Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to episode 17 of the energy balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman, and joining me again today is my good friend, Mike, Fave in today's episode, we are going to be kicking off a two part series on how to fix your sleep, which, if you aren't already aware, sleep is incredibly important for our health. It plays a major role in our metabolic health and affects our hormones and plays a major role in fat loss. And basically, if we want to be improving any health condition or symptom, we want to make sure that our sleep is optimized. So we're going to be focusing on sleep for these next two episodes. And in part one today, we're going to be talking mostly about our circadian rhythm and light and different types of light, and how these affect our sleep quality, and basically what we can do to optimize our sleep. From that standpoint. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where I'll link to any of these studies or articles or anything else that we mentioned. And in part two of this series, we'll be talking more about nutrition and exercise and other lifestyle factors in relation to sleep. But if you want to get ahead on some of those things and learn about the influence of nutrition and exercise and different lifestyle factors on our health from the energy standpoint, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and sign up for a free mini course where I'll walk you through the main things that you'll want to do as far as nutrition and lifestyle go, in order to optimize your energy systems, in order to improve your ability to produce energy on that cellular level, and to make sure that you're not wasting energy. And this is really the key to improving all sorts of low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions, and this includes issues related to sleep and insomnia, and it also includes everything from fat loss to gut dysbiosis and gut inflammation to any sorts of chronic health conditions. So to check out that free mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and with that, let's get started.

So as far as sleep goes, I mean, I would say that sleep is one of the foundational aspects to our health. It's not one that we've talked about as much yet, but it's one of the primary symptoms as well, where it's one of the main things that gets dysregulated if we aren't doing well health wise, but it's also a major component to improving our health. Of course, if we're sleeping well meaning that we're getting good quality sleep, deep sleep, and we're sleeping for enough enough time, then it improves virtually all aspects of our health. And we'll be talking about why that is, and what those aspects are. But it's pretty common to have sleep issues are relatively common, whether it's not being able to fall asleep or waking up throughout the night and not being able to stay asleep. Sometimes people will wake up throughout the night and they can go back to sleep. Sometimes they can't. Another one would just be sleeping throughout the night, but still feeling exhausted when you're waking up, still feeling tired the whole day, having those energy dips throughout the day. And there are various reasons for all these things, and we'll talk about why they happen and what we can try to do to remedy them. And I would say also that sleep, I would say, for the most part, is kind of under prioritized, where within the health and nutrition space, health and fitness space, people do talk about the importance of sleep, but it seems to still often take a backseat to things like nutrition and fitness, which I think is in many ways fine, because our sleep should improve if we're doing other things right. But as far as our day to day lives, it's really important for sleep to be a priority. And if I've had this before, where I talk to people who are generally healthy and feel like they're generally healthy, but when you ask about how much they sleep per night, they might only sleep five hours a night, and think that that's normal, or think that they feel good when they're only sleeping five hours a night. And I'd really argue that you can't really feel good, at least, like in a in a way that isn't driven by stress hormones, or just in a way that's kind of skewed because of what we're used to. But like, when we're not sleeping enough, it's just such a major component of our health. And I think a good way to kind of exemplify that is that regardless of how much you sleep per night, let's say you sleep more than five. Let's say you sleep, you know, between six and seven hours per night. If you were to ask someone like that how they would feel if they only got five hours of sleep per night, if they got two hours less, of course, they would say they would feel a lot worse. They'd be tired and groggy and have a hard. Time waking up, they feel off the whole day. They'd have trouble focusing. And then if, but yet, they say that they feel fine when they get you know, they're six to seven hours and then if you said, Okay, well, what if you were to sleep two hours more, they might say, Oh, I'll feel just as good as I feel now. But it's like we have this distorted view because of what we're used to. But when we look at sleeping less, we know that that affects us, and we just don't put the effort or try or recognize the value to actually sleeping more and trying to get more in that eight to nine hour range. So yeah, I would say that that's kind of like the main things that I see as far as general problems. Do you have anything to add?

Mike 5:39
I think it's just important to note for people that, um, your body gets used to things over time, right? And then you you establish a new new sort of baseline. And so you can get used to four hours or five hours or three hours of sleep on a regular basis, and even just from personal experience, switching over between being on a night shift versus being on a day shift for work, you you can get used to almost anything now it may not necessarily be a good thing. And when you first make the transition to whatever you're going to do the first few days or weeks or so, you really feel it. And then eventually your new normal stabilizes. And then you're just then you don't realize what the difference was, and that's for me, coming from day to night shift, because I know when I first went on night shift, I literally felt like I had dementia and I was extremely disoriented and completely out of it, and had no sense of time, tired all the time. But after, I guess, two to three weeks of being on night shift, and this is, this is being on night shift, 24/7 just not switching back to days ever for my for my job, I just, I just stabilized on it, and I was tired all the time. But being tired all the time became the new normal, and then eventually, like, I didn't recognize that as tired, right, right? I recognized that as just, this is just how I am. And I was just, I would be there during the day. I sometimes I'd have trouble sleeping still, but I would could sleep in the day, um, but I'd still be trying. I'd be if I sat down in the middle of the night, I would like, say, like, 2am or so, which is like, two o'clock in the afternoon. For me, I was just, I would it was very difficult not to fall asleep. So I'd go to the gym, things like that. And you just, you just, your body adjust very easily to things over the course of a few weeks, and then you get this new state of perceived normal, and it's not, it's it's the it's just a relative normal. It's not actually a legitimate normal. And I just know that by changing sleep cycle, by moving to a night shift and it but it did take me a few weeks to stabilize into that. So I think that the idea of a subjective state, or a perceived state of normal, or normalization after a period of acclimation to whatever you're undergoing is can really change what people's perception of how they're doing things, I guess, goes, or how the effects of what they're doing on themselves is, yeah.

Jay Feldman 8:20
And that's kind of what I was trying to get at, but I think you said it more clearly, which, and that's I was trying to, kind of use that as an example of a way to determine if you're just kind of used to less sleep, is, is considering, okay, what if I slept a couple hours less, and I know, what if I slept a couple hours more? How much better would I feel? And yeah, I've had the same experience when I've had for work, I've had to get up earlier, you know, four or 430 and yeah, it's the same thing where at first it really weighs on you, and then over time you come, you become used to it. But in reality, I know at least for me, I was not the same person when I was when I had to get up that early and I was not getting enough sleep. And, yeah, I think it's one of, really one of the main factors affecting our health. Both how much we're sleeping, the quality of our sleep and when we're sleeping matters as well. So, yeah, it's very easy to adapt to whatever we're used to, but I think the vast majority of people need at least eight hours. Eight to nine hours, I would say is probably a good range.

