Maria Ruberto - Sleep Your Way To Your Top | The Imperfects

My name's Hugh, I'm a co -host on The Imperfects.

I'm the son of Sri Lankan and English immigrants, and I call Australia home.

We at The Imperfects acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast was recorded, and we extend our respects to the Elders past and present.

I've spent much of the last decade travelling around this country sharing stories.

In doing so, I acknowledge and pay homage to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's rich history of storytelling.

failing. I also acknowledge that whenever I talk about or practice resilience, there is no greater example than the one set by the world's oldest living culture.

If we don't get to sleep till 11 or 12.

Am I best to forego my morning exercise and get the extra couple hours of sleep?

Or should I get up an exercise?

Like what's gonna set me up for the day better?

Well, Scotch, my eggs.

This is the Academy of Imperfection.

Where experts in their field share their wisdom on the subject of imperfection.

Today, it's everything you've ever wanted to know about sleep, but we're afraid to ask.

With Ryan and Josh's old psychologist, Maria Roberto.

What happens if in the last eight years of your life you haven't even reached 6 1 by 5?

There's an outreach.

Let's talk about that, because that's actually a really big question.

So, join students Hugh, Ryan and Josh and sit back, relax, but don't fall asleep in the Academy of Imperfection.

Well, she's back. Maria Returno.

LAUGHTER Maria Roberto, back again.

This is huge. So good to see you Maria.

It's so nice to be here and it's just lovely to be sitting at you know the King Arthur round table.

Of course! So funny you mentioned Kings, I was just thinking about, I just listened to, in preparation for today, I listened to your, the episode you did with this last year where you covered everything that's ever happened in the field of psychology Which was great!

Yeah, that was impressive!

Very impressive. And I was reflecting on the conversation and I was remembering how it reminded me of a little bit of Brandon Stark from Game of Thrones, the Game of Thrones fans.

When you think about something, it's almost like he does ...

do you watch Game of Thrones?

Yes, yes! And he does that thing where his eyes go back and he just ...

What's it called again?

Worg? Yeah, Worgian!

It's like that with you and all this knowledge just comes into your head and you can tell us it's great.

And yeah, that was my point on Kings.

That was it. Just to get that war organic don't tick that up.

But sometimes that's not good, right?

Because there are just tangents everywhere, you know?

We love a tangent. So for those of you who are listening to this episode, but you perhaps didn't hear Maria's last episode with us.

Just the background on Maria.

She's the founder and director of Salutogenic Psychology.

psychology, a strength -based practice that aims to move people through personal and professional coaching towards mental fitness and overall better life health.

Maria's work is based on a theory of salutagenesis, where wellbeing is built from the development of positive human assets and strength -based skills.

Maria is an excellent psychologist, just asks either Ryan or Josh.

Yes. It's been a long time since she's been a psychologist, but we feel our lives are better because of Maria.

Mariel is the co -designer and National Registered Master Trainer for resilience first aid or RFA which we'll refer to a little bit about today, it's a brilliant course that everyone in the whole world should do.

But today we are here to talk about a topic that concerns every single person in the world who's ever existed and ever will exist, we're talking about sleep, and it's a topic in your first aid resilience which I feel like you could probably do a three -day course on this part on sleep.

I mean you sent through a list of topics you'd like to speak on within or sub topics to sleep.

And I'm just looking down the list.

Screens devices and their impact on sleep.

I can't wait to get to that.

Sleep deprivation that scares me.

The danger of medicating to sleep that also scares me.

Sleep hygiene. I can't wait to get to this stuff.

It's not at the top of the list though.

No it's not. This is a huge leap forward Maria from the last time we spoke about sleep where Hugh lay on this table and showed us his sleeping position.

I did. I found a great sleeping position.

I can show you later.

That's okay. We've definitely come a long way.

I mean, sleeping is like even like Hugh and I, we went away on the weekend with a group of friends and I feel like it's the question that no matter who you're with or what age you are, everyone always asks how do you sleep?

How do you sleep is one of the top questions other than like, what's the weather looking like today?

So true. It is, it's a cue in, it's a cue in because when I ask you how you sleep, it will give me an indication of how refreshed you are.

And then it will give me an indication of how I need to respond to you.

And I do that with my girls all the time.

So the first thing that they do is that they wake up and I greet them.

You know, you do the eye contact.

And then I say, how did you sleep last night?

And depending on what they give back, if they've had a really good night's sleep and they go, oh, I slept so well, I go, oh, now's the time for me to have that conversation.

You weaponize it, right?

That's very Maria. But it gives you an indication of your response.

So if someone says, oh, look, I didn't sleep well, you know, you need a little bit more care, you know.

I slept with a magician on the weekend and I discovered that it was not not actually - Take your mic.

You slept with the magician.

No, we had, we shared a bed.

On this trip, we went away.

Well, our single beds, you couldn't push them apart.

So they were next to each other.

Oh, we pretty much shared a king sized bed together.

He's a magician magic Mike, not a stripper.

Just that's his name.

And I had two wonderful sleeps next to the magician, Magic Mike.

I don't know if that's brought my own pillow.

So I care about sleep.

Oh, you did. Yeah, you bring that water pillow everywhere, don't you?

You have a water pillow.

I have a water pillow.

Oh, have a gel pillow.

Yes. How's that go?

Excellent. Have we covered everything?

Okay. So where would you like to start?

Yeah. So you lay down and then what?

Yeah, yeah. But this is just it, right?

People just think, if I close my eyes and I just relax, I'll go to sleep.

And the biology of that is true.

But what's missing is the fact that that's so difficult for so many people.

And there are reasons for that.

So what I thought we would do today are a couple of things.

Because this topic is so huge, and And it is so complex because sleep is so mysterious.

There is so much to learn that I thought let's try and get to the basics first, because if we can get to the basics, it sort of starts to answer some of the questions that you might have around why we're not sleeping, what's insomnia, what's...

And it will give you some of that insight.

Besides, the neuroscience behind sleep is so exciting.

It will blow your mind.

So as we do at SaluteGenics, we are biology before behavior and so we do, we run a lot of training and we have a science of sleep workshop.

So I've taken bits out of that because, you know, we, we run it for a whole day, you know, like there, there is a lot of content.

And so what I thought we'd do is we'd pull out the basics, the biology, and then we will align it with psychology.

energy, so that you get a little bit of the why and then when you get the why, you will understand the what, what do we do?

And what's this about?

So that's what I was hoping that we could do.

But before we start, I do want to say something because I think it's really important.

Because there is so much content here, today's discussion is really about the sides of sleep sleep in a way that's descriptive, it's not prescriptive.

So, when I talk about some of the science, people will just go, Oh, so I just need to do that.

It's not that easy because there are so many variables.

So I just want to be really clear that I'm going to describe what the research says.

I'm going to describe some of the biology.

That does not mean that I'm prescribing anything in particular.

And in fact, because sleep has such a pertinent biological feature in our lives, which is increasing our longevity and increasing our lifelong health, it's really important that if anybody is having any issues around sleep, you need to see your GP.

Especially parents of children, you need to see a paediatrician, you need to be talking looking to specialist people who then can put together a treatment plan.

Yeah, really good to know.

Great. Okay, so you lie down and what?

So what's sleep? What's sleep?

So sleep is not unconscious.

You don't go unconscious.

Sleep is an altered state of consciousness.

And this altered state of consciousness has some criteria around it.

So when we go to sleep, we go into really deep rest.

And we go into rest in a way that allows the body to completely move into a state where it can be replenished, where it can be reorganized, reset.

And we used to think that the brain would just sleep, the brain does not sleep.

It never, well the brain sleeps, but it never becomes inactive.

It is constantly active because it is constantly performing certain tasks.

It just gets a bit weird at night.

It does get a bit weird at night and it gets weird for a reason.

So you know, it'd be nice to look at that.

I mean, that's, um, I know you're going to talk more about this, but the idea that the brain is still performing tasks and not including dreams, but the brain is still performing tasks while you sleep.

I know when I first heard that, heard you talk about that was complete news to me.

I did not understand.

It's like when you drive past a warehouse late at night and you realise the whole world shut down with their people in there working, doing stuff, you're like, gosh, good on them.

I really love that.

That's exactly what it's like.

Yeah, that our other systems shut down because sleep is completely restorative.

So one of the functions of sleep and the most important is that it restores everything.

It restores every system.

It restores our health.

It restores our digestive.

It restores our circadian.

in a resort. It restores everything, and that becomes really important.

So I thought what I would do is start with just the brain basics.

So one of the things that SLEAP does is that it puts us into really really deep rest and the way that it does that is by using our circadian cycle.

Now we are a diurnal species, so we are our biology Apologies, we are, you know, we're not possums, we're not nocturnal.

Well, it's diurnal.

Opposite of nocturnal.

Oh, okay. Yeah, so we are a species that operate on daylight.

Gotcha. So we are awake during the day and we go to sleep at night.

This is one of those words I've never heard it in my life.

I have no doubt I'll hear it in the next 48 hours.

Yeah. You'll start to see it everywhere.

You are a diurnal man.

Yeah and apologies to all the vampires listening, we know that everyone's different and some of us like to be up.

Well funny you say that because we're going to talk about the vampire hormone.

Oh really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Every now and again I accidentally say something smart.

Um, so we have this concept of sleep where our biology moves us toward, so to start us of sleep is not negotiable.

It is a non -negotiable feature because it actually allows us to be able to look after our health in a number of ways.

But our society makes it negotiable.

Our society wants to negotiate sleep.

So we should sleep on average for 8 hours a night.

It's a long time. That worries me already.

Yep, between seven and eight.

Let's go for eight.

What happens if in the last eight years of your life you haven't even reached six and a half as an average?

Let's talk about that because that's actually a really big question and I think partially it'll be answered when we get through the next couple of years.

No, don't be because that's actually a really good question.

I see all the parents of young kids.

