So we are going to jump into these seven strategies that you have that will help you become a better sleeper. What is one of your favorite tips in order to get better sleep?

One of my favorite tips for a great night's sleep is this idea that routine is absolutely queen, and we're really not meant to keep different sleep schedules as human beings. Falling asleep at 2:00 AM one night, 10:00 PM the next. Understand how vitally important consistency is in our sleep routines, because then our brain and our body starts to understand when it should be tired and prepare for sleep and when it should be awake. And then it allows ourselves to better organize ourselves and get a lot out of our sleep episode. The best sleep comes when we're keeping our sleep times consistent, so falling asleep at the same time and waking up as close to the same time as possible.

Is that takeaway number one, then climbing into bed so you have a consistent time that you're signaling that you're going to Start the process of falling asleep and having your alarm ring at roughly the same time is one of the first things we want to do.

Absolutely. And I think we're slaves to our alarm clocks. Yes. But we don't really talk about the wind down time. It's like a fuzzy idea, fuzzy game plan. It's not a, Okay, 10:30 is when I'm going to start to power down. I'm going to get off my phone. I'm going to boil a small cup of tea, herbal tea, and then start my bedtime ritual and wind routine, which is an essential part of sleep. We always think, Oh, now's time. Now feels pretty good for sleep. But it takes time.

So you are a world-renowned sleep researcher and scientist. What is your wind down routine?

My wind down routine is one thing that I am very diligent about. And it's not complex, but I'm very diligent about the time. I do my best. I try to get all my computer stuff done, and then I put my boys to bed, and then it's 8:30, and then I am switching my mindset, and it's time for Mama to go to bed. And there are days where I need to be working and plug back in. But the best case scenario is my boys are down, and then I do a couple Maybe I clean up a tiny bit around the house. I start to turn the lights off, and then I go upstairs and I turn my phone off. I wash my face. I take a shower, and then I do one breathing exercise. I sit cross-legged on the ground in my I'm turning lights off as I move into the bedroom, and I do one breathing exercise. And I don't set an alarm, but I just do it until I feel like I've gotten rid of that busy mind that has served me so well over the course of the day. And sometimes that's five times on busier, more stressful days.

Sometimes that's seven rounds of this. But it's the military breathing technique. So I breathe in through my nose for a count of four. I hold for seven. And then I exhale, purse my lips for eight. And those times are longer than you think, right? The seven and the eight, really, you're fighting for the breath at the end. And that's the benefit of that technique. It restricts and restrains the breath and can help calm the heart rate and calm your mind. And now, while I'm doing that, thoughts are flying in because, of course, of what I forgot to do or I need to do. And I come back to this idea of, no, not now. Now is my time. I've done things for my students, my partner, my kids all day. And now is my time to restore and relax. And if anything, any thoughts are still fighting to the surface, I write those down at my night stand. So I've done the 4, 7, 8 technique, and then I mosey into my bed. I read a couple pages in a book. I do progressive muscle relaxation. I clench and release every muscle group starting from the toes.

And I inhale, clench, And then exhale, release. And I really add on to that something, like something that I'm letting go, heaviness or a thought that's not serving me. And then I say a prayer and I go to sleep. And it doesn't happen every night, but that's my ritual. And I use the word ritual purposefully because you want to cultivate a ritual. A ritual is something you do every time. And so it's thoughtful. It's one, two, three, boom, sleep is next. For you listening, what are the three things that can do tonight and tomorrow night, and really institute as your ritual that you can ideally also take on the road when you travel. And be diligent. Try to do those every single night because then what the brain starts to understand is what comes next to sleep.

Do you find that in your research, that the people that are struggling the most with sleep don't have this wind down routine? They're not diligent about this ritual and the consistency of it and practicing these steps that help you fall asleep and stay asleep?

It's a great question. I think it comes back to this idea that we're so used to getting what we wanted quickly, whether it's our food or a coffee or getting a subway or an Uber. We're used to things happening quickly when we want them to. Our brain is hardwired to to crave consistency, to be able to expect what's coming next by keeping our schedules consistent, by giving our brain that sense of normalcy. And then falling asleep faster into deeper sleep is more within our reach.

Quick question. What is the average amount of time that it takes to fall asleep? And when should we get out of bed because it's not happening?

This is a great question, and I think a big area to to promote awareness about because we think that we just should be able to crawl into bed and flip our brains off like a switch. Wrong. Sleep is a process. And so falling asleep actually takes time and more than a lot of people realize. Even a healthy sleeper with no problems should take about 15 or 20 minutes to fall asleep. And that's counter... So many people will say, Oh, I can fall asleep anywhere. As soon as I get into the airplane at Logan, I'm out. I'm snoring before even the announcement. My husband's like that. I literally...

He hits the pillow and he's. Now I've got to try to fall asleep while you're already snoring. And so he just drops in like it's his job. He might be a little sleep-deprived.

I'd love to talk to him and make sure he's getting enough sleep. But if you're able to fall asleep right away, it's generally a sign that you're not getting enough sleep. Really? Same thing. If you're starved for food and you sit down and you have a huge meal and keep eating and eating, it's probably because you're starved for sleep because it's not, of course, healthy to have enormous meals. And so same thing with sleep. If you are starved for sleep, your brain is going to... Hopefully, you're not in a place like driving a car or anything that would be safety critical. But if you're not getting enough sleep, sleep will come because it's a biological necessity. And so when we go without it, Our body works desperately to get it.

So 15 to 20 minutes. And that's both for when you climb in at your bedtime, when the bedtime wind down routine happens. And that's also how long it might take you to drift back to sleep if you do wake up in the middle of the night.

These are such good questions. We just wrote a paper on how to help a researcher conceptualize these different steps because they're a couple, right? So the time that you want to be winding down at night, maybe you're walking around your house, your lights are low, you're lighting I have some candles, ideally. Oh, my God.

That's not going on in my house. I'm like, Who didn't turn off the light? Where are the dogs? Did you lock the doors? It's like the shutdown is happening. I need to play some music and light some candles. It is like, get through I love it.

I mean, you're not alone, so many of us, right? Especially with kids and other moving parts. But finding ways to draw a little inspiration from these things, right? Look, I'm not saying let's all spend two hours in a candle environment before good time.

Yeah, but I think this is really... What you're doing is you're taking a spotlight and you're highlighting something that is within your reach to do. And when you understand that it is coming from a world Old renowned sleep scientist at Harvard, that thinking about the way you turn yourself down. So I think about, I turn down the house. We turn off all the lights. I love that. You lock the doors. The dogs run into their crates and get a little treat. You say good night to the kids. You make sure the cat's outside.

Hold on. This all sounds wonderful, Mel.

Well, I don't have any candles. You know what I'm saying? But there is this signaling that happens.

Exactly. And look, that's actually part of your wind down routine. And maybe as you do those things, you're consciously looking at it as that. You're maybe slowing down your breath. When the dogs are out, you're consciously not on your phone. You're starting to switch into a different mindset, a one that's all about rest and recovery. And it's different than the daytime, right? The day is do, act, execute, thinking. And maybe at nighttime, you draw inspiration from some of the meditation world of thoughts come into the mind and then come back to the breath, say, tomorrow. And if those are festering, those thoughts are festering, a great addition to your bedtime routine is writing down anything that's on your mind. So powerful, because sometimes it's the stupidest little things that Keep us awake. The dry cleaning. Got to call mom. Take the dogs to the vet. And there are things that you can only do sometimes during work hours. And so writing them down can then, I suggest, a stack of note cards, because then that can also be your to-do Those things that were bothering you that you need to do, they're now on a piece of paper, and you can cross those off when you wake up.

Oh, that's great. So you have a stack of little five by seven note cards. And as you've got all those things that you'd normally ruminate about as you're laying in bed and you can't fall asleep, dump them in their little home, and then you don't have to hold space in your brain.

Exactly. And it's so powerful. And then you start to condition your brain to think, not now. Now is my time for sleep.

One of the other levers that you say helps us sleep better is a consistent schedule. What if you've got young kids or you got a puppy that's waking you up or your work is inconsistent? How do you create consistent sleep if something is interrupting your ability to do it?

This is such a great question, and there are so many of these, right? Young kids, dogs work. I would encourage you to look at your weekly schedule and find the time that you can protect for sleep. And that's going to be the time that your biological clock gets used to. And if you can get a little bit more time in the morning, an extra hour, go to bed a little bit earlier, an extra hour, wonderful. But if you can protect, say it's 12:00 to 6:00, if you can protect 11:00 to 5:00, be diligent about that. And then think about either end of that being things that you could move, but have maybe a time... If you're a young mother listening, for instance, and you're like, Look, I'm working. I have kids. How do I follow this? Nine hours? Here's the thing. That is That's the goal. If you can get there, wonderful. But if you can't, give me seven. Take that first time that you have to be up. You've hit your target wake up-time that should be your alarm for every, ideally, every day of the week. But again, life happens. We'll talk about I got to catch up in a moment.

