The Woman Who Helps Athletes Sleep: Stop Having Showers Just Before Bed! New Science! ‘Nappucino’ Phenomenon You Need To Know!

27:12A lot of times for my athletes, that means we'll go for something like 50 % of a complex carb and like 50 % of a lean protein. So for example, cereal and milk is an easy one. Serial. Yes. Serial and milk. Of course we want something that's whole grain and not necessarily a sugary cereal. But cereal and milk is an easy one that many people have access to or cottage cheese and fruit or 100 % holy crackers and peanut butter. And the reason why is because I don't want you waking up in the middle of the night being hungry or even trying to fall asleep and you feel like you're hungry But we want something that's slow digesting through the night because ideally you're gonna be sleeping 7 8 9 hours during the night And we want it to be able to get you to the morning time and then you will fuel when you wake up So a pre -sleep snack can be a great strategy if you're coming home late and you want to obviously be able to fuel before bed or if you have a really early dinner and you're hungry before bedtime.

28:09Yeah, that happens sometimes as well. Sometimes I'll eat dinner at about 5 pm. Yeah. And then I get to about 10, 11 pm. I'm still awake and I'm starving. Okay, so what's a pre -sleep snack that you think you can grab for? Some nuts. Okay, yeah. Does that work? Yeah, yeah. Nuts have protein in them. Yeah, you can grab a good nut mix. Maybe you can partner that also with like some yogurt too. Raspberry's. Raspberry's, yeah, fruit. Yeah, and some, yes, a protein and carbon there. And those are good, good pre -sleep snack. What's the, if I wanted to destroy my sleep, what would you recommend I eat right before bed?

28:46What would you recommend I consume right before bed? It could be. If you just wanna destroy, sleep entirely. Okay, so we're gonna have the nightcap of having a couple of drinks right before bed. Okay, so some alcohol. Yeah, we'll have some alcohol on board. we'll throw in some caffeine too to really get you to stay awake in the next couple of hours. We'll add a really heavy meal that's fried tomato based fatty sitting in your stomach right before bed and you say tomato based? Yeah sometimes individuals will have acid reflux with tomato based products and so if that's something that is yeah is that something that you experience then you generally want to avoid some of the tomato based products that can aggravate some of the acid reflex.

29:33So some fried food with some ketchup? Yes. Okay, so alcohol, caffeine, and some fried food with some ketchup? I think that would really work to your disadvantage during the night time. Any sugar? Yes. Sugary carbs are tends to be some of the preferences when you're particularly also sleep deprived, so people will choose more carb -heavy foods and foods that have less fiber and more sugar. Why is it that if I eat those foods before bed, it impacts my sleep. What's going on? I don't think we have a great understanding of that. I think the field of sleep and nutrition is definitely growing and I think down the road in the next five or 10 years, we hopefully will have more answers to that.

30:19But it's a fascinating that we do start to understand what we eat can affect our sleep. So for example, the stages of our sleep, or how we sleep during the nighttime. Some of the smaller studies have shown what you eat can then affect having more awakenings during the nighttime and affecting the quality of your sleep. But I think the money of them are still at the infancy. Because that's certainly something I can attest to. I talked about one time many months ago. I think it was last year actually, when I was staying in a hotel here in LA. and I had a cookie before bed because I'm bloody, you know, I blame the hotel, I don't really blame the hotel, I'd take four responsibility.

30:54It was in the mini bar. And I hadn't eaten all day, I came back, I'd been working all day, and when I've been working a lot, I'm much more likely to reach for something bad, and I had this cookie, and honestly, I woke up the next morning eight hours later, feeling like I hadn't slept at all. I just felt so tired, and I know it was that bloody cookie, because I looked at my, um, my whoop, hashtag ad hashtag investor. And I could see that my heart rate throughout the night was really high, like a typically high. My heart rate throughout the night will usually just be this nice flat, I'd know, 50, 55 beats per minute.

31:28And when I had had that cookie, it started in pretty much stayed for the first three or four hours at about 75 beats. So it was like my body was still on. It was like I was walking. And so I've always just had this idea that when I, if you eat something like that right before bed, It puts your body under a lot of strain, like a metabolite strain, then it's kind of like your body doesn't fall asleep. And my REM sleep's always attacked as well if I were to eat something like that. Yeah, it's very fascinating. I think we're starting to understand the connection of what we eat, how our gut is responding to that, and then how that potentially can affect your sleep, and then ultimately your daytime functioning the next day.

32:10but we do recognize from sleep deprivation studies that individuals will make different nutritional choices and grab for the cookies and the ice cream and some of those other snacks later at night then they would if they were well -rested. That's a real horrible paradox, isn't it? It is. Do you know what I mean? Like if you're tired, then you're gonna eat bad things right before bed, which is gonna make you sleep worse and make you tired, which is gonna mean you eat bad things before bed. This is vicious cycle. It is. And unfortunately that could potentially lead to potential weight gain and other downstream consequences.

32:44So just one other reason why obviously making sure you're having sufficient sleep, but also having good practices and your approach to sleep is also a priority. So you're asking what else did we do with Andre, but in that ways of preparing to sleep, you know, we addressed does he have a wind down routine. So we implemented one where he would read before bed to actually relax and prepare his brain and body to sleep for the night. Managing a racing mind can be incredibly common for not just the late athlete but for all of us. And so even before he did that reading, we would actually have him stretch and process his thoughts outside of bed.

33:26And that set him up with a two -part system so that he could actually be strategic about preparing to sleep for the night. A lot of people can relate to this managing a racing mind, athletes, performers, creatives. So if I've got a racing mind, I think as well. I think I tend to feel like I have my best ideas just before I'm about to get in bed. What would you recommend someone do if they have a racing mind? Again, incredibly common to have racing thoughts, thinking through the day, needing to process your thoughts about how to prepare for tomorrow. So what I'd recommend is spending 10 minutes processing your thoughts outside of bed in dim light every single night.

34:10So that can mean I would recommend you could do stretching and you could do deep breathing exercises to activate your parasympathetic system and dampen down your sympathetic system. That's what I recommend for a lot of my athletes. If that's not your thing, I recommend journaling. Getting your thoughts down onto paper or writing a to -do list. Those are easy ones that all of us can do for, even if you start with five minutes today. So I'm gonna stretch. I read something. I think it was Woop's day to day released at the end of the year where they, because there's an activity lock at Woop where you basically say what you're doing.

