There's a really big hype going on right now on hydrogen water.

What is your take on this?

I can speak pretty well on this actually, but does seem at this point to potentially have some sort of an antioxidant benefit.

Is it better than any regular antioxidant?

I don't know.

Talk to me about sleep.

We are spending globally 60 plus billion a year on sleep and it is getting worse.

The question is why?

I'm Doctor Andy Galpin.

I am a human performance scientist.

I was hired as a professor at 27 and then was promoted to full professor at 36.

You mentioned heart rate variability.

It's become quite a big topic now of conversation.

Is this a good indicator of health or not?

Because mine's always very low.

Yeah.

Should I be worried?

No.

OK.

Low doesn't mean anything.

My advice with HIV is you should pay attention to it.

The variability is what matters.

But if people want to increase their HIV, what would you suggest?

Nothing will improve HIV more than sleep.

How should we be looking at our sleep levels?

You'll never find one explanation for why sleep is still getting worse, but one of the things to consider are the environmental factors.

If you have this light spring thing that's happening throughout the globe, you have this CO2 stuff in people's rooms because we're living in more concentrated areas.

Because a lot of people wake up at like 2-3 AM and can't get to sleep.

Super comedy.

It's actually like pretty easy to fix.

Really, what do people do?

One of the biggest ones is actually.

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This helps the show more than you can imagine.

It means the world to help growing this show and you all know that.

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Thank you.

I think like starting at the beginning for most people.

I think that's where I always like to start when it comes to health.

What I've seen and what I know from people that write into the show is that people really want to to live well.

They really have.

Most people have the urge to think they're doing the right thing, to want to do as much as they can, even if they don't have very much.

But where would you say most people should start if they want to to have good performance and live well and be well, which is the whole reason I named the show that.

Yeah, sure.

Well, I think the fact that they're listening, tuning in, following on social media already says they want that step.

Yeah.

And whether they realize it or not, they're going to take that step because they've already made the big step, which is to care.

Now, what do you do?

My journal advice here is find the thing that is what we call the biggest performance anchor.

So imagine that we're maybe not here in London, but imagine if we were in San Francisco or some other city that has a lot of up and downs and you're driving your car down the hill and you want to go faster.

People's first inclination is to hit the gas pedal, the accelerator.

But my first coaching step is, let me look at the brake first, because if you are going down the road and you're going downhill and then you hit the accelerator, you will go faster.

But if your left foot is on the brake, you'll go faster, but not as fast as you could.

And two, you're going to put more wear and tear in your car.

You're going to break down sooner.

And so the first step to going faster is actually just removing that anchor, that brace.

What is that?

What's hitting that brake pedal?

And if we can move that, you'll go faster and you'll have less wear and tear.

And then if you want to go faster on top of that, now we can hit the accelerator where most people start with, you know, in the the shorter version, the rapid fire question you asked about hacks and tips and things, those mostly fall into the accelerator category.

And they're awesome if you're truly at that level.

But what are the foot on your brakes?

They're different for everyone.

These anchors are the things that you hate the most about yourself.

That's within your control.

The thing that is actually legitimately your worst health activity or habit or status.

And don't do anything else besides that a goal.

Deal with that.

Now, maybe this is obesity, maybe this is mental health, Maybe this is a a eating practice or a micronutrient or like, what is the thing that you're struggling the most with?

And go do that.

And so if your sole focus is simply saying, OK, it's my body composition I don't like the most, like, OK, then that is your first health practice.

It is maybe your body composition is fine, but you think it is.

And maybe really this is a mental health fine.

Go address that, whatever our case is.

And I'm really truly saying that as a not a non answer, it's a genuine answer because I coach a lot of people and this I'm telling you, this is the exact approach we take.

And I coach professional athletes in every sport, the highest paid contracts in the NFL, in golf, in baseball, the Cy Young winners, the, the MVPS.

And we coach a load of regular humans too, men, women, 30, 50 years old, seven years old, like we coach a ton of them.

This is the exact system we use.

I, I can't be more direct and honest with that answer when I say we have changed countless lives.

I, I think I said earlier about climbing Mount Everest.

We had somebody that did that like no athletic background, no nothing.

And we got him to Mount Everest.

We've had tons of just general people who are like starting their fitness journey, right.

I don't know what to do at all.

And I'm just started and I went, OK, fine.

So we have these like elite high performers.

That's what like I love the most personally and that's what I do.

But within the people that I have directly and we are still coaching, we've done this.

Like this is exactly what we do.

And we're not perfect, but we've had a lot of success because that's where we start.

If our aptitude, whether you're it is your money or your time or your resources or your mental bandwidth or your grit allows you one particular goal, always start with the thing that's the biggest thorn in your side.

And just if that takes a year, I don't really care because if we think about it took a year, but now I'm got this thing that's been driving me nuts for 10 years, 1520 years out of the way, we got the next 30 to start going to chase accelerators.

Like we just have to think on a little bit of a larger timeline with this and more be more realistic.

So we always give our clients, of course, you know, six week and six month goals, but we also put them year long programs and then decade long programs so that they understand.

Hey, look, I know you're concerned about AB and C, but the reality of it is this is your biggest problem over here.

It's D Give us the six months and then we'll come back, we'll get you AB and C.

But if we can unlock this thing over here, this is immediate versus delayed gratification stuff, right?

So this is your sleep or whatever your case is.

That's that's where we're going to go now.

Like candidly can get pretty complicated figuring out what that performance anchor really, really is.

But I guess maybe the lesson we could distill the most out of this is try to be a little more focused when people do 30 or 40 things or maybe even 3 or 4.

And this is also classic like marketing and everything, right?

You say 12 things, no one does anything.

If you say one really clear thing, someone might do it.

So use that message on yourself.

Like this is my thing.

I'm just working on this.

I'm just working there like a really specific singular focus.

You have much more likelihood of success by doing that.

Now, last thing I'll say on that is sometimes people have to RIP the Band-Aid off with lifestyle.

And it's like, all right, I got a clean house because I can't just work out because my eating is also terrible.

And that's when I eat bad, then I don't want to work.

Oh, OK.

Like, I get it.

Sometimes we got to like RIP the lifestyle off the Band-Aid, but in that particular case, it's still one thing.

It is saying I'm overhauling lifestyle like that's still, you can still do it, distill it down to one goal.

I'm not worried about body comp.

I'm not worried about this.

Like I'm just cleaning house.

And so I'm going to not be around this friend anymore.

I'm going to not do this thing at night anymore.

I've got to work on fine life, but I'm overhauling lifestyle and the results will come later because I know this is the right process.

So we will still frame that as like 1 focus for now.

And this would be an action focus versus an outcome focus, but we'd still call that one thing.

It really reminds me actually of work where I always try and do my hardest thing in the morning, like the focus on the and the thing that I always want to put off.

But actually if I just sit down and do it and I commit time to it, then it doesn't feel that hard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's the one thing that if you finished today, would make your life better?

Exactly.

Right, this is classic Tim Ferriss.

Right.

Yes, yeah.

Just nail it right?

So I read, and maybe that was me rereading it incorrectly on X former Twitter, that you had this profound gratitude at becoming a professor so young.

And you wrote in that tweet that, you know, you were on food stamps when you were growing up and now being a full professor at 27 or 28.

And I think you wrote that at 36, you had this, like, immense amount of gratitude.

So I kind of just want to start there.

I would love you to just tell everyone who you are and like share a part of your story.

Sure.

I'm Doctor Andy Galpin.