But that's your target wake up-time. And then count back, maybe again, if it's only six that you can give me, count back six. And even if you can't get enough sleep, if you can get consistent sleep, here's the dirty secret. You're going to do much better than someone that's getting enough sleep but keeping different schedules.

Wait, what? So hold on a second. If I can get less sleep, but consistently, so I'm consistently getting five or six hours of sleep, I am going to do better than somebody who's getting eight or nine hours of sleep, but an inconsistent schedule?

And we are talking about situations where the person is really fundamentally not able to get enough sleep. It's not what I recommend. But if you're a shift worker, if you're a single mom with kids working two jobs, And you can't get eight hours of consistent sleep, if you can get five consistently or six consistently, I really want to move you towards six or seven for your health, your well-being, your ability to be around for those kids. If it's caregiving, that's one of your challenges, and being diligent. How many hours can I give myself? Because the closer to seven, the closer to eight, the longer you're going to be around, the better the quality of your heart, your brain, your productivity, your relationship, so many positive things when we can put sleep first. But if you're looking at a schedule that is tough, then yes, consistency is king.

Why is consistency more important than the amount of time you're sleeping?

It comes back to our circadian rhythm. Our body and our brain, we're not built as humans to keep different schedules. It didn't serve us from the standpoint of evolution. It served our ancestors from the standpoint of evolution to know when it would be alert. So then it could say, Okay, these animals are up at this time, and I can I'll hunt for these animals and forge for these berries at this time. Then I prepare my meal in the heat of the day. It's so silly to compare, but it helps you understand just how important it is and how we're really built. It takes a lot of time to change our physiology as a species. Our technology has really outpaced our biological rhythms, which are all about consistency and keeping our sleep times the same, powering down. These are things that we don't have hacks for.

Well, and what I love is there are things that you can do. Basically, it makes sense because if you are a young mom or a shift worker or something's going on with your parents and so you're in the middle of a period of your life where things are really inconsistent, that creates its own level of stress. Totally. Being worried about how much sleep you're going to get, or this, that, and the other thing, if you can focus on the five or six hours that you can pretty much guarantee, that lowers a little bit of stress because now you're focused on what you can control. So it makes a lot of sense. What if your partner has a different schedule or snores like crazy or is just a human furnace and keeping you awake. Do you recommend that you sleep in a different room?

This is such a good question. If you have a partner, sleep is a social behavior. It's funny to think of it that way, but it really is.

What do you mean by that?

You co-sleep, largely, if you're in in a relationship. It's a social phenomenon. It's true. If your partner snores, it's going to probably interrupt the quality of your sleep. I would encourage you to think about, again, putting sleep at the center. Granted, I'm biased. This is what I do for a living. But when we can do that and really say, critically, how can we optimize for sleep that will improve your relationship, improve your productivity at work, how you care for your children, so many positive things. And then you have to ask yourself, am I creating lasting memories by sleeping together with my partner? This term is actually... This is termed a sleep divorce. What I'm about to talk about, sleeping separately. That's a terrible name. Which is so negative. Totally.

Can we kill it with a better name?

I couldn't agree more. I have some friends who are like, Look, it's a sleep marriage. It literally is how I'm able to stay in this marriage.

And that could be for a number of reasons. You should just have a sex bed and then a sleep bed. We need to make this sexier in terms of the name of it.

That's what people did in the Victoria era, right? And even earlier than that, and very wealthy individuals would always do that.

I thought it was because they had mistresses, but I thought that's why they were not sleeping together. That might have been a factor. So you recommend that just- And ask yourself as a couple, how can we be the best possible couple that we can be?

How can we be the best parents, succeed in our careers, love each other? And you can do that with good sleep. And if your sleep is interrupting each other's, maybe one's snoring, maybe one keeps a different schedule, one's a shift worker. If you're able to sleep separately, why not? And again, doing away with this term sleep divorce, I think we should coin sleep marriage instead. Because again, you're just not creating lasting memories when you're sleeping. Sometimes it's nice to cuddle, but you could do that and then slip into your separate bedroom where you're going to get the sleep that will support your personal waking success. And again, allow you to thrive in that relationship. Now, there are some people for whom that will be challenging. Maybe you don't have a guest room that you could oust your husband or your partner to go to. So if that's the situation for you, think about the ways that you could buffer against that disruption that your partner imposes on your sleep.

Like a pillow wall and earplugs?

A pillow wall, earplugs. And earplugs that block against 60 decibels or higher It's just a specific type of ear plug, and they have them at the drug store, every drug store. White noise, they're widely available. Look into one of these. It creates a background level of noise that then can dampen the impact of intermittent noise, which is often the challenge, right? It's someone getting up to an alarm clock or someone snoring.

I'm not going to try that. That's so simple, and hearing it from you makes me know that it's actually going to work. What is a circadian rhythm, Dr. Robinson?

The circadian rhythm refers to systems in the brain and in the body that operate and oscillate in an approximate 24-hour cycle. That's because we, on Earth, have a pattern of light and darkness that is 24 hours in duration. Over hundreds of thousands of years, we've adapted our internal biological mechanisms to that 24-hour day. Sleep is one such rhythm. There are times during the day where we're awake and then times where we're asleep. Now, the reason this is beneficial is largely evolutionary and nature. When it's dark out, we can rest and recover. When it's light out, we can be operating at our peak, working, commuting, et cetera. Our physiology has adapted to life on Earth, and our internal system systems are governed by this tiny little region of the brain called the suprachiazmatic nucleus. We call it the central pacemaker of the circadian rhythm.

That almost made me want to go supercalifragilistic, right? Yes. Supercalifragilistic nucleus.

Okay. If you ever want to impress someone at a cocktail party, that sciencey term is the way to do it. How do we say it again? Suprachiasmatic nucleus. Say that 10 times fast, right?

Superchiasmatic nucleus.

Yes, bravo. Nailed it. That's the central pacemaker of this biological clock that we have inside us. And what's so interesting is virtually every part of the body operates in a circadian-like fashion, firing it sometimes and then relaxing and unwinding at other times, even down to the cellular level, believe it or not. So this system, this internal circuitry, is not meant to make quick changes. Hundreds of years ago, we weren't flying on airplanes all around the world. So understanding that that internal system, really, I like to liken it to a big piece of machinery from World War One that just moves slowly. And really, when light changes in our environment, it's maybe a couple of seconds a day, not much more. But we fly in airplanes. We hop in airplanes and fly to new time zones and wonder why we just struggle with brain fog, with sleep. And it's because there's a mismatch between our internal biological rhythms and the new pattern of light and darkness and social time. So the clock on the wall when you land in London is, of course, going to be different than your internal biological clock. So understanding these principles can better set us up for success when it comes to our sleep.

So I have a couple questions. This is fascinating, first of all. So thank you for breaking this down. One of the things that you also recommend is getting light in the morning. Why does this matter when it comes to your circadian rhythm and being a better sleeper?

So that tiny brain region that we talked about where the circadian rhythm is housed is located right behind the eyeball in the brain. So the brain takes an information about the presence or absence of light through the eye. Then that travels along the optic chiasm to the superchiasmatic nucleus. There's really good names here.

Optic chiasm, super, whatever it is.

We're going to sound very serious.

Very sexy field of study, Dr. Robbins.

So light comes in through the eyes and triggers the superchiasmatic nucleus or the cognitive home for our circadian rhythm. And then that triggering allows for the secretion of melatonin when we're in the absence of light. So we've all heard that term, and it's all over the shelves of every grocery store offering you the promise of good night's sleep. But it also is a hormone that's secreted in the brain in this home of our circadian rhythm, the suprachiazmatic nucleus. That hormone is secreted when we go out into a dark environment and we see the sunset, and then the process of melatonin secretion begins, and that allows us to then sleep. Then conversely, when we wake up, that internal circuitry gets a signal through eyes that travels to that brain region that says, Oh, all right, melatonin, you're done? It's time to become alert and awake. And going outside to get some natural sunlight in the morning is really vitally important because that stops the floodgates of melatonin and triggers the brain to say, Oh, all right, we're in the awake phase of our circadian rhythm.

So what happens if you step outside and it's a cloudy or rainy day?