Absolutely. Going eight hours?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You joking?

Yeah. I'm lucky to get full.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, so we, we try and negotiate sleep.

We are also the only species that synthesically cut our sleep short.

So if you go to bed at 10, 10 o 'clock at night and let's just say you're wake up at, um, six, six in the morning.

Yeah. Um, that gives you, you know, you're at hours, but let's just say you, um, want to get up early and go to the gym, you go to bed at 10 o 'clock and you might get up but four or you might be catching a plane, you'll go to bed at 10 o 'clock and you might get up at three because you've got to organize yourself, get to the airport, you know, beforehand not miss the flight.

So what we do is that we place our social responsibilities and our personal goals.

We place that as a priority in comparison to our sleep.

So we go, let's compromise our sleep, let's negotiate our sleep, and let's do what we need to do.

Now what the research says is what you need to do is heavily reliant on the amount and quality of sleep that you get.

Poor. Yeah, which conceptually goes, yeah, OK, cool.

So just go to bed at eight.

But it's like, practically, that...

Nah. That's like eight, I literally got home half an hour ago, now I've got to have a dinner.

And then I got things to do, like the practicality of it, like...

Yeah, so that's what you said, the societal.

Yeah, the societal things, yeah.

And that's because we don't know enough about sleep.

sleep. So, I'm hoping that after today, there's a bit more interest.

Well, in fact, there's a lot more interest, and then I will direct people as to where to go in terms of finding out more information because there's some really fun stuff anyway.

I think some people also like to sort of flex that they don't need as much sleep.

There's a belief, I think in the high achieving world that like to be a high achiever, you can get away with like, I work late, get up early and that's the not only the cost, like that's a cost I'm willing to pay to be successful, but also that the people that are really successful can do that naturally and it's that if I don't do that I'm not one of the ones that will get there.

Well, it's kind of, it's the work hard, play hard person at work.

You know? Yeah, yeah.

I work hard and play hard.

It's like, that guy seems like a legend.

And that's a myth. Right, Josh, it's a myth that I believe that I can sleep on less.

Now, some people can.

But when you are activating really high levels of energy during the day, then you are going to need your sleep to restore that.

So work hard play hard legend.

Obviously, you know, that's obviously not the ideal sleep formula.

But maybe it is without being like a llamas about it, but it maybe is interesting to kind of talk about like what are the costs of that sort of, what are the costs of less sleep or bad quality of sleep?

Well it does it doesn't cause, right?

It just raises risk so you just have greater risk factors, you've got greater risk factors to inflammation, you've got greater risk factors to getting sick, you've got greater risk factors to diabetes, you've got greater risk.

So it's not the lack of sleep that's going to kill you, it's the fact that because we are not caring for our sleep, then it slowly deteriorates our the health of our organs and the health of our capacity.

So in the end, it's going to be something else.

But it can, you know, sleep is a big contributor to that.

So let's just start with our brain.

So how do we sleep, how do we get to sleep?

So we have light sensitive eyes that that our eyes during the day are constantly picking up on light and we need that light in order to promote really good levels of energy.

So there is an area in our brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus.

Now isn't that a fantastic name?

And the name reminds me of well it puts on something a bit sparkly.

I'm a big fan. I was raised in the 80s.

So the suprachiasmatic nucleus actually sits in the hypothalamus and the hypothalamus is like a switchboard.

You've got lots of switches that really manage all of our internal systems, our digestive, our circuitry, all of these systems in our body reproductive that allow us to be able of function when and where.

So, we're in the brain at the moment.

So, you're in the middle of the brain in the limbic system where it's fully automated.

So, the suprachiasmatic nucleus is this small part of the hypothalamus.

And what that does, I want you to imagine a mirror ball.

Like a disco ball. Like a disco ball, yeah.

The suprachiasmatic nucleus, you got it?

Yeah. Disco ball. Think of a disco ball that rotates And as it rotates, it picks up all the light around it.

So all the light's coming in and it's just bouncing off this beautiful disco ball.

Not just white light, but lots of beautiful coloured light that comes naturally in through the sun anyway.

So all this beautiful coloured light.

And then what it does is that the suprachiasmatic nucleus feeds that light to particular systems of the brain.

So when it's light outside, the suprachiasmatic nucleus goes daylight.

So now it bounces all of that light and tells our wake system to wake up and do its thing.

Let's go. Let's live life.

But as the sun starts to set, and there's less light, the disco ball goes, not enough light.

So then it starts to promote our sleep system.

Now look, sorry, what I should have said at the start, I'm going to use metaphors like the disco ball.

There's no disco ball in her head.

But what metaphors do, he can't help himself.

So what metaphors do is that they don't explain exact science.

And I think this is really important to know.

But what metaphors do do is that they allow our listeners to create an image as to what the function of this could look like.

And once we've got that, then you So it can sort of delve into the depths of science.

But metaphors allow us to explain things and add to narratives so that we are able to just understand and use those visuals.

Don't worry, it's the only way I can understand anything.

And right now I've got a warehouse with a disco ball and a switchboard with lots of switches.

I loved that. I wish you could see what's in my brain right now.

Actually, not all. Stop right there.

So it starts to become night yet, the sun sets, and the disco ball says, I don't have lots of lights It's bouncing.

So what it does is that it starts to turn to a particular gland that sits in the middle of our brain, a little bit behind the hypothalamus, and it's called the pineal gland.

And the pineal gland, this is really important, is actually responsible for the release of melatonin.

And we all have all heard of melatonin.

Yeah? The camera comes in a bottle.

I think drops. That's the drops.

The droppers, so you don't need that gland.

You know, we could have a whole session on melatonin because not all melatonin that's sold is pure melatonin and that has its own issues.

So really you need to be, you need to see a prescribing specialist too.

So we've got the suprachiasmatic nucleus and what it does is promote all of this information to the pineal gland and the pineal gland goes and see the pineal gland waits, it's really excited and it just goes wins my turn.

Why can you imagine?

Any time that the suprachiasmatic nucleus turns to the pineal gland and goes, now's the time because she whispers, she's a disco ball.

She's glamorous. She turns to the pineal gland and she says, now's the time and the pineal gland gets so excited that it lets itself and it releases melatonin.

I think that's good.

Because I was, my metaphor in my head was like the kid being called off the bench to get on the field to play.

That's actually better.

No, no. So now we've got melatonin.

Melatonin is our drowsiness hormone.

So melatonin, what that does is that when it becomes nighttime, melatonin starts to rise.

And the rising of melatonin starts to promote a type of really sort of, you know, type of fatigue, a really deep need, you know, relaxation around, oh, you know, I'm sort of just feeling a bit drowsy.

You know, that sleep wave that they talk about?

Now, melatonin is a hormone.

So we're going to come back to that because this is really important when we're thinking about taking melatonin.

And melatonin is known as the vampire hormone.

So, the vampire hormone works best when the sun goes down.

Okay, gotcha. Got it.

And so we need the vampire hormone slash melatonin in order to get ready to go to sleep.

That hits our circadian cycle.

As we start to become drowsy, and melatonin is well set in, then we wanna get to our bed.

Yeah. That's what sort of drives us, you know, to the bed to go, you know, it's we wanna sleep.

So we can go and scroll our phones, right?

Well, this is what's really interesting.

Many people think that melatonin improves the quality of your sleep.

It doesn't. Or that melatonin improves the longevity of sleep.

It doesn't. The role of melatonin is really simple.

I want you to imagine a race starter gun.

That gun, that starter gun, is a melatonin.

The minute that that gun goes off, melatonin has done its job.

And you're not even asleep yet?

And you're not even asleep yet, yeah?

Mm -hmm. Well, you're on the verge of sleep.

You're on the verge, okay.

So, melatonin has more to do with the preparation of you starting to come down, come down, come down to sleep and less to do with it.

It's not an overly active agent, a little bit, but an overly active agent in actually sleeping.

Right. So it's not actually going to get you the REM sleep.

Correct. It's just kicking it off.

Yeah. So, I think so.

So if melatonin isn't what then keeps us asleep, what does?

Before we get to that, I can ask a question about ...

Please. If you, so under the current system that you've described, lights are dimming, melatonin is being released.

If I then turn on lights again and look at screens, TV.

Bright lights in the house.

What happens to the melatonin release?

That is a beautiful question.

Do you know what only takes 15 seconds of really bright light to interfere with your melatonin?

And what happens if your melatonin is interfered with?

your sleep promotion decreases.

And so what you're doing is that you're telling the suprachiasmatic nucleus, because remember, it's light through the eyes.

And then all of a sudden the suprachiasmatic nucleus starts to spin again because it's gone, Oh, light's coming in, we need to be awake.

And then what it does is that it promotes cortisol because cortisol is our wake hormone.

We have a misguided understanding of cortisol.

We all think that cortisol is really bad.

it is not. Cortisol allows us to use our energy.

It allows us to promote energy so that we are able to be functional and adaptive and cortisol actually allows us to start to think.

It's when cortisol levels are too high that's when it works against us but our biology is like that, everything in moderation, anything too much or too little, is going to go against our health.

So if we're turning on screens, those screens, the light that comes from those screens seriously impact how our brain then sets us up to sleep.

Seriously impacts to the point where the interference is so significant that it has ongoing issues and we'll get to that.

And we hear a lot about blue light.

Yeah. But is it all light?

It's not all light.

So, the really bright blue light has the biggest impact with melatonin.

And that's the light from your phone or computer or whatever.

Yeah, correct. But we should be getting really bright light during the day, especially in the morning because that's what raises our level of cortisol because cortisol is our high alert and so is epinephrine.

So, you know, these high alerts but we'll get to that in a minute.

People wear blue light glasses to try and block out the...

When you say people.

I wear glasses now, so.

Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah.

I was one of those people.

They said, well, we wear glasses at night.

Did they help in your experience with a screen thing?

Look, they help slightly, but that's not the issue.