34:45And I'm gonna butcher this, but I think the stat said that reading before bed improved your sleep by about 5 % across everyone that was using Woop, which makes sense because you're gonna be away from light, I guess, and you're also going to be calming you, you called it your parasympathetic nervous system. Yes. The parasympathetic nervous system. What do I need to know about that in the context of sleep? That's just the system that helps you relax and wind down. It is in balance with the sympathetic system, which you may have heard as the fight or flight system that gets you going. That's where your heart beat will be much more rapid.

35:22Your breathing can be much more rapid when you need to go. That's what I'm overthinking. Yes. But you want to dampen that down and you want to get your parasympathetic system activated so you can help actually relax physiologically your body and also your brain so that you're in a better state to sleep at night, right? It's easier to slowly pump your brakes and then try to sleep versus if you were going 60 miles an hour on a freeway and then suddenly slamming on the brakes and just jumping into bed. So you actually have a process to slow yourself down your brain and body. It will help prepare you to actually get better sleep during the night time.

35:59I just want to close off on Andrea. Is there anything else you did with him? Yes. So please take it away. There's more that we've done with Andrea, but this is to give you some highlights. So, you know, approaches to his sleep were having that way to process his thoughts, being able to wind down before bed and relax, improving his sleep environment. So that it was, as I mentioned, dark and cool. I believe his was around 67 degrees. It was quiet. We tried to, we took out technology from his bedroom. So he didn't have that exposure prior to bed. We looked at cutting down some of his power naps that were several hours long to shorten them to 20 to 30 minutes and time it much closer to game time.

36:42So we would get that boost as you would go into evening games. and we looked at some of his nutritional choices, but this is the highlight of some of the ways that we were strategic about his approach to sleep. And while we're also extending his sleep from that under seven to seven and a half to eight hours, because we knew he had an accumulated sleep that had been built from not getting sufficient sleep, probably for many months to years prior to this. And so as we've shared, some of the performance outcomes were astonishing, and he's been very vocal about sharing his sleep story. And he's not the only one.

37:18If I could share another story about another athlete where you've asked what has saved someone's career. So with Andre, I think he saw this performance enhancement that he could tap into that was that was previously he didn't know almost existed, right? But then there's other athletes where I think having sleep as a foundation almost saved their career. One example is Ryan Jensen. So Ryan Jensen was cut from the Ravens and put on the practice squad. And during this time, as the story goes, his father said, you know, what's happening? You're not yourself. You like made your mom cry the other day.

37:55You know, there's something that's going on. And he eventually was tested for sleep apnea, which is a very, very common sleep disorder where your airway has some partial or a full collapse during the night. and so can have very fragmented sleep through the night. And he was eventually tested, diagnosed, and then put on treatment through what's called a CPAP or continuous positive airway pressure. So it's a mask that provides air to keep the airway open. So then you actually can have consolidated sleep during the night time. And in a very neat way, four years later, Ryan Jensen comes back, signs a $42 million contract as one of the highest paid centers in the NFL.

38:42And then three years later in 2021, it wins the Super Bowl with Tom Brady on the bucks. I see this as the success story of saving his career. And he's been vocal about how much of a difference it made from literally almost the end of his career happening to now being able to succeed at the highest level. And also, of course, being healthier and be able to have more success on the field than he probably imagined for himself. And better relationships, presumably he's not made his mother cry. I'm quite curious about that. Why is it that when we haven't slept, we're more likely to make people cry?

39:18Because our emotions are not regulated well when we're short on sleep. We are more irritable, we are more grouchy, we respond more with our emotions and being able to, why we respond with our emotions. Yeah, what's going on in the body? Is it like a different part of my brain? Is it my hormones? Is it something else? It's probably a combination of both, right? We know that our emotional regulation is not the same if we're well -rested versus if we're asleep deprived. And so we rely more on our innate response, which may not necessarily be that, which is strategic for what we should be responding with if we were tempered and had a better rest under our belt.

39:59So we ask cognitively, there's an implication of which part of your brain you're going to be using, but then also you are just not in a state in which you are going to be able to respond in the way that you would otherwise. Is it the amygdala that's the emotional center? That is one that's where like fear is very much, and emotions and yeah, the amygdala is where like fear and emotions are often centered. Because when I started learning more about sleep and the impact it has on my emotions, I can see a huge variance in how I make my decisions, but also how short I can be, if I haven't slept. And so on the days now where I haven't slept, I literally have a conversation with myself and tell myself that I'm going to be in my amygdala today, so to try not to make any decisions, try not to talk to many people, because there's a risk that I might just be too short in how I consider things and how I respond, and I really want to stay away from that.

40:58But I've seen such a huge, huge variance. And I've also heard of other like famous CEOs and stuff like that talk about how they focused so much on their sleep. I can't, I was reading something the other day and it was, I think it was, it was Jeff Bezos. Do you know what I'm gonna say? I don't, but Jeff Bezos is someone who has been an advocate about sleep and vocal that he needs eight hours every night. Yes, the quote that I heard him say or someone told me that he said was, I think it might have been Ariana Huffington actually. He said that his job as a CEO is to make decisions. And he says he doesn't have to make that many decisions a year.

41:35He only makes a couple of big decisions a year. Every day he's probably just making two or three big decisions. So if his job is to make decisions, then his job is also to sleep. Because the variance I see in even my own decision making when I'm slapped and under slapped is just unbelievably staggering. As someone that sits here for seven, eight hours a day, sometimes having conversations, you wouldn't believe the difference when my brain and my mouth are like connected because I've slept. It's like a different human being. It's a different podcast host. Have you got data to support this, this impact on cognitive performance?

42:09Yes, so you definitely make better decisions when you're well -rested. You're less likely to make cognitive errors. You have better judgment when you're well -rested and you're going to react faster. So in the situations where you need to make big decisions, whether it's on the field, and you need to react because you're running a path, whether you are Jeff Bezos and you're running a company and you need to make critical decisions under, under sometimes, you know, acute stressors, or you are someone who just is trying to be your best. we know that the condom domain very much is influenced by getting sufficient sleep.

42:48And some of the, I would say, you know, large, very, very public disasters have happened as a result of what we know is sleep loss, where people have made poor decisions or decisions that have led to unfortunate disasters. So for example, the challenger disaster with a space shuttle that exploded. And as a result, there's investigations of why did this happen? And the final report does suggest that insufficient sleep for some of those key decision makers around being able to launch or not was attributed to fatigue and insufficient sleep. So being able to make good, daytime decisions had this disastrous effect ultimately on the challenger explosion.