No problem. Does it still work? No problem. Why does that work? Because it's amazing the power of of sunlight in our environment. And so even if it's a cloudy day, getting outside will get you the sunlight exposure that you need into your eyes to stop the floodgates of melatonin and begin your day. It's a myth that a cloudy day might hamper that or dampen that ability.

How long do I need to be outside? I've rolled out of bed, I've opened up the curtains, being inside and looking out the windows, not enough. I got to step outside, I got to get the UVs in my eyeballs. But how long am I standing out there, Dr. Robinson?

Great question. Now, I think it's so important. This is so aligned with your work, but meeting people where they are. I'm not saying we all need to be out walking for an hour before we get to work, but find a way to fit it into your schedule and think carefully, where could I get a little bit more sunlight? If that's Okay, I get up, I make my coffee, I have to drive 45 minutes, and maybe you park your car farther away from your office building. You walk for three minutes. Give me five minutes. Amazing. Or if you're commuting on the subway, try to extend another stop. Walk one more stop before you go underground. Walk to your coffee or park your car instead of doing the drive-through. I think these little microhabits can go so far.

Well, I also think if you know that the reason why you're doing this is because you are using UV rays to manually reset the circadian rhythm in your body to go, Okay, we're starting to practice. The thing I'm doing right now when I wake up is helping my body do what it's designed to do, which is sleep. What What about for somebody that's listening who wakes up before the sun is even out? So you are going to work or to school, or you live in a part of the world where it's really dark out when you wake up, what can you do?

Such a great question. There are more than 25 million Americans who work on shift schedules, so going to work and coming back from work at times that are mismatched with the patterns of light and darkness in our environment. For all of the reasons that we just talked about, the importance of sunlight exposure, those individuals can really struggle. The good news is there are a lot of technologies energies that you can buy. Essentially, if you're an office employee outside the traditional 9:00 to 5:00, get one of these lights that ideally is blue daylight spectrum. You can sit in front of that light, turn it on high when you get to the office, because what you want to do is you want to trick your body into thinking that that's sunrise. If that's your work schedule, an early start, or conversely, if you're starting your day at 9:00 or 10:00 PM when it's dark.

Because you're working an overnight shift. I've done that, and you feel like a zombie. Is this something, though, just to make sure? Because I know people are going to Okay, where do I go? Is this something you can literally buy at a retailer or go on Amazon and just Google blue daylight spectrum light and you can purchase one? You don't need a prescription from a sleep researcher?

Essentially, these technologies are widely available. If you look for the lights that say, specifically, their blue daylight spectrum, because we really want that light being strong enough to emulate the sun. It can be strong enough that it's actually a treatment for seasonal affective disorder because some Some of them are that potent. You sit in front of them and don't stare at it anymore than you would the sun. But that can be a helpful part of adapting to a shift schedule.

Let's say the person listening is thinking, Oh, man, I don't have a consistent bedtime. I'm not looking at the UV. I'm all over the place. I got to get my circadian rhythm back in place. How do you shift or reset your circadian rhythm to a healthy 24 Our cycle?

Really good question. I think one of the key questions to ask yourself is, where can I find some normalcy in my personal schedule? If you're keeping what we call a yo-yo schedule, falling asleep at one time, one night, another time the next night, another time the next night, is that in your control? Is it maybe that just the hours fly and you're leaning in, maybe you're watching another episode on streaming, and then you got an Instagram alert, and then suddenly it's way past your bedtime and you're looking at a short sleep window. So really ask yourself, are you doing this and is it in your control? And if you're willing to try this out, what you could do, if you do have control over your schedule, look at your typical week. What is the earliest time that you have to wake up. Is it, say, seven o'clock for an 8:00 AM meeting, and that allows you time to get ready and do your commute?

And get your light exposure.

Yes, so let's make it 6:45. Sun might not be up then unless it's summertime. So pick that time, and that's your wake time. And ideally, that's your alarm clock seven days of the week. Because if we sleep in, we really recommend no more than an hour, much more than that throws that internal circuitry out of whack.

Wait a minute. So if I sleep in on the weekend more than an hour, I'm throwing my circadian system much more than an hour.

And we all know this. We just went through daylight saving time. And that one hour is enough to throw all of us out of sync, right? So much more than an hour is not recommended. So if you look at your typical week and say, what is my earliest wake up-time? And then you hit your target wake up-time for the week. Again, sleeping in an hour, absolutely fine, but much more than that, try to avoid. But then count back, give yourself a full nine hours, because our biological need for sleep is individual. Some people do very well on seven, and some people do much better on nine. And it's in part, genetically hardwired. And so if you had two parents that were longer sleepers, you're truly If you're really sleeping eight or nine hours a night, you might be a longer sleeper. And then if you had two short sleeping parents, you might be lucky and really truly only need closer to seven. But if you count back nine, that could maybe add a little bit of time for your wind down routine. And so those nine hours, count down, and that's your target fall asleep time.

Or I should say, get ready for bed time. Got it.

I want to make sure that you hear this because this is the advice that as you're listening or watching us, somebody's going to be like, Okay, nine. But this is critical because you got to stop and think about what is the wake up-time that sets me up to be able to do some of the things that Dr. Robbins is going to tell us based on the research makes us a better sleeper because we are learning that better sleep begins with what you do once you wake up. She's saying, once you know your wake up-time, and I'm going to do some math here because I think it's really important. Let's say it's just 6:00 AM. That's what you need, 6:00 AM. She says, Count back 9 hours. That means, where are we? 9:00 PM, right? And That is the time that you now need to start the wind down routine based on research that will help you start to get the sleep that you need so that when you wake up, you feel refreshed, you aren't so tired, you got the benefit of sleep. I love what you're teaching us because this is within all of our power if we choose to follow it and we choose to try it.

And so we've talked about circadian rhythm, and consistency was a huge takeaway. And we've talked also about how one of the big things that we need to do is get this light first thing in the morning or that blue spectrum light if you need to get it from a different source if you're not getting outside. But can we talk more about light the rest of the day?

It's a really great question. Morning light exposure is helpful and good, but actually getting exposure all across the typical day is vitally important. Actually, in the afternoon, it's just as important as the morning. So I didn't mean to privilege in the morning over the afternoon. But instead, getting exposure to fresh air and natural light over the course of the day is extremely important to help our body get information. Okay, we're still in the wake phase. It's not quite sleep yet. And then going into darkness is equally as important as exposure to light during the day because that absence of light does the converse. It allows for the secretion of melatonin for the brain to say, We're approaching bedtime. Let's start to power down. And so So unfortunately, many of us have bright blue light emitting devices all around us, not only our light bulbs, but also the devices that we carry around with us, our smartphones, our tablets, our computer screens. Now, in a perfect world, we would be able to unplug, even give me 15 minutes before bedtime. And start small. If you find that you're a little bit addicted to your phone, it's hard to put it down, start with maybe five minutes.

If you could swipe to airplane mode, amazing. And I think there's something also powerful about that to say, I'm off for the night. I might be receiving messages, but they can wait until the morning. And think about all day long, we do things for other people in our careers, in our personal lives. We care for children, we care We're older adults. We're spouses. We help and support people in the workplace. And another mindset is, this is my time at night for me, and really consciously purposefully turning your phone off. So if you find yourself a little bit addicted to your phone, start small. Try just five minutes before you want to be falling asleep. Switch your phone off. Try to give yourself at least a little bit of a buffer, and then maybe work up to 15, maybe work up to 30 minutes. Now, if you're telling me, Look, I'm a student. I have work to do. I'm a busy professional. I have stuff I need to be doing up until the minute I fall asleep. I would implore you just to ask yourself, Is there anything off-screens that I can do at night? Do all your screen work during the day.

If it's reading a couple of emails, and you can print them out, or reading a book or anything that you can shift from your work day into non-screen time and do that at night. I think there's even a way to meet even the busiest of people where they are.

Dr. Robbins, you're nice. I'm not going to be nice. I think that's a bunch of garbage that you have to be on your phone or on your laptop until you collapse into bed as if you're just going to collapse or fall asleep in bed with your laptop open because you don't have time between between the stopping of work and the falling asleep. Complete and utter garbage.

I really agree with you. I think for all of us, even, the most busy person.

Honestly, if you can't put your phone on an airplane or stick it in the other room and give yourself five measly minutes, then don't be coming here and complaining about how tired you are. That's the thing that you have to understand is that the research is very clear, and it's going to be very simple. I didn't say easy. It's going to be simple to put into your life, but you've got to want to get a good night's sleep. You've got to want to stop waking up tired and exhausted. And so really stop and think if this is you, that you're that addicted to work or that addicted to your phone, that you cannot carve out five minutes, you're never going to change this. I also am going to come back to the math because this is why it becomes really important to get very specific with yourself. If you're You're going to wake up at 6:00 and you're going to back up the nine hours like Dr. Robbins is telling you to do, and she's also saying, You got to have a buffer. You got to have a buffer from the last screen time to when you're going to start falling asleep, then maybe you need to put an alarm in your phone at 8:00 45, because that's the time you got to stop looking at the darn thing.