The issue is you're delaying your sleep.

That's the issue, right?

And it's the delay of sleep.

So if your, let's just say you've got a work late at night on the laptop.

So, putting on those glasses helps, but what any type of shading of moving the light, that should be very short term, because the issue is how much you're cutting into your sleep.

That's the issue. So really we shouldn't, even though it's completely impractical, particularly when it's not daylight saving, it sounds like ideally when the sun goes down, we should not be turning any lights on.

Correct. We should just be like keeping it really like almost dark.

In an ideal world, you go to sleep when the sun sets.

Yes, but we're not tribal.

Yeah. And here we are, we live in a progressive society where we continue to operate well after those hours that the sun sets.

So we need to think very carefully.

So one of the strategies is two hours because before you are ready to go to bed, you should have 50 % of your lights off in the house and you should dim them down to about 50%.

So that you are not having lots of light come in.

Just to round out that little bit.

I, so in 2008, I, for three and a half months, I lived in the desert, up in the far north of India, and there was no electricity.

And so everyone went to bed at quarter to eight, eight o 'clock and everyone woke up around five and the sun came up.

So you went to bed when it got dark, you walk in the sun color.

And only now, because I always look back at that and go I've never felt healthier and happier.

I put it down to so many different things.

I never once considered the fact that I was going to bed when it got dark and waking up when it got light.

And I now sit here thinking gosh, that was such a huge, huge component of it.

Yeah. Because there is less interference from the environment.

So let's go back. We've got our melatonin.

The gun goes off, it's done its job.

But we'll go back to melatonin later because it's a hormone.

What happens next is we experience what we call sleep pressure.

It's an internal sensation that we have that you just go, oh, I've just got to go to sleep.

You know that feeling, yeah?

Now sleep pressure is interesting and we need to explain it because it has a really big role to play to really getting us to sleep.

So, it causes this sort of sedation process, but sedation is not sleep.

Alcohol sedates, other substances sedate, but sedation is not sleep.

So we need to be really clear about that because it promotes a false sense of sleep.

sleep. So we start to feel sedated.

What causes that sedation is a neurotransmitter called adenosine.

So let's talk about adenosine.

So adenosine is our sleep neurotransmitter and adenosine is gorgeous.

So adenosine is a chemical byproduct of ATP, adenosine triphosphate.

Ooh, from half caught.

Right. If you think of ATP as all that power and all of your cells, every cell has it, right?

Just think all that power.

This is really easy to remember.

So during the day all that power releases the energy in your body so that you can do what you need to do – exercise and all the rest of it.

there are all other aspects to it.

But just for now, know that adenosine is the byproduct of ATP.

So the more ATP you're using, the more adenosine is going to be floating around in your body and in your brain.

Do you understand? Hence why you feel tired after a big day of exercise or whatever?

She's dancing for those of you who understand.

That's absolutely right and hence why parents of young kids go, the playground is the place to be.

If I just take them to the playground and they play and swing and climb and run around for two hours, parents will say, I know that they will sleep well.

And that is because what is happening is that adenosine is being promoted in the body.

Now, I want to explain how this works and let's use another metaphor.

I want you to think about a jigsaw puzzle because there's more to this.

So a jigsaw puzzle is going to be your sleep puzzle.

The aim is for your entire jigsaw puzzle to be complete.

Every piece is in, you fall asleep.

In fact a denocine promotes deep sleep very important.

So what happens is Adenosine are floating around, floating around and they accumulate.

So every hour they accumulate because you're busy.

Yeah, you're busy. You're busy being productive.

And so this Adenosine is accumulating.

I want you to imagine that they have to fit, they've got to fit into your puzzle.

You can't just put it anywhere.

So far so good. I want you to imagine the space, the space that that jigsaw piece needs to fit into, that space is waiting for that piece to be inserted into it.

That space in the brain we call adenosine receptors.

So once they are all placed and you have a complete jigsaw piece puzzle and all the pieces are in there, you are now asleep.

Now here's the issue, sometimes we lose a puzzle piece.

Why do we lose a puzzle piece?

Where is it? Is it in the cover of the box, is it underneath the table, has a dog eaten it?

Is it still a metaphor?

It's a metaphor. Still a metaphor.

Yeah. And so we can't sleep because not all the pieces have been placed.

Now there's reasons for that.

So what interferes with those pieces being placed, stress, particular illnesses, diabetes, you know, when our bodies are unwell, sometimes it's a little bit harder to get to sleep, not sometimes most times.

But here's the thing there is one main contributing factor that interferes with those puzzle pieces being placed so much so and something that we do every single day that we don't take enough notice of, but yet, it seriously impacts our sleep, and that is caffeine.

And the reason for that is that the caffeine molecule mimics the adenosine neurotransmitter.

So what happens is I want you to think, I want you to think of an AFL tackle.

You know, when they tackle each other...

So caffeine comes in, tackles the adenosine and goes, it's mine.

And then slots itself into the receptor.

Oh, sneaky. So the adenosine receptor thinks that it's adenosine.

Well, it knows it's not adenosine.

But it can't fit in the adenosine.

But it's blocked it now.

So it can't fit the adenosine in.

Gotcha. And so the adenosine keeps floating.

And if it keeps floating, you're not going to fall asleep.

And so that's why you have coffee to keep yourself awake.

So this is, because I I've often, like, I can have a coffee later in the day or even at night after dinner and I and I'll still be able to fall asleep.

But it sounds like even though I can get to sleep, I'm definitely not getting as good of a sleep as I would otherwise be getting.

Correct? Correct. Mm hmm.

Can I ask about Adenosine Creation by Product Creation?

You talked about ATP in a physical sense of running around doing physical exercise.

But I think about kids experiencing new things but also I think about myself when I first started, say, working a full -time job, from a 9 to 5 and I'd get home and be asleep at 7 o 'clock because I was so exhausted.

Exactly the same. So learning new things...

energy, any energy that your body requires, in order for you to be able to function, requires ATP.

And so during the day, you've got this massive load of adenosine that's starting to build up, build up, which is natural.

And what needs to happen, like, we need that to happen so that we actually go to sleep.

sleep, and then it's during sleep that, you know, the brain just purges all of that adenosine and then we start again.

And so, when you wake up in the morning you're refreshed because the adenosine's gone.

The concept of a siesta, like an afternoon nap, may or may not be regular.

But like, obviously in Europe a siesta is a huge part of life.

A lot of elite sporting clubs have sleep scheduled just after lunch part of their training.

I know the Kenyans who the best middle distance runners in the world will train in the morning and they will sleep during the day and then train again in the afternoon and then sleep again at night.

They've done some research.

Napping in the afternoon if you don't have insomnia.

Now, if you have insomnia, no napping, because it will seriously interfere with you trying to then sleep at night.

But if you have good sleep and lots of ATP happening and it's high performance, so you're consuming huge amounts of energy, because then there's a huge amount of adenosine, if you just sleep a little bit, yeah, it won't interfere.

But what's a little bit and what's too much?

Five minutes of napping does very little.

10 minutes of napping doesn't do much.

15 minutes of napping, is you get quite a good effect in being able to replenish that level of energy, but the research is pretty clear.

20 minutes is ideal, so a 20 minute nap.

Hence the power nap thing with driving.

Hence the power nap.

Yeah. And no more, because if it's more, you're actually gonna start to interfere with your sleep cycle.

And is that pretty general across most people who don't have insomnia?

It is pretty general, but don't nap too late, so after four o 'clock it's too late.

Gotcha. I remember Melbourne Storm, 2017, I think it was, got a Sleep Coach and I had this room for them too.

I remember being shown in the Sleep Room and they're all sleeping and I just walked in and it was just like a slumber party.

I could sleep over there.

Kindergarten, where they're all asleep?

Yeah. That's like twisties everywhere.

Watching movies. It was one of the guys go, Hey brah, you're awake?

Yeah, I can't sleep.

Can I ask a question on that eggs off the back of I can't sleep, but I remember when I was having trouble sleeping as a teenager, which I think is very common.

And I remember saying to dad that I couldn't sleep.

He is to say you still should be trying and the rest is still beneficial.

Like the lying down and the slowing down and the taking time out of what you're doing is still beneficial to you.

That's not all lost.

So don't stress. Don't get overly worried about the fact that you didn't feel like you got the best night's sleep because there was still benefit to it happening.

I love that. That has such a big part to play, clever man.

Such a big part to play in training ourselves to relax in order to sleep.

Because there are going to be nights where you won't sleep.

And that's okay. You can go for a couple of nights of not having great sleep, and it doesn't have any impact or side effect to, you know, overall health.

But understanding that our psychology really tries to manage our biology.

if you are worried about something during the day you are not gonna sleep at night and that's part of the sleep hygiene but sometimes you're gonna get into bed and you're gonna go and you're tossing and turning and you're just trying to sleep because your mind's racing, really we need to be saying to ourselves, or we can say to ourselves tonight may not be a deep sleep night But it's okay, I can use this time to just relax and just be still and know that I'm just trying to replenish as much as I can.

And you're going to be conscious the whole time.

Because your prefrontal cortex, which is our thinking brain, isn't shutting off.

Yeah. But not all is lost.

But not all is lost.

Yeah. There's good news.

A lot of people drink coffee.

Yeah. And they're probably thinking, so when can I?

And can I, am I right in saying it's like, eight and 10 hours before you want to go to bed you shouldn't be drinking caffeine, is that right?

That is absolutely right, but can we just make a distinction?

Because everybody that I speak to, will especially when we start our Science of Sleep workshop, everyone puts up their hand and goes, the first thing we want to know is there's some research that says you shouldn't have coffee and there's other, yeah, that says, you know, when should we have, we should, we shouldn't.

But we need to make a distinction between coffee and caffeine.

So it's the caffeine that is the active agent in interfering with adenosine.

Coffee has some other byproducts, like it's high in antioxidants.