43:33Or are you aware of any studies that have measured cognitive performance on and sleep? Yes, so my studies as well as many of my other colleagues particularly look at reaction time because we know reaction time is Very finally or is very sensitive to sleep loss and I'm starting to find it also is sensitive to extension of sleep So the other half of this story when you pay back sleep sleep debt we see that benefit on on reaction time but reaction time and looking at aspects of, you know, how quickly you're able to respond or if you're having errors when you're responding and you're not supposed to be responding, cognitively those are tests that are typically used in a lot of sleep studies because we know is quite sensitive.

44:20Can you give me an example of a study that will convince me that if I sleep more my cognitive performance will improve? One of the studies I mentioned before, even 15 minutes more sleep was that difference of that A student to the B student. There's There's another study I often cite where if you look at the difference of someone who gets nine hours of sleep for a full week, the reaction time stays very consistent. Great. You want to react appropriately, you want to not make cognitive errors or lapses in judgment, and that will be consistent over the week. If you're someone who's getting seven hours of sleep, you see a slowing of that reaction time and then a leveling off.

44:55If you are getting five hours, you see even even sharper decline in being able to react fast. and then you see a leveling off. If you're getting three hours of sleep every night, you're just gonna tank that reaction time and be slower. At the same time, you have more lapses in judgment and not able to respond appropriately. But the thing about the study that I find so fast inning is when we know that there's this deficit, when you're gonna react slower, in the seven and the five hour group, there's this leveling off. So people say, oh, can I get used to getting insufficient sleep? In some sense, there was the stabilizing of it, but the reality is you're not at your best, right?

45:35We know what your reaction could be if you were getting that nine hours. And if we even gave you three nights of what we call recovery sleep, so we said, okay, now we get, let's say, eight hours in bed for the next three days. You're going to feel better and you'll probably feel more refreshed. But those reaction times for the seven hours and the five hours and the three hour group didn't go back to the baseline. So it takes more than one night or one weekend of that recovery sleep to get you back to your baseline. And so that's the bottom line that I tried to show. My athlete says that you can pay back sleep debt, but it often can take more than just one day or one weekend of quality sleep.

46:17How long does it take? So my studies have suggested multiple weeks will really be beneficial to paying back more of your sleep debt than just a night or two. two nights of sleep. The biggest thing for you tends to be in the first week or two, but obviously this depends on how much more you're actually getting, how you're timing that in your night. But the bottom line is that if you can invest maybe a week, or maybe if you have a vacation coming up and you do two weeks, that's going to be the biggest impact on paying back your sleep debt. And if you say, hey, that sounds like a long time, Dr. Ma, well, even potentially like five days as one of my preliminary studies had suggested in professional baseball players, even if it's five days of getting one additional hour of sleep, that was shown to improve cognitive reaction time and also processing speed in the athletes that actually got one additional hour.

47:11So if you got six hours, you went to seven. If you got seven hours, you went to eight hours versus the athletes that just continued to get their normal sleep. Interesting. I guess I've got to understand what this concept or this idea of sleep that is, because I want to make sure I'm super clear and what it is and isn't. Because when you say the word debt, I assume it's kind of like, I owe the sleep bank manager a couple of hours. But I've kind of gone back on forward on this idea of sleep that I think some people have told me that it's real, some people have told me that it's not real. And I don't know where I should stand on it.

47:43So if I haven't, so for example, I flew into LA the first couple of nights my sleep wasn't great. But I had good sleep last night. Am I still paying for it now? No. The way I explain the concept of sleep debt is that your body requires a certain amount every single night. Again, we talked about individual variability, but let's just say you need eight hours every night. And conceptually, if you don't meet that eight hours, then you build up a debt. So if you're only getting six hours a night, you now have two hours of debt built up. If you go Monday to Friday, that's five days. Now you have 10 hours built up, right?

48:16Two hours every night becomes 10 hours. And if you then sleep in on a Saturday and you get, let's just say, 10 hours of sleep, you've paid back two of those hours, but you still have eight hours left to go. Am I, am I body now? Yes. So conceptually, that's the idea of accumulating sleep debt. I do stand in the camp that believes that that does accumulate over time. We do think that you can pay back some of that debt on the short term, right? So what you lost, like you said, this past day or this past week, maybe this past month, you should pay that back with getting extra sleep, or we call sleep extension.

48:52We don't think that you can surplus and bank more and that you can pull from that in the future, but we recognize that if you've got insufficient sleep, that if you extend it over a couple of days, maybe a couple weeks, then you will see benefits in your reaction time, in your fatigue levels, in your performance outcomes. And so we do recommend that as a tool, especially if you know that you're going to have a day where you're going to have sleep loss. So it's a strategy, for example, if you know, okay, in a week, I'm going to have a project and I'm not going to be getting enough sleep that night.

49:29Then what you can do in the days leading up to it is getting sufficient sleep, but arguably even more, so that we know when it gets to that project, the decrements that you'll experience tend to be less robust than if you went into it with just say those five hours. So what evidence do you have that sleep debt is a real thing? What's the first thing that comes to mind? So what I've dedicated my career to is trying to understand how to pay back sleep debt with sleep extension interventions. So what that means is typically I'm working with a number of collegiate athletes where many of them are not getting what they need because when we start these studies, many of them have high fatigue levels.

50:09They are reacting slowly. we often see lapses in their judgment and their ability to ultimately perform and function, which is what they consider their baseline. But then when we actually challenge them by paying back some of that debt by getting additional hours, when we monitor the differences that can make over multiple weeks, that's where we see there's improvement in the reaction time, their fatigue levels drop, their performance on the field improves. And so we recognize what has changed in this is trying to pay back some of that accumulated debt when the rest of their training has been held consistent.

50:53So we've been trying to maintain the rest of their training. Which is key, which is the key point because in my mind I go, well maybe if you've got the athlete to sleep well on that first night, then when they've showed up to training, they've trained a little bit harder, they've built their muscles a little but more they've had better recovery in their muscles. So then the next day, the same thing happens because they've slept. So it's actually just that they're training better, which is causing them to improve their muscles. We've tried to hold their training to be consistent and choosing periods where their training isn't going to vary significantly, as well as you can almost make the argument too, that sometimes as the season goes on, athletes get more fatigued, more tired, and that can be actually a decrement to how they'll perform.

51:37So when we see the benefits come down the road as the seasonate potentially gets even longer, that at least is some Suggestion that the intervention of sleep while we also have the measures of how much more they were getting actually were at least Associated with these performance outcomes because REMS the one of the key things about REM sleep Which is the sort of final stage of sleep is that it helps with muscle recovery? Deep sleep is actually deep sleep is where we deep sleep is where it's implied that there's more rust muscle recovery regeneration because there's the biggest pulse of growth hormone during your deep sleep.