Anyway, you're nice. I am not. I'm just like, You can't complain about something and expect it to change. You got to do something.

Totally. It comes back to this idea that good sleep actually does take a little bit of work, and it's not going to come easy. But we get so frustrated when we're like, I'm here, I'm trying, I'm doing everything. But being really critical, I love your points about what really... Be honest with yourself, right? Do you really need to be on social media for 20 minutes? It's before bed time? No, you don't. You don't.

Totally. And that's the thing. I know we're all tired, and there's periods of your life where there are very real things going on that are beating you up. But I think for most of us, Most of us need to have a moment of honesty with ourselves, that we are making ourselves exhausted. We are giving our attention and our brainpower over to the phone and social media and to all of these screens, and we are not taking the wind down routine seriously. If you are serious about wanting to feel more energized, if you're serious about getting better sleep, you got to try what Dr. Robbins is telling you, and you're not going to like it because you're used to just going through the thing.

It's not sexy. I'm not here to say, drink a couple of glasses of wine and then spend some time on social media. But what really works when it comes to sleep is old-school stuff. It's getting off of our screens. It's powering down, making a cup of tea. I love the Swedish tradition of hoga, this idea of warm, cozy time before bed. The Swedish culture has a word for this. I think as Americans, we think, I'm just going to write reports, I'm going to send emails until the moment that I want to be falling asleep. Then so many of us wonder why we struggle. But even just a couple minutes and then maybe build up to 10 minutes, and then maybe 15, and maybe 30 off of your phone or your screens or your laptop before bedtime can do a world of good. Because all those devices are engaging the prefrontal cortex, the planning, the thinking part of the brain, and in many times, giving you exposure that mimics the sun right when you want to be falling asleep. So it's this cocktail of sleep inhibitors, really, when you think about it.

So should we be watching TV before we go to bed?

Well, some people swear by an episode of Seinfeld or Friends, or some people listen to podcasts also, and that's part of their ritual. And I will say, if it's not broken, don't fix it. If that works for you and you don't find that it... Really being honest with yourself, it doesn't wake you up because some people will maybe fall asleep to that, but maybe they don't have a Timer on. And then when there's a louder part of the show, it'll wake them up, and then they'll go back to sleep and people say, Oh, no, no, it's fine. It's what I do every night. But what we really want to work towards is a night of uninterrupted sleep.

What happens if you get up in the middle of the night? I used to all the time. 214 was my number. 214 Mel Robbins. Up, got to go to the bathroom. What happens if you're up in the middle of the night? I know I'm not supposed to look at my phone, but I would pick it up and I'd use it as a flashlight, and then I'd get to the toilet, Dr. Robbins, and I'd flip that sucker over. And next thing you know, I'm surfing social media or checking out text messages while I'm going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. What does that blue light exposure do when you look at your phone once you wake up?

Also the rote procedure of waking up, whether it's in the middle of the night, whether it's in the morning and reaching right for your phone. It's like an automatic response that we've conditioned ourselves to do. A couple of suggestions for that. Again, this comes back to the idea of these old-school tricks, but a night light in your hallway. Sensor-activated night lights, not only for your hallway, but maybe also they have them for the rim of your toilet, which is a little bit gross. But that allows you to, if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, get there.

Well, does it make it harder to fall asleep if you look at your phone when you wake up in the middle of the night?

So the reason I bring up lights is that can guide you and reduce your reliance on your smartphone to get to where you need to go. When it comes to picking up the phone, though, maybe not for the flashlight function, but just to maybe see if you got any messages. You're like, I'm up. I might as well be Or I'm bored or I can't fall asleep, so I'm just going to look at my phone, done all of these things. Coming back to that idea of working towards consolidated sleep. When you get up the next time, if this is anyone listening, the next time, take it in stride. That's the first thing. Don't kick yourself because it's so easy to say, Oh, I'm up again. And then your cortisol spikes, and then it's harder for us to fall asleep. Take it in stride. Get up and say, Oh, do I need to use the bathroom? Go to the bathroom and then crawl back into bed. Resist looking at the phone. Crawl back into bed and try again. And we'll go through a great bedtime routine, but every good routine will culminate with a couple final things.

And if it's prayer for you, if it's progressive muscle relaxation, clenching and releasing different muscle groups, If it's closing your eyes when you crawl into the sheets and focusing on one good thing from our day, I think that could be one small thing that we could all do and really benefit from. But focus on one small thing. Whatever it is, those final steps of the routine that get you sleep, come back to those when you're awake in the middle of the night. Crawl back into bed, do that last progressive muscle relaxation or gratitude exercise, and then try again. Close the eyes and slip off. And if that voice, again, rears its ugly head of, Oh, not again. Not again. I'm up. That is when you get out of bed.

Wait, get out of bed?

And this sounds antithetically... You're like, You're a sleep researcher. I'm in bed. Shouldn't I stay here? But wrong. If we stay in bed and we're tossing and turning, either at the beginning of our sleep episode or if we wake up and struggle to fall back asleep, we're starting to associate our bed with stress. It's one of the biggest myths people often will tell us on our surveys. Oh, if I stay In bed, I'll get some sleep. It's better, right? Then if I got out of bed, wrong, because we start to toss and turn. We start to increase the temperature of our bedroom environment, which is not good. And then we start to identify our bed as a place where we experience insomnia. We wake up at 2:14, and we start to tell ourselves these stories, and then they become a reality.

Because now you're training yourself that this is what I do at 2:14.

Exactly. You're classically conditioning yourself to look at your bed as a stressful place. So you want to break that cycle. As soon as that voice comes on and says, Oh, not again. I'm up. That is when you want to condition yourself instead to get out of bed, keep the lights low, and go sit in a crisscross apples sauce and do a meditation exercise, a breathing exercise, on the floor or on an armchair. Read a couple pages of a book, ideally with a lamp that has a sleep friendly light bulb. These are also widely available and not expensive. Install all sleep friendly bulbs in your room. Get all of the your essence out of there. If you're really struggling, maybe read a couple pages in a book or really do anything that's boring. It's going to put you back to sleep. Fold socks. I love to say your spouse will love you. Do all the boring house chores that you find to be soporific. Save that for when you have some insomnia. Yeah. Like symptoms and come back to those.

So what would you say to somebody who thinks they're a bad sleeper?

I think first changing the narrative to yourself is the first step to say, I got this. I'm not a bad sleeper. No big deal. I'm struggling a little bit. It'll come back. And we're going to talk about the tools to come to and really have in your toolkit when problems rear their ugly head, because they do for all of us. People always come to me and they're like, Isn't your sleep perfect? I'm like, No, of course not. I'm a mom of two. I have a busy career, a relationship, so many things things going on for all of us that can hinder our ability to get good quality sleep. So number one, changing the narrative that you tell yourself. And then pulling on some of the levers of change that we're going to talk about. Try them all. Let me cut out caffeine and see if that helps. Let me cut out alcohol. Let me see if that helps. Let me move my dinner three hours earlier. Let me add a meditation technique or routine to my power down ritual. But trying all of these the sweet and the constellation of healthy sleep strategies. That's the second step.

Now, if you've done all of that and really done it, because some people are like, Oh, I've tried that. I've tried that. Yeah, sure. Oh, it didn't work. But really given it a shot, thought about a week and really gone ham on all of these strategies. And if you're really still struggling, chronically struggling to fall asleep, I'm talking 20 or more minutes every single night, 30, 40 minutes to fall asleep. Or if you're up every single night, can't fall back asleep, wired, or if you're practicing all the dictates of the healthy sleep strategies that we're going to talk about, and you're still like, I think I'm waking up. Those are sleep disorders. And that's where the sleep strategy will not work. And you do need to seek medical attention before you can start to reap the benefits of some of these behavioral tips and strategies.

Terrific. That's super clear. One of the levers that you're teaching us that you can pull based on the research is also temperature. Temperature is something that can help you fall asleep. And how is temperature related to getting better sleep?

Temperature is a It's a really important consideration that's often overlooked. I think a lot of us think you want a warm and cozy environment for sleep, right? You want lots of blankets and you want to be warm and cozy. But if you find that you're waking up, maybe in a sweat or with the chills, that could be a sign that you personally are not in the right range for you. And if you're in the menopausal period, you might need to be on the cooler side, even below the cooler range, like 65 or below, or maybe look into some products or things that you could have in your bedroom environment to purposefully cool you further because of some of the challenges there. And airflow is another great strategy in that life stage.