So a good coffee is high in antioxidants.

So have a coffee, but if you're just having caffeine like Coke, like those sugary drinks, then that that's a serious interference with with this whole process because it's caffeine without any other benefits.

So Coke Zero but dinner is not a good thing to do?

Not a great thing to do.

So coffee should be had early morning you know maybe an hour into your day, have a cup of coffee, maybe have another cup of coffee at about you know eleven or whatever the case may be.

But anything after.

Oh, they say 12. You know, I'm Italian, I sort of stretch it to one.

Like a rebel. Anyway, anyway, let's, let's now talk about what happens during sleep.

Yeah. So all your puzzle pieces are in.

So all our puzzle pieces are in and now that they're in we are now asleep.

We are in bed. We're in bed and we're out.

We're asleep. So what happens now?

What happens now? and why do we sleep?

What happens? So I want you now to imagine a vertical line because I'm going to talk about stages of sleep.

So right on the top of the vertical line is when you're awake.

Yeah, so that's going to sleep.

It requires for us to move into four stages.

So the first stage that we move into is what we We call alpha stage, and it's called alpha stage because alpha waves are being activated in the brain.

And alpha waves are those waves that promote drowsiness, fatigue, which is what you're getting from the adenosine, yeah?

That's the feeling.

The second stage is what we call the beta stage.

And beta stage are where you have beta waves that are being identified in the brain.

Beta waves is where your brain is doing lots of thinking.

So right now, there are beta waves.

Interesting, part of sleep.

Yeah, right. Where does twilight sit in?

You know that kind of, am I awake?

Am I asleep? That's the next stage.

Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, which is theta.

So you've really come down to, to a relaxed state and theta occurs during meditation.

Theta occurs during really deep relaxation and daydreaming.

So, you know, you really are very, very hypo aroused.

Yeah. There's this real deep relaxation.

And then you hit this deep sleep between Theta and then Delta and Delta is that you've gone into very deep sleep and your non -room starts.

It does bother me that the third stage doesn't start with C.

Why? That's ABTD. That's a real problem for me, but that's all right.

I can deal with it.

You need to take that up within your assigned time.

Okay. So with the vertical line, I'm imagining you start at the top and you're dropping down a level each time.

So you are obviously not asleep straight away at the top.

You are drifting into sleep.

Yeah, you are. So you go from wake to alpha and that's when you're drifting into sleep.

But that's where your sleep starts.

And then you drop down.

Albeit a very light sleep.

Yes, and then down and then down until you get to your delta and then you start your slow wave sleep.

So we're going to get to deep and random sleep.

So, let's do it now.

Yeah, so let's do it now.

Because that's what my watch measures.

When I wake up in the morning I get a sleep score.

Right. Telling me deep, REM, light.

And yeah so that's, I'm so interested in that.

Oh good, so let's do that.

So, that's your vertical line.

Yep. Now we're going to go horizontal line.

Yep. Awesome. So horizontal line matches your number of hours, so zero to eight hours.

That's cool. So, you kind of drop down, you drop down the vertical line.

So, delta ?to delta.

Then we're going to go cross and we're going to sleep for 8 hours.

That's like a proper timeline.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Great.

Now, our sleep is made up of cycles.

Cycle of non -REM plus REM together.

And that cycle, so we go non -REM, REM.

Non -REM, REM, non -RE.

They are cycles. You just, for everyone listening and not watching, you're going up and down with your finger that you can at the side.

The pink. Yeah. When you sign right at the top you have non -RIM.

At the top is RIM. Top is RIM.

Bottom is non -RIM. Okay, yeah.

Yeah, because deep sleep.

Deep sleep is non -RIM.

Right. Yeah. Deep sleep is non -RIM.

And that's the first part.

So you go into non -RIM sleep first and every cycle is about 90 minutes.

Now is that 90 minutes for everybody?

No, because you know there are variations, and we'll get to that.

But 90 minutes, let's go with that because that's a typical cycle of sleep.

sleep. So you have a ratio of non -REM sleep to REM sleep.

Hold that, I'm going to get back to the ratio in a minute.

Let's just talk about what it does.

So non -REM sleep is really important for the brain because the first thing that non -REM sleep does is that it protects you against external noise.

And the reason for that is if you continuously have external noise coming in, you're not going to complete your stages of sleep.

because if you've got external noise you're forcing the brain to go, what's that?

Do I have to attend to that?

It's distracting. It's distracting.

And also we need to be really clear about something.

Sleep is promoted by safety because our brain is wired to detect for cues of threat.

Our brain is wired to detect for any sound that's going to interfere because if I fall asleep, I'm not able to protect myself.

So sleep is about safety first.

So you have to be able to promote an environment of sleep with the least amount of distraction so that your brain can do what it needs to do.

Does this make sense?

Mmhmm. Because I guess there's nothing more dangerous than lying there, I'm not, I'm conscious of the wrong word.

Yeah. And in an alternate state of consciousness?

there and not being safe.

So that's why where you have had a burglary in your house recently, let's just say it is and it's been documented, it's really, really common for people in that house to then not sleep for a significant period of time or sleep lightly because their biology believes if someone has broken into our sanctuary, I now need to listen out for it so that I am alert to those cues of threat.

like our brain is this amazing organ that is so sophisticated and he's so incredibly attuned to us, our environment, and the role of keeping us well.

Anyway, let's go back to our sleep.

Right. So we've got ratios.

Now the first thing that we know is that deep sleep is what we call slow wave sleep.

Now when we are talking about beta waves there, and I'm using my finger now to sort of go a sharp up and down.

That is a wake stage where there is really, there's lots of electrical activity happening because we're focusing.

When we are in deep sleep, the non -room sleep, it's this slow wave sleep, this slow curved up and down line that you see.

And And what that does is that it calms the brain and slow -wave sleep starts to wash away clutter.

What it does to the brain is that it starts to give it a bit of a cleanse.

Now, hold that for a moment.

So, what that means is in those eight hours, we've got non REM sleep, which is non rapid eye movement.

Your eyes also deep sleep.

And then we go up then a cycle, we go up to REM and when we get to REM that's where it hits beta.

So, there's lots of eye movement rapidly from side to side and it's processing.

Our brain is processing.

Sorry, our brain's processing what?

We'll get to that. Okay.

Now, in the first half of our sleep, over eight hours, there is a greater ratio of non -REM to REM.

This is imperative that we know this.

More non -REM, so more of setting our brain up, just giving it a wash but calming it.

So imagine this, this wave is calming our brain.

And then what happens is that suddenly the brain goes okay that's enough non -RIM now we're gonna spike up to RIM because we need to do something with all of this stuff that's washed away, and there is information during the day that is being collected that is important like our learning and there's memory so now we've got to do something with this so then it starts to spike up to RIM and RIM is rapid eye movement and RIM is where there is a just a fiery activation of neural electricity.

And this is where we dream.

So REM is our dream state.

And here is where all of the information during the day just comes out to play.

Everything that we have ever coded in our brain in our hippocampus because that's our learning and memory area of the brain.

Everything is just shot up.

What happens during REM is that our prefrontal cortex is completely switched off.

So REM is completely non -rational and it's a dream state and it is during that REM stage that our brain does three really important things.

So the first one, you're going to love this.

So the first and most prominent function of that REM is that it becomes an emotional processing period.

So what it does is that the things that were really hard during the day so you know you might have had a really big argument with someone and it just felt so bad, or that you had a really difficult situation to deal with or you heard something that was a nice and And you were really loaded emotionally.

Sleep tends to process that emotion, diffuse it so that you're left with the memory but you're not left with the emotional load.

So it's like brain therapy.

So that's dreaming.

That happens during dream and that's why people say, you know what, don't address it today.

Have a good night's sleep, sleep it off, you'll feel better in the morning.

Wow. Oh, it's literally processing the thoughts.

Yeah, so what... And attaching the emotion.

And attaching the emotion.

And so what it's doing is that it's allowing you to take that load, that burden off, so the emotion is processed and you're then left with the content.

The thing that's immediately jumping to mind is, I remember Jerry Seinfeld.

I think he I forget where I heard him talking about it.

Could have been during, I think it was during his episode on Tim Ferriss' podcast.

Really great interview.

And he was like one of his rules, like when he comes up with a joke, or he writes a new joke, his rule is he will never tell anyone the joke in the day that he thought of it.

He will always give it like a 24 hours or he'll sleep on it.

And I, and that makes sense to me in terms of like, whenever I've written anything if I get excited about it, or an idea and I go and tell someone if I haven't given it time to process or to, if I get a negative, any slight hint of negativity from that person, I go off the idea or what can often happen is I'll be really excited about the idea because I've just had it.

But then if I wait till the next day and then I look back at the idea I had, I'm like, that's terrible idea.

Or all it needs is this twist.

Yeah. Or I can improve it.

And that's because you had a greater alignment to the emotion than the idea itself.

That's what I've just realised is like I'm actually more excited about the newness of something as opposed to the content itself.

You've got to let your brain do the laundry.

And then you can— Love that.

Thank you. The other metaphor I was thinking was like it's like when you're working like a big building, you work, and, like there's been like a Christmas party or something at the work, the work Christmas party.

And then the clean, the cleaners come overnight, and then you come back the next day and everything cleans.

That's better. Yeah, that's good.

So they must... the cleaners must have come last night.

That's exactly right.

Yep. And what REM also does is that it strengthens our memories.

So REM, during REM, we take the memories, we take the content that's been coded, the most important.

It's reinforced, and it's placed into memory.

And then the other thing that REM does is that it strengthens that memory because during REM when you are dreaming, you are also dreaming about things that have happened in the past.

Now our brain is this amazing associative organ, it learns via association.

So if there's something that I've done today that was similar to something that I did three weeks ago, three months ago, even a year ago, that associates it and it It strengthens that circuit.

So, what REM does is that it strengthens the synapses and the memory and learning circuits.