I am a human performance scientist.

And yeah, I was hired as a professor at 27.

I obtained tenure, I think at 32 and then was promoted to full professor at 36.

So pretty crazy considering I think the, the post you're referring to is, was when I was promoted to full professor.

And that means a little bit different things in different areas of the world.

But in the states where, where I work, that's there, there's kind of you start off as an assistant professor.

Once you're promoted and you achieve tenure, you're called an associate and then the highest achievement you can get is full professor.

And so that was the post I made once I was a promoter to that level and why I made that for, for plenty of reasons of gratitude.

But I didn't even know what a professor was when I was a kid.

And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know what a PhD was.

I didn't know any scientists.

I didn't know any lawyers.

I didn't know any doctors.

Like I didn't know anybody like that.

And so it was, this is whole new world going into, it wasn't like I, I grew up in the country and it's just like we farmed hay and we logged and we just like did things like that.

And man, if somebody had their own gutter company, it was like, oh, that person made it, you know, like, like that was a huge thing where I'm from.

And then then did like have all these academic achievements and to be a doctor.

I'm like, well, like, how did this all happen?

So always have and always be super grateful and fortunate for all that.

So how did you get into it?

You know, when I read like going from food stamps to a full professor, I mean, it's an amazing journey and it's so inspirational.

But I how did you get there?

Well, because I grew up in the country, you know, my parents, like, like everyone I grew up with, I was super fortunate in the sense that, you know, my parents were super positive.

There's no anger, no violence, no alcoholism, like there's nothing like that around.

But we were country kids.

And so it was sort of like, hey, all those city people have advantages.

They got all this stuff and like, we don't even know what to say because you don't even know how to describe it because you're just like, they got just things we don't have right.

And so there's a little envy and admiration.

It's but my parents were like, do whatever you want to me and my brother and my sisters, but you're not going to do what we did, right?

So you guys can be teachers or coaches, like whatever the heck.

You don't care what you do, but you're not going to have to have to live the lifestyle that we had to do.

So my dad was a construction worker and you know, my mom did whatever waitress and like all these things and then try to raise children.

And and so there was in that two things were instilled and there were words that were different, but it took me many years to realize those words didn't matter.

What mattered was the two foundational principles that they gave me, which was one, hard work in the sense that the city kids got everything else.

And so if you want to compete with them, you have to work harder than them.

Everyone I grew up was like that.

All my friends, my coaches, we all were cleaning horse stalls before going to school and then we're going to football practice and then after that we're going home and cleaning more stalls.

Like that's just a super normal thing.

Or I came from like the hours my parents worked.

I, I wish I could say like I'm disciplined like, but I don't know anything different like, and everyone I grew up with was that same way.

And things like stealing and cheating were like biggest sins where I was from, Like you could have nothing, you could lose, you could do whatever.

Fine, people more talented that happens.

But being out prepared or finding shortcuts like these were the cardinal sins.

So that was all just work hard, right?

It was if you lose because you're under prepared, that's embarrassing.

If you lose because you got tired, that's embarrassing.

If you lose and you have to take from somebody else, that's embarrassing because that's all just saying, you know, philosophically, you didn't work You you had the ability to work harder and you didn't.

That's your fault.

So I was fortunate where that kind of environment was a positive thing for me.

That was empowering.

That wasn't demeaning to me or that wasn't like put that wasn't empowering.

Like, hell yeah.

I have the ability to to do what I want.

If I just work hard, Great.

Super inspirational.

I'm very aware that's not always the case for other people in situations like that.

Sometimes it's the opposite and they're being held down and but for me, it was totally empowering for my personality and my siblings.

The other thing they gave me was ambition.

It was I wanted to want more because they told me I should want to want more.

And when you combine hard work and ambition, that that's everything I have.

And then of course, an enormous amount of luck along the way, like in every facet of everything, but that's really all they gave me.

And the words they used were go to college.

And the words they used were have a real job.

Like they didn't know anything about college.

They didn't know what it really was, but it that was their way of going ambition and the the city kids, the losing sports.

That was their way of saying just work hard, right?

And so again, I had to translate that later in life to go, Oh, I get it.

And so I had that and they said, you're going to college no matter what, again, for ambition purposes.

And so I said, all right, I was talented at sports.

I played college football.

I knew I was going to have that ability to play college sports.

And now I had to figure out like what I was going to do with my life with that.

I didn't want to be a sport coach.

I didn't want to be a a strength conditioning coach or a trainer.

But I like if I can be in this world somehow, what would that be?

And so once I got to college, my own abilities were mediocre.

And this was great because this meant if I did things really well training wise, recovery wise, nutrition wise, then this was going to directly translate into more playing time, more accolades, like more reward.

If I didn't though, any day of the week, some kid could have shown up from the one of the the big Division One schools, which happen all the time to us and take my spot and I was gone.

And where I'm from, kids don't go to college period.

And they definitely don't go to college and play sports.

So I was terrified of losing that.

And so my entire goal in college was personally just to get as good as I possibly could.

So I'm like, I'm going to learn exercise, science and Physiology, whatever.

It's like I want to train more because I want to play football.

That's like as far as really I had to go mentally.

And then it was very easy for me at the time to tell a story of saying, well, you're learning more about Physiology and science and stuff like that's going to be valuable, right?

I don't know, because no one where I'm from knows that stuff like that's just cool number one and great.

So then after that, I, I will shorten the story, I guess at this point, but it was just trying to figure out, OK, now how do I make this a profession?

And so being able to craft that, I was able to look at the landscape and, and see that I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of sports.

And I was already coaching professional athletes at probably age 2223, really elite level All Stars, top draft picks in the state's Major League Baseball players, NFL players.

So I felt like like strength conditioning, I really understood really quickly, but I didn't see anybody who had that same knowledge and also understood molecular science and biology and biochemistry and Physiology.

So I thought, man, I have this down.

Let me kind of walk away from this a little bit, this strength conditioning piece and let me go explore more muscle Physiology and biochemistry and let me go as high as I can go with that and get a PhD in that.

If I do that, I can walk out having this combination of two things, which is I can directly coach people on the floor.

I can put together and have put together training programs for people to clown, literally climb Mount Everest, to win UFC World Championships, to win the Olympics in in many different sports.

I can do those training programs and have and physically coach those people on the floor.

At the same time.

I can develop entirely new biochemical methods of measuring single proteins and single muscle fibers.

That's going to be a valuable skill set to combine.

And so I did that and that turned out to to really launch this entire career that I've created, which is what I do now to this day.

So that is the long version of of really how I got here.

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I think that's so inspiring because I think you said two things at the beginning, which I feel has like kind of streamed through into your work, which is consistency and hard work.

But you, you talk about this a lot.

You know, I think what I love about the word that you do is it can be so into the details.

And into the specifics, but it's also very broad to the masses where it's like actually forget the overwhelm where we are.

Start with these simple things and consistency and hard work are like 2 of the things that you talk a lot about.

And I feel like that's actually just been innate within you since you were a child.

Yeah, again, I wish I could take credit.

Like I wish I could be like, oh, here's a like, I don't know any different.

Like I really don't know any different.

I'm going to get lazy and everything like everybody else does.

Of course, I know plenty of people that work way harder than I do.

But yeah, like that was, that was a foundational principle that I, I may be the easiest way to to grasp.

It is I don't know that I'm any better at executing those things than anybody else, but I don't have any other setting that says you should care about something more.

That is the thing that's like, that is my ground truth of like it's something I really care about and I don't know why.