52:12So to back up a bit you have light stages of sleep, then you have deep stages of sleep, and then you have that rapid eye movement sleep or when you dream. That tends to be more associated with consolidation of learning and memory and skill consolidation. So you go through these cycles during the night time, about 90 to 120 minutes, but the proportion changes through the night. The beginning of the night, you get more of that deep sleep. And then in the early morning hours is when you get more of that REM sleep. So you might have woken up in an earlier morning and had the recall of these vivid dreams.

52:46It's because you often will be waking up from that REM sleep. Yes, that happened last night, actually, because I woke up suspiciously early for me. So I woke up about five or six o 'clock and I was just kind of dipping in and out of dreams. And there were very vivid dreams that I can still remember now. Yeah. So the muscle memory element of all of this, what is muscle memory and how is that sort of implicated with sleep? So muscle memory, there's different types of memory and you need sleep, think of sleep as hitting that save button, right? You need to sleep after you have learned new information, and learned a new skill so that you can consolidate those memories and be able to retrieve it later.

53:29So I always use an analogy of hitting that save button after you learn new material or learn a new skill set. You need to go home and sleep so that it goes into long -term storage and that you can retrieve that the following day and subsequently. Without that sleep, we know that that groundwork for that new skill or that new memory is not going to be as strong. And so in the context of students who are trying to study for a test or an athlete that's trying to remember the playbook You want to space those intervals that you're learning that material and have sleep that follows so that you strengthen those connections And also you mentioned when you were talking about one of your athletes encouraging them to map before a game I read this fascinating word in the research that I was doing on your work.

54:19I think it's Nappa Chino. Yes. What's a Nappa Chino? The Nappa Chino. So this is a useful tool if you're trying to have a temporary boost in alertness and performance. So the Nappa Chino, you go and take your favorite caffeinated beverage. Yeah. The caffeine will start to kick in in about 15 minutes and you go and then take your 20 to 30 minute power So if you're able to fall asleep within that five to ten minutes while the caffeine will start to come on board, then when you wake up after 20 to 30 minutes, then bam, both the caffeine will have kicked in and the power nap will have kicked in and there's research to show that that's more effective for alertness and performance improvement for a couple of hours then if you only did the caffeine alone or only did the power nap alone.

55:05So the napachino is a useful tool for some who utilize caffeine and you can partner that together with a short 20 to 30 minute nap. So if I wanted to take a nap now, I have an espresso and then go and have my nap. Exactly. Yes. The caveana you do need to fall asleep within about 10 minutes or else the caffeine will start to come on board. But if you do this in the late morning or early afternoon, it can be a helpful tool so that you have a boost in your alertness for a couple of hours. And I grew up thinking that maps didn't work because I learned about sleep and these sleep cycles and then it takes, I don't know, 45, 60 minutes, whatever it is to get into late stage sleep, like the REM sleep, the deep sleep.

55:48I thought what's the point taking a 15, 20 minute nap if I'm not going to get into deep REM sleep. So there's benefit of just that 15 minute nap you mentioned. You want to stay in lighter stages of sleep because there's benefits of lighter stages of sleep. And that can give you that alertness and performance boost, even when you're in lighter stages of sleep. You actually don't want to go into deeper stages of sleep because when you take the longer naps, as I think you might have shared, you've taken the two hour nap, the three hour nap, you wake up and you're much more sluggish, much more groggy.

56:19That's not a good state for you to go out and then do work after that, or it's not the state that you want to be for a basketball player and have to go and play a game. But those deeper stages, you come out of what we call sleep inertia, with that sluggishness. And so it can also affect your sleep at night and make it harder to sleep subsequently. So you actually want to stay in those lighter stages of sleep and keep those naps very short. So what's the maximum length that an app should be? I like 30 minutes. Okay. Yes. So you can time that by setting an alarm. If it takes you five or 10 minutes to fall asleep, you can plan for that as well.

56:57and then setting alarm to wake yourself up 30 minutes later. I think it's a great strategy when, again, you don't get sufficient sleep at night or you had poor sleep leading into that night and you need a little bit of a boost later in the day. What do you think of a snooze button? The snooze button. I'm not a huge fan of the snooze. I fully understand why people love to hit the snooze and then go back to bed. And if you're someone who does that, one of my suggestions is just to cut down so that you only hit the snooze once, five minutes later, start your day. The reason why is because it helps to maximize your RAM or your dreaming sleep in those early morning hours if you can actually sleep consolidated all the way until the time you have to wake up.

57:39So for example, if you're someone who hits the snooze button five times, every five minutes for a half hour, it means that you're having very interrupted sleep for the last half hour of your night. versus if you just let yourself sleep consolidated all the way through and then maybe hit this newsman just one time and then got yourself up to start your day. It means you would have given yourself another 25 minutes of consolidated sleep, likely that dreaming REM sleep that's so important for learning and memory. And so that is one just easy adjustment that you can make in terms of your morning approach to maximizing what you get during the night.

58:18So what's the what's the value in consolidating it versus just having fragmented sleep? Yeah, so then if you're getting a lot of that REM sleep in those early morning hours and you're snoozing, you're going to be waking up and coming out of that REM sleep So you likely are changing the stages of sleep you would be getting in those early hours So you would then be awake and then probably going into lighter stages of sleep awake lighter stages of sleep than necessarily having a solid REM period all the way until you wake up. What's the cost of that? So learning a memory and consolidation is definitely one area that we recognize as associated with that REM sleep.

58:56And so you want, as we talked about, it changes through the night. You want to have as much as possible, but you part have to have just the duration. So when you get the most of it in the morning hours, if you cut that short and either wake up earlier or you're snoozing and you're interrupting it, you're not going to maximize the value you get of the hours in REM. Okay, so I just want to make sure that I, those 25 minutes, I give them to REM sleep. Versus just giving them to a little fragmented light sleep. Exactly. So I'm better off just putting my alarm to the time that I actually have to get out of bed.

59:31Exactly. Just to maximize the amount of REM sleep that I get to consolidate my memories. Are you a snoozer? No, not really. Okay. Well, I mean, we will have our moments, but not really, I can't remember the last time I pressed the snooze button, but the thing that I do, and I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, is because I have told myself, and I say told myself because I'm quite conscious of the BS that I believe about myself, but I've told myself that I'm like an alchronotype or something, which by the way, I don't even know if it's true, and I don't know if coronatripes are true. And I typically work quite late, and I love working late.