Really important. Now, hold it for a moment.

Because I want to say something.

Here's what happens though.

Over those eight hours, the first few hours, there is a greater ratio of non -REM sleep to REM.

In the latter part of our sleep timeline, there is a greater ratio of REM to non -REM.

Now let's just say you went to sleep at 10 o 'clock, and you normally wake up at 6.

That's fine, because you've got your 8 hours, and you've got the full repetition of cycles, and your sleep has been completed.

if you wake up two hours earlier and people go, well, I'll just wake up two hours earlier.

I've still gotten, you know, however many hours of sleep.

Well, no, that's not right.

Because what you've done is that you've cut your REM significantly short up to about 25%, because the REM ratio is not the same throughout all the eight hours.

So the part of the reconsolidating of memory, the part of strengthening those synapses, you've cut that short, you've got lots of non -REM, you've cleaned your brain, but what you haven't done is that you haven't processed and recalibrated all of that information, in a way that the brain can then remember because you've cut your hours by at least two hours, you've cut your hours short.

So so now we're starting to go, does that affect us?

Absolutely it does, we remember less.

Our reference points, our reference point to material is, is not as accurate.

There are a whole lot of things that we are interfering with.

Does that also explain why if I've, if I've had a really short night's sleep and I'm feeling crap, I will be much quicker to emotion and say cry in the morning.

And I also eat really poorly.

me. Is that because I haven't detached the emotional from my self -identity and self -worth?

Maria's nodding so heavily.

Yes. Yes. And if you would have had a really emotion intensive day and you have the day before.

And you haven't had a good night's sleep.

Or even just a regular day because they're pretty emotional.

Yeah. Yes. And as they are.

As they are for me, then we haven't processed that enough.

Yeah. And so you're going to need another night's sleep but you're going to need better sleep.

So you're sort of starting off the back foot at the start of the day.

Yeah, that checks out.

Yeah. And this slow wave sleep is the biggest promotion for immune function.

Can that, like what Josh was saying in terms of the fact that he's quicker to cry, could that also mean that someone has a shorter fuse the next day?

Yes, absolutely. Look, there are a whole lot of other variables, but we're just focusing on sleep and its contribution to that.

Now, I just want to say something about REM sleep because...

So we've spoken about the biology, now let's talk about the psychology of it.

Let's talk about what REM sleep actually looks like.

So pure REM sleep looks like a psychotic state because there is no rational brain that is coming into manage it.

So there are four ways that your brain becomes psychotic during REM.

The first one is that we see things during dreaming during REM that are not there.

They're actually not there.

We're just seeing them in our mind, and that's hallucinating.

The second thing is that we believe things that could not possibly be true, like I'm flying.

That's delusion. The third thing is that we become confused around time, space and person.

And that's what we call being disorientated.

That's like it's it's kind of like when you're like, yeah, you were there, but you weren't you.

Correct. Correct. And then the last one is we have wildly fluctuating emotions.

And that's what psychology calls being, um, affectively labile, that we have no control over these.

So if you were to take that and put it into a day person, it looks like a psychotic state.

And yet this is what REM sleep does every single night.

it allows this very floral stage of anything goes because there is no manager containing it.

And managers gone home for the night at the warehouse.

And then and then lastly, we will get up the next morning and forgotten everything that we've dreamt about and that's amnesia.

Yeah. Yeah. So I always forget my dreams, but Jam always remembers her dreams in great detail.

What's the difference?

Well, that's because she places a value and a focus on remembering her dreams.

So you can train your brain to remember dreams.

And if you are not leaning into that to start with, it's going to take a bit longer.

But dream training is a really big thing.

Sorry. Sorry, just on a ratio, sorry, for people who measure their slope.

Yes, go on. They get a, every morning they'll get a percent reading that says you got 25 percent.

And we're told through whether it's Garmin or whatever your measurable is that 30 percent of each is kind of what the ideal, is that about right from what from your research you looked at?

Yes, absolutely. You want just as much non -RIM as you want RIM.

Okay. Yeah, I remember you wanted to be similar.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. And, and the wearables have a pretty good strike rate of how accurate they are, probably about 85%, you know, you're going to get the highest percentage if you go to a sleep lab and they hook you up.

And so it's so they're fairly reliable.

Yeah. So can we go back to non -rhym for a moment?

You're gonna like this.

And this is the beautiful work, and you'll find this on YouTube, by Professor Jeff Ilef.

Linking bio to that.

And you will find this beautiful Ted talk that he does, where he explains it beautifully.

So, if you do a close -up of the brain, the brain actually uses a huge percentage of our glucose energy, something like 40%.

So, it's got to get rid of all of this debris.

Like, how does it do it?

Around your skull and around your spine, there is lots of this clear fluid that we call cerebral spinal fluid, CSF.

And that CSF, there's so much of it that it cushions your brain and it cushions your spinal cord in case you have a bump, a bit of an accident.

It just absorbs some of that impact so that it doesn't affect your brain because remember your brain is not a skeleton, it's really soft gel, so it needs to be protected.

During the night, what happens is that that cerebral spinal fluid that's CSF during a particular time of the night and only during non -REM sleep these slow waves this CSF is pulsated imagine you're in a bath you're in a bath and you're sitting on the end of the bath and with your hands you just gently push the water towards your feet you push and you do that rhythmically and you just get this beautiful wave of water that gets to your feet and then the wave comes back and then it goes to your feet.

So, we have a brain bath and the brain bath during non -REM is where the cerebral spinal fluid flows through, picks up all the toxins.

Gives them a bath. Gives them a bath and then takes all those toxins and then puts it into the blood system and out through our ex -radiary.

whoa, it's extraordinary.

So it goes into the bloodstream and then out and we wait and we wait.

Yup. Okay. Yeah. We do.

Now, now, what is actually being washed away because our brains are so busy during the day?

We accumulate byproducts of this electrical energy And some of those byproducts are amyloid beta that you've heard about, which cause serious inflammation, amyloid beta.

So it's a protein that is a byproduct of just functioning, any type of exchange in the brain, chemical exchange.

It produces? But it produces, yeah, as a waste product.

So let's do another metaphor.

Imagine that you're at the soccer and there are people like my husband who bring, not mentioning names, who love peanuts, but he doesn't just bring a peanut that he eats.

He loves to de -shell the peanut whilst he's watching the soccer game.

He's a massive soccer fan, right?

So him and his mates, they get to the game and he brings a big bag of peanuts and his mates know that he's coming with the peanuts and everyone gets very excited.

It doesn't take much.

That does sound funny.

Right, so what they do is that they, you know, they're watching the game and then they stand because it gets a bit exciting, yeah.

But what they're doing is that they are de -shaling the peanuts and then the shell falls to the floor and you eat the peanut.

that peanut is the nutrient.

It's a metaphor, it's what your neurons are wanting.

They're wanting that nutrient.

But in order to have the nutrient, have the peanut, you've got to de -shell it.

And so, if you are very active, intellectually and going back to what you were saying very early on about high achievers.

For striving for high achievement.

That they are using a lot of that energy so are creating more shells.

Now, imagine that you're standing there and all of these shelves are falling to the ground, you're creating now debris.

And that debris sits in between your neurons and that can be referred to as the amyloid beta and also tau proteins.

The CSF during non REM sleep during slow wave sleep with this beautiful brain bath comes comes in, the CFS comes into in between all of those gaps, takes away those shells and you've got a clean brain and that only happens during non -REM.

Now, we know that amyloid B and the tau protein are highly aligned with things like Alzheimer's Disease and that that inflammation in the brain is also aligned with Parkinson's and whole lot of other diseases.

So, sleep then becomes a biological imperative.

We need to sleep to clean our brain and to allow our brain to process our thinking in order to retain memories and create really strong synapses in order to maintain our health.

Wow, it's terrifying because of the cost implication there and I hope I'm not being too specific but it seems like you chose the word aligned very carefully.

So it's not causational you know, we don't, well we don't.

The science is very very cautious to explain what is being found and what is being found are those proteins in the brain specifically with Alzheimer's and it It happens that it's also the one thing that's being washed away so well during non -room sleep.

And you will see people who have symptoms of Alzheimer's that their sleep has been quite poor, that there's been lots of disrupted sleep.

So, you know, we're not saying one causes the other.

There are so many other variables too, stress plays a really big role.

Yeah, yeah. And I hope that that explains a little bit of, you know, why we have poor mood.

mood. When there is a reduction of REM, it dysregulates mood, it increases our negative reactivity, you know, we become more rigid, less agile.

You know, it's a huge disruptive mood.

I found that this morning I didn't get much sleep last night, ironically.

I've probably got six hours, I reckon, and I've got up, as you per usual, probably two or three times to a child.

And this morning I was talking about something to sof.

That has been on my mind a little bit, but I think I've been sort of managing the emotional attachment to it.

And this morning I almost started crying, talking about it and it was really bugging me.

But I think on a ball night's sleep it doesn't bug me as much.

And there you have it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really nice when science can describe the anecdote of our experience of life.

And And then when we know the why, we are then more likely to then pay attention to the what.

So sleep hygiene. So the beautiful Matt Walker who is known in the neuroscience world as the ambassador of sleep is British.

Blonde hair. Floppy blonde hair.

Absolutely. Yeah, I've seen him.

Look. Seen his work.

He's got better hair than me.

So much so that he can sit in a podcast and wear a headband.

I'm so jealous. A headband?

Like you mean, you mean headphones?

No, no, no. A headband.

Oh, to keep his head back.

Oh, wow. He has the best hair I've ever seen.

I'm jealous. Me too.

No, me too. We'll put that in the show notes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he is not only a neuroscience but he's a poetic neuroscientist.

I was thinking about how many people right now, um, listen to this, they're just googling this guys' hair and not going to work for a second.

So all of what I've spoken about today is in his book Why We Sleep.