Well, I, I know, I know why.

So I never have to go back when or thinking about whether I should care about that.

I always know I should have some again, I fail a lot and like whatever, but I'm, I don't have to question whether or not that's a principle worth striving for.

I want to add one more little thing, if I may.

Yeah, something I think is really important on this journey is, you know, I have the my PhD in human bio energetics and I mentioned I've done some stuff like biochemically and in the molecular science side of the world, but I was terrified of all that stuff as an undergrad.

I was terrified to take chemistry.

I got AC in chemistry like as an exercise scientist, right.

And then I got into my masters and I'm like, how do I avoid biochemistry?

I don't think I can pass like I'm little was terrified.

I'm like, I don't think I can pass this class.

And then getting in a PhD program, like when it got into the exercise science classes, I'm like, OK, fine.

Like I'll be all right here, all right, because training stuff.

And then when it came into the any like the genetics courses, the molecular bio stuff, I'm just like literally going like, I'm not going to pass these classes and just barely getting by on all of them.

And I think that's important.

I always really want to share that because I almost didn't get in the field at all because I was simply terrified of taking chemistry as an undergrad thinking like I'm not going to pass this.

And literally I barely did.

Like I barely got through.

So those words were terrifying to me.

Those courses were terrifying to me.

And I was just very lucky.

I had a combination of two other things.

One like enormous arrogance and just being like, like, I'll figure it out, right?

And I had some other people that were with me, Doug Larson, my 20 plus year friend, just being like, dude, you like, doesn't matter.

Like we're going to go do it or whatever.

But had he not been there, I wouldn't have done it.

And like my career path would have changed.

And then many people along the way of with similar things.

So if you ever have something in your way like that, I just can't recommend enough to go after it because I would never be here had I not.

And I barely got through.

And now I have an entire company that does biochemistry and we do like all these things.

And I'm telling you right now, if you have article, I never took organic chemistry.

Like I never took it.

I luckily got away.

I remember actually getting my PhD program and they're like, oh, you haven't taken O chem yet.

You have to go back and take it.

And I was like, OK, but I'm, I admitted and they're like, yeah, you're in the program, but just take it before you get here.

And I was like, and I didn't take it and then nobody double checked and I was like, sweet.

So like I never took organic as I was like, I can't.

And I almost for sure knew I couldn't pass organic chemistry.

So when, when you look at people that are like have degrees and accolades and stuff like I have, they're probably not that much more than you.

And I promise you if you are to take an IQ test or anything else, like you guys would find me very average to below average.

My wife would hammer me and has hammered me on every cognitive test we've ever done in my life.

And she's an elementary school special Ed teacher.

So I, I don't like, I don't want anyone to think titles or jobs or things like that are too outside of their stretch.

I reiterate, I got super lucky in a bunch of different ways of my life.

I worked really damn hard and I just did it for a long time.

I don't think those three things are that obtainable for most people in this position, so I hope that that message lands.

It really does, listening to you.

So I remember going to my biochemistry classes after changing my career.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I graduated school not feeling that intelligent because I didn't realize I was neurodivergent.

And so I just zoned out of a lot of my classes at school because I didn't understand how my brain worked and I had ADHD and dyslexia.

And so you can imagine doing biochem with dyslexia.

I mean, I renamed so many enzymes.

And I think I, you know, I remember just switching a career that I had a successful career in a completely different industry when I was young and going, it was like a Legally Blonde moment, like walking into, into the, into the class and sitting in biochem and being like, I don't, this is Japanese and immediately wanting to drop.

And it wasn't until I had a talk with my professor six weeks later that she told me that she thought, you know, I was dyslexic and actually to take me through that process.

And that changed my life.

And I think a lot of people, and I know this, I could look up to a lot of people and think, oh, they've just got it really easy.

But it's actually, I worked so goddamn hard to get through that degree, to get through my biochemistry exams and all of my lectures.

And it didn't come easy.

But now it doesn't feel easy.

But now it's more easier because I've done it for 10 years.

So I understand that landscape so much more.

But for me, it was complete.

I mean, no one from my family came from science.

So if it was completely foreign to me, I had no one else to ask.

So I remember just being like, I don't know how I'm going to get through this, but the like the determination to get through was kind of proving it to myself rather than anyone else that I could do it.

And I think it's so important to have these conversations because even me listening to you saying that is an amazing thing for me to hear that I wasn't just on on my own going through that revelation myself.

And I think that's the thing.

Those hardest moments actually have the best outcomes because when you have grit and when you really work hard, you know, getting that scroll when I pass biochem and getting first, which I thought was just unattainable for me and was better than any job I'd ever done in my life.

That was a big thing is unexplainable.

Exactly.

So one thing I also think that I love that you speak about is your nervous system, and I think that gets overlooked a lot when it gets to health.

How important is that when it comes to health and performance?

Well, I actually think we have done a disservice by teaching the broad people to focus on systems and Physiology because the reality of it is, number one, I'm a muscle guy, so I always think muscle is more important than the nervous system.

Always.

But whether it's your immune system or lymphatic system or endocrine system, it doesn't really know that it's a system and it doesn't care.

It's interacting, it's all working together.

You can't, it's really hard to separate out your nervous system from your Anetron system or that from your muscle system.

And so I think maybe I'll just translate what you're saying a little bit more.

The way that I would maybe position that question is more like we have an allostatic load, we have a general stress load and we'll sometimes we'll call this nervous system, but it is far more than just the nervous system per SE.

It is a way of saying we have to appreciate and recognize the totality of things going on in our Physiology has a net sum and you may not realize what's adding, contributing, or deleting from that net sum.

We will break these down into what we call visible stressors and hidden stressors and stressors.

Reminder does not mean bad like stressor, just like stressors are what cause adaptation, stressors what make you happy.

Stressors are what like improve your physical health, right?

So this is like a very much a good thing.

But you have visible stressors, which are things that you are aware of.

You see, you feel, you know, you didn't eat today, you know you ate too much today, you know you had a cigarette today.

You know, like you will know and get a visceral response to these things.

Hidden stressors are doing the same, positive or negative to the same or even a more extent, but you won't directly know them so you don't necessarily know your vitamin C is getting low.

No one wakes up and goes oh God glutathione is just off today like you have.

You have no idea.

Right.

I'd love if they did, but yeah.

But they might go like, man, I have a headache or I'm just brain fogged.

Like what is going like you won't know them.

And so you may you may not even have a physical sensation, by the way, like you could just be happening and you don't know what's there.

And so when we like, we want to think about this is everything has a, a tax to it.

And in Physiology, there's no free passes.

Everything you're doing if it's going on or in your body, if it is an action you're taking, it's, you're going to pay some price to that.

And we just have to be a little bit more strategic and meticulous with understanding that cost.

And so there are various tools that people will use that give you an estimate of that total allostatic load.

And most of those tools measure the nervous system.

That's my very like long winning answer to saying that is why I got there is they're trying to approximate an estimate and saying what is the total physiological load in this person right now?

And if it's high or low, you don't necessarily know why.

So it's a non specific measure.

It could be emotional or mental stress.

It could be physical, could be environmental, could be something in the air like it could be, you wouldn't know, but it's saying, OK, we're going to measure the quote UN quote nervous system typically as something like resting heart rate, reaction time, vertical jump, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, there's eye movement, there's lots of insulin markers, glucose markers.

There's lots of ways we can measure that.

And we would generally call those like a nervous system one, but they're not really that they're, they're a systemic load management system.