Mike 9:21
And I think consistent, eight to nine hours on the same on on the same schedule, right, right? Because you can sleep eight to nine hours, because I've done it, you can sleep eight to nine hours, but one day you're sleeping, you're going to bed at 1am and then the next day you're going to bed at four, and then you're you're just switching all over the place, and that's not good either, right? Or having a fractured eight to nine hours, where you take a nap from six o'clock till 10 o'clock, and then you go to sleep again during the day at like 10 o'clock in the morning until two o'clock in the afternoon, and you're still getting eight hours. And. You'll be getting it every day depending on what your schedule is. But, um, that's not the same thing as getting a consistent eight hours from, I don't know, say, 10 o'clock at night until, what, six o'clock in the morning. That's, that's, that's paramount. That's, that's very different. And, you know, waking up once during sleep you got a pee or whatever, which is the common thing for, I guess guys a lot, or definitely for women too, that that's fine, um, but I think that on that solid eight to nine at night is very important. And that's just coming from experience with flip flopping schedules all over the place, for sleep, for work, yeah.

Jay Feldman 10:40
Yeah. And there's evidence for that as well, that having this, you know, sleeping the same amount of time, but push having it be much later, like a night owl type thing, where you're going to sleep at midnight or two in the morning, waking up much later in the morning, you know, or, you know, even later than 2am doesn't result in the same quality. It doesn't, you know, and it does result in certain drawbacks for sure. So I would say that there's that does lead to a couple of of those common myths where one is just that, you know, people can function on six or seven hours of sleep and ideal health. And I really don't think that that's that that's the case.

Mike 11:13
Theres definitely issues over time for sure. Yeah, and you you don't realize how much your cognitive function takes a hit until after you get off that schedule, or how much your ability to relax takes a hit until you get off that schedule, because the days that you don't sleep you're and the days that you don't sleep that that many hours, or you don't get a consistent, solid amount of sleep, you you can get into this state of there's either this state of exhaustion where you just don't care, and this is, this is from my experience, or there's, it's almost like a manic state that you can get into where you're constantly going, going going, going, and you can't fully, you can't fully relax yourself. And I think that that's often what people can experience. Or you can get a combination of both where your manic is first, and then afterwards you get this period of of of exhaustion, where you're not even you're not even relaxed, you just don't have enough energy to deal with whatever is going on, or to care about what is going on. And I know I personally experienced that.

Jay Feldman 11:15
Yeah, yeah. That sort of apathy, and then also irritability, becoming angrier, easier, just like our general sense of well being, our sense of humor, are all things that tend to go when we're not sleeping enough, and we really don't for the again, not everybody, but so many people don't value it relative to other things. So they'll wake up really early and cut their sleep short so they can go work out, or they'll do it so that they can get to their job earlier, or start working earlier and not recognizing that in the long term, not only is that a detriment to your health, but it's also a detriment to your productivity and your ability to focus and work well...

Mike 12:55
Or even the goals that you're focusing on..

Jay Feldman 12:57
Exactly

Mike 12:58
You want to wake up early and cut your sleep Short and then you want to work out. I mean, the biggest determining factor for your, your your gains, or your progress in the gym, is your is your hormonal profile, and having cutting short on sleep and things like that directly negatively impact your hormonal profile. So yeah, you'll get your workout in. That's fine, but the results that you'll see in the long run may not be the same as if you were able to actually sleep consistently.

Jay Feldman 13:33
Yeah, they won't be the same. And there's research showing too, that you'll lose less body fat or lose and lose more muscle when you're not sleeping as much, when your sleep isn't as as consistent. So it's it ends up causing more stress. It comes at the cost of our health, and it leads to all of these other issues in the long term. So and we'll talk about why that is, and what makes sleep so important, and why it affects us so much. And I think that when we understand those things, it's easier to prioritize it, because we understand how important it is, and of course, it's difficult. I mean, so many things in our lives happen really late at night, and we're not saying, you know, one night of bad sleep or makes or breaks, yeah, yeah, yeah. But just in general, it really is something that, when it's made a priority, makes a major difference for our health, of course, yeah, and just our life and..

Mike 14:27
A lot in a lot of different ways, the mood, digestion, performance, everything, it really makes a huge difference. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 14:35
So we can, let's talk about that. I mean, there's direct relationships that have been shown in the research with as far as sleep goes, with our metabolism, our metabolic function, we mentioned fat loss a little bit. We've talked a little bit about our mental health, immune function, gut health, these are all areas that are directly impaired or depressed and. When we aren't sleeping enough. So a couple examples there. I mean, it's been sleep has been shown to be pretty disruptive to our gut microbiome. It's definitely been shown to be immunosuppressive. That's poor sleep, correct, right, right. We're not getting enough. Yeah, not getting enough, not getting good quality sleep, or not being consistent, all of those things which are separate things, as we kind of mentioned, and all of them have been shown to have an effect. And there's even, I mean, there's entire there are people who feel like circadian rhythm, which is the, basically the rhythm of our days, which a lot of it centers around sleep. So part, as far as sleep goes, that would mean going to sleep at the same time, waking up at the same time. It also has to do with other factors, like eating at a regular schedule, and we'll talk about it. But it's so important, sleep being so important, that some people feel like our circadian rhythm, of which sleep is a major component, is the main determinant of our health. And we both think that it's an important factor. We don't think it's the main determinant, but it's just kind of goes to show how directly it impacts us physiologically.

Mike 16:06
Yeah, and I want to clarify, as far as the definition of circadian rhythm, I would say it's along the lines of the it's like daily cycles of your physiology, and they function. They are not they are tied to light, they are tied to food intake, but they're also tied to other factors besides that, and that, specifically, in regards to different factors on on within the environment that we live on the planet, that we live in general. Um, so it's their their daily rhythms, or daily cycles that our body undergoes. And there's multiple there's circadian ultradian, there's, there's different types of cycles. But the main cycle, that is, that is being discussed here, or that is, that has a lot of research behind it, is the circadian rhythm, which is, like about the 24 hour. They call it the body clock, um, and there's, there's some interesting research on, uh, shifting it, and lack of light exposure and all those types of things. So but it's just the cycles that our body undergoes and the physiologic processes that our body undergoes within a 24 hour period based on exposure to light, different fields from the planet, our environment, food intake, all that type of stuff.