1:00:06I get better ideas late. I do my writing pretty late at night as well. And so what I've done in my life is I've basically made sure that I don't have any meetings or any engagements before 11 o 'clock. So even like this podcast that I started at 11 o 'clock. Yes. Basically nothing in my life starts at 11 o 'clock for that very reason. Just to... Because if I do end up staying up a little bit late, I want to be able to kind of sleep through without having to sit in a alarm and just wake up naturally. What do you think of that? Is that suboptimal? No, I think it's a great strategy. So there are Chronotypes where you've mentioned you are more of an evening owl you go to bed later You like to wake up later as a natural predilection.

1:00:43Is that real? Or is this real? This is real just to find myself No, there is a natural tendency for some to feel like they're evening owls and there's others who feel like they do much better in the morning So they go to bed earlier the wake up earlier They're more productive in the morning those are our morning larks and then there is a group that's somewhere in the middle that don't strongly lean one way or another. But really what you're doing is you're making your sleep work to your your chronotype and to your advantage where you do feel like you're more productive in the evenings and then you want to be able to maximize your sleep waking up without an alarm and starting your day later.

1:01:18I think that's like a great strategy because a lot of people aren't able to have that flexibility and so society often will force particularly the night owls onto an earlier schedule where you have to wake up whether to go to work or other obligations or kids at an earlier point. And then you're cutting your sleep short, like you mentioned, like with school. And then we're getting these, and then you're on a schedule that doesn't work synergistically with what your chronotype is. They should do some studies on kids in school and like disobedience and ability to pay attention in do -home working grades because honestly I was so useless in school and I really, I really think a lot of it.

1:01:59Now I'm not entirely sure here because I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was like 30 years old, so part of me thinks I've just got like a very active brain and part of having an active brain meant that late at night I was finding ways to stimulate it by playing video games, etc. So that might just be the reason. But the other reason might be that I'm an alchronid type and I found it really hard to get up at like 730 to go to school by sort of an 830ish. And so I would miss school, I would show up naked, I would sleep in lessons. I feel like school just starts way too early for kids. It's an ongoing problem and actually in a very interesting way, there has been a change to school start times, particularly in California.

1:02:42This year was the first year that school start times for high schools and for middle schools was shifted much later because there are studies to show that that are when our students are better rest in, they have higher attendance rates. Their GPA and grades are much higher. There's less mental health issues. There's less car accidents. And so these studies have been over the last decade and longer in which they have built evidence to help make decisions to start school time later. And that is in California, I've been enacted this year and some other states are starting to follow suit. but to your point, what makes it challenging is that at the age of high school, many of those body clocks are shifted.

1:03:27And so students want to, in adolescence, go to bed later and wake up later naturally. That's just how our sleep changes through the life cycle. But when they stay up late and then we cut their sleep short by forcing them to get up really early for school, now they have insufficient sleep and that builds like a sleep debt. And so they're not setting it themselves up for success in school for learning a memory. So that's where, again, there's more evidence of if we can shift the school start time, get these students to have a little bit more sleep. They ultimately are better prepared for school, come to school, have less car accidents and are just healthier students.

1:04:03Do you think there's anything parents need to know about sleep when it as it relates to their children and sleep hygiene with their children? I think it's important for parents to start at the early, early years of instilling good sleep habits, a good sleep routine, and giving their children the tools and skills to be able to make sure that it's a priority as they go through early childhood into adolescence. And hopefully then set themselves up for making sure it's a priority for their adult life. I'm a young parent myself. I just had my first son. And so I recognize and can empathize with the struggles of getting sufficient sleep when they're very young, but then trying to instill how they can approach your sleep from early age, I think, would be incredibly helpful.

1:04:52To also just change culturally how we think about sleep, because so many of us now have never heard learned about sleep before or what we should do until you're an adult. But if we can make that change earlier on, I think we're going to have healthier kids, better families, who are better rested and also just this generation where we recognize this is so important that we shouldn't sacrifice it because we're doing ourselves a disservice to letting us be the best that we can possibly be. How old is your son? 11 months. 11 months. So how are you sleeping? Oh I transparently I'm quite tired. I as a yeah new young mom also I don't have the ideal sleep that I know I would love.

1:05:34And it's just for a short time, but I'm trying to be strategic of the things that I can do with some of the tools that we've talked about trying to leverage power and apps. When, for example, I do have to still wake up during the night time to tend to him. And the early morning starts are not always consistent. So my sleep schedule is not always consistent. So going back to those three buckets we talked about earlier, if I don't get the full duration that I want, then how do I maximize the quality? I've optimized my sleep environment. I try to have a process to wind down at night time, or the timing is, and the sleep schedule is another area that you can still work on when, for example, you may not be getting the duration.

1:06:16So these are strategies that I try to employ when I know that I also am a work in progress in trying to get the best sleep possible. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place.

1:06:50Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode in interscale at mode. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors. Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to NetSuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning. That's NetSuite .com slash Bartlett. What are the other examples of sort of case studies that you're most proud of or that were most pivotal in shaping your thinking about sleep?

1:07:29I mentioned the Philadelphia Eagles back in 2017 and tried to help them educate their players about sleep, how to have a more strategic approach to their wind -on routine, to thinking about how they're integrating sleep into their training practices, and thinking about ultimately how they travel and having, for example, strategies to minimize jet lag when you're crossing time zones and having to play in different locations. and the whole. Give me some of those then. So, the tips you'd give me as someone that travels a lot, pre -during and post -travel. What should I be thinking about before I travel while I'm traveling and after I land?

1:08:06Yeah. So, have a game plan for every trip. I think most people have no strategies in place when they travel. They just get onto an airplane, get to a new location and try to adjust when they get there. That is not really a great strategy. You want to have at least a pre -flight strategy, in -flight strategy, and post -flight strategies because that will set yourself up better to minimize jet lag, also travel fatigue, and ultimately then be able to acclimate faster if you're crossing multiple time zones. Before pre -flight, try not to panic pack. I know all of us do panic packing right before but right before we're getting on a flight.

1:08:42So you want to try and be strategic and pack early. You want to get at least... Why do I want to not panic pack? Because most people will panic pack the night before they have a flight and then they'll cut their sleep short so they'll get only say five hours of sleep because they're staying up late trying to pack everything and get ready for that early morning flight or for the next day. Well, I pack the morning off travel. I'm out here in LA for two weeks and I packed carry on suit goes. I opt to look at one where I wear just the same outfit every day so I have the same outfit but I pack literally an hour before I go to the airport.

1:09:18But you're right, it does cut my sleep because I could have been in bed. Whether it's beginning of the day or the end of the day, if it's affecting then the duration of your sleep, I would recommend trying to be a little more strategic and do it a day before, two days before. Don't panic pack. Number two, try to get at least those seven hours if not your amount of sleep that makes you feel like you're functioning and performing well, at least a day if not two days. If you get insufficient sleep before you get onto an airplane, jet lag will be worse. And that travel fatigue can feel much more robust.

