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What's up guys, it's Sam and Taylor, and we want you to put your shoes on, pop open that energy drink, and go. Hello guys, welcome back to another episode. I'm Taylor. And I'm Sam, and we are very excited about today's episode because we...
Have a nice little sleep specialist on to talk about all things sleep and improving your sleep. Yes, which is someone we haven't had on yet. We haven't done a sleep episode. Yeah. So very exciting bringing something new. We're really on the ball with the new... I know. I got a few DMs. New, funky, fresh ideas. I got a few DMs saying like how amazing we've been doing with like not transforming our podcast, but just kind of like bringing more valuable information than just fitness. And...
I take that compliment very much because that's what we've been trying to do. There was a lot of positive feedback about our last episode and just how everyone's so happy to see us kind of living and thriving. Yeah, living and thriving. So thank you guys for that. Speaking of feedback, just your episode reminder to leave that review on Apple Podcasts.
You can do it while you're listening to this. It takes two seconds. You just press five stars. And if you want to be extra nice, you can write something nice. But leaving that five-star review will help us out a ton. You know what's funny? I got a... I hate... A troll account on my Instagram swiped up on me when I said that. I was like, everyone leave five stars. And they go, I swiped up and I left one star. I'm like...
First of all, I think... To go out of your way. No, but I think they are dumb in not realizing that the more reviews and the more engagement the platform gets, the better, even if you're giving a one-star review. Like, who gives a fuck? Like, you're still engaging and, like, bumping...
like traffic in our direction. Like, thank you. Right. But those five-star reviews will actually help us out because, you know, with the podcast, it's not like something else where you just like an Instagram photo. There's not much direct...
engaging you can do. So that five-star review helps us out a ton. And also merch still for sale. The hats are going quick. We have an order of future MILF hats we need to take to the post office and they're going to go quick. So get your hands on them and of course t-shirts too. But other than that, now that that's done, we had the best weekend of our lives last weekend. I
want to relive that weekend over and over and over again. It was so much fun.
much fun yeah so basically formula one was here in austin and we've never been so we were like honestly let's just go let's buy a ticket like why the heck not like it seems like a cool thing people are doing let's just buy a ticket and go like we didn't have other plans so we were literally at the gym that morning talking about it like yeah we were like let's just go my dad went in miami and he was like yeah it's super cool like you should go and like we're talking to the owner of our gym and he was like yeah it's sick like you should just go to at least like say you've been and it's like okay whatever
Don't tell me twice. So, yeah, like, whatever. Who cares? So, like, we got dressed cute, went there, had no idea what we were doing at all. We were like, where are we going? Like, didn't really know where to park. Parked in some sketchy...
back of the farm type park. We had no idea where we were. We just full sent it. And we had a good time. We dressed cute, saw some TikTokers from afar, which was kind of funny, rode a Ferris wheel, watched a few cars. And then while we were there, so Celsius was part of like the after parties and I had got an email inviting me to the party. But I guess I responded too late and they allocated all the tickets already and I couldn't get
a ticket they were like we sold them already like your response so i now i know i guess if you get invited you have to answer within the five seconds or the ticket's gonna be gone but i was like damn it we can't go to the post malone after party because i guess i didn't answer fast enough that really fucking blows like because i really wanted to go to this post malone after party duh like who would not want to go i didn't know anything else about it other than post malone was going um and then i'd match this guy on hinge and i he messaged me and i was like
are you going to this? And he was like, yeah. And basically it ended up like, yeah, you and your friends can come. I can get you guys in. And we were like,
We're fucking going to post Malone. So we dipped out at F1. Yeah, we dipped out real quick. The race... So we got to F1 at like 3-ish and we had been there till 5 when the race started. And we were there for like 30 minutes of the race, which is like all I really needed. I don't need to sit there for more than 30 minutes watching cars go 100 miles of power past me. We skirted home and...
re-showered, re-put on our makeup and basically went out. Yeah, I called our friend Haley and I was like, we are leaving here in 30 minutes. She's like, oh my God, like you did not inform me with enough time. I was like, well, we're going to go see Post Malone. So you need to get ready. Like you need to get ready. You need to come over and like do what you got to do to put on an outfit and be at our house. And she did and we made it and we were, I was a bit stressed if we were going to get in or not, but we got in and we were right up by the stage at this table and
And I was like, we're not going to drink. Like, because I was like, I can enjoy a Post Malone concert with no alcohol. But it was open bar. Yeah. No, like, so to make it, first things, Hayley, our friend Hayley wanted to drink. And I'm like, whatever. Like, she can drink, like, totally fine. I was no intent on drinking. And Taylor's, like, with the guy at the table. So I'm with Hayley. We're going to the bathrooms, getting drinks. And the entire event is sponsored by Cash App. So...
we're like okay so like how do we pay like how do we pay like or how do you pay just like oh no like cash app is sponsoring it but if you want to download cash app because this is how cash app was getting people to download the app was if you wanted to leave a tip you needed to download cash app and use cash app to leave a tip and we're like okay first of all that's so smart awesome but then we found out like the drinks were free everywhere you just needed a tip through cash app um at every bar and like oh my god like your
You're kidding. These drinks are free right now, so I had to get a drink. I got a Celsius mixed with Tito's. The whole time, I was like, you know what? If I'm going to go out tonight, I know I need to be up and awake. I'll get one espresso martini if they have them there. But they had
So I was like, even better. Even better. I got a Celsius with Tito's in it. Would I recommend doing that? No, but I needed the energy because Post Malone did not go on stage until like 2.30 in the morning. And my first drink was at 10. Yeah, so we got there pretty early. We were going to go somewhere else first because we knew Post Malone wasn't until 1.30-ish. It literally was over at 2 a.m. So we were like, he's not going to be on till late.
we're going to go somewhere else first. But then the guy who was getting us in was like, we're going now. And we kind of had to go when he was getting there so we could get in and get wristbands and get tickets. So we were like, okay, F it. So we show up and when they came back and it was open bar, I was like, damn it. But I was like, this is such a fun night. Like some nights deserve celebration. But I didn't drink that much because I was like, if I wake up and I don't remember seeing Post Malone, I'd die. And I'd cry about it.