Jay Feldman 17:18
Yep, and that's something that's been shown to directly affect us on the energetic level. On that bioenergetic level, it directly impacts energy production. It directly causes stress. And when, when our circadian rhythm is dysregulated, those things happen. And when it's regulated well, then the opposite happens. And it makes sense, because the from this bioenergetic level, one of the main things that the that these it is basically one of the main interfaces between our environment and us as humans. And the entire purpose is for us to adapt to our environment. And when an environment is more stressful. We want to produce less energy. We want to store more energy as fat, or not energy. Want to store more food as fat, which is more of the fuel side. And we want to down regulate all of our systems, as we've talked about, immune system, gut health and digestion, mental health, all of those things get down regulated when we're in a more stressful environment, so that we can survive. And it puts us in the stress state, which allows us to survive, but it comes at the cost of higher levels of functioning and higher levels of health, and having a disrupted rhythm is makes sense, biologically or environmentally, to be stressful, because it suggests that something in our environment is off. So if we're not going to sleep at a regular time, and if instead, we're going to sleep several hours later, if we consider when that would be happening, considering that, you know, night time happens around the same time, darkness happens at the same time, those are the kinds of things that drive our desire to sleep. If we're staying up all night, that's a suggestion that something is off in our environment, it's so, it makes sense that that would be causing these stress signals that would lead to a stress state that down regulates all of these higher level functions, increases fat deposition, fat gain. And yeah, so that's just kind of a a piece of this larger picture as far as why it's so, why it acts as such a major factor? And on the bioenergetic level,

Mike 19:24
Well, yeah, I mean, it completely changes the hormonal profile. I'm pretty sure you see increases in cortisol the next day and changes in carbohydrate metabolism and things like that. And on a direct experiential level, I mean, when I wasn't sleeping, or when I was shifted to sleeping during the day and being at night, my in my food intake and my hunger levels were massively increased. I was a lot hungrier. And first for sweet things, for sure, for sweet things, and I think that as an adaptive response to what's going on. So there's definitely and the other thing is, is not sleeping a. Or not sleeping at night and sleeping during the day, I still was able to remain lean and still was able to work out who my progress in the gym was definitely much very slow. And then my ability to stay lean or to stay leaner was was impacted as well. It was much more difficult and so and when I went to days was almost like it became more effortless. Became a lot easier. My progress in the gym increased. It was a lot it was a lot better overall, as much more. It was a much easier process. So there's definitely you can look at the studies as well. But even if you look at what's going on your own life, but that you can see the effects as well. So yeah, that's...

Jay Feldman 20:46
Yeah. And just to add to that, and again, and all this talking about night work, Night Shift versus day shift, has been shown again in the research, to be massively impactful on our health, and that is...

Mike 21:01
Association with a ton of diseases as well. Yeah, metabolic syndrome, cancer, all those types of things. It's definitely not good.

Jay Feldman 21:09
Right. And that's talking about essentially the same amount of time sleeping, just just changing up when it's happening. And again, speaking of circadian rhythm, that the reason why night shift and day shift matter is because of our regular light cycles where we're supposed to be essentially awake when when the sun is up and when it's dark, we're supposed to be asleep. And there are various reasons for that, but the point being that when we are operating outside of those cycles, it is a stress signal to our bodies that things are wrong. Something is like, certain things are not right. So unless you have anything to add there, I think we should talk about basically the relation how we can improve our sleep, both as far as techniques that we should be using in order to, like, Get to bed on time, or that'll help us sleep, but also things that we want to be eating throughout the day, certain supplements that could help, certain supplements that can actually make things worse, that I see pretty commonly as well.

Mike 22:13
Yeah, and lifestyle factors in general. But before we say I just want to, like, create, do a summary for what we just talked about. So not sleeping enough, sleeping at the wrong times, like flipping your sleep schedule, not sleeping consistently, are all generally associated with decreases in mental health, decreases in ability to lose weight, changes in hormonal profile are associated with numerous chronic diseases, changes in immune system function, and then changes in energy balance in general. So it's sleep is as much. It may not be the only factor in regards to health, but it is one of a few factors, including diet and other lifestyle factors, social support, stress levels, things like that, activity level that are extremely important in looking at and trying to determine how to maintain your health, how to improve your health, things like that, how to stay healthy in general. So it is associated with a lot of different diseases. Not I mean, a lot of people like, Oh, it's just sleep, but it, no, it there's asleep when I'm dead, yeah, I sleep when I'm dead.

Jay Feldman 23:22
Yeah, yeah. And it's a time for regeneration as well. You know, on on in the in our brain, a lot of regeneration is happening while we're asleep. Also muscularly. It's talked about a lot in the fitness community that that's what allows us to recover from any damage that's going on from exercise, and allows us to is one of the main areas where we're able to build muscle. It's very much that time for rest and regeneration. And part of that too is because when we're sleeping, instead of spending all this energy being up and active and moving around, that energy is directed elsewhere. And when we're not giving ourselves that time, it means that we have a lot less of that regeneration going on. And regeneration isn't just for when we're directly damaging something like like our muscles with exercise. We're always degenerating and regenerating. It's a never ending cycle. And if we're not emphasizing this regenerative side of things, we inherently will continue to degenerate, and that state of flux is again, more than anything dependent on energy availability. When we have the energy availability to regenerate, to repair, on the cellular level, things that aren't working properly and also literally generate new cells and new tissues. The again, that's all dependent on energy, and things are always kind of being used and broken down and so. So that's another reason why sleep is so important. Yeah.