And if people are really serious about understanding sleep at a very deep level, you've got to buy the book.

Mm -hmm. Book Club it.

Yep. Yeah. But Matt Walker, um, who is now at Harvard, because, you know, they've, they've taken him over there.

He says, what constitutes good sleep?

And he calls it QQRT.

So that's all we need to remember.

QQRT. He says, quantity of sleep, quality of sleep, regularity of sleep, and timing of sleep.

So if we can get all those four points right, that's what we aim for.

So we aim for good quality sleep, which means that you are getting those ratios of REM and non -REM.

talks about, that was quality, he says, quantity of sleep, you've got to get your eight hours.

Seven, eight. If you are spending more time in bed after the eight hours, you actually could be interfering with good sleep.

So bedtime should be for the double S's, that's it.

Nothing else. The double S.

Sleep sex. Yep. Separate, not sleep sex, sleep and sex. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Separate. Sleep, sex. That's it.

So confused. Don't start eating in bed, don't start watching TV.

Oh, that's two things you can do.

Great. Yeah. The two S's, the SS.

We call them the SS.

Yeah. Yeah. You do both.

But we're just going to talk about sleep.

Not at the same time.

No. That's right. So your brain is highly associative.

If you are doing other things in bed, other than just sleeping, your brain is going to associate that with playtime, creative time, TV watching time.

So you may experience a greater difficulty in being able to get to sleep.

So let's talk about quality of sleep.

So quality of sleep is that you reduce your external noise as much as possible, so that your brain whilst it's going non -REM -REM, there's no interference, it can actually do that safely.

If you've got lots of stuff, if you've got lights on, music going, TV going, however, there are so many people who will say, but I need the TV to sleep.

I need background noise to sleep.

The background noise is okay if you are able to use that to sleep, but if your noise is elevated to a point where it's interfering well then that doesn't work.

So, to clarify and to quote someone who I think was trying to give me a compliment who said they use our podcast to go to sleep.

I do it with another show and I regularly put it on with a 15 minute timer and it goes off once I'm asleep.

Is that a bad idea or a good?

Is that bad for me?

Or is it? It's not bad or good.

It's about what works for you.

But let's talk about what you're doing.

When you are listening to podcasts like this, the tone of the vocalisation is low.

And because it's a low tone, it almost has a sedation effect.

You're listening to it and you just go to calm.

Now if you have that on low in the background, because your voices for most of your audience, I would say, is so familiar.

And people feel so safe with you talking about what you're talking about and who you are.

That's a cure of safety for your brain.

So what you're doing is that you're setting up your pre -sleep, your sleep hygiene, with a sound that feels like safety, regardless of what you're talking about.

But it's actually the tone that's coming through.

Yep. Because it leads to a question that my, I think he's just trying to drag out staying awake, but my oldest boy all like, so many things in our sleep prep that gets extended because he wants to stay awake.

Now we played a story to him from a phone, like after already reading sort of four stories and doing all these things.

And then now he wants a story on the phone that we set up.

Is that I was worried that maybe we're doing a bad thing there by putting a story on the phone and leaving him in there because it was interrupting with his quality of sleep.

Is the story to go to sleep if it gets him to sleep going to interrupt with the quality of his sleep or if it works, that's fine?

That's a double -edged sword.

Okay. So finding an intervention that works is really important.

parent, but having children be accustomed to devices to falling asleep may not be.

So even though that may work, what we don't want to do is have our kids associate their devices with sleeping.

Yeah, getcha. So you're better off using that outside the bedroom as a wind down.

And then in the bedroom, you're doing all of your really nice pre -sleep, like dimming the lights, bringing your voice lower, snuggling in because skin contact is really important, that's another sense of safety and then sort of, you know, reading some books, not focusing so much on exactly the pictures and the words, but it's reading the story and reading the narrative that becomes important because it's your tone that then the brain will tune into.

So it's not so much about, um, reading a story that they like.

It's more the voice and the tone, which is actually helpful.

But it's also reading a story that they like because it's familiar to them.

Again, it's familiarity that brings that sense of safety, but also also that sense of certainty that they know what's going to happen next.

They're just hearing it again.

For us as adults, what do we do?

So for us as adults, we do not have any light stimulation or an hour and forty -five minutes before we go to bed.

An hour and 45 minutes.

Yeah, as dim as possible.

As dim as possible.

And we want to watch television, what do we do with that.

And well, look, saying you don't is not helpful because you're going to.

That's the reality of it.

But trying to bring into your sleep hygiene a minimal amount of TV at least half an hour before you go to bed.

I don't want to push it too much, but it really should be 45 minutes to an hour, is going to be helpful.

The least you can manage.

Do not load yourself up with fluid, because the last thing that you want to do is have a full bladder at 3 o 'clock in the morning and then go, I need to get up, and you're interfering with those sleep cycles.

Also, there's a lot of controversy around how much food to consume before you go to bed.

And interestingly enough, the research is a little bit out on that, because there are some people who eat, and then will fall straight asleep, and it's not an issue.

And I think the older you get, the worse it is.

Well, that's anecdotal, because that's for me.

When I was younger, I used to be able to eat and then go to sleep.

The older I'm getting, the more I go, I will have gastric reflux for the next three hours, it will be three o 'clock in the morning.

So it's more about just how the food sits in your stomach and how you feel.

So there are some people who can eat.

But what they're saying is, at least an hour before bed.

Not to have anything.

The sleep hygiene is about creating a pattern so that your brain starts to associate whatever pattern you are engaged in.

So things like putting your pyjamas on, doing your skincare routine, brushing your teeth, doing that in order so that you are actually teaching your brain, we are about now, to start to go to sleep at the same time that melatonin sits in.

So it's really, I mean, I really think, for me, I think what would be helpful is because I think my dream scenario, so to speak, is going to bed at 10 and waking up at six.

Like that, that is like what I dream of.

Like that's what I hope for.

And that rarely happens.

But I think what would actually be more helpful is to think of my sleep time as from 9pm, because it's like from 9pm that's when I need to start getting ready for sleep.

So it's like, as opposed to going like, oh, well it's 955 and the show's just finishing and then I'll go to sleep in a second.

Correct. I need to wind back all that activity.

Yes. To finish at 855.

Yes. And 9 PM. Then it's like, hey, 9 PM dim lights, turn screens off.

This is the ideal scenario, of course.

And then, so treat my sleep as like 9 hours, instead of 8 hours, but that first hour is awake, but preparing for sleep.

I love that. And sleep research will say, we set our alarm clocks to wake up.

We should actually set an alarm clock to start to sleep.

Mmm. That's good. Yeah.

Yeah. So instead of having just an awake alarm clock that we have a bedtime alarm clock and I can't wait to set that.

I'm excited. That is so out your alley of things.

And set that about an hour before or 50 minutes, 45 minutes, so that you are engaging in your sleep hygiene.

So the other thing about quality of sleep is that your bedroom must be cold.

Oh yeah, you need to sleep in a cool room because we need to be cold to go to sleep and warm to wake up.

So call to sleep to this, warm to wake up.

Can I ask just one question?

So this is often Jam and I have differing opinions on this.

So if, if we don't get to bed, so my, you know, the ideal is I get to sleep at 10 and I wake up at six to six o 'clock.

I then want to have like a couple of hours to exercise and meditate and do whatever, you know, morning routine things.

If I don't get to sleep, if we don't get to sleep till 11 or 12, am I best to forgo my morning exercise and get the extra couple hours of sleep or should I get up and exercise?

Like what's going to set me up for the day better?

So, whatever you do, what's going to set you up for better, is aiming for your eight hours of sleep.

Sleep wins, sleep wins.

Every single time. Wow.

What if your identity is so tied to being fitted?

The costs to a reduction of sleep are significant, you know, weight gain, sugar levels, inflammation, digestion, digestive issues.

In fact fibrosis has been found to be one of the costs of sleep or insomnia.

Because, yeah, because in my mind, everything I've sort of picked up over the years or whatever is, like, if I, and I often feel this, if I start the day with good exercise, actually this is interesting and I think about it.

If I start the day with really good exercise and I get all the exercise I want there are some days where I feel excellent throughout the day like god I feel good but then there are some days where I do the exact same amount of exercise and I feel exhausted in the morning and throughout the day.

That's weird that didn't work this morning but I bet on those days it's the sleep.

Absolutely. I also seem to remember hearing that Walker say that the cost like your ability to do that exercise is something like 30 % less if you've had less than six hours.

That's correct. That's correct.

Because you have a...

So you're getting a lot less out of it anyway.

You are getting a lot less out of it and that's because you haven't had a proper rain bath.

Yeah. Cool. So temperature of the room between 18 and 19 degrees.

It needs to be cool.

Yep. I just realised I don't really get to sleep all the exercise.

I've just gone for neither the last couple of years.

I feel like we need to acknowledge, I think it's implicit in Joshua's story as he's told, but just to acknowledge parents, who young kids have very little control over any of this stuff, and have probably aren't listening at this point.

Trying to find out.

Yeah, because it's just, you don't really get a say a lot of the time, and you feel the impact every day of lack of sleep.

Let's quickly talk about that because we need to alleviate some concern and fears here.

Our body is incredibly complex and also protective for us.

So where there are young children, yes, you will get lower levels of sleep, but then there are other things going on in a parental body, when you are connecting and attaching to your child and doing the child rearing, which is oxytocin, which is that bond, the oxytocin.

Yeah, it's the attachment, the love hormone, the bond hormone, that's quite protective.

So, that buffers a little bit against a lack of sleep.

And it promotes that sort of protective barrier to our sleep -wake cycle.

I just want to say something around melatonin, if I can.

Melatonin, that is taken as a treatment, as part of a treatment plan to sleep, is used quite often with children and even adults.

We need to understand that melatonin is a hormone so it won't just affect sleep, it will affect other things and one of the other functions of melatonin is that it impacts the reproductive system.