And so the last part about that is people will tend to pay attention to that a lot because they're wanting to either understand total status, which is a way to say like, do I need to recover more now?

Do I need to back off more in my shot?

Like, can I, can I learn something about my Physiology that maybe I'm overloading or, or ignoring because I'm not in tune of my Physiology or I'm expressing too much grit right now and something's going to break, so I want to stop that from happening.

Or as a prognostic tool, such as to say, we know when you get to X level, then you start making less progress, you start getting hurt more, you start having more emotional blow UPS.

And so let's just watch you and let's predict that happening.

Then we'll pull the throttle back before that happens.

So it can be a reactive or a proactive tool.

I'm interrupting for one moment to ask one small favor.

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I'm really interested in the nervous system itself called central nervous system.

But I think because I have overlooked it for so long.

And so now I have to become more mindful of, of where I am because I think I have a very strong mindset to override signals and I can easily reach burnout very, very quickly.

I'm very kind of single lens from where I want to go and nothing will stop until my body says, well, then that's it.

So now I've tried to become more aware of that.

And you mentioned something that which I'm really interested in, which is heart rate variability.

It's become quite a big topic now of conversation.

A lot of people, especially if they're wearing trackers, are aware of the heart rate variability or if they're doing certain workouts, they're always looking at the HIV.

Is this a good indicator of health or not?

Because mine's always very low.

Yeah.

Should I be worried?

No.

OK.

So low doesn't mean anything to me.

Great, good answer.

I don't know what wearable you're using.

Every one of them is different.

Not only is their technology different, but their their The calculation that they used to derive the number is different.

And so if you were simply comparing a number or a score, it is irrelevant to anybody else because of that fact alone.

Even let's let's say you're using the exact same wearable devices as a friend of yours, it's still almost irrelevant because your normal homeostatic range differs.

In fact, we have a paper in review right now that I Co wrote with some of the folks at WHOOP and where they looked at I think it was 22 million data points or 2 million days with HIV score over time.

There's also other published research.

We've done this before in the past we've used stuff.

What you have to consider is, is it a general health metric?

Yes, resting heart rate is as well.

BMI is as well.

It is a real metric and it is generally associated with health.

When you have people that start getting HIV is very, very low at is almost always associated with poor health and the higher HIV is generally associated with better health.

And there is probably 50 plus years of research on this.

So if you ask is it a real metric?

Absolutely.

When you ask should I be concerned about your low score?

That's why I quickly said no.

I don't know your normal homeostatic range.

I don't know what device or tracker you're on, and I don't know what's normal for you.

There are genetic factors.

Probably 20 or so percent of HIV is just simply genetic and I don't know if yours is being measured appropriately or properly.

Last thing I'll say on that is, again, I don't know what context low means to you because when I get this from people and clients, I'll get wildly different answers right past this one.

I'm like, what does low mean?

And so low typically means something like Oh my friend has AB and C like that, That doesn't mean shit.

Where should it normally sit though?

I mean, I feel like men and women are also going to be very different here.

Well, OK, yeah, yeah, again, we have some a little bit of data on men and women and that it is true men and women are a little bit different and HIV does change with age.

That said, the more research coming out suggests that it's not as big of a change as lifestyle.

So when we see changes in time via age, it's generally because of worsening health patterns and activities than it is the age per SE.

And in fact, in the paper that I'm discussing that'll be out.

I think it'll be Open Access to you will see a different curve in men and women.

And again, at least according to the WOOP data.

So this is again, specifically coming from WOOPS stuff.

It dips during menopause and or, or I should say 40 to 50 year or so age because we didn't confirm it's in menopause and those individual people, it's like the menopause window, right?

But then it rebounds and goes right back up.

So are the numbers different?

Yes, for sure.

But when you ask like where should it be?

Again, if you were to pick a WOOP device and an or device or our device or Morpheus or anybody else, the scores are wildly different.

And so there is no like number.

If you contrast that to like resting heart rate, I can give you exact numbers because every device is going to say the same thing.

Everyone uses the same equation.

It's not the same for HRV.

So if you use a Morpheus device, which is if you care about HRV, like that's one of the the gold standard ones to use, you might get a score of 20 and that's phenomenal.

And if you use an aura ring, a 20 would be terrible.

So it's like you're literally talking different equations and calculations, not even algorithms.

Like if you get the exact same data in the back and they're using different calculations of heart rate variability, where something like resting heart rate, there is only one equation.

How many beats did you beat in one minute?

That's that's the whole equation right now the technology is different, but the equation itself for heart rate variability is, is different.

So devices use them differently.

So it's a very difficult thing.

So my advice with HIV is you should pay attention to it.

The absolute number, like payless attention to the variability is what matters.

And so if you like, what device do you do you mind sharing your although I mean I'll just break.

You down?

I have no watch.

OK, so you don't use.

What do you use for HIV?

I have this brand called No Watch.

No watch.

And they are a tracker and they are, they're amazing.

It's called compassionate tech but it basically isn't as it gives you a rate every four days as a baseline as opposed to every single day, which I prefer because then it doesn't make me obsessive.

Does it give you like an average of the four days?

Yeah.

OK.

A far better way to interpret that.

So generally what we will say is you need 21 to 30 days to understand where your baseline is.

And then the individual day like almost has no bearing.

So if you wake up today and it's down 10% or whatever off.

So I again, I don't know that company at all, but my assumption is they're giving you it every four days to say, hey, let's normalize the data a little bit, which is a great way to approach it.

Generally, if we see a change in HRV that's not consistent for seven plus days, I don't care if it is consistent for seven or more days, then we might like start to pay attention.

Like something may be happening here.

But one thing you'll see really consistently is the standard deviation that happens with HIV for each individual person, the magnitude of that deviation differs and, and that's an important distinction.

So let's just say you and I have the exact same device on and like, what's the number?

Like give me a score that you would get on yours.

It ranges between 10 and 13.

OK, again, I don't even know what that means because I don't know the units.

And HRV.

Well, for this device, I don't know what they're using.

OK, yeah, so the units can be different, right?

But.

My resting heart rate is great.

What's your resting heart rate?

45.

OK.

That's, that's pretty decent.

And what's do you have any idea of like your average overnight respiratory rate?

No.

OK, that that's more important.

Oh, OK.

I'd probably pay attention to that.

So let's just say 10 to 15.

And that's, I assume based on how you're saying it, that's a bad score on that device.

OK, fine.

So if let's say mine is 80, OK, Now if I wake up tomorrow and instead of being at 80, I'm at 75.

So I'm down 5 absolute units.

And let's just say your average, just to make math easy on yours is 15 and you wake up tomorrow and you're at 10.

We both are down 5 absolute units.

But who actually had something happen and who didn't in this case?

Me or you?

Both of us.

No, nothing happened in me at all, even though we both went down 5 units.

This is why it matters in your case, going from 10 to 15, I'm making this all up, right?

Or going from 15 to 10 represents a 50% drop.

That's a huge change for me.

Going from 80 to 75, I don't know what that number is, but that's a small percent, right?

And so when we see that change, when I say like your normal standard deviation, you don't have anywhere to go.

And so my guess is your deviation is within one or two every day.

Why you can't drop 12, You don't have 12 to drop, but I can drop 12 and it still maybe doesn't mean anything.

I might not have any actual change in my allostatic load until I drop 20 to five points or more, which is more of a typical thing by the way.

So even interpreting with from person to person this again, there's why it say like it gets really complicated.

Generally, roughly here is not perfect, but roughly the healthier the person, the more stable their HRV in in response to stressors.

