65, 70, 30 to 40 year olds, a little bit lower, 40 to 50s, it’s kind of
1:23:02 in the 50s range, I think. So definitely it gets worse as you age, but I think why people
1:23:07 are obsessed about it is it’s just, it is a really good marker of just the overall state
1:23:10 of your mental, physical and emotional health.
1:23:12 Do women and men have variants in their heart rate?
1:23:18 They do, yeah. So generally, men would have a higher heart rate variability than women,
1:23:21 I think, at baseline, bigger heart size.
1:23:27 I’m trying to get my heart rate variability up. What are the most important things for
1:23:30 me to be thinking about? Because it seems to be a bit of a mystery, this heart rate
1:23:31 variability thing.
1:23:35 So there’s definitely some things that will directly impact your heart rate variability,
1:23:40 sleep wake time. So stabilizing when you go to bed to wake up, wake onset being kind of
1:23:44 the number one part. You want to wake up at a regular time every single day, you want
1:23:47 to get a huge ball of sunlight as soon as you wake up, you want to get a lot of natural
1:23:53 light during the day. All of these things are going to impact inflammation and cortisol,
1:23:59 all of the things that are kind of circulating in our body that we need to be circulating
1:24:02 and when we’re not doing some of these behaviors, they’re not circulating in our body, which
1:24:09 have negative downstream effects. You want to mitigate stress throughout the day. So
1:24:17 stress is not bad, but we need to proactively manage bouts of stress with appropriate levels
1:24:26 of rest. When we are going, going, going and we can only sustain that for so long. So just
1:24:31 being proactive with stress rest cycles throughout the day, really important. As we go, we want
1:24:36 to eat a bulk of our calories in the morning, lots and lots of protein. We want to make
1:24:41 sure that we get lots of protein. I think folks don’t probably get enough protein. We
1:24:50 get lots of protein, bias early in the day. Stop eating a few hours before bedtime and
1:24:56 make sure you’re hydrated throughout the day. Yes, absolutely. So I can go down a very deep
1:25:03 rabbit hole in terms of optimal training protocols, but, but in some, we want to make sure that
1:25:09 we’re polarizing our training in that we’re doing, you know, zone five, which is, you
1:25:15 know, kind of max effort where we’re at a breath a couple times a week. Okay. Two to
1:25:20 three times a week. And then we want to do zone two, which is kind of, you know, just
1:25:27 a low level, you know, 60% of our max heart rate. We want to do that for, you know, 200
1:25:33 to 300 minutes per week, which I know sounds like a lot. The, the recommendations 150 minutes,
1:25:37 I think it’s a little, I don’t think that’s enough, frankly, but if we’re talking about
1:25:43 optimizing hearty variability, that would be the protocol we want to strength train a few
1:25:48 times a week. That would be a way to maximize interplay between the cardiovascular and the
1:25:51 nervous system. Right. There is definitely a way to train to do that. And what I just
1:25:55 described, we’ll kind of get you there roughly. So we talked about time restricted eating
1:26:01 or stopping our feeding window three times four, three hours before we intend to sleep.
1:26:07 Huge. No alcohol. Obviously, again, if we’re interested in optimizing our ability to adapt
1:26:12 to environmental stress, that is an improve our hearty variability. Really important.
1:26:18 We, we, we abstain from alcohol. And then I would say, you know, spending sufficient
1:26:22 time in bed is going to be really important. That is not accumulating sleep debt.
1:26:28 What about having friends? Yes, connection, you know, folks being around individuals who
1:26:36 support your values is absolutely essential. We talked a little bit about exercise there,
1:26:42 but there’s also just like the general sedentary nests of our lives. I was looking at some
1:26:48 research a couple of years ago, which I included in my first book, which shows that we get
1:26:51 in the Western world, we’re getting increasingly more sedentary. It’s kind of like this downward
1:26:58 graph that just shows every year, people move less because we’ve got Ubers now and we have,
1:27:03 we’re working more in offices and we’re working even more from home now and we’re optimizing
1:27:09 activity out of our lives. And surely that has an implication for heart variability as
1:27:10 well.
1:27:13 There’s no question that sedentary behavior, you know, I think where we go wrong is we
1:27:18 think I can wake up and work out for an hour and then that gives me license to sit for
1:27:23 the rest of the day. But we know that for individuals who are sitting for more than four
1:27:32 hours in a row, so consolidated sitting for four hour blocks is associated with increased
1:27:38 mortality rates. So four hours of sedentary behavior, which, you know, consolidated, right?
1:27:46 So the ideal protocol, if we want to, you know, basically improve all these parameters
1:27:49 of health that we’re talking about, specifically heart variability, you want to break up your
1:27:54 sedentary time. So every, you know, half an hour to an hour, you’d want to get up, move
1:27:59 around for five minutes or so, and then get back to your work.
1:28:05 In 2020, you wrote an article where you offered five ways to improve our HRV. And HRV, as
1:28:08 I say, is super important because it’s linked to all of these health markers. It’s linked
1:28:13 to immunity. It’s linked to all of these things that really, really matter. And one of the,
1:28:16 there was a couple of sort of surprising suggestions you made in that article. One of them was
1:28:18 about practicing gratitude.
1:28:28 Yeah. I mean, I think what the research says is that actually receiving gratitude has the
1:28:38 most powerful effects on our mood and our feelings of well-being. So if I were to receive
1:28:42 a thank you letter, for example, and really internalize that, that’s going to have the
1:28:49 biggest long-term effect on my feelings of well-being. But there’s also great research
1:28:56 that shows giving thanks as well and expressing gratitude also has, you know, lots of positive
1:28:58 implications for our psychological functioning.
1:29:05 And I guess this brings into focus the psychological element of health and HRV and sleep and all
1:29:10 of these things that we’ve talked about like stress and anxiety. You’re currently finishing
1:29:12 a PhD in psychology, right?
1:29:13 That’s right. Yes.
1:29:18 And again, it links to something that was written in that article as well where you talk about
1:29:20 a growth mindset. Again, that’s psychology.
1:29:21 Yes.
1:29:27 Why does this matter? This growth mindset thing, this, you know, gratitude psychology, why does
1:29:28 that matter?
1:29:34 Yeah. I mean, it, I think it relates to just our, you know, whether or not we feel that
1:29:41 growth in the future is possible. You know, do we, do we feel like we have the potential
1:29:48 to grow and to learn? And do we feel optimistic about the future? I mean, that’s really what
1:29:52 growth mindset is, right? And, and you can imagine if you don’t feel optimistic about
1:29:57 the future, you don’t feel like growth is possible. You feel really limited in your
1:29:58 capabilities, right?
1:30:04 And you feel limited in your happiness. So I think that, yeah, there’s, I think a really
1:30:11 strong connection between, you know, believing that the future is positive and, and that
1:30:16 is going to manifest in, in a measure like heart rate variability, you know, it’s going
1:30:20 to, it’s going to manifest physiologically.
1:30:22 This is an author called Sean Anker.
1:30:24 Oh, Sean Aker. Yeah.
1:30:25 From Harvard.
1:30:26 Yeah.
1:30:27 Yeah. Aker.
1:30:28 Yeah.
1:30:31 There’s a lot of work on this idea of growth mindset as a way to sort of counteract stress,
1:30:32 which I find fascinating.
1:30:33 He does. Yeah.
1:30:38 He found that doctors in a positive state of mind perform diagnoses 19% faster and more
1:30:43 accurately than doctors that are neutral. And he also found that positive employees
1:30:48 are 31% more productive than negative employees.
1:30:57 Yeah. And I, and I, and I think our life circumstance, you know, kind of certainly can tilt us and
1:31:03 one direction or another, but I do think that we have a genetic predisposition to, you know,
1:31:08 the cup is a half empty versus half full. You know, I think there’s something to, to
1:31:13 that, to that research and that literature, but all the things that we’re talking about,
1:31:18 I think provide a foundation, right? So a lot of the physiological stuff that we’re
1:31:22 talking about, the circadian stuff, the sleep stuff, the recovery stuff, right? The stress
1:31:26 management, you know, when we’re eating our food, the, how we’re training, right? All
1:31:37 of these things kind of position us to, I think, leverage our, our mindsets in a way
1:31:41 that is the most productive, right? When we’re not kind of taken care of these physiological
1:31:45 things, you know, we don’t feel like we have purpose. Talk to us. We don’t feel the skills
1:31:49 and resources to do the things that we want to do in our life. It’s really hard to talk
1:31:56 ourselves into a better future, right? And it’s hard to kind of move around our mindset.