Mike 24:52
So I guess as far as as far as general things to improve sleep before I think we should get the supplements. To talk about just general lifestyle strategies, and some of them are from research, and some of them are from personal experience, as far as being a night shift worker for a year and a half and living on night shift that entire time, some of the most important things, I would say, to maintain sleep, or to be able to sleep comfortably and on a consistent basis, is number one, going to sleep at the same time every day and waking up around the same time every day. I mean, it doesn't have to be the exact same time. You know, you don't have to go to sleep at 925 every single day, but you know, around the same time between nine and 10, and then wake up around the same time between, I don't know, six and 7am or five and 6am whatever, whatever your schedule is, and then also, with that, is eating at the same times every day become pretty important. Your body gets adjusted to eating at those times and changing the schedule over the place, like if you were to eat a meal at 12 o'clock at night, especially if you have a protein heavy meal later into night, that can create alertness and make it a bit difficult to fall asleep, at least for an hour or two after you eat. So those are really important things to focus on. The other thing would be, if you have a later night and you wake up in the morning at your regular time, and then you keep going back to sleep. So you wake up, go back to sleep. Wake up, go back to sleep. Wake up, go back to sleep. In my experience, I found that later on that night, you're unable to fall asleep, or I am unable to fall asleep because I've adjusted the time consistently. I woke up, I went back to sleep. I woke up, I went back to sleep. Everybody has those mornings, you know, you wake up at eight, then you go back to sleep, then you wake up at 10, then you go back to sleep, then you wake up at 11, and then you go back to sleep, and then finally, it's one o'clock in the afternoon, you wake up, and then later on at night, you can't sleep until like four o'clock at night or four o'clock in the morning. So I think that's really important. And then the other thing is avoiding taking extremely long naps in the middle of the day. I think that's also extremely important for maintaining the be the ability to fall asleep at a decent time at night. I know for me, even during the days, if I sleep more than about if I take a nap for longer than 20 minutes or so, I start going for an hour, or two hours in the nap, then I have a hard time sleeping at a good time at night, I can't fall asleep. And even when I was on night shift, if I took a nap at like one o'clock in the morning, from one to two, I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until maybe 12 or one in the afternoon, and I would have to wake up at four or five o'clock in the afternoon to go to work. So that was for some of the things that I avoided, and I even avoid now, is taking long naps. And then the other thing that was really important, even on night shift, was light exposure. So when you wake up, getting exposed, getting some exposure to light. And with nights in the I was up north, so in the summer, when I would wake up, the sun would still be out, so I'd go outside, and I would sit in the sun right away. So I would basically tell my body, hey, it's morning. And then I would move to in the winter, by the time I woke up, there was no sunlight. So what I wound up doing was buying a bunch of halogen bulbs, which have a similar light spectrum as the sun. And I would spend some time in the halogen bulbs as soon as I woke up, and also use some red light as well. And then at night, before I would go to sleep, I would put blue blue blocking glasses or orange glasses on to block blue light. And so part of these things the blue light, or the light in the UV spectrum, triggers the it hits the melanopsin receptor in the eye and inhibits the form formation of melatonin. So blue light blocks the formation of melatonin, and then a lack of light altogether induces the formation of melatonin. And melatonin is one of the main compounds in the brain. I'm pretty sure it's formed by enzymatic reaction from serotonin, and it actually induces sleep. Some people talk about it being a disposal pathway for serotonin. I mean, that's that's theoretical, but essentially, the serotonin is converted to melatonin, and blood induces sleep, and blue light inhibits that process. So getting sun exposure in the morning, by mean, you have a circadian rhythm that will stop melatonin production, but getting that the bright sunlight exposure, and particularly on the blue blue spectrum, will inhibit melatonin formation, and basically it'll induce wakefulness and then inhibiting exposure to that light at night, which was what would naturally occur anyway. Um, prior to industrial revolution, would basically um, it would start to induce the formation of melatonin, which induces sleep. Um. And then the other important piece here is that light on the red spectrum doesn't directly inhibit melatonin formation, at least to the same extent that blue light does. But one of the important things about red light exposure is that red light exposure has an effect on the mitochondria. They say it affects cytochrome c oxidase, allows it to function better. There's now, there's talk of it actually affecting the structure of water. That's a different story. But it basically increases mitochondrial respiration, and that becomes very important, because a decreased exposure to light in the night time actually causes, I think it's nitric oxide, to bind into cytochrome c oxidase, and then that lowers the enzymes function. And when that happens, it inhibits aerobic respiration, or oxidative metabolism to some extent. So exposure to light during the day, particularly in the red spectrum, becomes very important. And so when you look at this picture altogether, you see that a lack of exposure to light at night induces sleep, and so having a lack of blue light exposure will induce that sleep. And you basically, you go to sleep, and then during the day, getting that light exposure stops the sleeping pattern and activates oxidative metabolism across the body. So for me, I inverted that for my night shift, but just so I would have my bright light exposure when I woke up at night, and then I would reduce exposure to light before I would go to sleep. And so that becomes, I think, very important, even for people who are on a day shift schedule to sort of get out and get themselves exposed to light in the morning when they wake up, and then at night, try to reduce the amount of blue light exposure, specifically, particularly from screens, from phones, from anything along those lines, from fluorescent lights overhead. I mean, maybe try and use incandescent bulbs or LED lights that have a that are on the lower wavelength spectrum. Things like that are really important for sleep?

Jay Feldman 32:02
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you touched on a ton of different things that's I want to try to go back through and summarize some of them, because they're important concepts to understand, and they're also important techniques that people can implement to improve their sleep. So one that you had mentioned, again, just as an overview, was going to sleep at the same time and waking up at the same time. And of course, it's going to be hard to do that exactly the same time every night. We were talking about earlier, a one hour window is typically pretty good. As far as you know, going to sleep, let's say between nine and 10, and then waking up between six and seven or five and six, depending so. So I think that's helpful. We also don't as much as possible. We don't want to be changing that on the weekends. So a lot of people will maybe go on the regular sleep sleep schedule Monday through Friday because they're working working. And then on the weekend they might go out and late at night, and then that does disrupt our sleep schedule. So doing that, you know, once every other week is not a big deal, necessarily, but every weekend, both Friday and Saturday night is it does come at a cost, so it's worth considering as as a factor that does affect our health. So going to sleep at the same time, waking up at the same time in general, is is pretty helpful. You also mentioned snoozing basically, or, yeah, just like every, I mean, you were talking about going to sleep for an extra hour or two and then waking up and going back to sleep. But, yeah, which is different. You know, when you're on night shift and your sleep quality is right, you know, it is a lot less you you're definitely

Mike 33:39
sometimes I would, I was supposed to wake up at four or five in the afternoon, and I would snooze till 12pm or 12am that's definitely not good. Yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't sleep the next day. The next day I would, I would have to go to work at 7pm and so I was supposed to wake up at four or five, but I wouldn't go to sleep until two or three. So now I go to work with like two hours of sleep, and that's because I snooze till 12. So you learn real quick while snoozing feels good when you're doing it later on, it is a nightmare in terms of falling asleep.