So I was like being super casual. They had like glasses like champagne. I was like, I want that. And I just like had champagne. They were giving like tooth gems. So we got rhinestones on our teeth. There was a photo booth. And then for like half an hour, we were up against the stage waiting for Post Malone.
Yeah, I was going crazy. I could not leave my spot. Like Haley asked me, she's like, do you want to go to the bathroom? I'm like, no, are you crazy? If we move from the spa right now, we are not going to have this spot when we get back. Like you're nuts if you think that. And so I stayed there, stamped there, like my feet in the ground. Anytime one of you guys went to the bathroom, I was like wide stance. I was like, no one is getting through in the spa right now. I am against the stage. I'm going to lick his damn fucking feet. I'm not moving. Yeah, we were...
I've never been so close to an artist while they were singing because since it wasn't a concert and it was a private party, there's normally even if you're front row at a concert, there's barricades and there's like some type of distance like you're not that close. We were literally like someone commented like, why are there no barricades? And I'm like, because it was a private party.
Yeah, we're like it's a private party, not a concert. That's why there's no barricade. So it was crazy, like crazy to just see such like a good performer, such good music so close. Like it was surreal. Yeah. Like if you want like the visual aspect from the whole entire day, I posted a YouTube video, massive vlog. You can check that out to kind of get an idea of what we're talking about, plugging the YouTube, you know. But yeah.
The entire concert, we failed to remember, that I had on my phone. You know, like, you can go on Snapchat and you can put, like, text. You see people do it all the time. Like, whether it's a club, concert, whatever. It's always like, play this song. Yeah, play this song. Or like, Venmo me this money. So, no. I put on my phone, Posty kissed me.
And the entire night I had it on my forehead and I'm just like, Posey, like notice me, recognize me, like kiss me. And obviously like he didn't kiss me or whatnot. And he came back at the end of the concert when he was like, he was just like putting his hands out in the crowd, like just touching everyone singing, like saying like basically like, thank you for coming. Like whatever. Like, and,
And in the concert. And at the very end, I go, book posty. Like, why not? He was like, because I'm a good boy. Like, I got like something like... Said I'll get in trouble. I'll get in trouble. And like in the back of my head, I'm like, okay, like he'll get in trouble. Like maybe like... With his PR team. Yeah, his PR team like doesn't allow that. Anyways, I make this whole TikTok and I post this TikTok on social media, not really knowing much of his personal life. Because like, I'm not keeping tabs on my celebrities, okay? And I'm getting ripped to shreds in the comments of like...
Like, you homewrecker. Like, what are you doing? Like, why do you think you can just do that? Like, he's loyal. He respects his fiance. I'm like, this is news to me that he has a fiance and a damn baby. Like, I had no idea. I had no idea. And let's be real, guys. Like, if Justin Bieber was in front of you, would you not try to, like, pull some type of move on Justin Bieber? Like, we all love Justin Bieber. Like, let's be real. Like...
What doesn't make any difference on who the celebrity is? Like, everyone's going to try to, like, do something. Like, I don't know. It was also a joke. People are so dramatic. It was also a joke. It was such a joke. Like, you really thought, like... I think everyone's like, oh, my God. People were commenting, like, saying, like, trying to be a homewrecker. Like, you're trying to be the next, like, Adam Levine. Like, he could have kissed you on the hand. I'm like, yeah. It wasn't that. I was like, I wasn't expecting, like, go home with this man. Like, I just wanted his attention. And if anything, like, him, like, responding back to me made my whole night. Like...
Him just, like, noticing that, like, or just, like, appreciating and noticing that I had that sign on my head meant more than him actually kissing me. I'm like, oh, so you noticed me. Like, I feel noticed. I don't know. So people are fucking crazy. That's crazy. But it was so fun. Yeah.
And there's just been so many fun things on the weekend. So back to back. And like, I know I need to chill. Yeah. But like, it's like fun things. Yeah. Like they're like play. Like we're not just like going out for the sake of it. We've like planned fun things, which are like, sounds good to me. But do we really have much else to catch up on besides that? I feel like other than that, our life is very. No, I mean, not really. Like Post Malone was fucking nuts. And now I am never going to a concert ever again. I am only ever going to after parties. And I'm like,
And yeah, that's about, that's honestly it. Like concerts. Yeah. Concerts are worth it. But first of all, I have the worst eyesight. I'm blind as a fucking bat. Like you will not catch me in the very, very back of a concert spending hundreds of dollars. Like I just don't think I will ever be able to put it in comparison to like what we experienced this past weekend. So yeah. And I didn't go to bed till 5am, which I feel like, and I got, it
Didn't go to bed till 5 a.m., got zero sleep, which I feel like is a great segue into the fact that we're talking about how important sleep is. And I didn't sleep on Saturday. Yeah. Didn't sleep on Saturday. Did not sleep. I went, I got back at 3, she got back at 5, but there, there, it was, it was a fun weekend. It was worth it. Very, very much was. And then this week is just back to the grind. Okay, now we're here with Vanessa Hill. Vanessa, if you want to like introduce yourself, who you are and what you do as a little bit of background. Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. So I am a sleep researcher and a science communicator. So I have a YouTube channel called BrainCraft and on TikTok and Instagram as well. And I have the weirdest intro to being a science researcher. Do you want me to tell you? Yes. Okay.