1:31:59 But if we can just kind of attend to some of these physiological and psychological things,
1:32:04 we can actually start to take more control of our mindset. So I think a lot of times,
1:32:08 this is, I think, frustrating in the field of psychology, we talk about how, we talk
1:32:12 about gross mindset without actually talking about the behaviors that actually underpin
1:32:17 that, you know? And, and, and that’s, I think a lot of the work that I’m trying to do is,
1:32:23 is that, you know, there’s, there’s these core influences, physiological and psychological,
1:32:33 that if we can understand and build an infrastructure to allow those, those kind of behaviors to
1:32:39 come to life in our everyday, we’re in a position then to have like a growth mindset, right?
1:32:44 But without that, that, that foundation of good habits and good behaviors, of good habits
1:32:48 and behaviors, it’s hard to believe that the future is, is bright.
1:32:52 It brings into question something that I know a lot of people think when they hear conversations
1:32:56 like this, they think, oh, but I just don’t have the motivation, Kristen, you know, and
1:33:02 there’s this ongoing conversation about which comes first. Is it the action or is it the
1:33:07 motivation? There’s clearly, in my life, I’ve seen this clear two way link by through what
1:33:12 I do and how I feel and how I feel and what I do. So if I want to influence the other,
1:33:16 I do the other. I, if I want to feel great, I have to focus on my actions. And if I want
1:33:22 to act great, I’ll focus on how I feel, for example, you know what I mean? Because people
1:33:25 hear, you know, the discipline that you practice in your life and they go, oh God, she must
1:33:32 have so much motivation. You know, the people that are watching junk TV at 3am in the morning
1:33:36 and eating junk food at 3am in the morning, they look at you and go, she’s got just, she
1:33:41 just got something I just haven’t got. So I can’t relate. You know, I can’t become
1:33:47 a Christian. What is the message those people need to hear? The ones that feel like motivation
1:33:49 is their problem.
1:33:58 I mean, I think it’s understanding how do we actually produce energy, right? Because
1:34:05 that’s really, at the core, what motivation is, right? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the energy,
1:34:13 right? And a couple of things influence our energy production or put a ceiling on motivation.
1:34:24 It’s called, oh, it’s appraisal. So how we, how relevant we think a task is and, and then
1:34:33 how we are perceiving the task. Is it hard? Is it easy? Is it challenging, right? So appraisal
1:34:37 and perception are going to work together to put a ceiling on your potential for motivation.
1:34:44 Okay. So appraisal I hear is being like the why, like why this matters.
1:34:46 Totally. That’s how relevant is it to me.
1:34:48 So interesting because in my book, I wrote this thing called the discipline equation.
1:34:52 And I think, you know, I think you’ve kind of summarized it a little bit there.
1:34:55 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, this is well understood, right? In the field of
1:35:01 psychology and physiology that, yeah, you, you, we all have potential motivation in the,
1:35:04 the two things that move around is how we appraise the situation and how we perceive it.
1:35:09 So in my discipline equation, this is the equation. Discipline equals the strength
1:35:14 of one’s Y plus the reward of the pursuit minus the cost of the pursuit.
1:35:19 Perfect. I love that. Yeah. That’s beautiful. And I think that would hold, that holds up
1:35:30 clearly. Yeah. For sure. But I think, and I, I would, I said, you know,
1:35:35 one of the reasons why I think my teams were always so successful is I just deployed that
1:35:40 principle over and over again in my environment. I help my, my athletes understand the why,
1:35:47 their personal why, like why were they showing up every single day to the field? How was that
1:35:53 attached to their individual values, not my team values, to their personal values, right?
1:35:59 And then I made the environment challenging, right? So they could get excited about the
1:36:03 work that they’re doing every day, right? And I tried to do that on an individual level.
1:36:08 And that’s why a lot of teams underperform, frankly, is that they don’t, leaders don’t
1:36:13 understand the relationship between appraisal and perception. Like I literally think if
1:36:16 you can understand that, and you’ve written a book about it, right? So people can read
1:36:23 this book. And if leaders can adopt the, understand the importance of setting, of creating infrastructure
1:36:30 where you tap into the person’s individual values and how that relates to the task,
1:36:37 you have motivation. Like you will, you will increase the ceiling for potential motivation.