Jay Feldman 34:11
Yeah. Well, and one thing that's good about night shift is you definitely notice those what could some people might think is a smaller change, because you really have to be very dialed in because of how unnatural what...

Mike 34:26
How extreme the schedule, you have to be extremely disciplined. That was the only way I made it work. For so long, I was extremely disciplined with my scheduling, eating at the exact same time and making sure I woke up and went to sleep at the same time my light exposure and not napping and not snoozing. And I learned really fast that any sort of interruption was just would have worked the next day. And there were some days I went to work for my 12,13, hour shift, and I had only slept for 45 minutes or an hour, and. And that. And when you do that a few times, or you have to work shifts back to back, and you do that, you start to realize, like you start to really realize the importance of sleep, and you start to see how much of a toll it takes, especially so it just it puts you, puts things more under the microscope in such an extreme situation, right?

Jay Feldman 35:18
And even when you did have it really well, dialed in. It still was not ideal. You still tired...

Mike 35:23
All the time. Yeah, and I would go to the gym, and it would just be like, in the middle of night, I would just be forcing myself, like I was just like, I'm not going to stop working out. I need to maintain my schedule, like I need to, I need to at least take care of myself while I'm doing this ridiculous schedule. So just just maintaining. It was just and even even maintaining, I was just so, so tired all the time. My brain function wasn't 100% great. My ability to focus was definitely distracted, and I just all I wanted to do was lay around in bed and all I wanted to do was eat. That was definitely what I felt with my lack of sleep.

Jay Feldman 36:00
Yeah, yeah, it definitely has a cost. So So circling back to some of those things you mentioned earlier, not snoozing, which for most people, is snoozing for five minutes or 10 minutes, and then they just keep hitting the snooze button, and it ends up being an extra hour. But during that extra hour, we aren't actually getting any sort of quality sleep. We're just laying in bed essentially for an hour, and it it maybe feels better, but that's typically just because we aren't sleeping enough, or aren't sleeping well when we wake up, we should be okay with getting up right when our long, our long alarm clock tells us to. Or if you're not using an alarm clock, that's even better. So, so yeah, we want to, we don't want to be snoozing. I would say if you're having trouble falling asleep at night, then making sure you wake up right at at that time in the morning is helpful for then making sure that you're able to sleep.

Mike 36:46
The following night Exactly. Because I what a lot of people, I don't think, understand, is that what you do in that morning affects what how you're going to sleep the next night, right? So it's so the thing is, is you can stay up all night long, and you, if you fall fell asleep at, I don't know, two o'clock in the morning, but you still woke up at 8am you'll sleep the next night. You'll be okay. But if you go to sleep at two o'clock in the morning, and then you wake up at 12pm you're not going to sleep. You're not going to be able to go to sleep that the same time the next night, especially for someone who has sleep drug sleep issues, right? So it's really when you getting up in the morning, at least in my experience, and has been one of the most important things is making sure that if you're going to get up, you're going to get up at the same time, or around the same time, and when you get up, you get up, you don't snooze, you don't sit in bed and just keep going back to sleep, because then you will then, I don't know specifically why it happens, but I just know that I will not be able to sleep later on at night. And I've seen that with other people too. They and they keep snoozing, and they have a hard time sleeping. So con and a lot of people get in this, this loop will they'll keep moving their time back, because they'll stay up one night and wake up late, and then they'll stay up one night and they'll say, Oh, I'm a night owl. What I think winds up happening is they just don't they never really, because to get your sleep back on schedule, you're gonna have to take one day where you're it's just gonna be a bad day. You're just not gonna have sleep because you're gonna have to get up early and you're gonna have to stay up, and by the afternoon, you're going to be beat and you're going to want to nap, but you have to hold out on it a little bit.

Jay Feldman 38:25
Yeah. I mean, it depends on the context. Some people, if they're so used to a much later sleep schedule, they can't just take one night or one day to reset it and be really tired and then they're back. They might have to scale back, slowly, going a half hour every night or something like that. If they're if they're that used to the late schedule. I'd also say for people who are not on shift work, it's still, it's, I think it's still helpful to wake up at the same time so or within that hour window. So if you were out late one night, and you go to sleep several hours later than when you normally do, as you said, if you wake up later the following day, you might have trouble sleeping that night, but it also will throw off your rhythm more than if you were just to wake up at the time that you normally do, or at least closer to it. So it's an important idea that can be implemented regardless of whether you're working shifts.

Mike 39:16
So before you go, I would say just for the night owls, it's not going to sleep 30 minutes earlier every night, it's waking up 30 minutes earlier every day that becomes that's because it's the waking up part, I, at least in my experience, that sets the tone. And so you there's some you can talk to some nurses. And I have a, I know a nurse who used to be a medic. And the medics work, and when you work night shifts as a medic, too, your shifts can go all over the place. You're you you're supposed to go end at seven, but you don't. And so then you have, then you, well, a lot of workers who work shifts, at least in my experience, people that I've met, they just don't sleep sometimes, or they they, if they have to switch over to days, then they just won't sleep at all, and they'll be up that whole day, and now they're on a day schedule. So and so one of the things there they'd have programs for them to basically rehab you back to sleeping the right way after you do that for too many years. And one of the things that they do is, regardless of what time you go to sleep at night, if you only get two hours of sleep, you wake up at this same time. And it just is what it is, and that's how they get their sleep schedule back. That's, that's one of the main important things that they do. You just got to wake up at that time. You can't you can't snooze. You can't stay in later to make up for the difference there. You can't napping. You just basically, you have to suck it up. But that is what gets your your circadian rhythm. It is what gets your sleep schedule back in place. And my experience, too, shifting back and forth between nights and days. That is the only thing that really gets it, is moving that wake up time back into a bright place. So it's not because you can try and go to sleep earlier, but you oftentimes you'll lay in bed. So what you got to do is just move your wake up time 30 minutes back each day, and then just deal with whatever you didn't sleep, or you did sleep, whatever it is. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 41:02
I mean, of course, you also have to work to bring that sleep time earlier as well. I agree that, you know, even if you're having a little bit of trouble sleeping, waking up at that same time that you've set is helpful, because then ideally, you'll be a little bit more tired that that following night, and it'll help. So yeah, I think that starting with the morning time is helpful. Of course, we also need to intentionally try to go to sleep earlier at night. Yeah.