Okay, so I was obsessed with sleep. So I have been doing my YouTube channel for 10 years, which is a really long time to be a content creator. And for a number of years, it was a series with PBS as well. And so I made like 200 episodes of this science show for them. And so much of the advice in all of these episodes came back to sleep, like how important sleep is, how we need to get
more of it. And I actually pitched a TV show, like a reality TV show about sleep. I made it with YouTube Originals. It's called Sleeping With Friends. And it's like a legit Hollywood reality TV show where we have these contestants who compete to get more sleep.
And I worked on that show for a number of years. I mean, it was just one season, but for a number of years in terms of preparing it and pitching it and producing it and all the rest of it. And through that process, I became even more obsessed with sleep. So when we were kind of wrapping that up, I enrolled in a PhD program in sleep research. So it's just...
So strange that I went from hosting a reality TV show about sleep to actually doing the science. Oh, wow. Yeah, that is cool. I'm so excited to have you on. Just nitpick your brain on everything because we talk so much about fitness, wellness, and how important sleep is, but we never really go into the science or the important information behind it. We're always just like, yeah, make sure you guys are getting your sleep, your A plus, A plus. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know. Do we want to just kind of start off with giving or asking her some questions? Oh, yeah, yeah. I want to go all into it because we are always telling everyone on our channels when they're trying to get healthy and fit and stuff like sleep, sleep, sleep. Sleep is so good for you. But that's kind of I feel like where our knowledge kind of ends. Like sleep is good for you. But then anything more than that is kind of out of our scope of knowledge. So...
First things first, for people that might be listening, I just want to kick off with like signs you probably need better sleep slash more sleep, like signs in your life that probably listening to the rest of this podcast is something you need. Yeah, so such a good question, but also a really hard question because we are all so tired and burnt out, right? So how do you know that it's your sleep that's bad and maybe it's not
that your job is exhausting or you're just like emotionally burnt out. Like it can be really, really super hard for people to actually figure out all of those different signals to take that first step to try to improve our lives. So there's this kind of classic test that a lot of sleep doctors recommend, which is called the chair test. So if you were to sit down in a chair for 20 minutes and not do anything, would you fall asleep?
And if the answer is yes, then your sleep could be better. It's probably bad because you have this like daytime sleepiness when if you're not doing anything during the day, you would fall asleep. Like that's a pretty bad sign. So I think that is kind of baseline how you could know.
Of course, if you are like sleepy during the day when you are like in a work meeting or should be doing something, that's also a good sign. So I think the feeling of sleepiness, like when you're so tired that you could just close your eyes and just fall asleep at any moment.
Okay, so yeah, kind of backtracking on that when you said that. So for someone that takes like midday naps, for instance, you would say that that is an indicator that their sleep is off or it's the burnout. Naps are a really interesting one because...
Like there's so many different theories about naps. Some scientists are like naps are amazing and they can be really good, but others are like, well, naps can really impact the quality of the sleep that you get at night. So for a lot of people, if you're taking a midday nap, if it's 30 minutes or less, that's completely fine. For people who do that, that's normally built into their schedule, right?
Right. Like you would normally be doing that every day or maybe like three days a week or something like that. Like that's a regular thing for you to do. And if that's the case, like your sleep could be fine and you're just getting this extra nap for whatever the reason may be. Like a lot of people who have weird working hours, who have small kids, like who are traveling, that kind of thing. Napping can be really beneficial to kind of top up their sleep.
But if you're napping for long periods of time, like more than an hour, if you're napping late in the afternoon, that can be quite bad and that can affect the quality of your sleep at night too. Okay. I'm not a napper. Yeah, I'm not a napper. And sometimes I'm so jealous of nappers because I feel like I can't nap and I'm like, wouldn't it just be great to just have a 20-minute nap every lunchtime? Yeah, I only nap in very like –
certain situations either like if i'm feeling like sick or something or like there's like very few days where i'm like i am so tired right now on the couch i'm just gonna crash or like on an airplane that's a good thing that means that your sleep is probably pretty good yeah i feel like we will get into that but i feel like we sleep it's pretty good yeah we we get our our sleep we do
I have another question before we kind of continue segwaying into this. I was kind of doing a little bit of research before this. And my question for you is there are stages of sleep. Would you mind going over the stages of sleep?
Yeah, for sure. So you can think of sleep as having three main stages. I'm not sure how much reading you did, but in some of that they get broken up into all of these sub stages. Yeah, the B6 is fine. But yeah, but generally there's light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep.
So, light sleep is the stage of sleep you're in when most of the time you get woken up or you might like wake up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night when you're first falling asleep. So, when you first fall asleep, you go into light sleep.
And then there's deep sleep, which is one of the best kinds of sleep for your body. It's called slow wave sleep. And that's when your heart rate really lowers. It's really restorative and restful for your body. And then REM sleep is when you're most likely to dream or when most of your dreaming happens. And when you're in REM sleep, your physical functions, your body,
it's the same as if you're awake, like your heart rate is the same as if you're awake and your body is mostly paralyzed. So you're not moving and acting out your dreams, which I think is just like kind of mind blowing actually. Um,
So like if you guys wear fitness trackers, which I would assume that you've like used at some point, they have all of these algorithms that will kind of work backwards to tell you what stage of sleep you're in. So a lot of people who are listening to this, if you have a Fitbit, you see your deep sleep and REM percentages come up on Fitbit. And a lot of the other sleep trackers have their own,
their own version of that. And the way that they work that out is by how your body is moving and what your heart rate is. Like they're the two main signals that they use because when you're in REM sleep, you have a faster heart rate and your body isn't moving, which is different to light sleep and deep sleep. So your body moves in cycles through these stages. So sleep cycles, I mean, some people say that they're about 90%
for you to kind of cycle through light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, and then back. But they are very different for everyone. And I think that's one of the main things that isn't really communicated in a lot of sleep stuff is that everybody is so different from how much sleep they need a night. Like that eight hours number is just kind of,
stab in the dark, like it's not necessarily true, to how long their sleep cycles are. Like everything is pretty different from person to person. It can be. Oh, that's very interesting. So I had something on here for like ideal amount of sleep, but I guess you just said there is no ideal number. I would assume there's some sort of range. Yeah. So there's a recommendation. There's like the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and these different bodies. And the recommendation is seven hours or more.
Okay. But that does change with age. So when you're younger, and I mean, we all remember being a teenager and just sleeping for like 10 hours a night and stuff like that. And that's amazing. Like when you're younger, you need more sleep. And then as you get older, generally you won't get as much sleep and your body will be able to function without it. So people who are like 65 or older might get six hours of sleep. And generally that's pretty common, but seven is, is,
a good number to aim for but keep in mind that you if there's some reason why you're not getting enough sleep whether it's kids whether it's your job like don't feel bad if you're not hitting at seven hours like a lot of us have all of this
guilt around being bad sleepers or kind of like not hitting a certain goal and things like that. And like our bodies are pretty amazing machines, like do your best, definitely try to get there. But if you can't, don't feel bad. Yeah. Okay. So
I want to dive into the correlation between like sleep and your mental health and sleep and your physical health. So we can kind of do both separately. So like the correlation between sleep and someone's like mental health, would you say that's like a big correlation? Not a big correlation. Yeah. There's a lot of research on this and it's,
a fascinating relationship. Like I think this goes to sleep and a lot of things like sleep and exercise and then sleep and mental health as well, because the,
There's so many different things that can go into this relationship, right? So sleep and mental health have this interesting relationship because there are a lot of studies that show links between people who are getting what we would call like inadequate or insufficient sleep, so less than seven hours, and people who have high anxiety and depression symptoms and stuff like that.
it's really hard to figure out the cause of that and exactly what's going on there because you kind of have this relationship where like sleep can maybe lead you to be more anxious but then if you're more anxious you're not going to get a lot of sleep right so there's this kind of like circular relationship with that and there's
like a lot that we don't know about studies that have correlations or links, right? Like with exercise, people who exercise more also sleep more, like they'll sleep better. That's kind of a pretty established thing in science. But is that because they're outside in the daylight more
exercising more and they're getting more daylight exposure, which is actually really, really good for your circadian rhythms and sleeping at night? Or is it that they're wealthy and they have time to exercise during the day because they're not working a super long day and they're sleeping better because of that? Like there's all of these other factors that kind of come into it that can be really, really hard to pull apart.
of course i like besides all the lifestyle factors between like let's say someone's work or someone's like um someone having the money or the free time like if we look at people on just a baseline level like assuming everyone had the same amount of time assuming everyone had the same amount of money is it is there less variables that way or is it still person to person or like are the person to person factors very lifestyle related
It is just really difficult in research to kind of pull out all of those factors and like control for all of the different factors that may go into it. But I think at a just everyday level, like research,
I experienced this. I wonder if you experience this or if people listening experience this too. Like if you get a bad night's sleep, the next day I'm angry and snappy and moody and like I just have a bad time regulating my emotions. And I think that
For me, like I can see that when I miss out on sleep, I am just a moody individual who is not pleasant to be around, right? Like do you guys experience this too? 110%. This happened to me this past weekend. We were on vacation and my sleep in maybe three nights was around like
I want to say like 10 to 12 hours. It was really bad. And the last night we were at dinner and I just did not want to talk to anyone. I was, I looked grumpy and I just genuinely thought everyone probably thought I was mad at them, but I was just really, really tired and did not want to be sitting at a table of dinner. I just wanted my bed. So I can relate to that. Yeah. We slept not, I would like every day probably into bed between like three or five in the morning and then up every day at like seven. Yeah.
Yeah, it was vacation though. So not good, not good at all. Of course, of course. But I think like in these cases, you can kind of experience what we know about sleep in science, which is that it is really good at helping us regulate and control our stress.
as well as our emotions. And when you don't get sleep, you get into this place where things stress you out really easily. You have these emotional reactions to things. So that kind of plays in to that link that you mentioned about sleep and mental health as well, where it's kind of hard to make like big,
sweeping generalizations because it's hard to control for all of these other factors in research, including race, which is actually a really, really big one in sleep research too. And how affluent people are those, those things that we mentioned, but yeah, we all kind of experienced this on an everyday level. Right. Especially, I feel like even at the level of like
um dealing with like really little kids like babies and stuff like crying because they're tired because like they need they need a nap and they're so tired i feel like adults are the same way yeah you just yeah you just don't you just don't cry about it i'm like i feel that i'm just not expressing it that way yeah exactly um
100%. I kind of have a question that's a little bit off track of what we're talking about. But I have a question about like insomnia. Now I know for me personally, I don't know the real definition for it. So I would love to hear your definition. My thought process is someone that literally is not getting any sleep all night. They're staring at the ceilings and just not getting a deep night's sleep. So I'd love to hear what
your definition of that is. Yeah, I love talking about insomnia. So thank you for asking. But one of the reasons is because I think it's a word that's like thrown around a lot in general. And you have this, it's almost like from TV or movies or something like that. But there's like idea of someone who has like
red bloodshot eyes who's lying in bed and staring at the ceiling and they just never sleep. But insomnia isn't that severe actually. And a lot of people experience it at all different times in their life. So, um,
Things that can happen to you that might indicate that you have insomnia is if you just have trouble falling asleep. So if you're going like more than half an hour or an hour every night and you're not falling asleep and you're really having a lot of trouble falling asleep, that's one symptom or one sign of insomnia. The other is if you wake up during the night and you have trouble falling
falling back asleep. So you're awake for these long periods of time during the night. And the third one is that if you wake up super early in the morning and you can't get back to sleep. So it's kind of these long periods that you might have of being awake and not being able to sleep. And I don't want people to panic and be like, oh my God, that's me. I have insomnia because there's actually two different types of insomnia. There's a kind of short-term insomnia and then chronic insomnia.
which is long-term. So short-term is kind of anywhere up to three months. And the most common thing that will cause that for people is stress and anxiety. So you can imagine that if you're like super anxious about something or you're really stressed about something personal, something at work, like you might have trouble falling asleep or you might get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and then you're awake for like an hour or two thinking about it. Like that happens to me all the time, unfortunately, and that's pretty common.
Chronic insomnia is when that is happening to you for a variety of different reasons, but that's happening to you chronically, like all the time, basically. So insomnia is actually a lot more prevalent than a lot of people think because we all have these periods of kind of short-term stress disorder.
full insomnia where we're just having trouble sleeping and that kind of thing. Yeah, so it's not always as severe as a lot of people think. And the thing that I love about insomnia that I was just talking about forever is that the gold standard treatment for it is actually therapy. Interesting. I actually – You're all therapy? Yeah. I did see this on your Instagram and I also saw the statistics
statistic that you put of 30 to 40 percent of adults actually go through this which i think is crazy i never thought that that many people actually struggled with this and what about therapy i know you're probably going into that what would therapy helps with insomnia
Yeah, so what therapy can help with is some of those anxious and stressful thoughts that you have, like kind of breaking the pattern of how you're thinking. So you can actually just kind of break out of that and be able to fall asleep. And so it's more the cognitive part is like changing your thinking patterns. And then the behavioral part is getting to that place where you're
using your bed just for sleep and sex and you have what's called good sleep hygiene so you have like a good bedroom set up you might have blackout blinds like you're dimming the lights in the evening like you kind of have these behaviors that are going to induce relaxation and good sleep for you
Interesting. Yeah. And I will say that that type of sleep therapy, there's a lot of apps that do it now that are decent. Like they're not, I mean, I personally think there's nothing better than like doing something like that in person, but that's like pretty hard for a lot of people to be able to fit in or access. So yeah, there's like a lot of different online apps
things like this that can really help address insomnia. I'm a big fan of the using your bed just to sleep. Like sleep and sex is all that like your bed should be for, which is why in college I always hated in my dorm room. Like you don't have any other like sitting spot. Like you only basically have a bed in the room and like a desk. And like I'm the type of person that if I'm going to be sitting relaxing, I'm going to
Unless it's like right before I go to bed, I'm going to be on the couch. Like I'm going to be I wouldn't work in my bed. I wouldn't really do anything in my bed besides wind down to go to sleep.
Um, so I've always been a big, big fan of that. I mean, that's really good. And that's what like sleep doctors and a lot of guidelines recommend, but I actually love bed. Like when I travel for work, I eat my dinner in the hotel room bed and I love watching TV in bed. Like even at home, just like watching YouTube on my phone in bed. Oh, it's amazing. I love, I love it. It's like, you're not meant to do it, but personally, I love it.
I can definitely say that with a hotel because I'm like, okay, this ain't my bed. Like, I don't care if it gets dirty. Yeah. Yeah. Hotel is definitely because like, yeah, if you like spill food on the sheets, like it's not yours. Yeah. Yeah. So I have another question for you. What are your thoughts and opinions on blue light and red light?
Yeah, this is fascinating. So I think that blue light gets a bad rap, like a lot of people think that blue light is bad. But the thing with light in general is that it just really depends on the time of day that you're in that light and how it impacts your sleep. So
Yeah, like light exposure, whether it's blue or red or just like white light, like daylight can be good or bad for your sleep and sleep quality, just depending on the timing. So in general,
we spend far too much time indoors. So we're in artificial light in the evenings when it should be dark and we're indoors when we should be outside during the day when it's really bright. Right. So we like in the kind of, you know, society that we're in now, we're not as naturally in tune with the rhythms of the sun as our ancestors were, which can affect our sleep. I feel like I just went off on this huge tangent. No, you're good. I love it.
But the point is that indoor lights can be quite bad for our sleep if you have them on and really bright within like two hours of you going to bed. Like one of the best things that a lot of people can buy for their sleep because there's, let me tell you, so many sleep products on the market now that it's kind of exploded in the past few years. But one of the best things you can get is just a lamp, like just a kind of maybe a red lamp but just an orange, like a really warm red.
lamp that you can just turn off your ceiling lights and have on. Because I mean, we've all heard of melatonin, like it's, you know, over the counter and you can get melatonin gummies. There's melatonin for kids now in like candy form, which is super concerning. But your melatonin is a hormone that your body produces naturally. So, and it helps you feel sleepy. It's like the sleepy hormone.
So when you're in blue light for those few hours before you go to bed, you're suppressing your natural production of melatonin. So you're not going to feel as sleepy. So instead of taking gummies, like buy a lamp and just let your body produce melatonin naturally. And the flip side of that is that blue light makes you feel really alert. So if you kind of go outside in the morning or if you're in blue light in the morning, it can wake you up.
I have a red lamp so I'm very happy with what when you said that because you've made a great choice yeah I just I had a regular lamp and I just bought a red bulb on Amazon but what I like to do is I'll put the light on when I am going to bed and if I'm in my room like winding down doing my skincare all that the only light that's on is the red light and then if I'm outside before going into my bedroom I only have like one light on downstairs so it's kind of like dark through
for a few hours before i go to bed and i would say it has definitely helped me falling asleep yeah um yeah it's awesome to hear i'll have the blue light with like my tv in my room and my phone like i'll fall asleep to my tv which is probably bad but it like i i like it so whatever but like i'll do my light and a candle while i read and then i turn off the light then it's just my candle
And my TV. And then I go to bed. But I used to. So my ex-boyfriend used to drive me insane. Because it would be like 11. Yeah.