1:09:53And you're more likely to have a cross on in the airport, which is going to destroy the whole thing for you. So those are things that you can do before flight. Depending on where you're going, you can actually start to adjust your body clock before you even get onto the airplane. So let's just take a three hour time difference here in the US. If you're in the West Coast and you're going to the East Coast, three time zones, you You can actually start to go to bed half hour early, wake up a half hour early. Do that for two or three days and get sunlight in the morning because that sunlight reinforces to your brain to start to shift that body clock.

1:10:29So if you can do that a day before, two days before, maybe three days before, when you actually get to the new location, you don't have to shift your body clock three time zones. You've already shifted it one time zone or two time zones because the rule of thumb is for every time zone you cross, it takes about a day to reacclimate. Even if you feel better after the first day, usually jet -like feels the worst in that first day when you arrive. But physiologically, you haven't really adjusted fully, even if it's over a couple of days. So that's the rule of thumb. So those are some things pre -flight you can do.

1:11:03When you're in flight, you want to hydrate throughout the flight because dehydration can worsen jet lag. You want to think about getting onto the new time zone schedule. So again, depending on which direction you're flying and how many times on your crossing, you want to start to synchronize perhaps like when you're actually sleeping or some of your meal times so that you're getting onto that schedule. And then you partner that with, for example, building a travel sleep kit. I'm a huge fan of investing in sleep tools that will help you sleep when you need to in non -ideal situations. Whether you're on the plane and now trying to take a nap or shift your sleep schedule, then you actually have an eye mask and ear plugs.

1:11:40You have noise -canceling headphones. You have your own travel pillow. You have the tools with you to make... Sleeping drugs? Sorry. Sleeping medication. Okay, so some medications can be helpful, like melatonin, particularly if you're trying to advance your clock, has evidence that it can help shift that a little bit more quickly when you're trying to advance your clock earlier. Would you recommend it to athletes? I would say if it's something that you've used before and you know that you don't experience some of the side effects, it could be a useful tool. So melatonin wall, it's one of the most commonly used supplements and sleep aids.

1:12:17There are still side effects that'd be wary of. So specifically for athletes too, you can feel more groggy and sluggish when you wake up from it. It's not regulated by the FDA here in the US and so you don't always know what's actually in those supplements. So for my lead athletes, they use what's called NSF Sport Certified versions. There's more regulation around them. But for the, you know, every day person, you know, there's a study where they looked at the amount of melaton that was actually in of a variety of these supplements and it was a wide range from over 400 % of what was on the label to obviously sub, you know, you know, under 100 % of what they actually indicated.

1:12:59So there's a wide range of what's actually going to be in the supplement, but it can help, particularly when you're on travel with reacquimating. My team here, most of them use a certain app when we travel, and it just tells you basically, you say where you're going, and then it'll tell you what time to eat, what time not to eat, etc. So you can get aligned with that with your destinations, like circadian rhythm, I guess. So we'll link below one of the apps that our team use. We're not affiliated with them in any way, but when we're flying out here, I know, well, in my team, send me a screenshot and said, Steve, this is what time you need to be eating and everything because we're going to LA.

1:13:34So it's been super helpful for all of us. I'll link that below because I know some people are going to be wondering what apps they should be using. So we're in the flight. We've got our post -travel flight kit with the eye masks and all those kinds of things in. We've got our app. We're hydrated, noise -cancelling headphones. Is there anything else we need to be thinking about while we're traveling? When we're traveling, so... On a plane. On a plane. So we talked about hydration, minimizing alcohol and caffeine or eliminating entirely is going to be a great strategy instead of having some on board because I can also potentially worsen jet lag and or make it more difficult to sleep when you're actually trying to when you arrive and again seeking light.

1:14:16That is the most powerful signal to your brain to help shift your body clock. Also bringing sunglasses so that you actually avoid sunlight at certain times because your body can respond differently depending on again on your home location and how many times in Zucross. So there's certain times that these apps can be helpful that will likely tell you you don't want to get sunlight during these hours. And so you want to be strategic about that and just make sure you have sunglasses so that you can still go about your day but try to minimize that sun exposure. getting well rested and getting sufficient sleep, even if it might be a little bit more fragmented than usual, just giving yourself at least a day to acclimate so that I would recommend not scheduling your most important meetings right when you get in or in that first day for athletes they don't want to do maximal exercise because there's a risk that that like could increase injury in that acute period.

1:15:09So you want your body clock to be able to readjust and then using caffeine and power nap strategically. So for example, our afternoon, one to four o 'clock is typically when we have this dip in our alertness. Now when you get to a new time zone, that can occur at a different time point in the day. But strategically, then you can use caffeine and power naps to be able to help you through those lulls when you're in that new time zone. What about sex? Sleep and sex and bed and that is it. Because I think so many people actually make the mistake of being in bed and being on their computer, on their phone, doing other work while they're awake.

1:15:48And that actually helps strengthen that connection that when you're in bed, you're awake and your brain will start to associate that. So sleep and sex are all that you want in bed. Everything else should be outside. So when you talked about that wind under a teen or that racing mind, all that should happen outside of bed. Because you want to actually tease apart that association that your brain is making of being awake in bed. and that will be one small adjustment that's helpful to get better rest at night. But will sex improve or hurt my sleep? I'm thinking, you know, because I'm really trying to get out like, should you be in bed with someone?

1:16:22Does it improve your sleep to sleep with someone? And does sex have an impact on your sleep? Because I, you know, speaking from personal experience, I think that if I have sex before bed, I sleep better. I don't think that there's a great literature on sleeping sex out there, but I will say that there has been, there's definitely an impact potentially of a bed partner sleeping with you in bed because their movements can affect your sleep. If they snore, that can very much affect your waking up during the night time. And then, you know, with sex, I think that that is something anecdotally. Some people will definitely say it helps them to be able to consolidate their sleep and they feel like the quality is better.

1:17:02But I don't think there's a lot of great studies that are being funded for research right now. What is the most popular question you typically get asked about sleep from people? Most public questions napping, which we've discussed. Keep them short 20 to 30 minutes. I get asked a fair amount about can you over sleep? So no, we don't think really you can over sleep. When some people say they get say nine hours or 10 hours and feel much more groggy, because often they've shifted their sleep schedule or they have an accumulated debt that says built up and then they're finally allowing their body to relax and so now they don't have the mask of stimulating activities from their day or their work.