Mike 41:24
And again, we're talking about extreme disturbances in sleep, wake cycle from rotating shifts, or night shifts and things like that. But it's just using the application and getting a good sleep cycle for if you have a more normal, more normal experience with sleep.

Jay Feldman 41:42
And I do think a lot of people do consider themselves night owls. And another thing I would say there is that not only are you not getting as good quality sleep, I mean, it depends on the context. A lot of people when it is at night. I mean, some people maybe they're doing some creative work, but I think a lot of times also it's kind of like wasted time. Maybe it's video games or something like that that is keeping people up, which most social media, right? Yeah, and most of those things are not going to be helping us health wise. Anyways. So, yeah, I think people end up feeling like they have a lot more of a day, feeling more productive when they have more of a morning as well. And that's important to note.

Mike 42:17
And as far as going to sleep later, I think the the one of the things to talk about is a and we won't, I guess we don't have to go too far on the specifics, but an adjustment, or a shift in the amount of non rem and REM sleep, and that's sort of where they see the differences in sleep quality and things like that. When you start to sleep later and then go to sleep later in the night, you change that, those ratios and that balance, and then that has implications on the nervous system and things like that.

Jay Feldman 42:44
Right. And, yeah, we don't need to go into it too much. The point being is that there are certain cycles of sleep that are more restorative and deeper and certain that are less and they all have different functions. But the point that you're basically getting at is that the quality is lower when the sleep cycles is later than than it should be better than ideal. So, yeah, the another thing you were talking about was light and blue light versus red light, which is really important. So basically, as you were saying, as far as our the the sun cycle in the morning and in the evening, the light from the Sun is has much greater amounts of red light. So that sort of red light mimics very early morning and late evening. For us during the day, the there's much more blue light coming from the sun. And so we in our modern environments, we're pretty separated from the sunlight and the sun cycle. So we want to try to mimic those things to help improve our sleep quality, even if we don't have trouble sleeping, but especially if we do, we want to try to mimic those things. So you talked about certain techniques you were using to do it when you're on night shift, which is a whole, you know, a whole separate thing. But even for people who are living on a normal day cycle, there are, it's important to do certain things as far as as far as that's concerned. So you had mentioned getting sunlight in the morning pretty soon after you wake up, as being a really great thing to help set our circadian rhythm. And I would agree it's that's a really helpful thing. It's helpful psychologically as well. I think it's very meditative. It. It's a really nice routine. It helps to set the tone for the day. I think it keeps us calm and relaxed to have that sunlight on our skin and in our eyes physiologically, and then also hearing the birds or or just kind of connecting with nature and the actual world around us is is a really good start to the day, and getting sunlight throughout the day is helpful as well, on that physiological level for it, giving us those signals that it is actually daytime right now, even though I'm inside and not getting the same wavelengths of light that I would be if I was outside. So there are a lot of reasons why it's helpful to be out in the sun and be outside during the day. This is one of one of them that's done. Definitely important. And another thing to consider is that the light bulbs that we're under throughout the day, and the light that's coming from our technology, whether it's phones or TVs or computers, is excessively high in blue light, which even during the day, is potentially so high that it is a problem as well.

Mike 45:21
And there are direct negative effects from the amount of blue light and the type of blue light, the wavelength that they use. In fluorescent bulbs, they have a direct effect on our cells in general that are not positive.

Jay Feldman 45:32
Yeah. So fluorescent bulbs, there's several issues with them, beyond just the wavelength of light, it also has to do with the frequency that it's it's, which as far as the light wavelength goes, the frequency and wavelength are equivalent, but there are certain other aspects of them that are harmful. But the blue light is definitely one of them. As far as fluorescent lights, there, for people who aren't aware, they're like those big tube lights. A lot of times you see them in department stores. They're really common in any sort of, like, large buildings. A lot of people get symptoms when they're around them. They'll notice agitation and hot flashes and like stress responses from them. I used to get them myself. I never knew what it was when I was when I was a kid, but I ended up sorting it out that it was related to the fluorescent lights. So if that is something that you notice, I would try as much as you can in the places that you have control, not to expose yourself to those fluorescent lights. And as you mentioned earlier, halogen and incandescent are much better options. They're being the LEDs and fluorescents are being promoted because of their supposed energy efficiency, which is a whole other topic, but we would definitely suggest the halogens and incandescent which have much less blue light, much more red lights, much better balance. That's closer to sunlight.

Mike 46:49
Well the LE so the one thing I want to clarify the importance with the LED in the fluorescence is the fluorescent bulbs, from what I understand, they have a certain gas in them that they run a current through, and that produces that wavelength of light. But and the LEDs are can often be very bright, white or blue light, in this case, but the new LEDs that they have, they can change the wavelengths in them, and they can produce different colors and things like that. So some of the LEDs may not be terrible, it really depends on what you're getting, but oftentimes the LED bulbs that they have they use in the very bright white and blue light, which is essentially a high blue light spectrum. So it's important to because not all LEDs are terrible. They're like even some of the red light devices that they use now are just a grid of LEDs. So it really depends on what wavelength led you're using, you can buy LEDs in a specific wavelength and wire them all together and make a red light device if you want. So it's not the biggest problem is the fluorescent, fluorescent lights, and then the bright white, blue, high blue light spectrum LEDs. Those are, those are really the biggest issue. And then, obviously, the old bulbs we used to use were incandescents, and then halogens. Halogens tend to put out a lot of heat, so they and they are very bright, and so they they're using different functions, but there's trying to phase those out, because they use a lot of energy and because they're putting out a lot of heat. And then the incandescents as well. But the spectrum produced by halogens, particularly is a lot closer to the spectrum of light produced by the sun. It just doesn't have the same amount of power. And then the incandescents are close as well to what the Sun is, not as close as halogen but they're definitely have a broader spectrum that includes a lot more red and far infrared light. Same thing with the halogens. Then do the new for the fluorescent bulbs, and then the new LED bright white bulbs that have a high blue mount in them. So the LED so the the specific LEDs are good. They have some. They in the stores. You can see them now. They have like the new LED bulbs that have like the vintage effect, or the vintage color, things like that. The wavelength that they put out there is meant to mimic the incandescent and the type of light that is produced. The reason it looks like that is because it doesn't have a lot of blue light. That's why you get that effect, and that's because it's for they're trying to mimic the old incandescent bulbs with the new by adjusting the spectrum on the LEDs in those newer bulbs. So those are okay, um, but the bright LEDs in the fluorescent tubes are bad. Those are those are not bad, but they produce a high amount of blue light in their spectrum. I don't want to make a dichotomy of good versus bad, because then it's just like it can become something. They just have a ton of blue light, and blue light can have some negative effects.

