Sleep, Light, Alarms, Caffeine, Night Shifts, Naps, Sleeping Positions & More With Shawn Stevenson.

Intranasal light therapy as a cognitive performance and brain health hack

Ben Greenfield describes intranasal light therapy as an LED or laser device placed in the nose that induces wakefulness, increases alpha brainwave production, and improves blood flow for traumatic brain injury, concussion, and Alzheimer's. He notes it is not as conspicuous as in-ear phototherapy but is a powerful pre-workout or pre-performance cognitive hack.

"It's intranasal light therapy. And they'll use this a lot of times for like Alzheimer's. It's actual LED or laser lights. It's very, very attractive look, of course, but it's up your nose. It is a cognitive performance hack, meaning it induces like wakefulness and an increase in alpha brainwave production."

Morning sunlight resets cortisol rhythm and boosts serotonin for better sleep

Stevenson explains how early-day sunlight exposure increases serotonin (the precursor to melatonin) and normalizes cortisol rhythm, citing a study showing sunlight in the morning decreased evening cortisol levels and an office worker study showing those without window access slept 46 minutes less per night.

"I started to embark on a lot more exercise and movement, even though they were saying to be careful, don't do this, don't do that, bed rest, bed rest. Your body doesn't heal unless it has a reason to. So your body requires movement in order to heal itself. So that's part one. But the assimilation of nutrients, the regeneration of your tissues, the vast majority of that takes place when you're at rest, specifically while you're asleep. And sleep is known as the, quote, the anabolic state for humans. Just being awake is catabolic. We could argue that during certain phases of meditation, we can get into more of an anabolic state, but just being awake for the average person is very catabolic and it's just the way it is. So we need that sleep and recovery. So once I was able to start to change some of the things in my daily ritual, all of a sudden I start to sleep better. And mind you, I was helping to keep Tylenol PM in business, man, at that time. I was popping those pills every single night just to get what I thought was a couple of extra hours of sleep, one to two hours of additional sleep because the pain would wake me up. But I didn't understand that I was really sacrificing my sleep quality and also leading to some really weird side effects that I didn't know until years later were attributed to taking the prescription medication as well as the over-the-counter stuff, like restless leg syndrome. This was before it had a sexy pill to go along with the name. So I'm just laying there in bed trying to go to sleep and my legs are active. I'm just like, go to sleep, legs. And it was so weird. And nobody really gave me an answer when I talk to my physician about what it was. It didn't have a quote diagnosis yet. And so long story short, once I started to change my sleeping habits, it's like the floodgates open and everything started to improve so fast to the degree that I lost about 28 pounds in the next six weeks. The pain that I've been experiencing for the past two and a half years was virtually gone. And the people who know my story, eventually fast forward the good happy ending when nine months later, when I got a scan done of my spine, I was able to regenerate some tissue, actually grew a half an inch when I had lost about three fourths of an inch in my height. And my physician was just like, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. And that was the birthing of my career. And so that was the first part for me. But when I started my clinical practice, which I ran for over a decade, I saw about at the five year mark, all of these amazing success stories, you know, and we had around, right around 89% reversal rate for people with type two diabetes, you know, so essentially helping them to get off their metformins, insulin, things like that. But there was always this category, this class of people who wouldn't get the results everyone else was getting. And it wasn't a lack of trying, because that's the first thing as a trainer, you would think and also as a practitioner, you know, in health, is that the person isn't doing the thing, you know, you're not following the program. But a lot of times, that's not the case. You know's the case. There are people who are sneaking honey buns under their shirt and doing stuff behind closed doors. But for the most part, people are honestly trying to do their best and get the result. And so I finally remembered, I'm not thinking about sleep problems because I'm sleeping so well and I'm healthy. Let me ask these people about their sleep. And it blew my mind. I could not, it was just like automatic. Everybody that I talked to who weren't getting the results, well, we'll just say 99%. There was like a handful of people who were sleeping to what I thought at the time well, but people getting less than four hours of sleep. They were waking up habitually multiple times during the night to go pee, or they've got a snoring partner, or they have sleep apnea, and all these things that people weren't telling me in the initial forms that they were supposed to fill out. And so that sent me on a quest to find out how to help these people to improve their