And like I'd be on like FaceTime with him or something. And he has his ceilings, his ceiling lights on. He's like, I'm so tired. I got to get ready for bed. I'm like, why do you have your overhead lights on? Like you're I'm like, that is like sociopath behavior to me. I'm like, that doesn't. But I'm like, how does that? Yeah. I'm like, you need to. Because it's your mom. You get so mad at them. Yeah. I'm like, you need to have like a lamp on you to turn those off. You need to turn on a lamp like you can't have overhead lights on past Thanksgiving.
7 p.m in my like i'm like you the overhead lights just cannot be on it drives me it drives me nuts but i'd say our house is pretty dark by like 7 30 yeah i like it it really helps me wind down yeah i don't like overhead lights they're like well the thing is our house has really big windows so we don't really ever have to turn them on
So as the sun goes down, it just gets dark. Yeah. Because we don't really turn lights on. I love that. You're just in sync with the sun. Yeah. Yeah. No, we are. It's the best thing for your body, honestly. Yeah. That's why we actually moved out of our last apartment. Like, there was a few reasons, but one of the biggest reasons was there was zero natural light. Yeah. Like, none. And...
I feel like now, like you said, we live in sync with the sun. There's windows. We don't put the blinds down ever. There's just sunlight. The one thing that drives me nuts is when you go to people's houses and it's the middle of the day and they have sheer blinds on their windows with all of the lights on. I'm like, what are you doing? Just open the blinds. No, I don't understand it. I do have blackout blinds.
But I love them at night when I'm going to bed. But also at the same time, I do really like waking up from the natural light. So what I do with my blackout lights...
shades is i have like maybe like a foot open on one end so that the natural light can still wake me up in the morning and i get up because i noticed with the morning getting up if i have natural light i can get up 10 times easier than when we were in our old place and we had no natural life at all and i just never wanted to get out of bed right
Agreed. So we talked about some parts of the ideal kind of wind down. What about there's so much talk about temperature that you should fall asleep and also like
um, it being like pitch, pitch, pitch dark. Like I've heard that that's really good for you. Like some people even cover the little light on their TV. Do you think that that like matters? You do that? You do that? Only because I, I'm really sensitive to light. So again, like with temperature and light, um, the best, um,
Case scenario is that you're in a cold room in Fahrenheit between like 60 and 66 is the recommended temperature for sleep, which is pretty cold, I think. That's pretty cold. It is really cold. Yeah, and then having the room completely dark. But as I said before, a lot of this just depends on personal preferences. Like my husband always wants the room colder than me and it causes so many problems.
fights like all the time, which I think like anyone in a relationship is just having fights about like the bedroom temperature, the blankets, like, you know, whatever. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, constantly. And then the other thing with light is that some people are more sensitive to light than others. But also as you age, you become less sensitive to the effects of light as well. So that can be a bit different too. That might explain why dads just fall asleep anyway. They really do. Yeah, they do. They really do. Okay, 60 to 66 is like,
Yeah, we keep ours at 69 at night. Sometimes I go 68. I'm like, I feel like I need to put mine down. I go 68 sometimes. I feel like that's pretty cold though. That's really cool. That's a lot on the electric bill. Yeah. For sure, for sure. Okay, now what about ideal like wake up? Does that like impact like your overall sleep quality? Like having like a good like wake up routine? Yeah.
It can if you are waking up at a time when you're in that deep sleep phase that I mentioned before. Like, you know how sometimes maybe you have an alarm go off and it just jolts you out of sleep and you're super groggy and you kind of like can't get it together? That is often when you've woken up when you're in a deep sleep phase. So one of the best things for waking up is sleep.
trying to wake up as naturally as possible. It's hard because we all have times that we need to be up for different things. But for me, I have one of those sunrise alarm clocks. So the light comes on gradually over a 30-minute period. So I will wake up at some point when I'm in a light phase of sleep over that amount of time. So there's that. The other thing that I will say with waking up is I
It's good to just try to get outside as quickly as possible. Like, as I mentioned before, daylight is just one of the best things to wake you up. Like, it's really good for your mood as well as your attention and alertness. So just getting outside, like, whether that is...
driving to work even or just walking your dog yeah walking your dog getting breakfast outside like whatever it may be if you can just be outside um in the bright light that is one of the best things to wake you up okay yeah i've heard that we've heard that a lot from a lot of different people on here which i have to say i'm kind of bad at and i need to just do it more i went in like a phase of doing it and i need to get back to doing it
The other thing that I will say is that this is becoming a lot more popular just in general, but is kind of working with your chronotype. So in just like normal conversation, we might use the terms like night owl or early bird, and that is your chronotype. It's just basically your preference for a certain time of day, like if you're more alert or sleepy at a certain time of day.
So I'm a night owl. So I like to stay up until like 12, 1am and then I'll sleep until like nine o'clock. And it has taken me my whole life to be able to design my life around this, where I start work a bit later, I finish work a bit later. And that's something that would be beneficial for so many people, you
if you are able to do that, right? Like if you are able to just work in sync with your body's natural rhythm, like whether you want to be sleeping later, sleeping earlier, because some people...
who aren't early birds have to get up super early for work and they're just groggy all the time because it's kind of out of sync with their like natural predisposition. We were literally just talking about this earlier today because our, I've noticed like going into the winter or even like the colder weather, like I, my body likes to sleep in a little bit longer and go to bed a little bit later. And we were like, Oh, like we're kind of like mad that we're sleeping in a little bit later now, but it's like,
We're lucky enough that we can actually change our work schedule around to our sleep schedule. So, which I guess is a question for you is depending on the season, like whether it's summer, winter, does that play a role in your sleep schedule or how you're sleeping?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's a lot of things wrapped up in the season, like light, for example, like in the winter, the daylight just isn't as long, right? And the temperature as well. So like in the winter, because there's not as much daylight, because it's colder, it's perfectly normal and natural to want to be able to sleep a bit longer. Yeah. Sometimes it can be really hard for people to fall asleep if the sun isn't setting until 9pm or something like that in summer.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. I definitely see that. It's also the time change from when we were, we were in California and now we're in Texas. So it was like a two hour time difference, but that two hours, um,
really hit us. It hit me at least. It hit me hard. There's also something called seasonal affective disorder. Have you heard of this? No. It's like a specific type of depression that people get in winter when there's not as much light, actually. And there's like light therapy boxes that you can get at home to help with it.
But yeah, that just kind of goes back to your earlier question about mental health and mood and how much light has to do with that as well. Interesting. Yeah. I have a question about dreams. I would love to know what causes nightmares and what just causes like...
your every night type of regular dreams like what is the cause behind them i've been having weird dreams she has been having the weirdest really so weird dreams everyone loves asking about dreams and it's kind of a funny thing in science because this is like a lot of things in science there's like two different camps of people who believe two different things
And one of the kind of, I don't know, it's like a bit unsatisfying, but one of the things that people believe is that dreams are just a byproduct of all of the electrical activity in your brain while you're sleeping. Like there's actually not really a reason why you have them. And then other people believe that there is a reason and they're helpful in for like consolidating memory or helping you learn things and stuff like that. So, yeah.
It's like pretty divided about why we have dreams.
But in terms of like what dreams mean and stuff like that, it's just like not a lot of scientists who are kind of looking into that. But one of the things that I find really interesting about dreams is that you can dream in different stages of sleep. So you can dream when you're in light sleep or deep sleep, those phases that I mentioned earlier. Most of your dreams will happen in REM sleep, but your dreams will be slightly different.
in those different stages. So when you're in REM sleep is when your decision making is like impaired, like that's kind of switched off. You're having like
what I call kind of crazy dreams. Like maybe if you're like flying or doing something like that's psychedelic or uncommon or whatever, that's normally happening when you're in REM sleep. And then when you're in light sleep and you're having a dream, they're your work dreams, right? Where you're just like having a dream that you're in a meeting or something really boring. Like that is one way that having dreams in different stages of sleep can play out.
Yeah, I can see that 100%. I feel like my light sleep dreams, like let's say I'm falling asleep on an airplane and kind of dozing off. I feel like my dream just feels like a continuation of what's actually happening in real life, but it didn't actually happen. I'm like dreaming it. But then my other dreams, I can almost always pinpoint something I heard in the day that made me dream what I dreamt. I'll have some weird dream and I'm like, oh, it's because we talked about that one thing.
And like I had a whole weird dream about it, but I don't remember them a lot of the time. I wake up and they're like gone. Yeah, I have a lot of light sleep dreams, like work dreams, like they're so boring and it makes me really sad. I'm like, this is such a cool thing that our brains can do. Like I could be doing literally anything right now and I'm like in a meeting. Yeah.
Yeah. I would love to dive into the top. You said we want to do top five ways to improve sleep. Five ways for better sleep. Five tips for better sleep. Your top five. Yeah. I would love to hear what you have to say for these. Five. Wow. I feel like I'm going to have to count them out because I might give six or seven. You can do six or seven. Do as many as you want. But what are your top tips?
Okay, let's I'll just talk and we can count them to kind of see how we go. Okay, my number one tip is around technology. And it's a bit different. So we are all using our phones or our TVs or something like almost right up until we go to bed, right? That's just like an
normal common behavior. Sleep guidelines are like don't use technology half an hour before bed, two hours before bed. Like this is completely unrealistic for normal everyday lives. Do you agree? Oh, 100%. Agreed, 100%. Yeah. Okay, good. So the way to think about it, I think in terms of people
using or not using tag is actually how you're using it. So think of technology or media or whatever in terms of being active or passive. So active media is like TikTok, like you're scrolling through. There's like a lot of emotions that you're feeling. There's a lot of stuff coming at you. It's really activating your brain. It could also be like video games, social media, like stuff that's making you think.
Passive media is stuff that is just like relaxing, like music, podcasts, boring TV shows, stuff like that. So I think like really try to think about how you're consuming media and just try to consume stuff that's going to, that's more passive, that's going to help you relax and wind down later at night. Okay, perfect. Because I watch my TV, but it's like kind of far away from me and it's super boring TV shows. So that's like fine.
Yeah, I do the same thing. I love British TV shows. I don't know why. They're just like calmer than American TV, right? So I watch Britbox to help me fall asleep. Okay, perfect. I'm glad I don't have to give up my shows. Okay, number two. So that's number one. Number two, I think, is to think about –
stress and anxiety. A lot of reasons why people have trouble falling asleep, why we're procrastinating before we go to bed is because we're stressed and we're anxious. And often thinking about doing something for that, for yourself, can help us have better sleep at night. So that can be
you know, whatever you do to de-stress. It could be like going for a walk, going for a run, listening to music, having a bath, like anything that really helps you deal with stress and anxiety will improve your sleep as well. Okay.
Okay, that's number two. Number three, we've already covered, buy a lamp. Get a great lamp. Lamps. Lamp, lamp, lamp. Let your body release melatonin naturally. Of course. Yeah, yeah. So get a lamp, dim the lights. Okay, so that's three. Ooh, where are we? Number four, I would say...
Think about your bedroom environment. Like blackout blind, white noise can be really good. I use white noise to sleep like a baby does, like people do for their babies. I used to use white noise all the time, especially in like new environments. If I wasn't trying to sleep in a new environment and I was struggling to go to bed, like a white noise helped me out so much. For me, I used it on planes every single time.
guided sleep meditations that are like white noise with like someone talking. Those knock, those knock me out in five minutes. Like I, like no matter where I am, if I put that in my headphones, I'm, I'm out. Yeah. I love them. Um, and I would say the last tip, Ooh, what will my last hit be? Um, I think I probably have like two more tips. Um, the last one is, um,
do some exercise, nothing hard, like just go for a walk during the day, you know, like it can really improve the quality of the sleep that you're getting. Like people spend more time in deep sleep when they've exercised during the day. And I mean, this is a fitness podcast. Yes. But it really doesn't matter what type of fitness you're doing that much. There is some science to suggest that doing aerobic fitness like walking
one hour before bed might make it hard for you to fall asleep because of endorphin release and stuff like that. But there is mixed evidence on that. So just like,
do what your body needs, but just like get outside and just move your body somehow during the day. And that will be amazing for your sleep. And then the last one is just be mindful about caffeine. I don't like telling people to like do or not do things because honestly, you have to live your life. But really,
think about having caffeine at night, like having coffee or like just regular Coke and that kind of stuff at night can make it really hard for you to fall asleep because caffeine actually stays in your system for way longer than you might think. Like caffeine is a drug and half of caffeine, like say you in a normal coffee, there's like a hundred milligrams
milligrams of caffeine, let's say, you'll have 50 of that still in your system, like eight hours after you've had the coffee. Oh, wow.
Yeah, that's crazy. Interesting. I know. So a lot of, like a lot of people say don't have caffeine within 10 hours of bedtime. That can be a really hard thing to try to figure out, like when you're going to bed and you might not be thinking about what time it is when you're having caffeine. But so I just kind of say like late afternoon or evening thing, like drinks that might have caffeine in them, just go for a decaf option. Yeah. I've heard after 2 p.m.
Yeah. I think that like that works. I personally kind of think, yeah, I, I kind of, I'm kind of like 1 PM for my coffee is like the latest that I'll have. Yeah. I definitely had caffeine today at like three, but that's okay. We'll start tomorrow. It's hard. It's really hard. But I think, um, a lot of us didn't know that. Like before I heard that stat about caffeine, um,
I would have coffees at like 3, 3.30, maybe 4 p.m. would be the last coffee that I had. And now I'm just kind of like, oh, wow, that's maybe a bit late. Or I would have like an espresso martini every now and again because that's fun. Me, me, me. But now I'm just, yeah, it's funny. Like when you know, sometimes when you know too much, I feel like it just ruins fun for you, right?
yeah when i'm out don't tell me yeah i'm like i can't have a martini it's gonna ruin my sleep but to be fair if we like both of us i feel like get pretty good sleep like we sleep a lot like we don't really struggle with it would we really like would it be worth it for us to be like it would only be worth it if you were having trouble falling asleep or you were waking up during the night
Like I notice in my body when I've had caffeine at night or in the afternoon, I'm just like lying awake like that insomnia person we were describing before. So I am just a very sensitive individual and I just know that I can't do it. But just, yeah, like always listen to your body.
And I would say like, I'm going to add another tip. I'm so sorry. No, keep it six or seven at this point. But the last thing I'll say is that like for a lot of people who have trouble sleeping, it can be really stressful. And I'll just say that sleep is really hard. Like a lot of us think that because it's a process that our body does every day, we should just be able to lie down and close our eyes and just like be knocked out for eight hours. But
like anything like diet or exercise, sleep is something that you have to work on if you want it to be really good. And working on it could just involve like exercising every day and just being mindful of having an afternoon coffee and like, that's it. Right. Yeah. But a lot of people just like get really flustered about it because it's not perfect, but it's one of those things that like, you know, for it to be really, really good, you have to put in the work.
Interesting. Okay. Well, I think that could be comforting for people to hear in the sense that like it's possible to fix. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think a lot of people think that like, you know, they can't sleep and they have trouble falling asleep and there's kind of nothing they can do about it. Or they just like cope with living with it. Like, yeah, they wake up for three hours in the middle of the night, but like is what it is. But realistically, you can probably fix it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's lots of things that you can do. I...
would say like seeing a sleep specialist or like pushing to see a sleep specialist for a lot of people is a good option if they're still having a lot of trouble with it. But I think that because we have like fitness trackers that measure our sleep now and people are really tuned into that, they can get caught up with trying to optimize it and trying to make it
perfect, which I would say is like almost impossible. So I think for a lot of people, like if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I don't really experience this
that much trouble falling asleep. I'm not really waking up during the night. Like you sleep's probably pretty good and you should feel good about that and not try to like overdo it because my God, there's a product for everything now. And you could spend like, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars pimping out your bedroom, but you probably don't need to. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm really happy you said that too, because a lot of the times,
Not people on our podcast, but just people in social media in general will really try to push products and supplements and all these things. Sell, sell, sell. And it's good to hear from someone like yourself not to do that. I do want a sunrise alarm clock. Yeah. I do want that.
But other than that, I love my red lamp. Yeah, I have a weighted blanket too that I love. And I think that anything that you have that helps you like be more comfortable or de-stressed or just not wake up too early in the morning is definitely worth buying. But you don't have to go for the like $2,000 option. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100% agreed. Yeah.
I feel like we learned a lot. Learned quite a bit. About things that I didn't know and I hope other people did too because this is something we've been wanting to talk about for a while because obviously sleep is just something we do every single day but we never talked about it. So thank you so much. Spend a third of our life sleeping ideally. That's so crazy. Yeah, I know. Oh my God. I'm wasting my life. I'm never going to bed. I'm kidding. It's so exciting.
No, the last weekend we didn't go to bed. We spent like way, we should have slept way more. We're still catching up. Yeah, we are. Okay. Well, thank you so much. And if, where can everyone find you on Instagram?
Yeah, I'm Nessie Hill, N-E-S-S-Y-H-I-L-L on Instagram, posting lots of stuff about sleep and happy to answer people's questions there as well. Amazing. You'll be tagged on our page when this goes up so they can find you on our page when this goes up. Very cool. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being on. Okay, bye guys.