Jay Feldman 49:42
yeah. And beyond the blue light, I I'm pretty sure there are other potential drawbacks to LEDs. I know I'd mentioned the flicker, and that adds stress to our eyes. It's a major problem with looking at like technology and devices which over screens. Yeah,

Mike 49:57
exactly. So it's the pulse width modulation. Right? And basically what it is is to adjust brightness on the screens. As far as I'm concerned, the screens flicker at a certain amount of repetitions per second. I don't I don't know what the specific term is. And so basically, when you change your screen to certain levels of brightness, you basically are have the screen flickering on and off to at a certain amount of times, and then your your brain basically pieces the picture together and and creates a degree and a degree of brightness, right? Yeah,

Jay Feldman 50:31
like, if another example of where you see it, where you can actually see it in real life, is, if you're looking through the rear view mirror at a car behind you that has has LED headlights, they look like they're flashing. Or if you take like a a camera in video, if you record a video of those headlights, you'll see that they aren't just it doesn't just show light the whole time. It flickers. So you can actually see it because the camera picks it up. But our eyes don't, but it doesn't our eyes still, even if it doesn't register, it causes a stress on our on our eyes. So when you're dimming any sort of led basically the point being that instead of simply reducing the power that's coming out of the LED bulbs, what it does is it flickers slower, so that you have a little bit more darkness in there. And that's how they dim it. And as opposed to reducing the strength of the light emission, and that that flicker creates stress because, yeah, it's like our mind is seeing these flashing pictures so quickly that it looks smooth to us. But it is a problem. There's, there's a cool, a really great software called Iris that you can get installed on your like phone screens and computers, that allows you to change the dimness without changing flicker. It just reduces the strength of the light emission, which I would highly recommend. Another really great feature of it is that you can reduce the blue light directly and increase red light. There's all sorts of customization on there, and that was kind of circling back to sleep. And light is all of this blue light from fluorescent lights LEDs, our technology can be very disruptive to our sleep routines, and especially in the evening, where so many people are on their phones and watching TV and on computers before they go to sleep, and that can make it a lot harder to sleep, and It also reduces the quality of our sleep. So using different apps or software that you can get on your on your devices to reduce that blue light, especially once night hits, is helpful. So there are a lot of times in the newer phones and computers, they're they're including like a night shift or a night light that brings the red light out a little more, but I would recommend using something that you have more customizability, so you can have even less blue light. And also, as I mentioned with Iris, it reduces the flicker as well, which is a pretty important thing, especially for your screen all day

Mike 52:53
on iPhones, you actually, actually in the newer versions, at least they have a color filters function. Okay, you can adjust the amount of blue light that you have in your screen, and then you can put it on a home button tab, where, if you triple click the home button, at least, I guess I have an older one than the newer ones. Or if you triple click one of the, maybe the power button, or whatever on the newer phones, it actually puts in a changes the depending on what you adjusted the screen color filters to it. Can put in a an all red screen,

Jay Feldman 53:25
And that's that's with the like native iOS system.

Mike 53:30
Because basically all you're doing is you're changing it's not there's a night shift setting. But you can also remove blue light from the screen. You can play with how much, what, how much of different types of light are in the screen.

Jay Feldman 53:42
Got it? Yeah.

Mike 53:43
That's just a, I guess, a hack or whatever.

Jay Feldman 53:48
Yeah, well, and so we mentioned Iris. There's also flux, F dot Lux. I would recommend Iris over over flux, there are several others. I have one on my phone. I know you can get Iris for phones as well. I don't remember what mine's called. I could throw it in the show notes, but yeah, those are helpful things to use. For sure, this is also being more and more recognized. So in newer screens, whether it's for laptops or computers or phones, they're starting to reduce the blue light emittance, just even at when they're being used at full brightness and during the day, because they're recognizing how much of an issue this is.

Mike 54:24
Even directly in the eyes, there's a negative impact of a high amount of blue light from screens has a actually damaging effect on the eyes. Yeah, that is something that they're changing. They also there's also glasses you can buy on Amazon that are look like normal glasses, and they remove about 50% of the blue light. So there's things like that. And then even in the new windows they have in the settings bar, you can actually adjust the amount of blue light in the screen directly. So there it is, becoming more commonly accepted, especially within the technology, stuff

Jay Feldman 54:56
like that. I haven't seen that on Windows, at least in

Mike 54:59
the. Windows that we use at work, they have that, that within our settings, we can change out the screen brightness

Jay Feldman 55:06
that might be specific to having, like work, you know, to work in night shifts and things that they have that, well, that's

Mike 55:11
why they have it, because the night shift nurse nurses will shift the screen into red light,

Jay Feldman 55:15
yeah, yeah. So that's yeah, which is, I mean, it's really great. It's definitely not standard, but using something like iris or flux would provide the same thing, same thing. Yeah. So as far as how that relates to sleep again, whether it's using the blue light blocking glasses, which works, some people will like to use either the ones that do have the red or orange lenses. There are also, as you said, clear lensed ones that still reduce a decent amount of the blue light and can also help their doctor.

Mike 55:43
They don't look orange, that's the thing they're they like, they don't have that tint.

Jay Feldman 55:48
And if you're working on computer, right, and if you're working on a computer all day, those glasses can definitely be helpful and reduce eye strains, in addition to having some of these other programs we've talked about. So all of those things are that are things that can then disrupt our circadian rhythm, disrupt our sleep, both quality wise, and being able to fall asleep or stay asleep. So the main points there being making sure we're getting the right type of light throughout the day, getting in the sun, if we can, in the morning, and definitely at some point throughout the day, making sure that once the sun starts to go down, all of our devices, at the very least, are the blue light is reduced significantly. And same thing with the lights around our house. Again, we mentioned either getting LEDs that have the warmer colors, less of the blue, or getting halogens and condenses, which I think would be better, but, but it all depends, yeah, but So those would be things that would be helpful. Again, we don't want to have the like really bright LEDs or fluorescent fluorescent lights on throughout the house. If you feel like you want to have those during the day, which I still think is not ideal, but if you do want to have them throughout the day, then at least have some lamps or something with those with the warmer the less bright lights that you can use at night. Yeah, exactly. And I would say, beyond just having more red light and less blue light on your screens, turning them off, I think is is so important, not only for the light purpose, but for us psychologically. Where, when we're on our you know, our phone is our connection to social media, and we have messages and emails and work for a lot of people, and that can also be really disrupted towards sleep. We haven't talked about the psychological side and the anxiety that can contribute, but maybe we'll go there next. I mean, there's, there's a few other areas that I want to talk about, but, but having your any technology, whether it's your phone or computer off at least 30 minutes before you go to sleep, I would say an hour or more, if possible, makes a pretty huge difference.