1:17:43That can affect. I read, I read, I didn't read a study. One of my podcast guests told me that there is a harm to over sleeping, but I think from what I managed to ascertain, the studies they were citing just proved that people who sleep for like 10 or 11 hours, is typically have a higher risk of disease and mental health. But then it's hard to establish cause and effect. Because if you're in bed for 11 hours, maybe you're a depressed, and one would assume you're exercising and moving a little bit less. So you probably got a lot of cardiovascular issues. Yeah, so there are studies of looking at the more extremes of less hours of sleep, and then even more hours of sleep like the 10 hours.

1:18:21And obviously there can be other comorbid conditions that go along with individuals like who sleep much longer as you mentioned, you can sleep much longer because of depression or other chronic health issues. And so that's a different context of thinking about oversleeping, I think in the question I typically get is oh, I slept one night of 10 hours and I feel worse. So I'm never gonna do that again. And that's actually not true, right? I think we want to have just more consistent hours that are timed so you're not having a shift in the bedtime and wait time by like three hours later because that could be why you're having that groginess when you wake up not because you got the 10 hours, but because you're waking up now at 11 a .m.

1:18:59instead of your typical, you know, 8 a .m. wake up time. You could be more dehydrated because of that longer time. Snoring is one that I get asked a fair amount about is, you know, is it completely benign? And I would say if you're snoring, you should go talk with your primary care doctor. And you should potentially ask about getting a sleep study. There is sleep disorders like obstructive sleep acne. we mentioned before that's incredibly common and that's when that airway has some partial or full collapse and can lead to very fragmented sleep so you can wake up not refreshed because you really didn't get quality sleep during the night time and snoring I think in our society has become just an accepted norm that can happen as you get older but that is not always the case that it is a benign a benign symptom and so making sure that you talk to your primary care doctor and potentially get a sleep study I think is incredibly important.

1:19:53Is sleep apnea the most common? Does he disorder that you see? Yes, yes it is. So apnea can be incredibly common. I believe it's about 26 % of people in the ages of 30 to 70. And so that as you imagine, that's like one in four individuals. But many individuals don't actually get tested or diagnosed and then treated until their way into their adulthood or even passed into their 60 -70s. So with a sleep apnea, oftentimes people will not wake up refreshed. They will often feel tired in the daytime. They may have a lot of caffeine or have to rely on power naps to keep their alertness up. A lot of individuals will have early morning awakening.

1:20:39So in those three, four, five o 'clock in the morning, they'll wake up and not realize why they're waking up frequently. Snoring can be very common. If you've ever had a bed partner or a roommate and they've ever noted that you stop breathing or pause breathing or gasp and choke Those are very suggestive that you might have sleep apnea and again, it is incredibly common but very manageable so something that I would highly recommend if you your bed partner your your roommate snore just suggest to have I would suggest they go see their primary care doctor. And typically, is it people that are slightly overweight that are more likely or unsusceptible to having sleep at mid?

1:21:20Yes, yes. A lot of individuals who are overweight or obese will be more at risk for sleep apnea. As you imagine, the collapse of the airway typically is here around the neck and so more weight typically is not helpful for, for, I mean, but you can also be a very fit, healthy, young individual. So I work with elite athletes and I have a number of my professional athletes who again are young healthy males But their anatomy is just more susceptible for this condition. What are the the big rebuttals you get the big Excuses that you hear from people. I don't have enough time. Yeah, I don't have enough time to sleep Okay, I don't have enough time to sleep and what do you think of that one?

1:22:02I Don't think that that's true. I think we we all are going to make sacrifices and priorities in our day. And I think if you are saying you don't have enough time, I think there's ways to be strategic about how you manage your time in the day. I think we all have five minutes to implement a wind down routine. We can all do that at the very least. I think all of us can optimize our environment. I think we all can invest in some sleep tools. I think we can make better choices about how you go about your day so you set yourself up better for sleep. So I think that those are just small adjustments, but will be huge in terms of what that will mean at night.

1:22:43I hear that, you know, I will sleep in the off season. Right now in season is when I want to focus on being my best. But really, I think that's the backwards way of thinking about it. If you're thinking about optimizing your sleep when it gets to the season or the postseason when some of the most important games come down the line, you're just playing catch up because if you have a sleep debt built up and you're just trying to maintain that through the season you actually are at a deficit versus the other guy or growl on the team who has paid that back in the off season. Now you have given yourself zero sleep debt, you're at your best and now you're just trying to maintain that through the season.

1:23:25What about injury? If I'm an athlete and I'm under -slept, are there any studies that suggest I'm more prone to injury? There are a few studies that do suggest getting insufficient sleep. So under six hours, there's been more fatigue -related injuries in adolescent athletes. There's also a study that has looked at under eight hours of sleep. It still has increased risk around 1 .7 fold higher of injury. 170 % of injury. when you're getting under eight hours of sleep versus those that got more than eight hours of sleep. And so I think it's unclear exactly why you're specifically more at risk for injury, but I tried to take a look at the biomechanical changes of what happens when athletes are not getting sufficient sleep in one of my early studies that has explored the biomechanical changes.

1:24:23And what we showed is that when you're not getting sufficient sleep for multiple days, you have more variability in your biomechanics. So moving differently? Yes, so you're moving differently. So you're not actually selecting probably your preferred coordination strategy. So for example, I had them doing a vertical jump. And if you're well -rested, you likely should be able to do that very consistently, as an elite athlete. But when you're not well -rested, it's much more variable. So they're moving differently, and that may put people at risk for injury. So they're landing differently? Exactly.

1:24:54Yeah, how their knees, their hips are coordinated together, it differs. And so that may put you at risk for injury down the road. But more to come, hopefully on that front. There's just not that many studies that currently exist. I've noticed something recently, because recently I've had to get up quite early on a few occasions. So when I say early, I mean, I've had to go get wake up at 4am because I've got a flight at 6am. And really interestingly, if I... So, if I got in bed at like 11 p .m. at night and I have to wake up at say 3 or 4 a .m. When I wake up at 3 or 4 a .m. I'm really hungry, but if I wake up at 8 a .m.

1:25:34I'm not hungry. Well, you are starting your day much earlier. So, your body clock is starting at a much earlier time than you typically would versus 8 o 'clock. So, you almost have what we call socially jet lagged yourself, right? Where you didn't get on an airplane yet, but you literally shifted your whole sleep schedule to be an earlier wake up time. And so you can feel some of the symptoms of jet lag where you can have stomach GI upset, you can feel more fatigued, you can have those symptoms as if you got onto a new time zone and flew there, but you hadn't yet. If it almost feels there, I say hormonal, like, because I was trying to understand what hunger is, and hunger is essentially a bunch of hormones, isn't it?