Generally the opposite happens.

So even if somebody came in and on that same device had an 80, but they wake up tomorrow at a

40 and then they're at 1:15, I might look at that person and go, that person is worse than you who's 15 every single day on that thing.

And so it's not just the number that matters, but it's also the variability that happens.

That's a bigger signal to me than the number.

So when my initial answer to you was no, don't worry, be worried about it.

It's all the stuff I laid out.

I don't know that device.

I don't know if that's been validated.

I don't know the data behind that.

I don't know what technology they're actually using.

I don't know what calculation that they're using.

I don't know what that number means.

I don't know what units they're using.

And then I don't know your variability in HRV.

So overwhelming majority of the time with something like HRV, it's fine.

It's not good enough of a metric for me to go missing all that information alone.

That's a problem.

We see people all the time who function really, really well but have a low HRV on a tracker and we don't see any other signs and signals of nervous system overload or systemic overload or anything else.

And so it's another one of my like classic dual answers.

It is an important metric.

It has been validated HRV on its surface for many decades.

It's highly associated with cardiovascular disease, mortality, cancer, like tons of things at this.

And we use it in every single person at absolute rest at our coaching practices at all of them.

But there's a lot of context there.

So you've mentioned this already, but that thing gives you a lot of like maybe anxiety may may or may not be the right word, but I just probably wouldn't use it.

That's why I use this one because I don't have to check it every day and it gives me a much more comprehensive score than all the time having to check if I want to increase my.

I mean, I think travel is a big part of a bit of a lower HIV for me.

But the people, yeah, jet lag and, you know, that's coming in from Seattle to London.

But if people want to increase their HIV, what would you suggest?

Yeah, first thing is, going back to earlier conversation, remove any performance anchor that will do it #1 so if you have a negative health practice.

So when people lose weight, HIV tends to go up.

When people eat higher quality food and their HIV tends to go up.

When people exercise, it goes up a ton.

Very few things will increase HRV more than exercise.

Those things will all shoot it up.

If you have, well, in fact, I'll add a moment.

Nothing will improve HRV more than sleep, especially if you have a a clinical or subclinical sleep disorder, which is really far more prevalent than people realize.

Those big, huge practices will rocket shoot HRV up.

Past that, we can start getting into some smaller impact stuff, but that is the overwhelming majority of time the people that we have doubled HRV in or had huge improvements in that, that actually had problems with HRV.

It's because usually one of those 3 or 4 big rocks is being taken care of.

The ones that will move at the most for sure will be against sleep and exercise.

And if you have to hedge, this is probably when endurance cardiovascular like type of exercise does seem to win a little bit.

You're more likely to see improvements when you see that go up, and that may or may not also be associated with a lower resting heart rate, but those are the biggest ways to move it.

What about cold plunges and saunas and things like that?

Because that's becoming huge.

Yeah, but they're not going to have even closeness impact as those other ones I said, so you can actually look.

So HRV will change with cold in a non common sensical way.

So if you get in the HRV, you get into a cold plunge, you will see HRV drop actually immediately.

And this is exactly what it should be.

So maybe I'll back up a quick second.

HRV heart rate variability is again, this indirect marker of autonomic nervous system.

And your autonomic nervous system is in multiple parts.

But the easy way to think about it is just in two parts.

Although again, there's, there's more than this.

You rest and digest.

There's also freeze in there.

Then you have your, your, your sympathetic drive, right?

So parasympathetic rest and digest and sympathetic Dr.

is arousal and up regulation and fight or flight and things like that.

Great.

HRV is telling us kind of where on that balance you are, how much of balance of sympathetic and how much of balance of parasympathetic, right?

So we tend to say a low HRV is sympathetic, like you're more switched towards that side.

It's not an on and off button, right?

It's a gradient here.

And higher HRV means more parasympathetic, more down regulated.

So when we say these things like a really low HIV is associated with poor health, it's generally because that's associated with somebody being stuck in the sympathetic Dr.

This could be stress, this could be, you know, poor sleep.

This like, OK, so that hopefully that kind of connects the picture a little bit of what's going on.

So if you get into a cold water or anything like that, your HIV will drop immediately.

This is going to shoot you into sympathetic Dr.

This is why you get out and you feel you're exhilarated.

Your adrenaline has gone up.

Cortisol doesn't go up much actually, like a huge misnomer.

It doesn't really change that much after cold in men or women like in humans at least to be clear on that one.

But adrenaline will go way up, like way up and HIV will drop down considerably.

But if you look at that person, 30 minutes, 6090, up to several hours, 3 to 4 hours plus HIV will climb in those three hours, four hours, five hours post cold and will generally climb for at least three plus hours.

And it will go way past baseline.

And so if I wanted to hack a test, I would say, OK, take your HIV and let's just say it's 20 and get in the cold water.

You get out of the cold water might be 10.

Again, I'm making numbers up here, but an hour later, instead of being 20, you might be at 30 and two hours later you might be at 40.

So it'll have gone way up.

That didn't really change your Physiology.

This is just a compensatory response to going into a huge sympathetic Dr.

and now you have this parasympathetic rebound.

It's the exact same thing that happens with cortisol and exercise.

You go exercise right now.

Cortisol goes up in the few hours post exercise.

It'll come way back down in a compensatory response.

That's what it's supposed to do, right?

That's exactly what we're looking for.

It's the exact same reason why taking a hot shower or a hot bath at night gets you really hot, but then your body has this compensatory cooling and you have to cool down to fall asleep.

So getting really, really hot actually helps you get colder to fall asleep.

It's like hormatic stressors, right?

Like very classic over response.

So the question really though is if I chronically did ice plunges or cold plunges or something like that, would I chronically improve my HRV?

And I don't think that we really have any data to suggest it's a really going to be a strong effect.

If you like cold plunges from probably, you know, like different topic we can go into at some other point fine, but that's not and it wouldn't compare nearly as much as sleep and exercise.

Sauna does seem to be pretty effective at that.

And chronic sauna use has more data.

It has data on, there's observational studies on it, there's randomized controlled trials, we have epidemiology on it.

There's enough there.

In fact, there's enough molecular mechanism stuff there to say, OK, generally associated with positive health and probably a really good thing.

So I'd probably be more comfortable saying, OK, if you want to use.

And again, it's not sauna, it's hot.

So it's sauna or any other methodology of that.

But the way to think about that is you can get hot with exercise too, and exercise does a lot of other things for you that just sitting in a hot sauna doesn't do.

So if we're looking at pecking order again, I will really go back to exercise and sleep for sure.

And, of course, mental health.

And nutrition.

Yeah, but if you're already doing those things, or like my grandfather, he doesn't exercise and never wouldn't know where to start.

But he uses the sauna like, great.

It's better than nothing.

There are positive things there.

The only thing I would really caution one against is saying, oh, the sauna is more important than the exercise, or I don't need to exercise because I'm in the sauna, or I don't worry about my sleep, I'm doing my sauna like it.

The problem we have with these hacks and stuff, not to call a sauna hack, but you get the point, is when they exceed the baseline stuff.

So that's I think the most appropriate way to think about this.

I love that you're talking about the baselines because I think so often and I've been sold into this narrative a lot of the times and I have sometimes have to weave myself out of it of going, wait, where are we on the basics?

Where we are we on nutrition, on sleep, on exercise, even just on daytime light Because you know, I can be in the studio all day.

Or if I'm writing and I haven't been outside, I've spent 90% of my time indoors.

And then I'm worried why I'm feeling anxious.

It's not because I'm like missing a supplement routine.

It's because I literally haven't done the basics to feel good.

With our professional athletes, it's funny what we call these Ed DS, so everyday drills.

So in American football, there's these classic drills that football players will do every single practice, right?

And they're like, they're the everyday drills.

It's like really it is 6 year old, 8 year olds, like it's, it's the really the absolute basics, right?

Regardless of what sport you go into, golf, baseball, there's a certain set of things that they will do really consistently that your 6 year old, again, 8 year old is probably doing as well.

We do the same thing with our clients.

What is your everyday drill?

And maybe you're not hitting a golf ball a certain way or doing a footwork drill, but we have the same thing, right?

So it's like your EDD is like, do we get outside yet?

Do we do the basics?

Do we drink water?

Do we do this?

Whatever, right?

Like we, we tend to give our athletes 2 to 3 Ed DS and we check in on them and then we give our clients the same thing, right?

And so we will actually use that same terminology for our lifestyle and health practices with our pro athletes too.

So we'll say, for example, you might be a professional athlete and we'll say, all right, did you do your Ed DS?

And that might literally mean did you walk outside this morning?

Did you, did you drink water before you, you got on your phone?

OK, great.

But we're using like sporting language to, to connect to them more.

So Ed DS might not connect with with like the average person.

But my point I'm trying to make is even with our pro athletes, we are still daily going over the basics of lifestyle.

Did you drink water when you got up?

Did you say, did you write something nice down today?

Did you say something nice to somebody?

Whatever.

Like the two or three things we that are most important for them.

And then they have their actual like on field Ed DS too.

But those things are really critical.

We all miss, as you perfectly said.

We all miss on those big basic things all the time.

And like the ones I loved always.

Like did you say something nice to your wife today?

No damn.

I'm so happy you said that because I always say, did you say something nice to yourself?

That's the one that I always say.

So I'm glad that we're on the same sink then.

And this wasn't a question that I had in, but it's actually just popped into my head because as we're talking about the fundamentals, you know, hydration, you just mentioned, which so many people overlook, there's a really big hype going on right now on hydrogen water.

What is your take on this?

OK.

I can speak pretty well on this actually.

Now I have to disclose conflict of interest here.

So we are actually doing a study right now in my lab with a company called Echo Water.

And so I can't speak anything about that.

That's an ongoing project.

Echo has a flask that it makes that actually generates hydrogen water that they sell.

So I know this research very well.

In preparing for that study, we've looked at this.

The easiest way to explain hydrogen water is it's not alkaline water, OK?

So hydrogen water is a like, if you talk to a chemist and like, you know this very well, it's a very funny term.

Some people will call it molecular water and the same thing you're like, that doesn't even like, that's a nonsensical word.

Like of course it's molecular like what?

Anyways, hydrogen water, OK, so confusion #1 is just like giving it a truly awful name.

OK, so many years ago alkaline water became a rage and for the most part scientists pushed back hard and they'd rightfully so because it turned out to be mostly nonsense.

And most of these things do right?

So that's a good stance to have is nonsense until proven otherwise.

We actually ran an alkaline study, like a six week study in my lab many years ago and we found the same thing.

Like did nothing for performance at all of any kind.

All right, so hydrogen water and molecular water are not alkaline water #1 alkaline water is literally giving you water that's at a different pH.

And the assumption is, oh, you'll drink it, you become more alkaline.

I eat less acidic, and that should have more positive health benefits because being acidic is bad.

Two major problems with that.

One, ingesting a little bit of alkaline water becomes immediately changed to the acidity level in your body, particularly in your stomach.

So it does nothing.

2, being acidic is not bad.

Your body has a natural pH that it runs in different areas.

Your stomach has a different pH than your in the fact, if you look at the pH in your arteries versus your veins, they differ slightly.

That's a good thing, right?

That's the way that you clear bicarbonate.

Even in your mouth.

100% like the pH in, in all the orsis in your body, in your ears, in your nose, in your mouth.

Vaginal pH is different, right?

So it's everywhere and it should be different, right?

Things work better at a certain temperature in a certain acidity level.

And so if you're actually too alkaline, you'll see breakdowns as well.

Not good.

OK, now let's set that aside.

What hydrogen water or molecular water is attempting to do is a very, very easy chemistry.

It's saying if we can add more hydrogen protons.

So quick chemistry for folks, hydrogen is H plus, right?

That's also the same way saying like proton, now pH, the word, the term pH stands for two things we won't get in this debate, but one of the ways you can interpret pH, the acronym is potential hydrogen.

And so the way that chemistry work in the pH scale will make something alkaline versus acidic is the the exchange between H plus and OH, negative.

Why that matters?

If you take an H plus again, it's got a positive charge and you take an OH that has a negative charge and you put them in the same room, what's going to happen?

They equalize.

There you go, right, Because they're going to, they're going to come together.

The negative and the positive will balance each other out because they have strong Infinity for each other.

And they're going to make water H2O, right?

So 2 hydrogens and one oxygen pulling them apart gives you those separate things.

OK, great.

So if I were to give you a big bolus of hydrogen plus, which is again pure acid, and that's in an environment with a bunch of OH negative, you'll take that acid, you'll take that alkaline, and it will all become neutralized because you'll just make a neutral inert water.

This is the rationale.

If we gave you hydrogen water and other water with a bunch of extra H plus into it, it will run around your body picking up a bunch of OH negatives, converting it into water.

Now why that is a potentially a good thing is oxidative stress breaks down tissue, breaks down DNA, breaks down anything.

Again, this is a good thing.

This is what scavenges your body of broken down tissue.

It fights off infections.

It's important for clotting.

It does a ton of things, but excess amounts of oxidative stress are detrimental to mitochondria and again, every tissue in your body.

So the working assumption thought process theory here is if there is too much oxygen stress going on and we can bring in extra hydrogen, we can neutralize that potential effect and also produce water, which is great.

So it should be quite hydrating.

But the real thing is a cellular stress.

So the available human research and there actually is some human research, there's not a lot of high quality human research.

There's not a lot of placebo and randomized trials on it.

But again, we are we're doing one right now.

It was more impressive than I anticipated to be quite candid.

I was like, OK, there's something here.

Now most of the research is pre preclinical, meaning non human and molecular based and all that stuff.

Interesting part of the story, you don't throw it out, but we don't put as much stock in that as we do human research.

And so the human research is emerging what it looks like it does.

Again, thinking through the chemistry a little bit here, nothing to pH.

You don't drink hydrogen water to change your pH.

As we already explained to the alkaline story, it's not what it's doing, but it does seem at this point to potentially have some sort of anti-inflammatory potentially, but more importantly directly an antioxidant benefit.

So here are the outstanding questions.

Does it do anything to your performance?

How much do you have?

How, how long from when it was activated between that and ingestion?

Does a preparation matter for it?

Does it actually make you better in the long term?

Is it an acute effect or a chronic effect?

If so, how?

And we actually have some some things we think that are happening there that I won't even share yet.

But it's not the stuff that most people are are talking about.

If it's potentially working, does it work in young people?

Does it work in old people?

Does it only work in people who are unhealthy?

Right.

And it is generally true to to complete the story, oxidative stress itself when excessive is associated with poor health effects.

OK, when you smoke, when you don't sleep, when you are in exposed to environmental pollutants, oxidative stress gets really, really high.

So are the potential benefits exclusive to people who are just kind of in a really highly oxidative stress state?

So somebody who is exercising a lot, drinking clean water, eating clean food and they're at, they're not overly exposed, are they still going to see the same benefit?

We don't know the answer to really any of these questions.

So at this point I would say, do I recommend it?

No, not per SE.

We'll we'll see what our study, you know, comes up with that.

Again, that that's funded by that company Echo, like very important.

This is conflicts of interest.

So we'll see, we'll see where the data shake out in our study.

We'll see where if other folks are funding studies and and getting those things done, I don't know.

It's plausible.

Is it better than any regular antioxidant?

Does it does does it outperform vitamin CI?

Don't know.

Like does it outperform just eating more antioxidant rich foods?

I don't know.

So the question in in science and performance is always OK compared to what?

And I can give you 1000 products that can show some efficacy or effectiveness in a, in a controlled trial, especially at the molecular level.

Like if you know anything about molecular or biochemistry, you can make a trial work right?

Like it's pretty easy, but is it very?

Important to say.

Really easy to make that happen.

So we'll see.

It's been a pleasure to where I can say work with that company has been phenomenal.

They are super transparent and like they, I really think that they're, they're in it for the openness and just like make sure the product works.

So good on the people at Echo for being like that, but we'll see.

I think it's so important that you said all those other things.

I think it's an it's an interesting area.

I've watched a few talks on it recently.

But I do think, you know, people might hate me on YouTube for this and write comments.

But if you're living like a high keto diet, which doesn't have many fruits and vegetables and antioxidants and trying to drink hydrogen water, is there going to be a benefit?

And you're living in a city that is full of pollutants.

Yeah, I don't.

Know.

You know, it's all context, isn't it?

I think that's the most important thing.

So I'll say one more thing, sorry to interrupt you.

Most of what I've seen thus far in the social media and podcast regarding molecular water and hydrogen water is complete garbage.

Most of the effects are greatly exaggerated if not flat out lied about and the impact how to use it are incredibly inappropriate use.

So that is very, very fair criticism of the field and I and I think I have no problem saying that because that field has that product specifically has done itself a huge disservice.

So people that are being like, man, is that all nonsense.

You're right to think that because most of what I have personally, I'm just saying what I've seen and again, starting to look into these products prior to our study, those claims are egregious to flat out fraudulent to be candid.

And so I don't know if this is a case where the pun here, this is the throw the baby out with the with the hydrogen water situation.

We'll see.

But I think it is fair to say like this has been a a really inappropriately positioned product thus far.

And that at the same time, there is some, there is actually some research behind it.

It's not a complete scam, but many people that are associated with these types of products are complete scam.

So it takes me to recovery and sleep.

I can't not have you here and talk about sleep.

I know that's such a big thing for you.

And in our five questions for sub stack, which we put out the day before, I asked you what you changed your mind on in the last year and you spoke around sleep.

So I, I can't wait to get into this with you.

So you've mentioned continuously there's four basic pillars, you know, and sleep is one of them to really look at when it comes to human performance.

But just like good general health.

And that's something that I've changed my mind on a lot in the last five years.

You know, I used to always think I had to get up at 5, you know, the 5:00 AM club and be part of that kind of hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, go, go, go.

And the more I worked, the better I was.

And actually I'm realising that and that's probably not the best way to look at things, especially for performance.

So talk to me about sleep.

How should we be looking at our sleep levels?

And is there like a specific time that we should be trying to hit every night or is that also a load of garbage?

OK, so there's a lot to think about.

We just published a study this weekend.

Congratulations.

And it is Open Access, so people can go read this and you can put in your, your sub stack or your newsletters if you want, on all the environmental impacts or all the things that in the environment that impact your sleep.

So this is led by actually a, a British guy, Greg Potter LED this, this paper in this up.

So you can see all the details of what I'm about to rattle off in that individual paper.

There's figures and there's actually a table we include that gives people specific recommendations for where to set all these environmental factors.

OK, I'm answering the question this way because we are spending globally 60 plus billion a year on sleep and it is getting worse.

It's one of the few areas of health that has a huge financial impact, but at the same time is getting significantly worse.

People are aware of obesity.

People are paying attention to other things.

I'm not saying we've solved those problems by any means, but there is some hope there and there is attention.

We're spending more in sleep than ever and it's getting worse than ever.

And so the question is why?

My, my dear friend Matt Walker, he works with me at Absolute Rest, my company, and he's been speaking about sleep for years.

He's he, you know, his book came out and people were like, he really turned the world's lights on to sleep.

So people are aware and we're spending money, but it's getting worse.

So the question is why?

In that paper we make, I think, a pretty compelling argument as to some of the many, many reasons sleep, like anything, is multifactorial.

There, you'll never find one explanation for why sleep is still getting worse.

But one of the things to consider are the environmental factors.

The world.

There's actually satellite imaging data that are make it really clear the world is getting brighter and there is a splash that happens.

Actually light that goes up splashes off of the clouds effectively in the atmosphere and comes occurring back down to the world.

The our, our physical temperature around the world is changing.

Technology is changing lights in the home, engagements like there's all these things and all the paper that are changing.

People are living in cities more why this matters.

There's really clear data on things like carbon dioxide concentrations in your bedroom, in your house, in working environments, not from a green light, but simply because you're in a closed environment.

You're, you inhale O2, you exhale CO2.

If a bunch of people are in a room with a closed window set, CO2 levels rise.

If ventilation is poor, if a lot of people are in that, you're going to have a higher CO2 concentration.

If that gets to a certain level, you see really, really strong changes in sleep onset sleep quality.

All architects of sleep.

So R.E.M.

And all your various end stages, next day arithmetic, next day executive function, next day subjective sleep and arousal and and wakefulness all change dramatically when CO2 levels in the room rise too much.

So you have all these things happening and people are like, oh, it's AB and C.

But the environmental factors alone, again, I'm not even talking about ozone layer.

I'm literally just talking more humans in the same space is a is a difficult thing to deal with.

So you have this light spraying thing that's happening throughout the globe.

You have this CO2 stuff in people's rooms because they're living in more concentrated areas.

We talked in the rapid fire thing about the world is more engaging, people are going to be on some type of device one way or another and so simply procrastination.

People just don't want to go to bed because the living world is really entertaining and so you're going to put off going to bed.

People are working at home more, which means people can work in different time zones much more effectively.

It would be really difficult for me to run my companies 10 years ago.

Now all of my companies are remote.

We're out here in the UK with absolute rest for our first time ever, but we have clients across the world.

We can do that because of the Internet, because of video meetings.

So because of that, your expectation as an employee is to be more available during different times, right?

Especially if you're trying to raise money or you're whatever, you need some, you're going to be more available in off times that didn't happen in the past.

So at night, for the most part, you were going to be left alone.

You're pretty much expected to answer Slack or whatever at any time.

So boundaries have completely changed.

So I can go on and on and on and on.

You also have, it's getting better.

It used to be at 80%, it's now down to 70%.

But at least the data in America will show 70% of true clinical sleep disorders go undiagnosed.

We have actually huge, huge areas that are called sleep deserts, right?

So we people are maybe like aware of food deserts and stuff.

We have sleep deserts going on, which are these concerted areas of extreme light, like in a city and sound.

Because now the world works more overnight.

So restaurants are open later, services are open later because the Internet and things are changed.

So it's harder to get more sleep in these sleep deserts.

The sleep disorders persist because there have been really no changes in technology for medical sleep testing in 50 plus years.

It's all the same.

You have sleep hospitals, but if you run the numbers right, you have hundreds of millions of people with sleep disorders and you have a few thousand sleep physicians.

So each sleep physician is responsible for 10s of thousands of diagnosis per year.

Like you have no chance, right?

You you want to get a sleep test done, What do you do?

You find a sleep hospital, you pay £5000, you wait four months to get in and they check you for apnea or not and then send you home like so.

You you can just imagine whether this is a behavioral issue, work expectations, you're on your phone too much, this is an environmental issue, air quality or there's too much light or it's too loud.

Whether this is a a pathological issue?

Yeah, like a lot of people wake up at like 2-3 AM and can't get to sleep.

Had that.

Had that question the other day when I was around a table at a wedding and three people woke up

at 3:00 AM and just like couldn't get back to sleep.

Extremely common and we deal with that and we handle that a a lot of ways.

It's actually like pretty easy to fix.

Really.

What?

Do people do?

Well, there's, there's a handful of things.

OK, it's, it's always, again, I will generalize this can be many different things, but a handful of reasons why that happens.

Like actually this is in our paper too.

You can go read some of these things.

But I'll link this in the show next.

Yeah, yeah, number of things that can be happening here, one of the biggest ones is actually your pre sleep heart rate will predict this is so a lot of the people you're familiar with the concept of wired and tired.

Yeah, right.

Oh yeah, far too well.

Great.

So winding back just a touch here to settle context when people think because you asked this question and then I'll come right back to here of what is sleep?

Is it just a number like a duration?

OK, Sleep duration is one of the many components of quality sleep.

OK.

So the total time, right, the average human 7 1/2 hours like is enough total time for a health perspective, for optimal performance, we're probably looking at more.

For peak physical performance, certainly more.

But let's just say you can get by 7 1/2 to 8 hours total.

But that's only one of the components.

Component #2 is actual daytime function.

Are you sleepy?

How's your inertia the next day getting out of bed?

How hard is it or how groggy?

Is your brain sharp the next day?

Are you feeling energy throughout the day?

That's component #2 right?

So I don't even really care about the numbers.

If you're like, no, I wake up, feel phenomenal.

I'm on point all day blah blah blah.

OK so your your subjective nature is number 2 #3 is quality and this is how long did it take you to fall asleep?

Your sleep onset?

Did you wake up at all throughout the night?

If so, why?

How hard is it to go back to sleep?

What's the people will focus on sleep stages?

Deep sleeping room.

Massively overrated.

Like in general, throw those things entirely away.

If you're getting those from a tracker, throw that entirely away.

What you want to pay more attention to are things like your stability, fragmentation, positional awareness, how how move, how much movement are you having?

Those things actually determine architecture.

But like the sleep staging is like almost entirely nonsense at this point, so that's not the appropriate way to think about it.

Quality is that other stuff.

Then there's also regularity, the simple fact of like how consistent are you at going to bed and waking up at the same time.

This can have as much or more of an impact than quality or duration it can have.

You also then have timing, which is what time of day are you waking up and what time of day are you going to sleep?

Any of these independent factors can be your problem.

So the person who wakes up at 2-3 in the morning, let's just assume because there's so much to go over here, let's just assume they're not having changes in regularity and that their timing is normal so that they're going to bed at say 10

or 11 and waking up at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.

But two or three, they're still shooting like, OK, the walk into that time matters.

So when I started this answer, I told you about that heart rate wind down.

OK, well one thing that predicts this is, and I went immediately to wired and tired because a lot of times what happens at night is people are extremely tired, super fatigued, like a sleep pressure is really high.

So they'll fall asleep pretty quickly or regularly, but they'll shoot up between 2:00 to

3:00 in the morning.

Really common number by the way, like almost always because they've hit those first few hours of critical sleep window, they're not actually down regulated.

And so they get too close to that sympathetic Dr.

window and they get kicked into arousal.

And now they don't have strategies and techniques to get back down into a parasympathetic Dr.

They don't recognize it and so now they're up and up and up and up.

Always happens at 2:00 to 3:00 because it is that 3 to 4 hours post sleep where you've hit a critical threshold.

Brain has done what it absolutely has to do and now you're you hit that threshold of awakening.

It can be some other things like blood glucose, Dr.

cortisol and so on and so forth.

But for the most part, this is almost always driven by actually a poor down regulatory routine.

We will see this in people's heart rate data.

We actually just had this happen.

Where was I?

Just at Costa Rica just before this, at The Four Seasons with some clients down there, ran through all their data really consistently.

See this, you will see a heart rate irregularity and their heart rate is being too high in the 90 minutes prior to sleep.

Sleep onset is fast 5 minutes.

They fall right asleep, sure, exhausted, tired, but shoot awake at that time.

The nights that they that they had this happen versus the night that they don't haven't were 100% predicted by that priest sleep heart rate in that particular person.

That's all we had to go solve.

And so this is a classic example of this is a extremely high level individual.

Everyone would know this person like very famous person and we're like, hey, you have to do this down regulation routine and this person was like 0 chance I'm not doing yoga, I'm not doing breath work.

Like could not be less interested in these things.

Showed the data and said I don't it's not about the breath work of a yoga whatever.

Do whatever you want.

Just make your heart rate go down part of bed.

Oh, I don't need that.

I'm so tired and I fall asleep easy has nothing to do with that.

So people will conflate the exhaustion with down regulation.

Sleeping and falling asleep is not down regulated per SE.

Those are different pieces.

And so in this particular case, it is very often one of a few things.

Let's assume also, by the way, it's not a, a menopause or perimenopause situation where it's any hot.

Those are, you know, different answers, but that in that particular case was that issue.

And so we actually have to have that person go through a wind down thing.

And again, that wind down thing can look different.

It doesn't have to be breath work.

It can be any number of things that are more aligned with your personality.

If breath work is your thing, like great, but we got to find a way for your heart rate to come down prior to sleep and then you'll actually walk into sleep with a higher or lower, sorry, higher HIV, lower heart rate, more prepared for sleep.

Your onset may or may not change, but that 2 to 3:00 AM waking up thing almost always goes away.

Well, I love that.

I feel that that is something that so many people struggle with.

I'm going to link all of that in the show notes.

There's so much more I want to talk to you about, but we have to finish.

And I have to leave you with one last question.

And I want to also link absolute rest because I know you're here in London.

It's just we're doing the quickest turn around ever for this episode to get this out.

But I got to give you in the squad a huge shout out.

I'm, I'm generally pretty like low demand, but I I was very demanding with you on this one and I had a huge ask and you guys delivered so.

We'll deliver it.

Yes, we are here.

Absolute rest in the UK for this month, October.

That's it.

So.

Maybe we can have a time to join a Round 2 because honestly the amount of stuff.

We still haven't spoke.

About Oh no.

But the crew.

Is here so.

If you live in London or want to come to London for the month, this is the only time outside of America you work with, work with our team and absolute.

So I'll let you get your question, but thank you very much for letting me do that and for turning this around.

No, I'm so happy.

I'm so happy we finally had this conversation.

So I always ask one last question for all of my guests, which is what does live well be well mean to you?

I think it's a state of joy, which is if you are in joy, experiencing joy, I don't think you can live or be well without that.

And I think part and parcel to that is you have to have some semblance of health, some semblance of community, some semblance of purpose.

And those can come in lots of different forms or fashion, but I think it would be difficult to live or be well without that.

And I think if you had all those things, but you weren't experiencing joy, I don't think you'd feel well or live well.

I.

Can't agree more.

Thank you, Andy.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.