Mike 57:48
To just unwind, literally. And then obviously, besides that, I know we won't go into it, but just the negative effects of the EMF from your phones and your computers and things like that using Wi Fi, which also can have a negative effect on a lot of body processes.

Jay Feldman 58:02
Yeah, I mean, some people I know will notice that they don't sleep as well, or have some people feel like they can't fall asleep when their Wi Fi router is on. And we are getting essentially bathed in those EMS throughout the night, and at the very least when we're sleeping, there's no need to have that. So our phone should be offer on airplane mode or not in the room, preferably, right? And if you need to have your phone for emergencies, I would say, put it away from your head for sure, like away from somewhere farther away, six feet away from your body. Yeah. And I was going to suggest also get an alarm clock so you don't have to rely on your phone. And there are actually some alarm clocks that will mimic the sun. So which, which are really helpful, especially if you have shift work. So yeah, about 20 minutes before you're supposed to wake up, or you can set how long it'll start to become a little bit it'll start to show some red light. It'll get brighter and brighter, and then by the time you're supposed to wake up, it gets really bright. It entirely brightens up the room.

Mike 58:57
Depending sunrise, it directly mimics the sunrise

Jay Feldman 59:01
Exactly, which is really helpful if you if all of your windows are closed.

Mike 59:05
if there's, which are your blackout curtains or anything, which I also wouldn't recommend, if you're sleeping in a well, it depends on if you're in the city or not. Here's a city with a lot of light pollution, then you may want blackout curtains. But if you're not really in the city, and you know, it's not really that bright on your on your neighborhood street, or wherever you live. I don't think blackout curtains are such a great idea, because it if without that stimulus to wake up from the light in the morning, from the sun, or in general, it makes it really hard to wake up. And I know that personally, yeah, black out my room for a night shift and I won't get up.

Jay Feldman 59:40
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we don't have any of those signals from sunlight. I would also say that the moon and stars are pretty bright, so all these people who talk about, you know, even the tiniest little LED that's flickering or any amount of light completely disrupts your sleep, and it's like, you might as well not sleep at all if that's the case, yeah, definitely an exaggeration, right? For sure, and yes, we aren't supposed to have blue light, but if you sleep outside under a full moon in the stars, it's pretty bright, so we don't need to be in, as you said, blackout curtains, unless, if there are a lot of lights around you, a lot of light pollution, or your neighbors.

Mike 1:00:15
If you are i a big city, or you're on a night shift, or anything like that, then it becomes important for something like that, yeah, but it's but in general, I think it's helpful to have sun come in in the morning when you wake up to get you up to literally, it makes it easier to wake up. In my experience, it directly makes it easier to wake I see the sun, and on your rainy day is a different story. But you see the sun, you like, Oh, wow. And then you're like, I want to go outside. But if you wake up and spring, you're like, yeah, yeah. Get out of bed, right? And

Jay Feldman 1:00:42
And when you have blackout curtains, it's like, what day is it? You know, what is it?

Mike 1:00:45
Very disorienting. It really is. Yeah, yeah.

Jay Feldman 1:00:49
We have that direct tie with sunlight for sure. And so again, if for whatever reason, you can't have that with your windows, then I would say that those sunlight alarm clocks are really helpful. It's also good because then you don't need to use your phone as alarm clock, as an alarm clock, as an alarm clock, which means that, at the very least it can be off and hopefully away, uh, offered and, or at least on airplane mode, and hopefully away from your your bed. I mean, even just having it there, especially if you're someone who's struggling with anxiety or stress, having it there can be a source of stress. So if, if possible, then I would say to keep your phone away from you, yeah, when you're going to sleep. All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode. That was part one of our two part series, talking about how we can fix and optimize our sleep. I did want to make a couple of clarifications as far as the different types of lights go. So we had talked about the fluorescent lights, and again, these are the ones that are found in department stores or in office buildings. They're those long tube lights. But these fluorescent lights are also really common nowadays in to use in people's homes. They're those kind of squiggly lights, the the small tubes that kind of spiral around, as opposed to the the round bulbs. And so these fluorescent lights do have a few issues outside of the fact that they do emit a lot of blue light. They also have what's called electromagnetic interference, which basically means that they emit frequencies that are outside of the of the light spectrum, and these include radio frequencies and frequencies in the microwave spectrum as well. And these can contribute to some of the health effects of these lights, the negative health effects. And then additionally, these lights are also very prone to flicker, which, again, our brains might not perceive, even if our eyes do. And this can cause strain on our eyes, and it can also create stress and and cause things like headaches and other symptoms. So those are all factors to consider as far as fluorescent lights go. And I just wanted to make sure I clarified a few of those things. In part two of this series, we are going to be talking all about how you can adjust your diet and nutrition and supplements and other factors of your lifestyle in order to really optimize and fix your sleep. So we'll be talking about the details of what we should be eating throughout the day, what we want to eat before bed, as a snack, or what we might want to eat in the morning, and how all of these different things can affect our sleep. And then we'll also talk about, again, factors like exercise and social interaction and how we can create a routine that all all of which will help to optimize our sleep. So definitely tune in for that episode next week. If you did enjoy today's episode, please leave a review or like wherever you're listening. It really does a lot to help out the show and to check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the links to any of the articles or studies or anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode. And if you do want to get a head start on improving your sleep and you want to know about some of the important factors as far as lifestyle, nutrition, exercise are concerned, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and sign up for a free mini course on energy balance, where I'll walk you through the main things that you'll want to do to support energy production. And this includes different types of foods that are really supportive for producing energy, and also foods that we want to avoid that inhibit our ability to produce energy. And then I'll also be talking about some of our biggest energy drainers and wasters that we'll want to make sure that we avoid in order to maximize our cellular energy, which is a huge component as far as sleep is concerned. So to check out that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy, and I'll see you in the next episode.