1:26:16So yes, you have certain hormones that regulate your appetite. So leptin and grellen are two hormones that impact your appetite. Grellen makes you more hungry, leptin feels more satiated. If you don't get sufficient sleep, these levels can be imbalanced. And so that's where people tend to, as we've talked about, gravitate towards, you know, carb and unhealthy foods in the later evening time. But also when these are not well balanced, that can also lead to weight gain or situations where you're not able to potentially regulate your weight appropriately. And so when I have individuals who are wondering about not making weight goals, I ask them about their sleep.

1:26:58And they don't recognize that sometimes being able to address how they sleep will actually help them to get to the weight management goals that they're really striving for. Jack, what about you? We've talked about sleep before. How are you sleeping at the moment? I've got pretty good at my sleep. but waking up in the middle of the night, you spoke about it in terms of sleep happening. But it feels like it should be normal to wake up. So, awakenings actually can be very normal. This is a very common question I get asked is, you know, should I never wake up in night? And that's actually not true.

1:27:28So you shouldn't necessarily hit your head on the pillow and then you're out for the full night and then never having awakening. If you wake up, you go to the bathroom one time, you come back, fall asleep in the five to 10 minutes. Great, that's actually very normal. So you can have awakenings that happen even in the early morning hours. And that can be just a typical part of your sleep cycle because it can be as you're transitioning between these sleep stages that you'll have these awakenings. Sometimes you'll consciously know that you're awake and other times you will unconsciously awaken. And so something like where we might actually show you that you have these awakenings during the nighttime that you don't recall.

1:28:06But when it becomes very frequent then you have these awakenings and over multiple weeks, or it makes it more difficult and challenging than to function in the daytime. That's when we get more concerned about awakenings because there's a number of ways, reasons why you can awaken at night time. To name a few, it could be environmental factors that affect your sleep. It could be that you had alcohol, you know, that right before bedtime. Maybe there's caffeine that's causing you to be awake. There's also just stress, or if you just have a racing mind that potentially could cause those awakenings, a bed partner is something that is a common culprit, or underlying sleep apnea that can happen.

1:28:45And so there's early awakenings that need to be investigated with your doctor. How much does um alcohol impact my sleep in percentage terms? I don't know the specific statistics of how that's going to impact the duration, but I will say that when we look at the studies of moderate to high consumption of alcohol, that very much has a association with more fragmented sleep, more awakenings during the night time. And so the quality of your sleep is significantly impaired. So if you're trying to have an important meeting the following day, an important game, or you're just trying to be able to be your best that following day, at least try to minimize or eliminate the alcohol or in the sleep, in the sleep -dox world, we say, drink when you wake up.

1:29:29We'd rather you have that alcohol in the morning, or the early afternoon, not necessarily right before bed. And so, yeah, that's one of the strategies is to eliminate the alcohol right before sleeping. Dr. Marl, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're gonna leave it for. And the question that has been left for you is, if you could go back and fix your worst mistake, but it would change everything afterwards with no guarantees, would you do it?

1:30:07No. I would not do it. I think we make mistakes in life, and we learn from them, and we adapt, and we... It can set us off in a different direction, but that ultimately is going to influence who we become, who we interact with, how we build a life forward. And I wouldn't change my life if I could go back and it would set me on a completely different trajectory. Could you think of a worst mistake when I said that? Did one come to mind or was that a category of? There wasn't. I, maybe I haven't spent a lot of time to try and dive into some of my worst mistakes. I definitely have made mistakes along the way and obviously would have done some things differently in my personal or professional life.

1:30:50But I do think that that is what has made me who I am today, right? I think I have tried to learn from those mistakes, try not to make them again, and try to figure out how to adapt from there. But that has, I think, set me on a path that is where I am today. So I wouldn't change that. It's so interesting the subject of sleep for me because I was part of the, like, burnout brigade. They're, like, badge of honor burnout brigade for a long period of time. And I definitely thought in my early career when I started my first business at around 18, 19, 20, 21, up until probably about, I'm going to say up until about 26, I thought that me not sleeping was something to show off, and I thought that I was more impressive if I communicated to people how little I slept and how much I was able to accomplish in spite of that.

1:31:40I think actually the greatest enableer to my productivity is like being really obsessive about my sleep and having that rule that I said where nothing in my life, unless there's something that's removable book people for 11 o 'clock. And I really hope other people, after listening to you, after going through your work, which is all available online, really prioritize their sleep. Because as you've shown through your research and the studies, the impact, the very real impact on our lives is so profound. Maybe one shift in your mindset too that I encourage you, but everyone that's listening as well is the way I frame it to athletes is it's a small tweak, but if you think about sleep as not the end of today, it's the beginning of tomorrow.

1:32:26What you do to prepare, what you do to try and get the duration that you're striving for, and how you set yourself up will affect everything about how you function, how you interact with individuals, and ultimately perform tomorrow. If you're willing to do everything it takes for you to be your best, sleep has to be foundational in every day. And if you're willing to put in that time and that effort, you'll read the benefits that come down the line and it can be completely life -changing. But you have to give yourself that grace and that patience to be able to make these small adjustments. But as some of my athletes have shown, it can be a game changer for them.

1:33:07It can completely change the trajectory of their career and even life once they actually get quality sleep under their belt. And so I challenge everyone to make small adjustments starting tonight and reach out if you have questions, but why do we find you? You can reach me at Instagram, Twitter or X Facebook, LinkedIn at Dr. Sherry Ma, DRCHERIM AH, or you can find me at my website is Dr. Sherry Ma .com. Thank you so much. I know that there's a lot of different individuals from various sports teams that listen because I speak to them. I speak to some of the guys at Manchester United two weeks ago in a hotel about from the wellbeing team about these subjects and the sort of interconnected subjects of sleep and wellbeing generally but also spoken to people at Chelsea Football Club that listen to the podcast about these themes.

1:34:02So I'm convinced there's going to be a lot of athletes and aspiring athletes and just people like me who are going to benefit profoundly from the work that you do and the research that you've done that really shines a light on the importance of sleep, which is often misunderstood and is seen as a negotiable part of our lives. So thank you so much for the work that you do and I'm very excited to see where your research and where your studies take you because it will be pioneering research, no doubt. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead.

1:34:36And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform. You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place. Their technology has been a real game changer, especially for my team at Flight Studio. As over the last year, we've moved out of start -up mode and interscale at mode. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors.

1:35:11Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future -proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett.