Sleep Your Way to Better Performance

TriDot Podcast Episode 335

Sleep Your Way to Better Performance

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Carrie Tollefson: Welcome to the show. I'm Carrie Tollefson, Olympian, broadcaster, and your guide to the world of RunDot.

Vanessa Ronksley: And I'm Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm, and host of the TriDot Podcast. Today we are teaming up with our triathletes and our runners, so that we can hopefully learn a little bit more about how sleep quality impacts us as athletes and as humans.

Carrie Tollefson: And I'm super pumped to have Mollie Eastman on the show. Mollie is the creator of Sleep Is a Skill, and the host of Sleep Is a Skill Podcast. Sleep Is a Skill is a company that optimizes people's sleep, which we all love, through a unique blend of technology, accountability and behavioral change. So Mollie is the perfect expert to help us sleep our way to better running and triathlon performance.

Vanessa Ronksley: Now, we treat this show like any good workout. So we're going to start up with a warm-up question, settle into our main set conversation, and then wind things down by having Mollie answer an audience question on the Cool Down. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warm-up.

Vanessa Ronksley: Now, Mollie, here we start our show off with a warm-up question. So today's warm-up question is what is one non-negotiable in your morning routine? Something that you would never ever give up no matter how busy your life gets?

Mollie Eastman: I love this one. Also, thank you so much for taking the time to have me here. It's truly my mission on the planet to share about all things sleep optimization and bring in this concept that sleep truly is a skill, a muscle that we can build. So from that place, what is ‘Sleep 101’, if you will -- it begins with how we start our day. So I love that you kicked us off like that. So for me personally -- and then it has spilled over into the people that I work with -- this consistency of how can we start our day, paired with -- so I'm giving you two things in one. But how can we start our day at about the same time, seven days a week, plus or minus around 30 minutes, and then getting ourselves physically outside, no matter where you might be on the planet -- ideally to get that sun in your eyes and on your skin. So we're throwing away the sunglasses, and the hats, and what have you -- just for this stretch of time, throughout our mornings -- because of the immense power that sunlight can bring to our circadian health. But it doesn't just -- people might hear circadian health and might think ‘sleep’, naturally. Okay, great. Yes. And I think we're starting to get into the conversation how it trickles and spiders into so many aspects of our health and wellbeing. Like the health of our -- the functioning of our hormones as it relates to sleep. Just the strength of a strong cortisol pulse in the morning, and a strong melatonin pulse in the evening -- and the fact that those two things, just to name two, are tethered to the timing and the intensity of that light exposure, that first bright light exposure -- I think it really starts to move the needle on, and helps beckon, this concept that the simple things can often bring wild results if done consistently and over time. So those would be my two things, and that could sometimes look weird, I can tell you. My husband and I were full time travelers for about three years, back and forth from New York to Southeast Asia, and at different points, no matter where we might be -- in random Airbnbs, or even just back in New York City, and it's freezing, and it's February, and wrapping myself up like a burrito and sticking my head out the window to get that light. Or even more ridiculous, is I work with a ton of high-stakes poker players, so I have this niche in high-stakes poker -- but a particular type of athlete, a cognitive athlete -- so that would often bring me to Vegas. And when you're in Vegas, you might be on the Strip and in casinos designed on purpose to confuse a circadian rhythm. So, no windows, no clocks, lots of blue light, et cetera. And it can be a challenge to even get yourself bright light exposure. So when you're in those giant casinos, it can take some time and commitment to walk yourself outside – find how many steps you got to take to get to that light. But once you start getting that commitment, you don't want to start your day without that.

Carrie Tollefson: Interesting. I'm wondering if you would love to come where I am right now, in Minnesota, when it's -23 at times, just to get your sunlight. But yes, I agree with you. I love to get up and get out the door as fast as I can. I know we have routines with the kids, so sometimes I don't get out before the kids get up. But my routine, for me, is to get up. I brush my teeth right away -- I have to do that right away. And then I go for a run. And a lot of times I sleep in my running clothes, because I think—

Mollie Eastman: Okay!

Carrie Tollefson: I know. It's one less thing to deal with or I lay them out so I can see that I have them out--

Mollie Eastman: Either way. Beautiful.

Carrie Tollefson: Yes, that's one of my little tricks.

Mollie Eastman: I'm so glad you mentioned, too, the location, because where we choose to live on the globe truly does impact our health and wellbeing in various ways and measurable ways. And I hear you. I grew up in Maine, northern Maine, so we're on the border of Canada. Went to school in Syracuse, New York, which is also freezing, and then lived in Manhattan for over a decade. And so I hear you. I will say, the location of moving to Austin, Texas, was -- a large portion of that decision was the knowledge that I can get my sunlight, my bright sunlight exposure, my ease of accessing that. And part of the ‘bad news’ insight, to build on what you shared -- because sometimes people just cut off this conversation altogether because, “Thanks for that tip, but I'm in Canada, and I'm not going to be doing that. So bye.” And yet--

Vanessa Ronksley: I'm in Canada.

Mollie Eastman: Okay, right. So in case anyone's checking out on the conversation -- I'm sure you've got that commitment, and yet at the same time, people might just write themselves out of that or say, “Well, I'll do that in the summer, but not in the winter.” And yet the unfortunate, bad news is that because the strength of the sun in northern latitude locations in the big swaths of the stretches throughout the winter are going to be less powerful, it actually behooves us not only to still get out, but to spend more time outside. Because there seems to be a bit of an equalizing effect. If that strength of that sun is lighter, it's less powerful than spending more time outside in the coast. So if we can take up some sort of hobbies -- skiing, dog walking, whatever happens out there -- so that we can just start layering up that time. And the other thing I do want to add to that, just to make this a lifestyle idea that could be doable -- it can be dosed, too. My husband is always begrudging on this rule of getting the sunlight in our eyes, so at different times, he'll say, “But I want to make breakfast. I want to do this other stuff.” So the two of us will just go outside to get ‘photons in our eyes.’ I'm like, “You haven't even had a single photon in your eyes.” He’s like, “Fine, I'll get my photons in my eyes.” So however you can make it fun—

Carrie Tollefson: It’s so interesting.

Mollie Eastman: Yes, it's powerful. You could spend the entire podcast on the power and the physics of light, and I think we're starting to get more of that information from a quantum biology perspective and circadian biology perspective. Chronobiology is a science of time and how time affects our biology. It's most simple of terms, light – because of the fact that our superchiasmatic nucleus is located right behind, in close proximity to the eyes, it makes a lot of sense that the light-dark piece is one the primary zeitgeber, or time-giver, to tell the body what time it is and what to be doing when. So it's always sampling the environment around it -- for other elements, too. So it's light-dark. It's also looking, and feeling, the temperature in the environment, because that's dynamic and shifts throughout the course of the day. So ambient temperature and our bodily temperature. Then we look at meal timing, meal type. That's another zeitgeber, time-giver, to the body. Then we look at exercise timing, exercise type. That's another fascinating one, certainly in the realm of what you all are really helping to support people with. And then thought timing, which is a fascinating one. How our thoughts appear to exist on a bit of their own circadian rhythm, and we have different types of thoughts as it relates to different times of day. So much so, that there's -- if people are interested in this one -- there's a great study called the Mind After Midnight, where people seem to have very different types of thoughts in the wee hours in the morning. Sadly, suicidality rates going up in the wee hours in the morning, catastrophic thinking, black and white thinking, flawed logic. So the timing of these things even impacts how we're experiencing the world around us. And then lastly, drug timing. So the timing of our drugs, and that could just be as basic as caffeine, alcohol, THC, but it could get into prescriptions, supplements, psychedelics, other things that are further shifting these rhythms as well.

Vanessa Ronksley: Well, this is extremely crazy and complicated, and it sounds like you need a full on schedule for all of the things with -- I don't know about you, but I like to have alarms going off so that I know when I have to do all the things. So it sounds like I might need to put those in order here. But I also love how ‘science-y’ you're getting, because it warms my little nerd heart. So thank you.

Mollie Eastman: Oh good. We can go deep. I love it. I'm excited that you're down to go with it, because sometimes you're like, “Um, okay.” But we will get practical, but of course.

Carrie Tollefson: Well, I’ll bring it back. I’ll bring it back.

Mollie Eastman: Thanks. We'll get out into the ether, and then we'll come back. We'll come back.

Vanessa Ronksley: That sounds good.

Carrie Tollefson: Sounds good.

Mollie Eastman: But I'm glad you said that, too. One of the things, practically, that we have people do at Sleep With a Skill is create what we call their ‘circadian-crafted day’. And so your circadian crafted day -- the aim is that the body loves consistency and loves count-on-able-ness, if you will. So if we can have that consistency around what time are we waking up -- as we pointed to the seven days a week, including the weekends -- the consistency of when we get our bright light exposure, when we get our drugs, when we get our caffeine, when we get our food, when we move our body. All of these things can really be wake-promoting or down-regulatory. So we want to see and filter which things go in which places. And that includes our thoughts, too. So emails and what have you might be more up-regulatory than maybe scrolling and this, that, and the other, versus resonance breathing, or other things that are going to be more calming in our evening.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you for sharing all of that. For me this question is -- something that's non-negotiable for me is breakfast. I'm just going to go plain and simple, and it's breakfast. I wake up. I'm usually starving, and so I can't survive without having it immediately. And the other non-negotiable for me is hugging from my kids. I love my kiddos hugs. So that's something that's part of my routine that is consistent. Now, I realize when they grow up and move out eventually, I won't get my morning hugs from my kids. But for now, that's what I'm going with. So there we go. Thanks for that wonderful warm-up.

Mollie Eastman: That was beautiful. It's soul-nourishing, filling on two levels.

Vanessa Ronksley: Exactly.

Carrie Tollefson: Who doesn't have breakfast and hugs? And also maybe a little run and a little sun, like, all of it.

Mollie Eastman: Ooh, okay.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, I’m like a poet and I don't even know it. But we do want to remind all of our athletes--

Mollie Eastman: That’s great!

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. But I want to remind all of our athletes in our audience that we want to hear from you, as well. So if you've been listening to this, our answers of this question, we want you to reply and let us know. So we'll post this question to all the TriDot and RunDot social media accounts. And of course, you can answer today's warm-up question right in the comment section if you're watching on YouTube or Spotify. So wherever you interact with us, let us know what's one non-negotiable in your morning routine?

Announcer: Let’s go.

Carrie Tollefson: Alright, on to the main set. Here we go. Okay, Mollie, your own experience with insomnia, not being able to sleep, has made you so passionate about helping others develop better sleep skills. So in this line of work, how much experience do you actually have? You've touched on this a little bit, that you work with some poker players, but how much experience do you have with athletes? And I know that poker is-- has that athlete mind, and they have to have -- I mean I don't gamble, but I know that you have to have focus. You have to have drive, commitment, all the things that we have to have as athletes. So tell us what your background is with working with athletes and their sleep.

Mollie Eastman: Absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned my background with insomnia. So in case anyone's listening and thinking, “Oh, nice idea,” or what have you, I can just share that I did everything ‘not to do’ enough so that it changed the course of my life, that I went through a period of insomnia over a decade ago that just so transformed how I related to my health and my wellbeing, and sadly, was given just about every type of sleeping pill. I think much, I'm sure, the chagrin of many of the doctors that I encountered, because -- I was actually traveling internationally at the time, and I think they wanted to be able to give more of a pathway. And yet, just for people to be aware, right now the average doctor is getting around two hours of training, even out of Harvard Med. So as a result, it's very common that things are getting missed when it relates to sleep. So this is really, really crucial. It behooved me then, in that situation, to then dive down the rabbit hole to figure out what I could do to restore the workability with my sleep, and it changed the course of my life. So this is also coming from well won knowledge along the way, and ‘no shame in the game’ with whatever anyone might be dealing with, because again, I was not adept at a lot of these skills. And that's why I really believe that sleep is a skill set, because I had all these labels and narratives, and it was just fixed. So I would say, “I'm a short sleeper. I'm a night owl. It's in my genes. I'll sleep when I'm dead.” And there's a tendency for many of us to have it, that there's a certain aptitude as it relates to sleep -- and maybe not even needing to examine it, because it's just, “It is how it is,” or resignation, or what have you. So I share all that because I see those things come up with athletes, as well. And yeah, I appreciate you pointing to the ‘cognitive athlete’ of poker players. My high stakes poker players are definitely my bread and butter, so I do have quite a niche there. At the same time, what I found is that we have quite a connection with that group and high performers in many arenas. Including, maybe, the impulsivity that can come, and that we're aiming to train in poker -- or ‘the swing and the tilt’ as they call it in the world of poker -- can show up in high performance arenas. So certainly banking, and lots of stock trade, and what have you. So we see a lot of that in those arenas. But as we get to specific on-the-ground athletes, we've also worked with people like UFC fighters, we might work with golfers, we look at long distance running, other types. So all that to say, various types of athletes. And yet, one of the cool things is that often it still boils down to a lot of -- as diurnal creatures, we’re meant to be active by day and at rest at night, which can fly in the face of a lot of the things that we're optimizing, depending on the athlete. So for poker players, to use them as an example -- but it can spill over into other areas -- they often are really experiencing what is akin to shift working, and rotating shift work, because they're moving around their schedule depending on tournaments, online play, et cetera. So we have to be really dynamic with this scheduling piece, and the same, or similar, rules seem to apply with different high-performance athletes. So what we're looking to do is get clear of their biological peak, so the timeline of when they're looking to perform at their best, especially when the stakes are high -- so when we're talking about really high-pressure environments, and ‘game day’, if you will. We've also had different sleep coaches on the podcast that work with different Olympians, specifically on just their sleep. And that's certainly the big moment where you've been training all this time and the pressure's on, and how do we manage sleep in situations like that? That can be fascinating, as well. So there's lots of things that we can look at there. But just to pluck one thing, one of the things that's often pointed to -- in the case of the Olympian example  --is we can almost anticipate that for something that big -- and you can apply this into your life in any big area that's important to you -- we almost just plan that we might not have the best sleep, in prep for that. And oddly, in the world of sleep -- which is so paradoxical, and often why we have the type A, neurotic, overthinkers like me, that can often struggle because it's the one area that has this paradoxical relationship where you can learn all these things, and you can support all these things by day, but when the night comes, it's really a practice of letting go, and just letting the night go as it is, and trust that we've set the conditions for sleep to arise. Now, when the pressure is on, and there's maybe anticipatory anxiety, that's where this concept of ‘sleep banking’ is often discussed in high stakes environments. I'm sure you guys are all familiar, and if anyone isn't as familiar, just this concept that in prep for a big day like that, or a big event, we're taking care of our sleep to levels that maybe we aren't always, and really upping our game to support that we know going into it, even if you really didn't sleep well the night before, you can trust that the body can pluck from this ‘reservoir’, so to speak, of solid and reliable sleep. Now that can just often take off a bit of the pressure, because then you know that you can still perform, even in the face of those specific, immediate results, which is a big deal. And then oddly, the more we set people up for that, we often see that then, counterintuitively, they might even get better sleep with that in the background.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's really fascinating. I love it.

Carrie Tollefson: I love it, too. Thinking -- Vanessa, before you ask the next question -- thinking of how many of us, whether you're an elite athlete, or you are one that just travels the world and does these different races. You think of all the jet lag, and how you actually -- you're not going over -- like a lot of pros, they have the time to go for two weeks and get used to the time change and all that. They are going over and racing a day, or two days later, so having that ‘banking system’ you're talking about is so crucial. So I love that you talk about that, and I love that you talk about consistency is key, more than anything. That if we can just continue to get our good sleep, that will be able to kick in when we need it. So yeah, go ahead, Vanessa. Sorry to step on your toes.

Vanessa Ronksley: It's all good, because this is such great content already. So I appreciate diving right in. I'm really, really curious. Oftentimes triathlons, marathon races, all of these endurance events -- they often happen early in the morning, and that might not jive with somebody's specific sleeping schedule. So I'm curious if you would recommend, then, for someone to adjust their waking time so that it more so coincides with what will be happening on race day, like if this is a really important race for them. Because I know a lot of athletes will say, “My body just isn't awake and ready to go at 6:30am, because I normally wake up at 8 o'clock.” And so I'm just wondering one, if that does have an impact on performance, and two, if they do need to adjust their schedule in some way, how far in advance would you suggest that they do that?

Mollie Eastman: Yeah, so good. One, for handling the travel piece -- no matter who they are and what their normal sleep schedule is. And no matter what else is happening for them, schedule-wise or what's coming down the pipe -- the travel piece that I would have everyone attend to is downloading the Timeshifter app for any sort of, especially long-haul, travel. What's so great about that is it can help you do exactly what you're speaking to, of this ‘in advance’ shifting. The idea, even the title, is that we're living into ‘time-shifting’ like a verb, so that you are actively shifting time, even before you get on the flight or what have you, and then during the flight, and then after. And then the same rules apply for return. But what's cool is one, you can manage that for the general piece of your travel. But then they also have a new shift work app. So in some cases, like with my poker players, we might utilize some of the shift work apps. Then if they're shifting around to different tournament times -- and this might apply to different athletes depending on start times—

Carrie Tollefson: 100%.

Mollie Eastman: Right? Yes, you're adjusting all over the place. Now, I will say one of the things that I do with these poker players, and it can extend across the board, is if we are able to anticipate, and plan, and look at what's ahead on our calendar, and shift that wake up time to best support the majority of those start times -- if possible. Sometimes it's not possible. The more we can make this a lifestyle -- and this applies even just with shift-workers in general, or anyone that's adjusting a lot of the peak performance times, or the times where they need to be alert. If we can make this a way of life, that is going to serve us immensely. So if it is possible, where we start to say, “Oh, if I really map out the things that are on my calendar ahead, and I start to make a lifestyle of waking up at 6:00am,” what have you, “Then can that catch a lot of those?” And that's fantastic. The more we can do that, the less we have to effort. But when we do have to effort, how we really relate to it is akin to that jet lag protocol. So if we need to be more alert later in the day, we can adjust that based on all of those zeitgebers that we were speaking to. So light-dark timing -- you can delay bright light exposure until a bit later into the morning, or whatever time we're going for, and that will have you be more awake and active later into the evening than you normally would. We can play with light from a dosing perspective, where we start getting more bright light exposure later, later, later to keep that biological peak higher. And we can delay meal timing, as well. So the breakfast piece -- plus one for the breakfast, I am all about that. Traditionally, what we have people do is get that breakfast item right when they first wake up, in alignment with their bright light, and some gentle movement, and all those things -- or maybe more than gentle movement, depending on the person. We're doing all those things because those are wake-promoting. But if we are looking to push people out a bit, we might push those things out a bit. So then you're moving this peak, this biological peak, further out. And you do the exact opposite if you're looking to move everything earlier. So that's where you would do those things first thing. And that is technically more in alignment with diurnal creatures, where we are looking to play with that strong cortisol pull -- but Goldilocks effect, not too high, not too low -- so we do have almost ‘natural coffee’ surging through us. We also can play with dosing of things like that. A newer one that we've been playing with is paraxanthine; it's kind of a newer caffeine. That one doesn't seem to be affecting adenosine in the same way, which is sleep-pressure response that, throughout the course of the day, starts accumulating. So if we're using something like pyraxanthine, we might be able to stretch that -- still get more of that wake-promoting effect with seemingly not affecting sleep quite as much as caffeine. So different little tips and tricks that we can navigate. But once you dial in,  most of the time -- you've got all of these things, and you're aware of the majority of pulls and levers that you can play with, then you know exactly what to do when you need to be shifting for different game times.

Carrie Tollefson: Okay, I have to double back on this caffeine thing.

Mollie Eastman: Right, I know, it's a big one.

Carrie Tollefson: It is, because a lot of athletes do rely on their caffeine. So what kind of caffeine do we get in a cup of coffee? A lot of people will wake up in the morning, and they go straight to coffee. What kind of caffeine are we getting in those goos? Is it all different? Is this all the same kind of things that you're talking about? Are we looking for a specific kind of caffeine that we add to our diet and our daily habits?

Mollie Eastman: Great question. Yeah, I'm excited because pyraxanthine is -- and this is newer research – but the thinking is this is a downstream metabolite of caffeine. The thought is you're getting some of the benefits of caffeine without the sort of ‘physicality’ effects. So the jittery effects, the heart racing effects, and yet you're getting still that cueing in from cognition, if you need to get some emails done or whatever. But then also, when we're really talking about performance, then there could be some benefits by layering in. This is a specific ingredient that we're starting to see show up. So much so, that's starting to catch the attention of even very mainstream thought leaders like Kim Kardashian, who are starting to have a big stake in certain ingredients and things to come. So what we're seeing is can you search for different ways that you could experiment with something like pyraxanthine and see if that could give you a little bit of an edge without all the other maybe deleterious effects of caffeine when we overdo it. So you will need to search for that specific ingredient. You can find in a few different ways. There's different drinks that are making it and including in it, different supplements that you can get that are starting to have that all blended in. Because it's within the last, I'd say, two or three years has started to really explode onto the scene for more biohackers or what have you. But even as mainstream as the Amen Clinic, and other groups, that are starting to bring that into a lot of their supplements and performance-enhancing options.

Carrie Tollefson: That's the big thing for me, is performance enhancing. I'm 100% drug free athlete, so anyone in the running world -- make sure all of this stuff is good, especially with USADA or USAT, all of that stuff, you have to make sure that that is good. In my world, we don't want anyone taking stuff they shouldn't be taking.

Mollie Eastman: Totally, 100%. Exactly. And if people want to learn more about caffeine, Michael Pollan has gone to town on researching things like caffeine, and the drug effects there. So however you cut it, we're looking at, there's certain things that we could take in. And what I often see is, I think, how rarely people quite realize just how much these, what can sound like the boring stuff can really show up in their sleep results. And what I'm excited about is that wearables I think are starting to disrupt this. So for instance, one of the things I think is getting a lot of talking points, or time, is that meal timing -- that we're starting to see how much of a difference that can make for our sleep quality, including our HRV -- so people are tracking heart rate variability -- and just what a difference that can make, of having your last bite of food a decent amount earlier than a lot of people maybe traditionally had been experimenting with. And seeing how much that can lower heart rate throughout the course of the night, boost heart rate variability, lower respiratory rate --how many breaths you're taking per minute while you're sleeping -- and then, of course, lower body temperature, and commonly help support blood oxygen levels. So if people are dealing with respiratory-based sleep disturbances like sleep apnea, upper airway resistance syndrome -- how we can see that be a real thing you can play with, if you know you have big things on your calendar for the next day, that you can thoughtfully bring that in. And I heard rumblings that WHOOP was looking at some of the results that they were seeing between two different groups of participants wearing the WHOOP band, that two hours before bed having last bite of food versus four hours before bed having last bite of food. My understanding is it's not released quite yet, but seems to be very clear, that this ‘four hour before bed last bite of food’ group seems to perform quite better in different metrics of sleep. Your face!

Carrie Tollefson: I have a milkshake every night, Mollie. I have since I competed. I have a little tiny 8-ounce, maybe six ounces of ice cream and a little milk, and then I go to bed.

Mollie Eastman: Okay. That’s hysterical.

Carrie Tollefson: I’m probably doing it all wrong.

Mollie Eastman: So another thing that's really fascinating is that Dexcom, one of the creators of the continuous glucose monitor, CGMs, and Oura have partnered up to the tune of around 75 million to really help demonstrate just how much our metabolism and sleep results are interconnected. And what that's looking like on the ground, is giving access to -- now we can buy over the counter continuous glucose monitors, which is really exciting. No prescription needed, in the United States, anyway. And then also in many other countries, you can get it even more easily. But what I would say is with the demonstration of putting those on -- and I would suggest anyone listening, I would love to see, across the globe, everyone just doing this, even for a stretch of time. If you could just do it for one month's time. So you put that on, and now it's overlaying on your Oura Ring data, so that you're getting to see the spiking and the crashing that might be happening by day. And if that's happening -- just about anything that's happening by day is often getting mirrored in your nights. So whatever is going on by day is often getting mirrored in your nights. So if we're stressing out on that nervous system overdrive -- which I've been there, I understand -- and yet if that is what's happening by day, we're often going to see in the evenings, those metrics show that. And that same rule seems to apply with glucose, and we're looking for rolling hills versus a spike-and-crash and spike-and-crash. Because the other tangible, real-world impact of this is that -- one of the most common reasons people come our way is that they're frustrated with wake ups, and they're just annoyed. “Why do I keep waking up at two, three, four am?” Or maybe, “Now I'm up, and I'm just up, and I can't fall back asleep.” And so for that group, there's many reasons for wake ups, tons and tons of reasons for wake ups. So I don't want to blanket this statement, but a common reason that I often find people not being quite aware of, or starting to just get out there, is that instability in glucose. And then when we show it on the continuous glucose monitor -- so say that milkshake, maybe it's fine, but maybe we're seeing a possible spike and a possible crash. But the other thing about it is just the process of digesting. Now, thankfully, you've got a more liquid based element -- depends on the ingredients and what else is going on in there. But hopefully it's easy to digest. So there might be benefits there, but anything that we're putting into the digestive system is turning on those digestive clocks. And here's what's really interesting. One of our top podcast episodes with Dr. Sachin Panda out of the Salk Institute, who wrote the Circadian Code -- which I highly recommend people check out. It's around largely, and other topics, but largely meal timing and how that impacts our circadian health and our sleep results. So what he found is that when we turn on the pancreas, which is one of the processes for digestion, then it seems to be at odds with our ability to create sufficient melatonin. So it's impacting our full surge of melatonin in the evening. So that meal timing has a very real-world impact and effects. Now, say if we eat something really egregious; we have giant pizza and all the things. So we're spiking. Now the pancreas is turned on. Now we're giving this whole body extra digestive load, so all this blood flow is going to the stomach. It's incredibly taxing, metabolically taxing. And it's taking away our ability to deal with one of the first things that happens in sleep, which is glymphatic drainage, with a G, versus the lymphatic drainage, with an L. So glymphatic drainage, with a G, is this deep cleansing of the brain. But if the body is split on having to tend to digestion, which can heat up the body, which is contrary to what we're trying to do -- we're trying to lower body temperature before bed -- so things are at odds, and you're not able to access some of that rich lymphatic drainage in quite the same way. And now if we did have that big spike from that pizza or whatever, now we're trying to sleep that off. Heart rate's up. HRV, heart rate variability, is down. Respiratory rate is up because now we're breathing more quickly to handle all this. And then what commonly happens is a crash at some point throughout the course of the night, especially because REM, rapid eye movement, is really metabolically taxing, as well. So the energy that it takes for that, we might see that crash. And when we see that crash, it's kind of a stress response to the body. And now with that stress response, now you're awake, and it might be harder to get back to sleep with that surging of those ‘stress chemicals’, if you will.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. You're blowing my mind with every sentence that you're speaking. I have a couple of things that I want to just put a pin in for a second. So one, you were talking about glymphatic drainage. Now, just for other listeners, you had referred to the increase of adenosine throughout the day, and is that not related? As we increase the adenosine throughout the day, the whole purpose of this glymphatic drainage is to decrease the adenosine. Is that correct?