sleep quality immediately. And again, man, once we did that and really locked in some of these strategies we're going to be talking about today, it's as if the floodgates would open, man. And sometimes they would get results faster than people who didn't have sleep issues. It so quickly changed the things that were going on from their insulin sensitivity to weight loss, to improving their cardiac function, just so many things changed. And once that happened, man, I had to tell the world about it. So that kind of birthed a couple of episodes of my show and I saw it got a bunch of downloads. So I was like, people want to know about this. So that's when I first wrote the book and here we are today. Yeah. And I failed to mention this in the introduction, but you and I had a really fascinating discussion a few months ago on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show about how you essentially simulated stem cell injections without actually getting stem cells injected through the use of some of these things like aloe vera gel and colostrum and chlorella and different things that you use to regenerate your spine. And that's obviously a whole different rabbit hole. But for those of you listening in who want to hear about that part of Sean's journey, just go to the show notes for this episode at bengreenfieldfitness.com slash sleep smart. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com slash sleep smart. Because hand in hand with what Sean and I are about to talk about when it comes to sleep, I'd recommend you go and listen to that episode that we did, which is entitled Lightning Speed Healing Hack or Overpriced Fad, What You Need to Know About Stem Cells. So go listen to that if you would like. But in the meantime, Sean, first question that I have for you about sleep is whether with all these different hacks and modalities and the things that you write about in the book, are you tracking sleep or quantifying sleep at all? Do you use any of these devices? Yeah. So this is why I really love talking with you. You know, I've done so many different interviews, especially the past year or two years actually on this topic. And, you know, because I know that you're somebody who is tracking this stuff and a lot of, a lot of different ways, a lot of different experimentations for myself, I err on the side of the old faithful, which is just paying attention to my body, you know, and specifically how I look, feel and perform. And I know myself very well, you know, I'm one of those people, especially being in this field, and I know you the same way. I know I'm very in touch with my body and how sensitive things are. You know, so if I take a certain supplement, I'll notice a difference, you know, and most people might not notice, especially right off the bat. So I'll notice a little bit of, if I don't sleep well, a little bit of cognitive impairment, you know, so I'm not as sharp. The energy levels are low, obviously. And, you know, simple things like, and also I'll just, I'll put it like this, emotional inconsistency, you know, so I'll notice that I'm a little bit more irritated by traffic, by my kids, by requests for my wife, which are ongoing anyway. So it's Like, why would I get an attitude about it? You know, so I would, I start to catch myself and see that I'm just, I'm not really on my game. And so those are some of the big ones. Also, you know, I noticed because I do some type of training every day and my balance will be noticeably impaired. You know, I kind of do a little bit of a test every day before I start training and just, you know, fooling around on a stability ball or something like that. And I'll notice the days that I don't get the high quality sleep, which is very, very rare that I'm not able to keep my balance as efficiently. So I err on the side of that because, you know, for myself personally, which I want to definitely hear what you're doing on this front and what you found to be effective. But for me, I'm like gadget free when I'm in that in that bed. Yeah, I too went gadget free for a very long time. And then I'd even though I issue constantly being plugged into something, because I want to stay away from like Bluetooth signals and Wi Fi signals while sleeping, I now am quantifying sleep. So before what I did was I would wake up and I would take my heart rate variability or my HRV measurement. Because what I've found was that even though, like you mentioned, when I'm just listening to my body, I can tell when a poor night of sleep is going to lead to me getting injured or ill. You just Like you just feel those things building up, especially like consecutive poor nights of sleep. What I found was that I could predict two to three days in advance, not just a neuromuscular lack of recovery that could lead to poor sleep, but also a greater risk for injury or illness when my heart rate variability would begin to dip low in the morning days in advance of me actually getting injured or ill. And what I'd find is if I'd push through low heart rate variability, a low heart rate variability morning score that even if I felt good for a few days pushing through it, if I ignored that score and just listened to right, without paying attention to that score, for some reason, it's so, so easy to stay tuned to our musculoskeletal system, right? Like, am I sore? Do my joints hurt a little bit? Do I