So, for example, high levels of melatonin intake for children has been shown to bring on menstruation a little bit earlier and all that for older people that there is an impact on reproduction if you're taking really high quantities.

So, this is not prescriptive and I am not a pediatrician, I'm not a doctor, but my advice is don't just self -medicate.

Sit with somebody who is specialised in this area so that they can do a full assessment and then use melatonin because melatonin is really important and it's really been shown for some children to work really well.

But it just needs to be contained.

Yeah. And also for parents of neurodivergent kids who, without melatonin their child would get no sleep.

No. And obviously they've seen a pediatrician going through all that and.

And melatonin has shown to work really well with autism spectrum disorder.

Like really well in terms of getting the child to sleep and for the child to have some longevity in that sleep.

Yeah. But it been important to do it with a healthcare professional.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

That is specialised in this area.

Yes. Because if you're giving the wrong dose the wrong timing then it can have adverse effect.

Yeah. How dangerous is it to self -prescribe melatonin then?

Look, the risk is high and the risk is high because self -prescription comes without a treatment plan.

Any type of medication, any type, when it is left without a treatment plan, we can get dosage very wrong and so that that error of dosage then can have really dire consequences and especially if we are loading a system up ongoing in a protracted period for a long period of time but the amount of melatonin that can be prescribed can sometimes be at a disproportionate rate to the amount of natural melatonin that is created in the body to sleep and your suprachiasmatic nucleus is actually going to create the amount of activation in the pineal gland for that pineal gland to produce the amount of melatonin that is required

for you because it's your biology.

So it's pretty complicated stuff.

But just take care and don't take it upon yourself for prescription.

Well said. This is ...

Where to now? Yeah, where to now?

Where to now? Quality, that was quality.

Quantity at hours, regularity.

Regularity, really important.

Do it every night? To do it every night.

To go to sleep at the same time.

Oh okay. Give or take 30 minutes.

Okay. Yeah, give or take 30 minutes.

So if you go to bed at 10 o 'clock, whether you go to bed at 9 .30, maybe quarter past 10 to 10.

But within half an hour, you should be going to bed at the same time.

Because your question, is what happens to sleep debt?

Because humans in, you know, in our world, we like to have short sleeps during the week and then long sleeps during the weekend and we go, well, we'll just catch up on the sleep debt.

Yeah, we've heard of that.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, there is no catching up.

Doesn't work like that.

Yeah, It's not a bank, we don't we can't just put you know sleep coins in and hope that that accumulates and doesn't work like that.

Your body doesn't know it's Saturday.

No. And in fact, you start to really interfere with circadian rhythms, but you are less functional during the week.

And that's why the song I Don't Like Mondays has far more signs behind of what you know, because when you are sleep deprived during the week and you're trying to catch up on sleep debt, then that circadian cycle is not working for you.

And so you are more likely to experience significant mood disturbance.

I've got a feeling everyone listening to this is going to have their own specific questions to their own specific life.

I know. So, I'm trying to kind of think of all the different people and one type of person that's coming to mind is the shift worker who works throughout the night.

Or even, it's been documented that through history, lots of artists will do their best work at 3am and they'll get up at 2 and they'll work through the night and they'll sleep in the day and they have a, I think Picasso at a very specific, you know, routine like that.

But what is, and I'm assuming it's not good, but to talk about it, what is the effect of people who do work throughout the night when it's dark and the sun's not out and then sleep when the sun is out?

So let's just start by saying we need these people and we are so indebted to the service that they provide for us.

Can you imagine you're bleeding and you can't call an ambulance, or that someone's breaking into your home and you can't call the police at three o 'clock in the morning?

We require a society that works and is functional.

We also know that people who work in high adverse occupations are more likely to be at risk of adverse responses to trying to be nocturnal.

And so, yes there are those costs, but the beautiful Michael Mosley did this beautiful study for a number of years.

and he said, how can we protect our emergency service workers?

So one of the things that he found is looking at gut health, which is really important, and that's a big story and one for another time, but he looked at gut health and what he found was that when we sleep, we're not eating.

So that actually helps promote, it quietens the organs so that the organs can reset.

So what he did is that he said, well, what if we asked our emergency service workers to not eat during their shift and that became protective.

That actually became protective.

Why is that the case?

It's really interesting because when we allow our bodies to have a non -digestive period, what that does is that it reduces the activation in that area and it allows that space to then be supportive of better health because we are not consistently loading it and consistently asking it to be processing.

But there is also another word that I can't think of that has escaped me when you don't eat there is that period of what?

Ketosis? No. Yes, yes.

Yeah? Yes, yes, yes.

Oh, Josh. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There is that period of ketosis that just allows the body to replenish reset and because our digestive system is so closely linked, there is an access between our gut and our brain then that plays a really big part in it being protective.

And so that fasting period is something that we are seeing research talk more and more about.

What also is incredibly useful is your level of resilience.

So psychologically, if you have And there is greater psychological health that is also protective of your – The lack of sleep?

The lack of sleep. Oh wow.

Okay. So learning how to manage your stress during the day, learning how to manage that level of stress in your workplace, means that you are not oxidising your body as much.

And so you are being a lot more protective.

Is that to link it to the – The debris.

The debris that causes inflammation in the brain.

Is that because maintaining a higher level of stress and ill mental health throughout the day increases the amount of waste, Karash.

Yes. And also people who suffer symptoms of anxiety and depression are more likely to have sleep problems.

Yeah. And see how that then becomes a cycle.

Yeah. You know, so you go, well, what do we treat?

Do we treat the sleep, or do we treat the symptoms?

And you go, well, no, you actually need to do both because as people we're holistic beings.

Yeah. You know, we are not this sleep entity and we are this wake entity.

Yeah, absolutely. You've just triggered a bit of an area that I just want to talk about just quickly.

When we, when we wake in the morning, we finish our last rim, and then we go to wake.

What brings us to wake is that the melatonin starts to come down, but what brings us to wake is a big surge of cortisol and also some epinephrine.

hormone. That is analogous to feeling anxious.

There are people who will say, why is it that I wake up in the morning and I'm feeling anxious?

Can we not say that?

Can we just say, I'm waking up in the morning and I've just had a surge of cortisol?

And that's why I'm feeling like that.

Because if you tell yourself that you are starting off anxious, your brain's gonna go, we need to be anxious.

Because cortisol and that epinephrine, that surge that happens is what happens during an episode of anxiety.

Now, if you have a history of experiencing those symptoms, you're really sensitive to that, right?

And so you'll go to bed, being replenished, suddenly, the surge of cortisol, because that's what the suprachiasmatic nucleus does, suddenly, the sun comes in and it goes, now we need to bring in our wake system.

And our racism is a surge of cortisol and we get norepinephrine in the brain.

And suddenly you feel all of those symptoms that are the same as you would feel if you are anxious.

And so your brain goes, oh, I must, oh, I've woken up anxious.

No, you've woken up from sleep.

It's just that you are experiencing and you're sensitive to these levels of cortisol.

Because then what we do is we feel the anxiety and then we attach it to the thing in our life that is traditionally caused anxiety.

And so then we're thinking about that like, I must be anxious about that.

Correct, and now we've done an association and our brain is highly associative, so we're actually teaching ourselves to identify and remain within that anxious state.

That's really good to know because I think like people, if you wake up to know that it's most probably the cortisol.

Well, it is because yeah, well, your body, your discoball is saying, time to wake up and we're going to wake you up and you need a big surge to wake you up.

So, up comes the cortisol and all of a sudden, oh, you're awake.

Now, if you are tuned into that, super tuned into that, you're going to misread what that's about.

It kind of reminds me of Dr. Emm talk, I think it was in Social Anxiety when she talked, and she was quoting another psychologist, about the feeling of anxiousness before a social thing, a social event, butterflies in your tummy, and getting your butterflies in formation.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

That great line. And I kind of feel like there's a version of that for the start of the day, of getting in and just getting my butterflies in formation.

Yeah. All your butterflies are coming in and they're fluttering to get you awake, and then suddenly they will rest.

Yeah, that's getting information.

Rest them. Yeah, so we're up, we're ready for the day.

Okay, so regularity, and then the final one.

Timing. So timing is about the research around chronology.

The way we sleep, the length of time we sleep is actually genetically predetermined.

So you may be more of a night owl, you may be more of a morning person.

If you are sleeping in alignment with your chronology, you're going to get the best sleep ever.

If you're sleeping against your chronology, then that's going to sort of interfere with really good sleep.

But that's a very big area.

And if you go on to Matt Walker's side, he actually has a QQ RT assessment that you can do.

And it takes like three minutes, two minutes.

QQ RTQ? Yes, yes, QQ RTQ.

Yeah. Some people say that they have a very good outside if they have like a gummy, like...

Like a weed gummy? Yeah, like a weed.

From everything we've just said, I'm going to say they don't actually.

They feel more calm before… Or sedated.

…and sedation is not… …actually lead to a better sleep.

So what that does is that it sedates you, but sedation is not sleep.

Okay. Similar to alcohol.

Similar to alcohol.

Yeah. Similar to some sleeping pills too.

So when you are taking external substances, you will get to sedation, but you won't nearly as much REM significantly reduces the REM significantly.

And so you're significantly reducing brain processing during that time.

And so, you know, the synaptic strengthening isn't there, the holding and processing of memories aren't there, and also the emotional load.

So you're going to need more of those gummy bears to feel better during the day because of the mood dysregulation.

Because remember REM sleep is your emotional therapist.

So for anyone out there who is reliant on whether it's gummies or alcohol or sleep medication, if they're hearing this and thinking I need to stop or I want to wean my way up and how do they approach that?

I really like that question because the question directs us to immediately to focus on, let's think about an intervention around improving the sleep.

Again, there is a duality to this.

You don't want to be taking something away and not replacing it with something.

Thinking about what is it that is happening for you during the day that you feel like you need to add those substances to your life.