1:36:41 It makes me think in some ways that people listening to this right now are without knowing
1:36:49 it in a upward reinforcing spiral towards the person they want to be, or in a downward
1:36:54 reinforcing spiral away from the person they want to be. Because if you’re showing up and
1:36:58 acting in the right way, then you’re going to release energy, you’re going to feel good,
1:37:02 which means you have a better chance of showing up and acting in the right way. And that spiral
1:37:05 goes upwards. But if you’re showing up in the wrong way, it means you’re probably going
1:37:09 to be a little bit depressed. You’re going to be, have a lot of circadian disruption,
1:37:12 you’re not going to feel great, which means you have less chance of showing up in the
1:37:17 right way, the energy, low energy, all of those things are downward spiral. So if you’re
1:37:22 in that downward spiral, I would, I would guess the way, the only way to break out of
1:37:25 it, I mean, is you listen to a podcast, but that’s not going to help you break out of
1:37:32 it alone. It’s going to start with you making one different decision at one point, and that
1:37:37 can be a tiny, tiny, tiny decision. Yeah. And I think that’s a lot of the work I’m doing
1:37:40 right now is trying to figure out what is that actual taxonomy though. If someone really
1:37:45 wants to make change, where do they start? Where do they start? You know, I’m going to
1:37:51 say it, sleep, wake time, like wake up at the same time every day and get as much as light
1:37:58 as humanly possible within that will set the tone for the rest of the day and put you in
1:38:03 a position where you can fall asleep at a regular time night after night. Like you have
1:38:09 to address that. The second thing is I would consolidate your eating window, you know, keep
1:38:13 it within a 10 hour timeframe, eat all of your calories within a 10 hour timeframe and
1:38:17 try to leave a couple hour buffer between when you tend to sleep in your last calorie.
1:38:23 Like just those two things are pretty low barrier to entry, right? And that will increase
1:38:29 mood. You’ll improve your body composition, right? Just by narrowing that window, you
1:38:34 will, you know, all the effects that we talked about in terms of the cardio and metabolic
1:38:38 effects from just stabilizing sleep, wake time, the mood effects from stabilizing sleep,
1:38:43 wake time, that will back you into having a better relationship with light, right? Which
1:38:49 we know light is at the core of human health and functioning. So those two things I would
1:38:54 say is the place to start. And I think the downstream effect of just those two things
1:39:02 is pretty profound. And then I think in parallel, just figuring out who do you actually want
1:39:08 to be in the world? Like, what is your, what do you want your identity to be? You know,
1:39:14 and I don’t know that people actually think enough about that. And there’s so many distractions
1:39:21 in this world. I mean, we can just drown ourselves with just stuff that’s, it’s just coming at
1:39:26 us content all the time. And we, we can’t discern, we haven’t done the work to be able
1:39:32 to discern what, what is, what is actually important to us. Like we don’t have the capacity
1:39:36 to direct our thoughts and our attention in a way that’s rewarding, right? Because we,
1:39:42 we haven’t built that skill or that muscle. So I think like getting that under control
1:39:47 is another way is, is like really figuring out what is my relationship with technology?
1:39:53 Like, what do I want that to be? You know, how do I actually want to spend my, my, my
1:40:00 time? Have you written that down? For sure. Absolutely. And what format does that take
1:40:05 or what medium did you use? Oh, vision board or something? Oh, just like pen and paper.
1:40:11 I mean, I have, yeah, I mean, I ever know, you know, I, I, I revisit this quarterly. Um,
1:40:15 you know, what do I value? What do I care about? How do I want to spend my time? And
1:40:20 that has been the basis for which I make all my decisions. What does your ever note say?
1:40:26 Oh, I mean, in terms of like my, how I think about why I have my list of, of values, right?
1:40:31 That it always starts there, right? What are your values? So growth, impact, tolerance,
1:40:38 compassion and presence. Those are my top five values. And I, and I, I meditate on those.
1:40:43 I, whenever I, you know, I’ll look for, I have some of my favorite authors that have
1:40:48 written extensively about all those different things, like, you know, James Baldwin on compassion
1:40:55 and tolerance and, um, um, I ran on, on impact and growth. I love her work. But yeah, I mean,
1:41:03 I think really connecting to what do those beliefs and values actually look like in action?
1:41:09 Right? If I don’t know what, what, what growth looks like, if I don’t know what tolerance
1:41:14 looks like in action, how do I actually play that out in my, in my, in my day to day? Right?
1:41:18 So you have to, you have to write about it. You have to internalize it. And then you have
1:41:24 to practice that behavior. Right? So in, in, I ever noticed it’s, I have a kind of like,
1:41:28 what does this look like in action? Like, what are the things that I can do that I can practice
1:41:33 to live these values? And then it’s having an outlet for those things. What, what kind
1:41:38 of things do I need to do? You know, like my PhD, that’s not a goal. I don’t have any
1:41:44 goals. Like goals are total BS in my view. It’s, it’s like living your values. Like the
1:41:50 my PhD allows me to live my values of a growth and impact. Right? If I want to be, if I want
1:41:55 to impact health at scale, I need to have the credibility. I need to know how to run experiments.
1:42:03 I need to be a scientist. Right? And, and so it’s not, yeah, the, I’m reaching this goal
1:42:09 of getting a PhD, but it’s allowing me to live my values of growth and impact. And, and I
1:42:14 think that’s where folks kind of get it wrong. Is they’re like, I want to run a 10 K. And
1:42:18 then what’s happens after you run the 10 K? And I use that principle in, in my life, like
1:42:25 I’m not, it’s, it’s like, I’m always just trying to live my values. And I, and I don’t evaluate
1:42:33 success on like achieving something. It’s all about my scorecard is am I living my values
1:42:40 to my fullest? Like that to me is a win. And that’s how I evaluated my environment when
1:42:47 I was coaching collegiate. It was like, are we living our values? And when you do that,
1:42:54 you kind of always, you always win, you know? And I has a, you know, kind of second order
1:42:59 effect in terms of how you think about competition, right? Like that’s another area where like,
1:43:06 I don’t compete. I stopped competing a decade and a half ago. Like we wouldn’t even like
1:43:10 our when, you know, my team at Princeton, like these are just little things, but when
1:43:15 we talk about going back to like an infrastructure to support your values, like we didn’t even
1:43:21 list our opponents. Like I didn’t want them thinking about how I didn’t want them like
1:43:27 changing how they acted throughout the week, how they trained the quality, what they did
1:43:34 behaviorally based on our opponent. That didn’t matter. Right? If you want to perform consistently,
1:43:40 you need to, you know, show up every single day with quality, right? And being willing
1:43:51 to apply yourself in a way that is going to, you know, create the output that leads to
1:43:57 the kind of quality that allows you to replicate, you know, performance levels. And it’s about
1:44:01 learning and development. And it wasn’t about an opponent, right? And that’s why that’s
1:44:06 why teams underperform, right? That’s why individuals underperform is they’ve got this
1:44:11 arbitrary kind of metric that they’re, or like team that they want to beat that they’re
1:44:14 focused on, right? Or person that they want to beat that they’re focused on. Instead of
1:44:19 looking, okay, what is my bar? Like, and, and going back to that question, am I actually
1:44:25 living my values? I think everything kind of works itself out. If you can just do that.
1:44:30 Kristen, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question
1:44:34 for the next guest, not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for. The question that
1:44:43 has been left for you. What is the last thing that you would say? And I imagine the context
1:44:47 though, and this is just me taking a guess is that if there was a last thing that you
1:44:50 had to say, what is the last thing that you would say?
1:44:57 I think figure out who you want to be in the world. And then set up your life so you can
1:44:59 be that person.
1:45:05 Kristen, thank you. So incredibly inspiring in so many ways. I, you know, I would, I would
1:45:12 promote woop, but I feel like you already have just by being so inspiring, so smart, so wise.
1:45:19 And that’s, I mean, everything that whoop is in a nutshell. There’s so many thank yous
1:45:23 that I want to give you for so many different reasons. But I think the most important thank
1:45:30 you that I’ll give you is for both the hundreds and thousands of lives that your work has
1:45:36 nudged in a better direction and transformed in many cases, but also for the millions and
1:45:41 millions and hundreds of millions of lives that you’re going to nudge in a much better
1:45:48 direction over the course of the next decade and decade and decade and decade. It’s a tremendous
1:45:55 service to humanity having the potential service to humanity, having the skills, the storytelling
1:46:00 abilities, the wisdom and that deep innate sense of drive that you have. And it is a
1:46:07 service to humanity that humanity increasingly, unfortunately needs. And I’m so excited to
1:46:10 watch that play out for you. I deeply believe this is the very start of your journey in
1:46:15 many respects, even though you’re several decades into the work that you do. But there’s
1:46:18 something tells me that this is just the beginning. So Kristen, thank you for your generosity.
1:46:20 Thank you for your wisdom and thank you for your time. Appreciate you.
1:46:23 I appreciate you so much, Steven. Thank you for all your good work.
1:46:33 [MUSIC]