need a recovery day off? But sometimes you don't realize when your neuromuscular system isn't quite as recovered. And so that's what I was doing for a long time. But now I use a device that I just discovered. And I've got no financial affiliation or anything with this company. But there's this ring called an Aura ring. And it measures your temperature, your respiration, your heart rate, your heart rate variability, your steps. It's like a Fitbit on steroids, basically. But the cool thing is it has a computer built into it, which means that you can put it in airplane mode while you are asleep and not get exposed to any type of Bluetooth radiation or anything like that. And in the morning, you simply open up your phone and you sync it to your phone, and it shows you sleep latency, rapid eye movement sleep, non-rapid eye movement sleep, sleep cycle, sleep efficiency. At what point during the night your heart rate dropped the lowest, which I never realized is actually that is supposed to be consistent. And if your heart rate drops its lowest later on in the night, like at, say, 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., and you're usually dropping your lowest at, like, 1. 1.30 or 2am, it's actually a sign of poor recovery or a poor night of sleep. So now I am kind of geeking out on sleep cycles. And I recently wrote a whole article on it. I'll link to it in the show notes for this podcast that you and I are doing. But yeah, I've kind of gone past the unplugging stage and I am now quantifying and tracking. I kind of like that concept of the combination, right, of listening to your body and then better living through science. Yeah, I love it, man. And that speaks to something really important too, because it was a sleep expert. His name was Phil Gurman, Dr. Phil Gurman. And he basically found over the years that and compiled studies showing that over time, people who are basically getting less sleep than that's optimal, you know, say getting six hours of sleep a night instead of eight or whatever it is. And by the way, at no point in time in Sleep Smarter do I say you need to get blank hours of sleep because it's really not about the hours, which we'll come back to. But he said that people begin to feel like they've adapted to the sleep deprivation across the board. And they essentially we get used to it. And I know that I've done that throughout my lifetime as well. But if you look at how we actually do on tests of mental alertness and performance, specifically, they start to go downhill and also our biomarkers, you know, so even though you feel like everything is normal, those things do start to go downhill. And again, this is why I love talking with you because it's like having that balance of both. Yeah. So yeah, man. Yeah. Interesting. Now, now speaking of, of, uh, science, you talk about sunlight, you have, you have a whole chapter on light during the day. You talk about getting more sunlight during the day. And I like how you go into how that helps to normalize your circadian rhythm, how that exposure to blue light during the day can help you to sleep better at night. Interestingly, did you see the recent study that just came out that showed even that exposure to blue light or sunlight during the day actually diminishes your sensitivity to things like Kindles and e-readers and phones and stuff like that at night? It decreases how damaging they can be? Wow. No, I have not seen that one yet, man. You got to forward me that. Yeah, I will. It's very interesting, but basically it goes into the fact that you get less of the melatonin suppressing effect that phones and Kindles and stuff can have if you get a bunch of sunlight or blue light during the day. So it's all about, you know, like not just absence of blue light at night, but presence of blue light during the day. And I know you get into sunlight in the book, but I'm curious if you've done much experimentation or if you've looked into blue light boxes or in-ear phototherapy or any of these glasses that produce high amounts of blue light or any of like simulate sunlight? Yes. Yeah, definitely. I've experimented with quite a few things, but I want to point out really quickly why this matters. You know, and I know you talk a lot about this stuff too, but exposure to sunlight. So this is one of the things that in essence, it, it quote, can help to quote, reset your, your cortisol rhythm. All right. So your circadian clock a little bit. And so, you know, humans through evolutionary biology, we've had a very predictable light and dark pattern. And obviously today we can essentially simulate a second daytime by coming home and just blasting every single light. And we don't even think about it, you know, and it's just a part of our culture. And so your body really starts to get out of sync with what's real and natural and what your genes expect you to do."

Caffeine's 8-hour half-life and adenosine receptor competition

Stevenson explains that caffeine mimics adenosine and blocks its receptor sites, masking fatigue. With an 8-hour half-life, consuming 200mg of coffee means 100mg is still active 8 hours later. A study showed even caffeine consumed 6 hours before bed caused an objective loss of one hour of sleep.

"What they discovered was that even at six hours out, there was a measurable objective loss of one hour of sleep shown via a sleep monitor."