What does airflow mean?

Generally, during sleep at night, we want to have mattress Roses, pillows, things in our environment that are promoting airflow and temperature regulation. Anything that's going to be blocking airflow or not be breathable would then, of course, increase temperature.

I thought breathable meant you pick up the comfort or flap it like a wing to try to fan yourself. But I know exactly what you're talking about, that if it's a fabric that's blocking your ability to regulate your temperature.

Lower core body temperature is associated with sleep onset. So that is idealed, especially to help us fall asleep. But over the course of our sleep at night, there are stages where we're not able to... Here's another fun science term, thermal regulate. In other words, shiver if we're cold or sweat if we're hot. And so because of the fact that we'll be going in and out of different sleep stages, and in some of those stages, we're not able to regulate our temperature, you want to be in a range that's called thermal neutral. So about 65 to 68 is generally that range, where if you're in that stage where you're not able to engage in those shivering or sweating, you'll be fine because you're in the range where you can maintain an appropriate body temperature.

If you were to say, We're going to set the temperature in the bedroom to a certain temperature. What temperature do you want the person listening to set their bedroom temperature to tonight for optimal sleep?

Well, if you're able to, also think about what temperature it is outside. And so right now in Boston, it's perfect to have your windows open if you're able to, because not everyone is in an environment that they're able to open their window. Maybe it's loud, maybe there are noises outside their window. But if you are able to open the window, what an amazing thing, right? You get fresh air, you're regulating your bedroom environment. So be mindful of the temperature outside. But if you're setting, you have central air, think about that range, 65 to 68. It's not that wide. So maybe start at 65. And if you find yourself too cold, then maybe go up to 66 or 67 or 68. So there is a lot of individual preference in that range. And also the bedroom environment and what you have on the bed specifically will matter. So if you have a very light blanket, then you could maybe get by on the higher end of the spectrum. Or if you really like cozy blankets, then you might want to go down to 65.

Can you describe the perfect bedroom to get a better night's sleep?

I love talking about the bedroom because I think it's one place where we could all make small changes. And you want to set yourself up for success in your bedroom. And I want you really to walk in and feel instantly soothed. Ask yourself tonight when you walk into your bedroom, what in here is stressing me out? And remove it. If it's an alarm clock that you hate, if it's a pillow that you hate, get it out. And I think sometimes upgrading the pillows, the mattress, are really important. Sometimes people can't even tell me when they bought their mattress or their pillows. And these things do not last forever. So like you were saying, I loved your comments. You look forward, you snuggle into your sheets, and it's this amazing feeling. I want you listening to want that, that moment of slipping in and just loving your bed and feeling instantly relaxed and ready for sleep and looking forward to it. The design of a great bedroom has a couple other things. Again, we talked about temperature. Hopefully, you're in the 65 to 68 degree range. Dark is also vital. Our eyelids are some of the thinest pieces of skin on our bodies.

And even light from a cable box or coming through a curtain from light outside your bedroom environment can be enough to disrupt your sleep, believe it or not. So I want your bed pitch black. Walk in tonight after sunset, and you can put tape, masking tape or duct tape over any light sources. Sometimes cable boxes have little lights on them, chargers, anything that's a light-emitting source, get that out of the bedroom, because then a pitch Black environment will do you so much good and really set you up for success from the standpoint of melatonin secreting and all the things that are so necessary to help you fall asleep.

I love this. So tonight, when you walk into your bedroom or after you're done I'm listening to this, walk into your bedroom, what is in there that's stressing you out? And I can think about periods in my life where there were piles of laundry in my bedroom and things that I needed to do. And all of that stuff that wasn't finished, it would stress me out. And so clear out anything. It's a reminder of your to-do list. Yeah, it's a reminder of your to-do list. So declutter your room. You want the temperature between 65 and 68. You want to have a pitch-black environment and And to the extent it's within your reach, get a mattress that you love, invest in coziness in your sheets and in your bedding, and don't be embarrassed if you've had the same thing for a long time. Chris and I just replaced our mattress. We've been sleeping on it for 22 years, the same mattress, everybody. So if you are in that camp, your friend Mel Robbins just got a new mattress, so you won't be alone.

I love that. The key thing is, if you're telling me of neck pain, your mattress just isn't supporting you, then that's a great time to... And if your mattress last 20 years, amazing. Wonderful, right? Keep it. So good for the environment, by the way. These things are not... They're full of material that sometimes aren't disposable or... What's the word? Not disposable. Recyclable? Yeah. They're full of materials that aren't necessarily recyclable. And so the key thing is just, is it not promoting airflow? Is it not supporting you? You're waking up with neck pain. Those can be signs that it might be time for a new mattress.

Let's talk about alcohol. How does alcohol impact your ability to sleep at night?

My students love to tell me this. They're like, You're wrong. I'll drink it. I'll put myself right to sleep. Yes, alcohol. There's some truth in that statement, though, what our young people will tell us, that alcohol will put you to sleep. It's great in reducing the term that we refer to sleep latency, which is the time it takes us to fall asleep. But what alcohol does is it starts to destroy the quality of our sleep. The idea that this is a good thing for sleep is completely wrong. It's one of our biggest myths about sleep, that alcohol and nightcap is a good thing. Depending on your body mass and your tolerance, one dose might be okay, but much more than that will start to virtually destroy the quality of your sleep. You've probably all been there.

When I drink, I always wake up in the middle of the night. I fall asleep quickly, but I do not stay asleep.

It's not restorative. You wake up, even if you spent eight or nine or 10 hours sleeping, you often feel like you haven't slept awake because the structure of our sleep starts to change, and it simply disrupts that architecture. So it's not as It's very different than the structure of a natural sleep without alcohol. It's very common for someone to wake up after a night of even just maybe one or two glasses and not feeling restored.

Well, I think, universally speaking, when somebody does either dry January or they stop drinking or they go for periods of time where they don't drink, better sleep is 100% what people talk about.

Absolutely. It's amazing, right? When we think about taking someone who drinks every night and then they are like, wow, they do dry January, and it's this light bulb. Finding ways to extend those benefits into our calendar year. Even if it's Monday through Wednesday, you're going to be dry. I think sometimes those very clear boundaries are so helpful because after a long day, it is so easy to say, I earned it. I had a long night with the kids, a long day with the kids, or this colleague at work, or this deadline is stressing me out. I earned it. But if you have structures in place to say, Oh, no, and make it fun, substitute a fun cup of tea ritual with your partner.

What you're here teaching us is what you've earned is a great night's sleep. And giving yourself The gift of better sleep is going to be a better reward than the glass of wine that numbs you out. Speaking of drinking, let's talk about the impact of caffeine on sleep, and specifically coffee. But I'm also thinking about all of these energy drinks that people drink and the pre-workout stuff that's just pumped full of caffeine. How does caffeine impact sleep quality?

Caffeine, like a drug, can stay in our system, and it has what we call a life life for six up to nine hours, depending on your metabolism and how you metabolize personally caffeine. And there are some genetic differences. But by and large, caffeine is a significant disruptor of our sleep. As a society, it's the number one most widely consumed drug in the world. And look, I love coffee. I love the smell. And so I find this to be such a struggle to cut off. But really ask yourself, and is one of your struggles a busy mind, heart racing before bed, can't calm down, then you might be a good candidate to maybe have one less glass, one fewer cup a day. And so if you go for a walk and get a coffee in the afternoon, try for an herbal tea instead. Make one substitute and see how you feel. Or maybe some people swear, buy no coffee after lunch. So maybe you have one nice medium or try not to have the huge cups at some of the fast food chains that are just a And I think much more than even the FDA recommends, which is about 200 milligrams of caffeine.

And that's in really a size small at most coffee places. So just be mindful of not only the timing, but how much you're consuming, because each additional dose can extend that half-life even further. So say you have a medium-sized Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts in the morning, and you drink that, and then you go for one more in the afternoon. So then you've doubled the half-life. So it's not only the six hours from the first cup, but then that caffeine Caffeine might be lingering in your system come seven, eight, nine o'clock.

Oh. So what time should you stop drinking caffeine? Let's say that your wine down routine is going to begin at 9:00 PM. What time should you stop drinking caffeine so it's out of your system and not impacting your sleep?

Well, be mindful of it. If you're drinking coffee and it's not too much and you don't have a problem with this, not really a problem. But if you find your heart racing, your mind racing, you're really struggling to fall asleep, caffeine is often one of the culprits. And so I'd I'd say take a day where you maybe cut it out or maybe try decaf and try that for a day. See if you can last because I think sometimes we get so devoted to our coffee. But try that and then see how your sleep is that next night. And then maybe add one more coffee back in in the morning and see how you do. And if you have no issues when bedtime rolls around the next night, keep that up. And then maybe you just keep that one cup a day, or maybe you add one more and see if it has any negative impacts on your sleep. But again, I'm a big fan of very clear cut offs. No coffee after lunch.

No coffee after lunch.

And it's hard because I personally love coffee, but that's a big one for me because if it were up to me, I'd be drinking it all day. I just love the smell. But really, I think behavior can become so mindless. And so really having these cut offs that we can adhere to instead of an abstract, Oh, I'll stop in the afternoon. And suddenly it's three, four o'clock in the afternoon. And any coffee at that time will likely be in your system around that time.

Another factor in sleep is So at what time should we stop eating before we go to bed. So if we're going to, again, start the wine down, we're just going to say nine o'clock to make the math easy. When should you stop eating?

Well, the old adage from the nutrition literature of a breakfast of King's, a lunch of Princes, and a dinner of poppers is actually really good for our sleep. The research shows in diets that control for the amount of calories that you're eating, you actually lose weight if you are doing this Breakfast of King's, Lunch of Princes, dinner of poppers. So it's good for your weight management ability, but it's also good for your sleep. So we don't run the risk of our body digesting food as we go to bed if we keep dinner on the lighter side. There's also the intermittent fasting literature, and it really came out of a circadian rhythms laboratory, which is so interesting. But the whole idea there, and some studies have shown different findings, but basically, listen to your body. If you're open to this, you might try it. If you find that dinner just keeps nudging later, and suddenly it's 9:00, 10:00 PM, you haven't eaten, your bedtime is in another hour, you might be a good candidate for this. Again, just a clear cut off of like, Is it 8:00 PM? I want to be done eating. So then that means I'm eating dinner at seven, whether that's at the office, whether that's with my spouse.

And so many people tell me, But my meal with my spouse is the only time that we have to be together. And I always respond to that, you don't have to be together over food. And so looking forward to your date on Friday or Saturday night or your weekends where you have a little bit more flexibility to really make a meal together, really enjoy it, really be present with each other. But then maybe during the work week when you have a later time that you're getting home, and then maybe your spouse is getting home late, too, and then suddenly it's way into the evening hours and you're trying to desperately do something together. But maybe find another ritual. I know it's lame, but maybe you make a cup of tea together and you're playing It's a card game. I was just going to say, my husband and I play cribbage, and we also are crazy into we're really radical puzzles.

We have a jigsaw puzzle on the dining table, and we sit around. But if It's amazing. If there were a rule of thumb, because I've noticed one thing that's made a difference for Chris and our son who's in high school is we were getting out of the habit of eating early, and all of a sudden dinner is at seven. Then it's at eight, and it's creeping right up on bedtime, which for me is winding down around nine o'clock. I pushed dinner to 5:30 because otherwise, our son was coming home from sports practices and eating half the refrigerator. By the time dinner was cooked, he's already fed himself dinner. But I've noticed it's made a big difference with my sleep and my bedtime routine to be done eating several hours before I am going to bed. And so if it It helps knowing that you should stop eating 2 hours before you go to bed.

I love that routine. So it sounds like doing maybe intermittent fasting without even knowing it because you've buffered, you've added about three or four hours before you're falling asleep and you're done eating. And so that's time that you're fasting, actually. You're extending the fast that we naturally do over the course of our sleep. And there are so many benefits to fasting. Just giving our digestive system a break is really the whole idea behind intermittent fasting. So if you can find a time, if it's 5:30, if it's 6:00, and really try to be diligent. If your son is on a bus to sports practice or driving, he has a meal that you made for him or he cooked, and he's eating it at the sports field before he goes on, or a smoothie. I'm a big fan of smoothies, actually, for dinner. I know everyone drinks them for breakfast. But if you're busy, getting some good calories in, it's light, it's likely to not disrupt your sleep at night, can be amazing for someone who's busy, strapped for time, etc. But it comes back to the the idea of good sleep takes planning.

So why don't we start with what the perfect night's sleep, based on your 30 years of research, what does a perfect night's sleep look like? Just so that we have a benchmark for what would be ideal.

I think if you just look at a 10-year-old, you'll get what the perfect night's sleep looks like. They sleep beautifully. They have a beautiful homeostatic, which means it responds to what you're doing during the a response and how long you've been awake. They have a beautiful circadian, which means their body knows what time of day it is and what time they should go to sleep and what time they should wake up. And so the 10-year-old's sleep is perfect. Don't ever wake up a 10-year-old if you can possibly help it. They're doing a lot of really important things. And after that, our sleep changes during our teenage years, and we need just as much sleep as a 10-year-old, which is about 10 or 9:00 or 8:00 to 10:00 hours for sure. But teenagers, circadian rhythms change a little bit so that they fall asleep a little later and want to wake up a little later. It's also a beautiful night's sleep if they are calm and not too engaged with social media at the wrong times. But anyway, that's a great night's sleep. Our sleep is actually pretty great until we're about 40 or 50 years old, and then varying, depending on the individual, your sleep can start to become less efficient.

What does a perfect night's sleep look like in terms of how long you sleep, the various phases of sleep.

Right.

Okay. So the perfect night's sleep for health as an adult is something around seven and a half, eight hours, plus or minus an hour, something like that. You should be awakened by the sunlight, essentially. So that's something that resets our clock every day. And then so you work back from there, from the time you need to waken, to get at least seven and a half, eight hours of sleep a night. Different people need different amounts of sleep. Some people need more like nine. Some people are fine with six for a while. How do you know? You just have to know from your own body. Some people, if they get six hours of sleep, they know already immediately when they wake up and going throughout the day, it wasn't enough. And so your body will tell you. And other people wake up at six hours and they're fine. They feel great. And one way to know is how sleepy you feel during the day. Okay.

Yeah. You already said one takeaway that I want to make sure that you listening got from us, which is you start with the time that you want to wake up, and then you roll the clock backwards, and you're basically saying that it's seven to eight hours, give or take an hour. So you roll the clock backwards, probably seven to nine hours, and that's when you need to fall asleep.

That's right.

And what happens when you fall asleep? What are the phases that we go through as we're sleeping?

The very first stage is, of course, dozing. And we don't really know when we're dozing, except that we come conscious once in a while and say, Oh, wow, okay, what happened in the last couple of minutes, I don't know, because our memory starts not recording what we've been doing. And that lasts on average about two minutes. For example, if you're reading a book and you fall asleep reading the book, you won't remember the last two minutes of reading, or if you're listening to a podcast, you won't remember the last few minutes of the podcast before you actually fall asleep.

Or if I was talking to my husband and next thing you know, he's snoring. He doesn't remember the last minute and a half of what I said. That's exactly. Exactly. So there's that dozing period, which I rather like. I love that you drift from your mind spinning to all of a sudden, almost like you're floating in a pool. That only lasts two minutes?

No, stage one is variable. It's about two to five minutes, something like that.

Okay, and you need that stage one of dozing to get into stage two. What happens next?

Then stage two is really an exciting stage. So between stage one and stage two, there's something called hypnagogic hallucinations, which- I'm not even going to try.

Hypnagogic solutionations? Hallucinations. Hallucinations.

It's our brain losing hold of reality and all kinds of imaginary, imagination things happen. For example, it can be as boring as feeling like you're falling off a step because not all of parts of your brain are a sleep at the same time as you drift into it. And so you feel the muscles relaxing and part of your brain says, I'm falling, and the hallucination is incorporated into that feeling of falling. And so you think you're falling off a step.

Wait, is that why they call it falling asleep? That makes so much sense. And I have had that experience before, where I do that dozing, my favorite part, you can drift off of the pillow, but then I every night have a jerking sensation. And it is like falling. It's almost like you're moving into the phase where your body is clumsily trying to turn your muscles off so you can drift into the deeper one. That's pretty cool. Now I know why I do that.

Or it can be as horrifying as feeling like there's a monster jumping on your chest and shaking you. And it can be very, very disturbing as well if you wake up from it. So they're pretty vivid hallucinations, almost like the dreams we have in rem sleep, only you don't have the atonia, which is all your muscles being inhibited to prevent you from acting out the dream. So oftentimes people, if they have a vivid hallucination that's scary, can wake up from that and then feel like, Oh, what just happened? Was there a monster in my room? Really? I think that's the idea of nightmares. It comes from that idea, just the hallucinations, the weird hallucinations.

And this is as your brain is trying to drop itself into a deeper state of sleep. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that.

Yeah, and not everybody, and most people, in fact, don't wake up from that. N2, it's called. N1 is dozing. N2 is that state of sleep, which has pretty vivid dreams, but they're not long story-like dreams like we have in sleep, but we'll get to that in a minute. So then from N2, which our brain is very active, we go into N3, which is also a time of activity, but it's really synchronous activity, like waves of activity going through our brain, and it's disconnected in time one wave from another, so consciousness can't be maintained. If you wake someone up out of N3 sleep, slow wave sleep, and ask them what they were dreaming, they will not report having dreamed anything. It will be a blank slate. And it's actually pretty hard to wake someone up out of that state. It's a deep. It's called a deep sleep.

And what's the purpose? You use the word wave. What is actually happening in your body when you're in that third phase and the wave is happening?

Yeah. So that's a time when we know that our brain is cleaning itself, actually. Wait, what? Yes. It's cleaning itself? Yeah, it's cleaning itself. Of what? Of all the junk that builds up during the daytime when we're awake and alert. What junk builds up? Well, proteins get unfolded. So things break down, energy is used. All of that gets restored in that deep state of sleep.

What would happen if you didn't get that deep stage of sleep? And the wave, the cleaning wave. I'm seeing somebody coming in after a big party and cleaning up all the cups. It's like this wave comes through your brain.

It's like a wave cleansing the brain, yes. And there's one per minute or so. Actually, one per second, actually. So a lot more often than that. And it sweeps from front to back, and it just pushes all the junk into your cerebral spinal fluid and out into your body. Is that why my back hurts? I don't think so. I'm just kidding.

But yeah, that's a good question.

Yeah. So if you don't get it, you actually don't get a chance to clean your brain like that. So you really need it. And that's the sleep you get, mostly in the first half of the night after you fall asleep. So you go from N1 to N2 to N3. N3 lasts 20 to 30 minutes or so. And then you go back into N2 briefly and then into rem sleep, which is called rem sleep.

How is that different than the wave?

It's very It's very different. It's actually also called paradoxical sleep, because if you look at brain activity, it looks just like someone's awake.

Really?

Why? Thoughts are going through and dreams are happening. It's really strong imagery in your dreams. If you wake someone up out of that state of rem sleep, they will always report a dream, 90% of the time. Even people who, if you ask, say, Oh, I never dream or I never remember my dreams. If you wake them up out of that stage, they'll remember. I think the reason why people don't remember their dreams is because they are solidly asleep and don't wake up out of that state. So don't worry, you are dreaming.

How do you know if you're getting enough sleep? Based on the things that you study? Yes. Because you hear eight hours.

How many hours do you sleep, by the way?

The The older I get, the more boring I am. So I would say nine or 10.

Yeah, I love that. People who sleep less than 6 hours have higher mortality. They have lower mood, and they are hungrier, as we said, with the leptin. What you want to do is really to realize how much sleep you need is when you sleep without an alarm, How many hours do you sleep? And not when you're sleep-deprived.

Oh, I bet I sleep 10 hours. If I don't have an alarm on, I sleep way longer than I think I'm going to.

When you look at the last couple of weeks of your life, the best days, the when you felt the most refreshed, the best mood.

Or were the days I got the highest amount of sleep?

By far. That's how much sleep you need. And every American that's listening to this is going to be like, I can't sleep that much. But you think about your best days of your life happened when you slept adequately. It changes your hunger hormones. It changes your hormones in general. For women, especially as we get older, this is important. It changes your mood. It changes your ability to make decisions. And your interactions with other people. So why would you want to skimp on that? Why would you say that you'll be like everybody else, sleep when you're dead? When you look at the data, the data says opposite. It says if you don't sleep, you'll be dead much earlier.

That's true.

If you don't sleep, you will be more depressed, more anxious, have more hunger and craving signals. You are going to be a version of yourself that is a shell of what you want to be.

So one final thing that I think would be extremely helpful to people. Let's assume that we went to bed early and we wake up and we get a good night's sleep. Can you walk us through what you would recommend the eating routine or what is on our plate and when are we actually eating? Okay. For complete hormone balance.

Okay, so as you know, it's everybody is different and their life circumstances are different. Every time I do this, people say, Oh, but I work night shift or I have little kids. I get it. I had many years where I didn't get enough sleep, where I didn't get enough sunlight, where I couldn't make the best decisions because I was just so pulled in all the different directions. So I get it. But we didn't even talk about circadian rhythms, but Mel, sunlight Light and darkness run our bodies. We have internal clocks in every one of ourselves. So routines are excessively important in terms of our mood and our body, our nutrition. So when you wake up in the morning, you want to get sunlight. I have a rule that I learned from someone online. Basically, I did this for a few days, and I felt the best ever felt, and I'll tell you what it is. When you wake up, instead of scrolling your phone, checking your messages and your emails, go get sunlight first. Sky before screens.

Oh, I love that.

So sky before screens is how you should start your day. Your body is wired to see sunlight in the morning, even if it's a cloudy day. It just has to be bright light. You can just walk outside. For me, it's my back door. Just walk out for a few minutes. It could be 2 to 10 minutes. You could do... For me, I'm usually just in my pajamas, so I'm coming back in and getting ready for the day.

Okay.

So you don't want to have food or caffeine in the first 45 minutes of your day.

Why?

I'll tell you why. When you wake up, you feel groggy, right? Yeah. That grogginess is partially, mostly from adenosine in your brain. Adenosine. Adenosine. Okay. And it clears out, as you know, within 30, 40 minutes, it clears out. Then you have your coffee, then you eat your food. And the reason why is coffee, the way it works, it blocks our adenosine receptor. So that means that it doesn't help get rid of that adenosine. It just blocks it from actually binding. So if you don't let that adenosine clear out and you just drink your coffee, when the coffee off in a couple of hours, that a dentinine is still there, and it just binds those receptors, and you feel excessively tired.

And that's why you think you need another cup of coffee.

And then you're fully dependent. Like the people that wake up and they need the coffee right then, and then they need it again at 10:00, and then they need it again at 1:00, it's because you're not letting that adenosine go.

You need to let that clear out. I'm guilty of this. I am going to try this tomorrow. I am going to absolutely I have my coffee, and then... Oh, no, I'm not. I'm going to wake up. I'm going to wait 45 minutes. Then I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to see if I have a craving for a second cup. Yes. That is fascinating. Okay.

So you want to let it clear out naturally because it's not going to clear out naturally if you start the caffeine cycle right away.

Got it. So clear it out for 45 minutes. Get our sun in. What's next?

Eat.

Okay. No intermittent fasting.

So everybody... I love intermittent fasting.

Then why are we eating?

Because I do it the opposite Talk to me. There's very good evidence that for thousands of years, we ate in one scheduled way, which is daylight hours. There was no microwave, Uber Eats. They had a fire, and you'd maybe eat an hour or two after sundown. That's it, right? You are not snacking at midnight. There's nothing. There's nowhere to store the food thousands of years ago. Our internal clocks are set so that when melatonin hits 2-3 hours before bed, your organs shut down. You cannot process sugar as well as you did. You can't take it into your muscles. You are not releasing digestive enzymes. So basically, when you're eating late at night, you're waking your body up in the middle of the night and asking it to do a math problem. Your body is going to be like, I don't want to do this. I'm going to make mistakes. You wake up and you're tired and you're pissed that someone woke you up in the middle of the night. That's what happens when you eat late at night.

Holy smokes. You put your body in conflict with itself.

Yeah. And so intermittent fasting, everyone's doing it the wrong way. They're eating way late into the night, and then they don't eat all day when the sun is out, right? Like, that's the time that your body is ready for food, right? So ideally, you You wait an hour because nobody needs to be eating every minute of every day. Americans, we just eat 14 to 16 hours a day. It's just too much, right? So you wake up, maybe you get some movement in, you get your sunlight, you eat about an hour or two even after you wake up. You don't need to push it to two, three, four. People are doing this thing. There's good evidence that skipping meals is actually bad for you and that people who do it habitually actually have worse health outcomes, okay? Got it. So eat your breakfast. You want to have a high dopamine breakfast? Yeah. Let's have, you know, cottage cheese, eggs, tofu, scramble, veggies, nuts, berries.

Great. When do I eat next? Because I'm already hungry. No, am I hungry right now? Are you hungry? When I eat vegetables, I would eat vegetables right now. There you go. So that must mean I'm hungry. But I got to have a glass of water first, and then I'm going to ask myself that again. Yes. See, I'm learning.

Then you tune in with the inner mouth, the brain-gut mouth. Yeah.

Okay.

So then you can eat when you're hungry. Again, you can use your inner cues. Could be 12, could be 1, whatever your inner cues. You'll notice your Ghrelin is set on a Timer. Every day, you'll get hungry at the same time.

So hello, Ghrelin. It just, I think, dumped on me. Yeah. So what do you eat for lunch?

So basically, lunch is a chance for you to get... The healthier you eat earlier in the day, the better your chance of sticking to it. So they always say exercise and eating healthier foods, breakfast and lunch, is your best chance. So for me, I automated. And I had already talked to you when we had talked before that I try to eat the same things every day. So what do you eat for lunch? So I eat a salad for lunch. I usually put a protein source on it. It could be different beans, nuts, it could be tofu, it could do eggs, you could do salmon, whatever you want. Protein and veggies, a salad with protein on it. And I always have a fermented probiotic food with my lunch because that's the best time for you to get in at least one to two servings of the kimchi, of the sauerkraut. It could be kombucha for a drink, apple cider vinegar in your dressing. So that's when you have the best chance, really simple, it can be very simple. And then your dinner is when you want to eat. If you are someone- Serotonin, baby. Yes, you're learning.

I'm paying attention.

So if I know it's It's not sexy to say eat carbs, but carbs actually can be very healthy for you, especially in vegetable form, sweet potato, quinoa, whatever it is. You can eat that later in the day if you want to have that big boost of serotonin.

And what about snacks? If I'm legit hungry, but I'm not really craving anything, but I'm legit hungry midday, what's your go-to snack?

So remember that protein has this effect on your body that it tells your hunger to hunger hormones to stop. So if you want more leptin, eat more protein. So your snack can be yogurt. Your snack can be a protein shake. Your snack can be a piece of cheese. Something with protein Because that will keep your dopamine levels up and it will keep your hunger hormone stable. So protein snack, I think women, especially, we're eating just too little protein. There is a theory Yes. That the reason we get fat from eating ultra-processed food is because it's so low in protein that your brain never gets the signal that you're full. Your protein threshold is never met.

Wow.

One final thing I want to ask you because we didn't really cover it, gluten. Everybody I know is gluten-free.

Yeah, it's not the gluten. There's very few people who are actually allergic to gluten. It is very common to You have GI issues with processed gluten. So when you eat a lot of bread, pizza, carbs, but that's not the gluten itself. It's the fact that you're eating processed food. So gluten gets mislabeled all the time. What I say to people is, go gluten free for a few weeks, three to four weeks. See how you feel. When you add the gluten back, don't add back the bread, the cookies, the cakes, and the processed gluten. Add back a small wheat bulgar, like in a salad. Add back a healthy sourdough bread. Add back wheat in small unprocessed amounts and then see how you feel. And what I realized is that people villainize gluten all the time. And in America, gluten free has become such a tagline that those foods are more unhealthy.

Oh, because of all the processing. Look at you, Dr. Amy. Is there anything else on this topic that we did not get?

I think we covered so much. I think, like you said, and I have taken this to heart, is that there's no pill that's going to save you. There's no person that's going to save you. When you learn about all this, when you actually listen to your own self, you Who's it going to be the one who saves yourself.

How does breathing impact your sleep?

In terms of insomnia, there's two times it can manifest. Insomnia affects about 30% of the population. Wow. And 10% have it chronic. One is that we go to bed at night, but we don't fall asleep readily. Typically, we should fall asleep in a few minutes. That's an ideal situation. But if we have over stimulation of the mind, we're not I'm going to fall asleep so readily. So it's very important to be able to go into relaxation before we go to sleep. Now, that would involve, I would say, use blue light filter glasses and follow sleep hygiene. Your bedroom is cool, it's airy, it's dark, and all of that stuff. But also we need to tell the body that we're going into rest and digest. So you could be sitting down, you might be watching some light TV, you might have your blue light filter glasses on. And as you're sitting there, really Really take a soft breath in through your nose, almost that you're breathing less air. That's what I would like you to do. You're taking a really soft breath in through your nose, and you're having that light and a really slow, slow, slow, relaxed, gentle breath out.

Then when you need to breathe in again, instead of taking your normal 100% of the breath, maybe take in about 70% of the breath in, and then a really soft and slow gentle breath out. The whole aim is to breathe about 30% less air into your body than what you're normally used You know you're doing it correctly if you feel a slight air hunger. Now, as you do that, pay attention to the saliva in the mouth. We'll continue for one more minute. I would like you to under breathe, Mel. I would like you to breathe in a way that you feel that you're not getting enough air. How do you do that? Take a very soft, gentle breath in, almost as if your breath in is imperceptible, and a really relaxed and a slow and a gentle breath out. So gently soft and then slow down your breathing so that you're taking 30 less air into your lungs. If you get stressed, just take a rest. But keep working on this because now what you're doing is you're telling the brain that everything is okay. And pay attention then to the saliva in the mouth.

When we get stressed, our mouth tells us because our mouth goes dry. When we are ready for rest and digest, rest, we feel sleepy. Digest, we have increased watery saliva in the mouth. So when we alter our breathing, we're stimulating the vagus nerve, which is secreting that neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is telling the heart to slow down. The brain is interpreting that the body is safe, and the brain is also spying on her breathing at the same time and interpreting that the body is safe. So we feel sleepy, and we do this for 10, 15 minutes before we go to sleep.

I know that you recommend people try this tape on their mouth when they sleep, and I tried it for the first time last night. I did not have this fancy O-ring, so I used packing tape. I know that that's probably not what you recommend. When I pulled it off this morning, I think I gave my upper lip a wax. But I put it from the nose down so that the sides were exposed, and I learned something really interesting. I put the tape on my mouth so that I would be cuing myself to nose breathe It's how I sleep. I'm a fantastic sleeper. I realized I sleep predominantly with my mouth closed. My husband, on the other hand, he has this sound that he makes that goes... It drives me freaking crazy. I know it's sleep apnea. I also know that 1 billion people around the world have obstructive sleep apnea, one billion. How does this nose breathing improve even people's lives with obstructive sleep apnea?

Okay. So obstructive sleep A hypopnea is when the person stops breathing for 10 seconds or more during sleep. That would be an apnea. Or a hypopnea is when there's a reduction in the flow of their breathing due to partial collapse of the airways, that their blood oxygen saturation drops down by 3 or 4%. The problem with sleep apnea is that it arouses you from deep sleep, but it's very stressful. It's very stressful on the cardiovascular system. There are four characteristics in obstructive sleep apnea. It's not just the anatomy. Insomnia that we spoke about earlier on is one of them. It's very important to be able to downregulate. Upper airway muscle recruitment, getting these muscles to do their job is very important. There's a therapy called myofunctional therapy that's excellent for that. Mouth closed with the tongue resting up in the roof of the mouth with good recruitment of the die from helps to open up the airway. So you think of the typical middle-aged man. We're drinking a few beers, we're putting weight on the belly. This is an interacting the movement of the diaphon. We're now breathing more up her chest. This is reducing lung volume, and the throat collapses more easily.

Our diaphon breathing muscle, as I said earlier, is connected with the brain, but the diaphon is also connected with the upper airway dilator muscles in the throat. So coming back to mouthpuffing, and the mouth closed is really important with obstructive sleep apnea. And there are a group of people with severe obstructive sleep apnea, and and people who may be obese as well. They're more prone to mouthpuffing. You still need to allow them to mouthpuff during sleep. And we were lucky with the design of the tape, the Myo tape, because it allows them to mouthpuffing. Whereas before that, we were using 3M, one-inch micropore tape, which is going right across the lips, but that doesn't allow mouth puffing, and that can make sleep apnea worse than some people. So I'm going to come back to sleep apnea with taping of the mouth. Tested in people with mild obstructive sleep apnea, just getting your mouth closed reduces the AHI, which is sleep apnea severity, by 33 %.

Wow.

So just with mild, just by getting the mouth closed, Because that's not looking at how do you improve your breathing patterns. If you have somebody with obstructive sleep apnea and they bring nose breathing into their everyday life, they learn to slow down their breathing, they learn to have good recruitment of the diet, from all simple skills that you bring into your everyday life, that will help your sleep up there. For moderate to severe, overall, it helps when you get them out closed also. But for some people with moderate to severe, they need to be allowed to mouthpuff. So Whatever you use as support to get the lips together, make sure it allows you to mouthpuff.

Got it. Well, I'm going to make sure to tape my husband's mouth with your tape, and I'm going to stop shoving him or pinching his nose when he goes... Patrick, you are a gift to all of us. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.