Mollie Eastman: Great question. Yeah. So this adenosine -- often, how I describe it to clients, is if you think of an hourglass, and when you first wake up in the morning, it's pretty empty because hopefully you did had some great sleep. And now all this adenosine has kind of dumped out, all that sleep pressure, and so all the sand is gone. And now, just by virtue of living throughout the course of the day, all the sand is starting to come into that hourglass. Now there's different things that we can be doing that might impact the way the body experiences all that sand. But if everything's working out great, then you're actually helping to build that up, almost kind of like kids. We're tiring ourselves out, we're working out, we're doing all the things we're talking about. And then all that sand is getting nice and high to the point that that sleep pressure is overflowing. Then when you do get into bed, you effortlessly fall asleep and stay asleep, because now you've got so much sleep pressure. However, there might be things that we're doing that are impacting that, so we're not quite overflowing by the time we get to bed. Some things can be -- caffeine can make the brain think that all that sand isn't there. Or other drugs -- stimulants can also impact that. And so even though all that sand's there, the brain's like blind to it and can't see it. Or then you can literally, physically be dumping out some of the -- not physically -- but you can quite literally think about it, that you're getting rid of some of that adenosine if you're taking too many rich and long naps and too late into the day. Because then you're dumping some of that out and so by the time your normal bedtime comes, it's not overflowing. And the other piece is if we move around our bedtime/wake-time a lot, then the body doesn't quite know what time we're needing to fill all this up too. And then we might be different points when you're exhausted really early because you got up really early, but then this other time you got up really late, so now you're not at all tired at your normal bedtime. So there's all of these ways with adenosine. Now adenosine is part of that process too, of that restoration that's going on with sleep. So we are cleansing, clearing all of that. And even more so, or in addition, we're also cleansing all of this brain-based waste, if you will, throughout the brain. And what's really fascinating, is the brain will actually shrink in size throughout this process to make room for this fluid to kind of ‘super-soak’ the brain and let all of that waste drip away. And this is actually why positional sleep therapies are coming into Vogue, to a certain extent. But it's also been around. We see what appears to be evidence of even like Egyptian beds having a bit of a incline so that you can be at more of an angle to let all of that flow through. Now, that's not the only reason. That's one reason why we are thinking about doing this now. But in the past, one of the other theories is that would have supported things like sleep apnea or snoring. Because of course, when you're sitting more straight up, then gravity is helping you, and you're not pushing their tongue back into your airway. But with glymphatic drainage, with a G, yes, it is that cleansing and clearing. But then we're also dealing with things like amyloid beta plaques. We're dealing with tau. We're dealing with this cleansing that does appear to have correlations with some of the things that we see with neurodegenerative disorders. So Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia. Now historically, we didn't think that there was a ton that we could do preemptively to help with this, but it looks like there could be correlations with poor sleep, not accessing, reliably, that glymphatic drainage, and potentially some accumulations of this brain-based waste, and the hardening and the plaques of this. So we really want to help facilitate this where possible. Now other things that help this are temperature. So when we talk about sleeping in a cool environment -- and the suggestions are actually a lot cooler than a lot of people are sleeping, between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit. That's out of the National Sleep foundation. That's your ambient temperature. But I also see when people layer in cooling mattress toppers, so an Eight Sleep, Chilly Sleep, or more newly the Orion, which is just launching. All of these things. That's one of the few things that I'll often see make a measurable change overnight in people's metrics and then experience of sleep. Because this also can play into menopausal symptoms – perimenopause, and menopause, and then hot flash -- even hot flashes, Eight Sleep has a hot flash mode that it will detect if you're starting to really overheat and adjust things dynamically.

Carrie Tollefson: That is amazing. So many things.

Vanessa Ronksley: Sign me up.

Mollie Eastman: Right, I know.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. One other thing that you had mentioned in terms of REM sleep. So first, there's multiple things here. One, can you describe the different stages of sleep for people who may not be aware? And two, when you had said that REM sleep is more metabolically taxing, I'm curious, a lot of endurance athletes and triathletes, they suffer from energy deficiency. I'm wondering if the body is in a protection mode when it is deprived of energy that it requires for the training and all of the things that we do throughout the day. Will it protect itself and not go into REM sleep to allow for that energy to be utilized in other metabolic processes and that sort of thing? So those are my three questions. Or two -- yes.

Mollie Eastman: Okay. Yes. Okay, let me see if I can answer this. So one, the simplest way for people to think about the sleep stage classifications -- and quick tangent, if people are tracking, just know that one of the least accurate sets of data on most of our hand- and wrist-based trackers are the sleep stage classifications. So in case people are losing it because their saying, “Oh no, I'm not getting enough of deeper REM,” or whatever. Now it's not to discount fully, but just to know that out of everything you're looking at, that is the most of a leap that is being made. Because one of our best ways to understand what brain state you're in is the brain-state tech. And we don't quite have that set up right now, so they're extrapolating and looking at different signs. But they're getting a lot better. So having said that, deep sleep -- and if you look at the architecture of sleep throughout the course of the night, the easiest way to think about it is if you cut it in half -- on the first half of the night, we're going to see more of a penchant of going through deep sleep for most people, and there's lots of theories on why is that. Does that make that the most important, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn't seem to quite be accurate that it's the most important, but it still does seem to be the first thing that we tend to go through. And then that's when the body gets into this really cooling state. Our body temperature goes down, our heart rate goes down, everything relaxes, and then the brain can then shift into those deep delta waves. But then as we start changing throughout the course of the night -- this is oscillating into some of that light sleep that might people might say, “Oh, I have so much light sleep.” And it's not a throwaway. It's still definitely supportive. We need that. And yet it helps us to shift over into those different states. And then in the second half of the night, that's when we are shifting more into REM, so rapid eye movement. And REM is also very important. So it can't just be chucked out, as opposed to, “Well, I want my deep sleep,” and deep sleep centric. Sometimes I see people really fixating on deep sleep, but all of these are important. And REM, you can almost think, is your ‘inner therapist,’ to a certain extent. And it does other things, but this is a big part of it -- from emotional regulation, well-being, filing of and making sense of the world around us, and what makes sense to mull over from the day before, or other big traumas, et cetera, and to help work those things through, and decide what to prune and what to toss. And that's in the second half of the night. Now, one of the things I said about that metabolically taxing piece with REM, things start to shift in REM sleep because now we start slowly warming up the body. Then there's questions of is that almost to prepare us to enter the waking world again? Because we can imagine that it'd be quite jarring -- if anyone's woken up in during deep sleep, you don't want to be woken up. You're just like, “Okay, I'm not done. I need more time.” You're in this rich, deep sleep versus REM as the body -- If you are looking at EEG readouts of what's going on in a person's brain when they're in REM, if you weren't sitting right next to them and seeing them sleeping, if you're in another room and you just see these brain states, it looks like they're awake. It looks like they're watching TV or something. Cause they are kind of watching TV, or we are all watching TV of some sort, which is our different dreams, or different things that we're processing. So there's a lot of activity happening that isn't quite there in the same way during deep sleep. So all of that is a little taxing. And then your heart rate can come up slowly. This is why we often see certain sleep disorders more active during REM. So meaning, if there's respiratory based sleep disorders -- sleep apnea, snoring, bruxism, upper air resistance syndrome -- all of these might flare up a bit more in REM and to some, to the point that they have REM-dominant sleep apnea or REM-dominant respiratory-based sleep disorders. And because of that, now they're breathing faster, there's more of a likelihood for some of those apneas. And then as the body temperature is going up a bit, that can prepare us to start shifting over to now we're going to be awake. And also cortisol -- setting the scene for cortisol to start rising. But if we're dealing with a lot of stress or other things at play, we might have too much cortisol starting to surge at the wrong times. And now we're getting up, and we're having those early morning awakenings and not able to balance and manage that nervous system. So that's kind of a breakdown of the two, and a little bit more about each one, and that metabolically taxing piece. But I think I might have missed the second part of the question. If I didn't answer that, just let me know.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, no, that's really fascinating. I was just curious if the body protects the energy that it has, if there is a lack of energy based on too much training, or not enough fuel that an athlete is taking in. Which is this massive -- it seems like such a complicated situation because you're saying, as you said at the very beginning, you want your daily pattern to kind of -- your daily pattern might inform how you're sleeping at night. And so if we're not getting what we need during the day, then how are we going to get what we need during the night? And so I was just curious if the energy deficiency that might exist might cause the body not to go into REM state to preserve the lack of energy that it's receiving for other hormone production and all the other activities that have to occur.

Mollie Eastman: No, it's a great question because this is where the fascinating part of the puzzle of sleep lies, for sleep optimization. Some people might hear, “Oh, sleep optimization. So you just tell people to put their phones away.” When you really get into the weeds of it, there's so much more at play because, just at its core, when we are tracking our sleep, it's like a nightly report card -- not just of how that sleep is faring, but also our health and wellbeing as a whole. So you're 100% right. If our mitochondrial health is not to the level that we'd like it to be, that's going to show up in our sleep results. So we need energy to sleep well. So that's why at Sleep Is A Skill one of the things that we're often doing is supporting energy production. So mitochondria is at the crux of a lot of things that we're supporting to be able to sleep well at night. And that might also look at some other things that aren't always tested as regularly -- that I would like to see, that we look at quite a bit -- things like leptin levels. Energy being able to be derived from balanced leptin is one example of things that I think get often overlooked. And if you don't have enough of those energy reserves -- so say, and this can happen I see a lot with athletes, is when we might have been over-training and under-fueling and just running ragged, and now we're dealing with low leptin. And so if we're dealing with low leptin and not enough body fat, et cetera, then the energy reserves aren't quite there in the same way. So it can be hard to tap into that rich restorative sleep. Then you get into kind of a snowball, because now your sleep isn't as great as it could be, and now you're dragging, so then you want more coffee, and you want all the things. And it can be so easy to get into that. So that's why I believe this concept of sleep being a skill is so important, because there's so many things we might be doing that we have no idea -- I mean, I know that's what was happening for me. I had no clue that the management of my days and nights were just massively impacting my experience of life and how recovered I felt after each night.

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Vanessa Ronksley: We like to do a Cool Down. We ask one of our guests a question from the audience. So this is the question that has been submitted from one of our athletes. She writes, “When I have a long and hard training session, I notice that I don't sleep well that night, even if I train earlier in the day. Why does this happen, and what can I do to improve my sleep so I still get the recovery that I need?”

Mollie Eastman: Oh, such a good one. Yes. Well one -- two part answer. So just in case anyone didn't see this, I think it was really helpful. I know I keep mentioning WHOOP, but there was a great WHOOP study that landed in Nature, one of the top tier journals, and they had thousands of participants, and one of the things that they found as far as exercise timing and its impact on sleep was -- it shook out to be about four hours before bed, ceasing any high intensity training. I hear them, too. They're like, “Even when it's early.” But just in case anyone doesn't know this, four hours before bed stopping with any of that high intensity, really being supportive of many aspects of sleep. And then on a more conservative level, there are a few things that were impacted by sleep, if you went even earlier back, about six hours before bed ceasing any of that high activity exercise. So could be a study worth looking at, just because there were so many participants, and all wearing actively trackers to get more information about their sleep. So aiming to factor that in for all of us. And that doesn't mean that you can't still have some gentle exercise in that six to four hours before bed, too. But just being aware of that. Now one of the cool things that we see -- so I work with a lot of people also on optimizing HRV, heart rate variability, even if they aren't athletes. But one of the biggest levers to supporting heart rate variability -- and this impacts everyone, because heart rate variability is really a metric of recovery. So there's an argument that that could be one of a very powerful metric for us to take a look, at just for the experience of sleeping well and feeling recovered the next day. Now a strategy that we often have people play with on purpose is knowing that -- say you have one of your strong endurance runs, or endurance training, and that you're strategically putting that into your week -- and hopefully being somewhat mindful, and hopefully not fully at the effect of your wearable data -- but hopefully it's on a decent day where you've got energy reserves to pull from. And now you train in a strong and powerful way, more so than most of the rest of your week. You can almost guarantee that the next day is going to be, exactly what they saw, is that kind of drop in many areas. And many of my WHOOP people will say, “I'm in the red after these things.” Or Oura, it's like, “It’s yelling at me. What's going on?” But one of the cool things that we see is if people do this, and then they give themselves enough recovery time thereafter -- and they don't just right back, hit the pavement and whatever, but at least just gentle recovery time -- then commonly we can start to see PRs, or improvements, in HRV, if they're starting to bring those things in further down in the week. If we give ourselves the following day, so then the second to third day, we commonly see that improve. So what I'm trying to say is if we're taxing ourselves, this is where becoming a pro at recovery becomes all the more important. And so some of my top, top athletes, they are the best at recovery. It's amazing. And if anyone is struggling with this -- and I guess what I want to also put in there too, is to maybe not be fully afraid, and maybe anticipate that it might be that way if you are taxing yourself on purpose. But then the body is saying I need that recovery time thereafter, and that you're not doing that every other day. You're just dropping that in intelligently in your weekly training plan. But then there's a book called the Power of the Downstate that I like to recommend for people because it plays with sleep and heart rate variability, which we don't have a lot of books that do that. So this has been helpful, so that it can look at lots of different techniques for downregulation. And it doesn't mean you have to be in a lotus position the whole next day. You could do some, maybe light Zone 2. Strength training can still often serve as recovery to a certain extent. Knowing your body, learning your body, and gentle walking, and that sort of thing. But it's not taking it to Zone 4, 5 for extended periods of time that very next day or right after. And so what I want to leave in is -- and this is another way too, to think about stress, because I also have a lot of people tracking daytime stress on their trackers, and they get really stressed out, ironically, about all the stress. So I share that both of these things -- what we're trying to do is not avoid stress or poor recovery days, because they're all going to happen every now and again. Instead, we want to train resiliency, and part of that training of resiliency is really powerful recovery techniques. That's what we want to play into in this sort of accordion model. So when you tax yourself, then we're relaxing ourselves. Look at all our poet ways of being. Tax yourself, relax yourself. Okay. Okay. But I hope that helps for that question. And if they have any, if I didn't explain it properly, you can always reach out to me at Sleep Is A Skill on social or on the website or what have you. It truly is my mission on the planet to help support as many people at their sleep. I don't want to see people go in the direction that I -- I felt like I dodged a bullet, because I could have been on these really heavy sleeping pills and all the things for a long stretch of time. And sadly I do see so many people go that route. Close family members, and other people really close to me, I've seen become really hooked on pharmaceuticals and needing really big time drugs to be able to sleep each night. And it just doesn't have to go that way.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, well, we will get you back, because we have a lot to dig into. But thank you for your time, Mollie. This has been amazing and now I'm going to go sleep.

Mollie Eastman: I had a blast.

Carrie Tollefson: I might try to cut out my milkshake though.

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