So this is an overall treatment plan.

So you would be working with somebody, a GP, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, to be looking at what are the things that are occurring for you in your life or during your day that require your attention, that may need some interventional response that will then help you just reduce those substances.

So you can't just remove a substance completely and hoping that you're going to improve sleep.

sleep. And you can do that, you can go cold turkey, but there are going to be lots of side effects.

You will have huge difficulty sleeping because you've removed those substances from your system.

I mean you're not getting good sleep as it is.

But you're going to get a massive influx of anxiety and worry and rumination that really interferes with that.

So you've got to be prepared for those things, which means finding interventions to help you manage them.

But you would but they would be gradual again.

I think a GP and a specialist needs to be working with that.

I can see why you gave such a fantastic disclaimer at the start about this being descriptive and not prescriptive, because there's so many factors that would interplay to a specific scenario.

So I imagine if you, if you can't sleep at all, or you have really massive trouble getting to sleep, then some kind of sleeping aid may be good to at least get you something.

But if you depend, it's so specific to every single scenario and then there's a cost, there's always going to be a cost analysis across your entire holistic life.

And I'm really glad you said that Josh, because the information today is not just this generic application.

There are so many other variables, things that are happening in people's lives, you know, where they're finding themselves in really difficult situation because that's life.

you are going to really struggle to sleep, but be kind to yourself.

You know, this whole area of self -compassion is really important.

You know, some of my clients who find it really hard to fall asleep start to worry about not being able to sleep and that that, we call that type two worry.

So type one worries, where you're worrying about something specific.

Type two is when you worry about the worry.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So type two worry is what we see in insomnia, Where I worry about not getting to sleep but so much so that my ability to even relax about the thought about going to sleep is so disrupted, and that in itself will actually completely interfere and significantly disturb a good night's sleep.

So, I mean there's obviously so many people who and Hugh is such a good thing to bring up the THC gummies and a lot of people who would be eating them would be doing that because they've got anxious thoughts running through their head and it's just, I've got to quiet these thoughts and then and then at least I can get through the night.

So if it's not a good idea to have the gummies or any sort of sedation technique, are they different for everyone, but what sort of techniques can people use if they are having anxious thoughts while they're lying in bed staring at the ceiling, their partners falling asleep and they're all by themselves.

This is a very big area because now we're starting to talk about the role that anxiety plays in our lives or depression or any type of mood disorder.

It's really important for us to know that at the moment what our society is experiencing is a lack of capacity to be reflective.

So we talk about, are you receptive or are you reflective.

And receptive is that when I wake up in the morning, pick up my phone and I start to receive information, or that I wake up and I'm on calls and I'm starting, yeah, what we're doing at the moment as humans is that we are relying, or we are favouring An influx of information so that we can become informed, but being informed doesn't mean you're better because you've got to put some of that into action.

And if all I'm doing is receiving information and trying to process because I value intellect or I value information and information is vital by the way, but then I'm not stopping to reflect, your brain actually isn't processing any of that.

And it's just being beaten by all of this information that's coming in.

So during the day, it's really important to have reflection time and that's the role of the default mode network.

But that's probably a conversation for another time but the difference of being receptive and choosing to have reflection because if you have, if you have periods of reflection during the day, and it's a particular state that the brain goes into, where you're not receiving information.

You're wandering, your brain wanders, you are daydreaming, you're sitting not doing much and your brain is just allowed to rest is the time where parts of this brain that we call the default mode network come into plane becomes really creative and it links ideas to the information and suddenly you go I've just had this really good idea that happens in the morning when you wake up, because your brain's clean, and it's held on to all these memories.

But we need to have periods during the day where we are being reflective, so that we can process that, so that we're not loading all of the processing to our sleep.

So, this is exactly what you just described, and I didn't realise the science of it, you know, while it was happening, but for long time listeners of the show, you'll know that there was a period of time where I didn't have a smartphone.

phone. Like I didn't, I used a flip phone for like 220 days, whatever it was.

And, so it meant that when I was walking or I was anywhere outside of the house or over my computer, I had no access to any information except for text messages and phone calls.

And so I find myself unlike, unlike the previous 15 years of my life, I would walk without a podcast or any music, or I wouldn't have any news or social media or anything.

And so, I just found myself just walking, and just with nothing to do.

Which sounds crazy that that's so novel, but it kind of is.

And what would happen in those times is, I would feel that what I'm, what you're describing is, that was reflecting.

That was like time to reflect.

And like now, I mean now, I'm relatively good with my phone use, I think.

But But when do we have time for reflection now?

Like, it's actually – actually, for most people, I cannot think of a time in the day until we go to sleep where we have any time for reflection.

And this is just it.

I have a beautiful dog that I love more than any other member of my family.

No. Tonka, like the truck.

Yeah. Because he bulldozes.

I take out that lead and he loses his mind, but then I do too.

And I walk with no music, no interference, it's just him and, you know, him and I.

And if he wants to run, we do a run, stops for a sniff.

I'm not pulling him, I'm going, you sniff the tree, because this is your time too.

And we have this beautiful synchronisation, just of mind and energy where we are really enjoying our environment and really aligning to that.

And I can do that for 30 minutes.

I can do that for an hour.

And I can tell you when I during those walks, I have the best ideas.

I have the most insightful little sort of thoughts about something that's happened.

And then suddenly I'm almost problem solving.

But not purposefully.

We need to make time for that.

We need to make time for those periods.

And you've worded in a really great memorable way, like reflect, first receive.

So much of us will spend the majority of our day receiving.

And we need to spend more time.

I think it's so great to remember front of mind for all of us.

This is not an exact science, you are never going to do any sleep exactly and you're not meant to because life...

Well, perfectly, because life fluctuates and that's just the way it is.

But know that your brain and your body is so protective of you that as long as you are self -caring and looking after yourself and that you are doing everything that you can to care for your biology to the best of your ability, everything else will fall into place As long as you are honoring the sleep and you're honoring your fitness and your connections because they are the really big things about, you know, wellbeing.

You're moving in the right direction.

It's not about perfect, but it is about getting as much of that as you can.

So before we wrap up, Hugh mentioned RFA, which was resilience first aid training, which you run and we've all done.

It's 2 days of basically, the sleep part of it is a section of that, but there is so much more to it because of course, sleep is a small part of resilience, but it is an incredible thing.

Can you just explain to those who don't know what – if I didn't do a good job of explaining it, maybe you can do a better job.

No, you did a great job of explaining.

It's a 2 -day fully -certified course, which, by the way, has just been certified by the American Academy of Medical, Continuing, Professional Development.

So that's really huge.

And, you know, and we've just published a paper, peer review paper on the, thank you, alongside Yuri.

But the course is two days where it teaches the core skills and practical strategies and domains of resilience, but it does so much more than that.

We really look quite deeply at self -regulation, we look quite deeply at those six domains and why those six domains exist.

But what we do in Resilience First Aid that is vastly different from any other program is that we introduce what we call conversations of care and those conversations of care are built around the default mode network and our ability for reflection.

Because when we teach structured conversations as to how to connect and how to help ourselves and other people reflect on what it is that they are being consumed by, you are reducing the load of leaving all of that for sleep.

So the entire program, based on neuroscience, has a profound impact on developing an understanding Sending an insight and a skill set, practical skill sets that allow us to bring it into everyday life.

It is not an intervention.

It is how to improve the quality of how we use our touchpoints of how we create well -being within ourselves and then support others to do the same.

It's so good. I just think like, you know, it would be such a great thing if you could take your staff or if you've got a company or colleagues or it's just such, particularly those conversations of care.

Is that what you're talking about?

That activity was probably my biggest takeaway from the two days.

It was so practical and I was immediately using it in my actual life.

It's just so accessible.

And so simple. And so simple, and you get to hang out with Maria for two days.

That's pretty cool.

And I take you on all my tangents.

Yeah, the tangents are great.

Tangents are the best bit.

Just learn to write really quickly.

Write that down. Just write that down.

Well, this has been highly educational.

Yeah, some would say life changing.

Yes, it will be for many.

Again, a huge thank you because you do, I mean, you could do this with no preparation.

I know you could, but you do do such preparation for us anyway.

So, we really, from the bottom of our hearts, we are so grateful for the time you put into this because it will help so many people.

It will change so many people's eyes, Ryan's spot on.

So thank you so much, Maria.

My pleasure. And thank you for giving this topic a space because at the moment, this topic is pertinent to a lot of people's lives.

And if we can increase the education just a little bit, that the information that comes in, we can place in our mind.

That itself becomes an intervention.

And I also want to say one other thing.

there is so much information out there on everything that I've spoken about.

Matt Walker's book, Looking Up YouTubes, and I've got some links to research papers but what I'd like for people to think about is, rather than just an intervention to reduce the anxiety of sleeping, maybe we just spend some time listening and reflecting on some of the things that are important to help create and induce good sleep and place our minds on what we can do rather than what we need to worry about.

So, rather than worrying about not getting enough sleep, maybe thinking about what are some things that I can bring into my life that will allow me to just look after myself better.

That's it. And not think about sleep specifically, although for some people you need to.

But I just wanted to raise that.

What's that? Amazing, Maria.

Thank you, Maria. So good to see you.

Pleasure. That was awesome.

Thanks for having me.

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The Imperfects is hosted and produced by Hugh Van Carlenberg, Ryan Shelton and Josh Van Carlenberg.

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[The Science of Sleep: Understanding Biological Imperfection with Maria Ruberto]-[Maria Ruberto - Sleep Your Way To Your Top]

📋 Summary

Unlocking the Science of Sleep: Biological Imperative and Psychological Restoration

The Biological Basics: Circadian Rhythms and the 'Vampire Hormone'

Adenosine and Sleep Pressure

The Architecture of Sleep: Non-REM and REM Cycles

Practical Sleep Hygiene: The QQRT Framework

Reflection vs. Reception

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript