Best 10 Way You Can Do To Sleep Right NOW | Michael Breus.

 so welcome everybody to um sleep for peak performance my name is dr michael bruce hopefully many of you know me um and i'm a big fan of the mind valley community so first of all thank you all for having me so let's talk sleep right so here's the thing to remember is there are two separate systems in the brain for sleep one is called your sleep drive the other is called your sleep rhythm so sleep drive is a lot like being hungry right so i get hungrier and hungrier and hungrier throughout the day and when i eat something that hunger begins to drop right the same holds true with sleep throughout the day when a cell eats a piece of glucose something comes out the back end

one of those things is something called adenosine

adenosine works its way
through the system and goes to a very
specific receptor site in your brain
as adenosine accumulates you get
sleepier and sleepier and sleepier so
more adenosine more sleep that's what makes you fall
asleep however what keeps you asleep and what tells your body this is my time for sleep is called your circadian rhythm so a circadian rhythm is also a little bit like hunger you ever notice you get hungry around breakfast time around lunchtime and around dinner time well the same holds true with sleep most people at least here in north america have a tendency to get sleepy somewhere between 10 and 11 o'clock at night now in different parts of the world and we've got lots of world worldly people here there are different times culturally when people like to sleep so there's lots of different variation that's going on out there the basics are when your drive is high when your rhythm is on point you sleep but if either one of them is off you either end up with a sleep
disorder like apnea narcolepsy insomnia restless legs or what i call disordered sleep what is disordered sleep dr bruce it's not an official diagnosis but it's i went to that room in the back of the house i was there for five or six or seven hours i come out and i don't feel so great what's going on here
that's the area that i've spent a tremendous amount of time michael excuse
me uh would you mind sharing the full screen while pressing on slab display so that we can see
the full big slides displays like that
yes that's perfect thank you so much i
appreciate that
so now what we want to do is we want to
move on from the drive and the rhythm
discussion to sleep stages
and what all those mean so this is a
graphical representation
of a sleep stage right and so what does
that mean so
orange represents being awake so you go
from wake
down into stages one and two which is in
the light sleep bar
then you go down into the deep sleep
which is the dark blue
then you go back to the light sleep
which is the gray and then on
into rem sleep which is represented by
the light blue
so that little dance maneuver there is
called a sleep cycle
average sleep cycle 90 minutes long
hopefully you remember that
because it's going to be important in
just a moment average number of sleep
cycles we count sleep cycles by
rem periods so one two three
four five rem periods that turns out to
be
the average amount of sleep cycles is
five that's going to become important
in just a second as well so what are
these sleep stages dr bruce and why do i
need to know them
so stages uh three and four which
represent about a quarter
of the night maybe 20 23 this is the
wake
up and feel great sleep right this is
your physical
restoration your blood pressure begins
to drop your respiration slows
but here's the best part about it all
we've all talked about anti-aging
feeling younger feeling better growth
hormone is where
that happens the most everybody's
looking for growth hormone everybody's
trying to take a supplement to increase
growth hormone everybody's trying to
keep the growth hormone that they have
here's the secret all you have to do is
go to bed
right growth hormone is emitted during
stages 3-4 sleep which is in the
beginning part of the night
and this is kind of like how the body
repairs itself so if you ever took your
car
into the body shop and they you know
they buff out the scratches and the
dinks and the dents and all those things
that's what stage three for sleep does
for your body
is it really helps all of that stuff
come together and growth hormone turns
out to be important
remember it's in the first third of the
night
rem sleep is a little bit different
makes up about 25 percent of the night
and this is where your mental
restoration has a tendency to occur this
is where we move information from our
short-term memory
to our long-term memory so there's a
very specific function
there our muscles become relaxed in fact
our muscles become
so relaxed that they become paralyzed
many of you may have experienced this
before some people will wake up
and their body will still be paralyzed
that's called sleep paralysis
don't worry that's a common thing it
really means that your sleep deprived
don't have enough good quality sleep and
that's why that's occurring for many
people
believe it or not during rem sleep your
blood pressure increases
not decreases you lose more weight in
rem sleep than in any other stage of
sleep because your body uses glucose
more than anything else
and we know that dreaming occurs because
of this movement of information from
your short-term memory to your long-term
memory
the way your brain figures that out is
by creating a story
that it can follow right so it takes
that information and it puts it
into that filing cabinet in your brain
and the way it does that is through a
story that your brain is telling you so
that's how you understand what's
happening
and again mostly in the back third of
the evening
now that's it for the science okay we're
going to now use
all of our information to be practical
and to change the way we're sleeping
okay so the first thing we're going to
do is we're going to have a bedtime
calculator i mean let's be honest when
was the last time somebody told you to
go to bed what were you like 8
10 years old something like that so the
thing to remember here
is we take our socially determined
wake-up time
and then we subtract seven and a half
hours
michael where'd you get seven and a half
from remember each cycle is 90 minutes
long
there's five cycles so five times 90 is
450 minutes divided by 60 to give us
hours
is seven and a half hours and that's how
you figure out your optimal bedtime
so as an example if you normally wake up
at 6 30 which is about the time i have a
tendency to wake up
if you subtract seven and a half hours
then you would go to bed at 11.
so first of all i want you to notice
something eight
hours is a myth very few people need
exactly eight hours the math doesn't
even work right
i mean if you look at the math and you
say the average sleep cycle is 90
minutes the average person has five of
those
that's only seven and a half hours right
so don't give yourself a hard time about
not
getting eight hours i don't i don't get
eight hours i'm the sleep doctor
guys and i don't get eight hours okay so
people oh michael what time do you go to
bed
so i followed this regimen pretty
closely and here's what i discovered i
would go to bed at 11
and i would wake up at 5 30.
let me be clear i'm a wolf i'm a night
owl the last thing that i'm interested
in doing
is waking up at 5 30. to be fair the
only thing i don't like more than
mornings are morning people
you guys are too damn chipper in the
mornings it's just not for me
this is not the thing i want i certainly
don't want to be awake at 5 30 in the
morning
i went to bed at 11 woke up at 5 30.
then i said okay i'm gonna try something
different i went to bed at midnight
more like a wolf and guess what i woke
up at 6 30.
what's going on there so number one my
sleep cycle wasn't 90 minutes
it was 83 minutes michael how did you
figure that out
guys i work in a sleep lab it's not that
hard but i also have an aura ring
right you can track your sleep and you
can figure out about the amount of your
sleep cycle so that's certainly one way
but here's what i discovered is i went
to bed at my chronotypical
bedtime which was midnight and i was
able to fall asleep more easily and stay
asleep
uh significantly longer than i normally
would have um so
this becomes very very interesting in a
lot of different ways so
when you sleep is equally as important
as for how
long you sleep and this is going to be
based on your chronotype right so
your wake-up time if you're a lion is
going to be very early probably in the 5
36 o'clock range
but if you're a bear remember being a
bear is the best
because there's more bears than anybody
else um you guys have got a great
schedule going that's more like a
between 6 30 and 7 7 30. if you're a
wolf like me
you really shouldn't wake up before 7 30
or 8 o'clock and dolphins who are my
kind of my problem children right you
guys kind of go up and down with your
sleep
you really do want to wake up somewhere
between 6 and 6 30 because it kind of
helps start your day
for you guys exercising in the morning
is going to be very helpful
now what happens if you didn't get a
great night's sleep what happens if you
only slept for four hours and you are
dragging it and you want to have some
energy
this is one of my favorite things to do
it's called the nap
a latte so i coined the phrase what you
do is you take a six
ounce cup of drip black coffee no dairy
no sugar
add three ice cubes merely to cool it
down drink it as fast as you can
then immediately take a 25 minute nap
you don't want to take a nap that's
longer most people realize if you'd nap
longer than 25 minutes
you actually feel worse not better so i
always tell people only 25 minutes
and what happens is your brain burns
through the adenosine that was making
you feel sleepy
the caffeine fits into that molecular
structure very easily
you're good for four hours guaranteed
four hours guaranteed
this thing works so if you're really
dragging and you need it and you need
something to save you
try an apple latte please do not do a
napa latte every day
that's not good um but if you need it
you can definitely use it
so what does good sleep do it literally
does
everything look at all of these
functions in the body you know you often
hear me saying
everything you do you do better with a
good night's sleep
i'm going to say that that's correct i
mean i really believe that to be true
every organ system and every disease
state is affected by sleep
and when you don't get good quality or
quantity sleep it's negative and when
you do get good quality and good
quantity sleep
it's positive so there's a tremendous
number
of things that good sleep can do for you
so what i thought i would do here
is i would stop for a moment and we can
answer a few questions
um greta's going to help me with that hi
greta hi
yes i'll definitely help so one one
thing that i
think a lot of people are asking is
they notice that when they're
emotionally drained or very
tired right and they feel burnt out
they're sleeping way more
and then and then usually they just need
to sleep no matter
what kind of prototype they are what
what would be your tips besides let's
say you know
a bath or something for people to manage
this so
so first of all let's take a step back
for a second and let's talk about
why is everybody so stressed out right
now right
and why are they more emotional right
now okay let's be honest
nothing has been as stressful as this
in our entire lives i mean across the
world we're talking about a pandemic
guys i mean i don't i'm 52 years old i
don't remember anything like this ever
happening in my lifetime
so the level of stress is significantly
higher
and it's a different kind of stress to
be clear right i'm worried about my
health
but i'm also worried about the health of
my children of my extended family
of my friends i've never worried about
the health of my friends before but now
you bet your butt i am right um i'm
worried about
finances i'm worried about career and to
be clear i'm not like a big warrior but
we're all worried about these things
because it's a unique
unique situation here are the things you
must
must do and i'm going to talk about this
a little bit later in my lecture because
i've got some covet specific
recommendations but a couple of things
that i want you to remember
wake up at the same time every single
day i
don't care if it's the weekends or the
week even if you want to sleep more
don't here's why what's happening for a
lot of people is depression
right and so when we talk about a
massive amount of emotional stuff and a
lot of stress going on
the need to sleep more actually is
probably more the need of depression or
escapism
right so a lot of people are saying i
don't want to deal i'm just going to go
to bed
right honestly that's really not the
best
use of your time it's really much better
to wake up at that consistent wake up
time whatever it is for your chronotype
and then going to bed at your
chronotypical bedtime the consistency of
that schedule
will tighten it up and improve the
quality so when you when you're sleeping
at various times your body doesn't know
when to give you the quality sleep
because you keep sleeping
so but if you have a compact situation
right you know the hours you know what
time to go to bed and what time to wake
up
your sleep will be better as long as
it's consistent it takes
21 days to get there so if you do my
quest
it's the perfect timing to do something
like that and help you out
all right what's my next question thank
you for sharing i actually have a
follow-up question so let's imagine that
i wake up every day at the same time and
go to sleep at the same time
but some days work is more stressful or
family is more stressful than other days
are there any key tips or something that
i can maybe
get ready for sleep or get even better
sleep so that during the day i'm
not so overwhelmed and over the place
yes
there is and that's the perfect segue
into the next slide in my presentation
you're so good at this greta you i love
it fantastic
so why don't i share my screen and i'm
going to give people five tips of things
they can do during the day
to help them sleep better at night let's
do that that's perfect let's do it
okay so there we go back to here
five things that we can do during the
day that can help our sleep at night
so what's the first thing i know you're
not going to be happy with me on this
one
let's talk about caffeine so it turns
out that
sleep in and of itself is a dehydrative
event
we're not getting your screen i'm sorry
we're not seeing
screen yet oh that's weird
it's not shared yet okay we're working
on it
just on zoom link maybe share the screen
yeah ah okay
oh no this one no this one
yet we're getting closer i feel like i
promise everybody i apologize on
it's okay oh my computer's acting crazy
is there at the bottom
of the screen of your zoom call there
should be a share screen
green button yeah i'm trying but my
computer is not letting me
it's okay something's weird with zoom on
my screen
it's not because i'm
all right hold on guys i promise we're
going to figure this out
it's totally fine
and everyone maybe while we are waiting
for this you can share
if you did prototype quiz what is your
type so that we see
if actually we have so many beers or not
and we have the screen perfect here we go am i back can you see me yes yes that's
perfect phew
all right guys technical problems
averted
thank you team mindvalley for helping me
out okay
so we're going to go back a little bit
to
coffee so remember caffeine you want to
have it 90 minutes
after you wake up because your body is
dehydrated if you add caffeine it makes
it worse it makes you actually
it's a diuretic so it makes you have to
go to the bathroom so we don't want to
drink coffee as our first thing in the
morning but
if we want it to give us a lot of lift
there are certain times that coffee is
better
and that turns out based on your
chronotype 90 minutes
after you wake up so if you took the
quiz
you should have gotten an email from me
that tells you all about your chronotype
and even tells you the perfect time
to have coffee to exercise to go to bed
things like that
so remember 90 minutes after your
wake-up time that's when you really want
to have your caffeine you got to stay
hydrated i mean i can't say it enough
i keep um like one of these little water
oh you can't really see it one of these
big water bottles by my bed because it's
reusable
and i will have water when i wake up in
the morning
usually somewhere between 16 and 20
ounces of water to help hydrate me but
hydration
is the key do yourself a favor when you
wake up in the morning
grab your water right and then walk over
to the window or go
outside and get direct sunlight what's
the science behind this
sunlight turns off the melatonin faucet
in your brain
so it's a great way to help help wake
you up in the morning
do me a favor put on a robe i'm just
saying if you woke up and you don't
sleep in any clothing and you walk
outside your neighbors might be
surprised
that was my best joke i'm just telling
you it was my best joke
okay guys physical activity so the best
way to improve
your sleep quality is with physical
activity during the day it just is
so remember most of us are not moving
sleep is
recovery that's what sleep is and so
when we're not moving a lot during the
day
our sleep becomes lighter and less
quality at night
so everything that you can do to move
around during the day
is going to be helpful for your sleep
and then stopping caffeine turns out to
be important as well
now caffeine is a half-life of between
six and eight hours
so it could take quite a while for it to
get out of your system so if you stop at
two
eight hours later is ten which is
roughly the bedtime of many people now
to be fair if you're in latin america
and you took a siesta during the day
then maybe
you can stop caffeine a little bit later
because in fact you're going to bed a
little bit later there's a little bit of
variation there of course depending upon
your culture
those are five things that you can do
during the day let's talk about what can
you do
at night in order to get for better
sleep we got to talk about alcohol
it's the one it's the one big one right
so alcohol is the one sleep aid that is
used more than any other in the world
and it's the worst
alcohol is not what we really want to be
having out there
so you want to limit your alcohol intake
it takes the human body
one hour to digest one alcoholic
beverage so if you have one glass of
wine
have one glass of water and wait one
hour before
bed two glasses of wine two hours
and two glasses of water before bed once
you hit the third glass
problems happen so from a sleep
perspective when you get more than two
alcoholic beverages in your system
it really destroys your sleep also to be
fair
it lowers immune function dramatically
right now we all want our immune
function so we really need to make sure
that we're not
using a lot of alcohol these days
i love exercise remember it improves
sleep quality don't do it too close
to bedtime because one of the things we
know is that body heat
makes it difficult to fall asleep so if
you're running and doing lifting and
doing all these great things
right before bed it will actually make
it difficult for you to fall asleep
because of your body temperature
so what do i do before bed is i take an
hour
and i chop it up into three 20-minute
segments so
remember going to sleep is kind of like
landing a plane you need some runway
like to get there so that hour
represents that runway so during that
hour and i've got some specific
recommendations in a moment
take 20 minutes to just do the stuff you
got to do so in our house it's getting
our kids backpacks together
shoes sports equipment that kind of
thing
20 minutes for hygiene so brush your
teeth wash your face maybe take a hot
bath
and then 20 minutes for some form of
meditation relaxation
prayer there's a lot of different things
you can do to slow yourself down
one of my favorite is a gratitude list
i keep a notepad by the side of my bed
and i just write down right before i go
to sleep a few things that i'm really
grateful for
to be clear there is data to support
this idea this is not just a kind of fun
thing to try to do
there's data that now shows that when
you're optimistic that is
positive before bed not only do you fall
asleep more quickly
but you improve your dreams who doesn't
want good dreams
so writing a gratitude list number one
it makes you feel very good
but number two actually helps your sleep
definitely something you want to try
if you take one thing from this lecture
today wake up
at the same time every day no matter
what i don't care if it's saturday i
don't care if it's sunday
pick your wake up time hopefully based
on your chronotype and stick stick stick
to it i promise you
it will help i'm the only sleep doctor
in the world that says that television
is okay
before bed i know you heard it here now
i want to be clear about something
only a certain type of television is
okay before bed
no media you do not need to know how
many people died of covid in your town
right before you go to sleep right i
mean that's crazy
if you want to watch a romantic comedy
if you want to watch an old episode of
you know seinfeld or or a movie that you
and your partner have been looking
forward to
maybe not an action movie maybe
something that's a little relaxing and
calming
just something again to slowly get you
there before bed i'm okay with
television but i don't like
is telephones can you see my phone here
telephones not a good idea um two
reasons number one it's closer to you so
the blue light that's coming from it can
have an effect
again if you um if you don't want to
have blue light
going in you then you need blue light
blocking glasses
i think i look a lot like bono don't you
think right or maybe elvis costello if
you guys know who that
is so blue light blocking glasses these
are amber lenses they must be
amber and they block the spectrum of
light that is considered blue
that's 460 to 480 nanometers
that light when it hits a particular
cell in your eye turns off
your melatonin faucet you want melatonin
at night so
90 minutes before bed i stick these on
and they help
dramatically keep it cool is the other
big thing so you can see 18 degrees
celsius that's about
65 or so i think 68
in fahrenheit you want to keep it as
cool as possible cooler is better when
it comes to going to bed
now one thing is i now actually offer a
service i'm a high performance sleep
coach
and i actually can do your sleep
genetics so i can take your 23andme data
or your ancestry.com data and if you
send it to me
over the internet i can actually run a
study on it and i can tell you based on
74 different sleep markers
exactly what your sleep looks like and
what you need to watch out for in the
future so the science is getting better
and better now i want to give you my
favorite recipe for magnesium
so when i'm working with all of my
clients i'm looking the very first thing
i do
is i look at their vitamin d i look at
their magnesium i look at their iron and
they look at their melatonin those
four things when people are low on
magnesium this is one of my favorite
ways to get people
natural magnesium it's called banana tea
to be clear there's no tea it's just a
banana so it turns out bananas are
loaded with magnesium but the peel
has got three times the amount of
magnesium as the fruit itself
so here's what you do is get an organic
banana just wash it off
cut off the tip cut off the stem cut it
in half
leave the peel on and the fruit in it
take these two halves of banana and drop
it into
three cups of boiling water and boil it
till it turns brown
then drink the water as my daughter says
daddy it's very banana-y so you really
have to like bananas
um but it's loaded with magnesium i had
one mom and she would make a pitcher
every uh like mondays and then she
poured it into popsicle molds
and she gave it to her kids at night and
it was great here's the best part about
this
magnesium is it doesn't interact with
anything
it's safe for children it's safe for
seniors like it's the best way to do it
so have a little banana tea or boiled
banana water
before bed it will absolutely positively
help you with your sleep
so what i figured i would do is i would
synthesize it all and i'm gonna give you
a
step a five step program to teach
everybody how to get a great night's
sleep
okay so step number one pick one wake up
time and stick to it
step number two is to stop caffeine by 2
pm
step number three is to stop alcohol
three hours before bed
step number four is to exercise daily
but to limit exercise
four hours before bed and step number
five is to get 15 minutes of sunlight
every morning
to turn off that melatonin faucet in
your brain now don't worry we're going
to take this slide and we're going to
push it out to everybody so that you
know what
what the steps are or if you want to
take a picture feel free i don't have a
problem with that
i believe we are recording this so don't
worry this will be available
in the future what i've done next is
i've added
five more steps based on covid so let's
talk about other things that we can be
doing that can be helpful during these
times
so step number six is put yourself on
that media
diet you just don't need to know what's
going on politically
you don't need to know what's going on
covid wise what you need to do
is chill out before bed so do yourself a
favor
step six is put yourself on a media diet
90 minutes before bed
step number seven is one of my favorite
relaxation techniques and it's called
progressive
muscle relaxation this is a wonderful
wonderful technique that you can do and
it's where you tense and relax your
muscles
now as a thank you for everybody that
came here
we're going to put um we have a website
where people can go
and they can actually download a free
audio version
of my progressive muscle relaxation with
my voice um
so you can check it out um or if you've
done the sleep quest you probably heard
me that way but progressive muscle
relaxation
is fantastic and i use it all the time
and it really works
i can't say it enough but that gratitude
list is a big one for me
i know it sounds a little goofy at times
but the truth of the matter is
there's real data behind it and i don't
know about you guys but it just feels
good to do it so
i recommend it for sure hot bath or
shower 90 minutes before bed so when you
turn off the tv turn on the tub
right remember mr bubble is your friend
bubble bath
makes it work a little bit better and
then our my final
uh recommendation is guava
leaf tea so this is an interesting one
so you heard me talk about banana tea
and you heard me talk about an apple
latte what is guava leaf tea this is
actually a real tea
i got some right here see if you can see
it it's guava
leaf not guava fruit and not guava juice
a guava leaf
tea this leaf and it tastes a little
medicinal um
it helps keep your blood sugar stable
all night long one of the big reasons
that people seem to wake up at like
2 30 in the morning has to do with blood
sugar so this tea i've found has been
very very helpful for many of my
patients
to actually do quite well so with that i
want to remind you about my book if you
want to learn the perfect time to
eat a cheeseburger ask your boss for a
raise become intimate
the power of when is a great way to do
it or check out my quest
we talk a lot about chronotypes on the
quest there are over 220 studies in the
book
and then if you want to find out more
about me you can check out my website
thesleepdoctor.com follow me on facebook
or on instagram
take the chrono quiz and absolutely
positively check out the quest guys it's
awesome i love it i recommend it to
people all the time
so with that i'm going to stop sharing
my screen once again and greta is going
to hop on board and tell me what to do
next
yes and i do great amazing i'm i am
inspired i'm inspired
to actually continue with my gratitude
i'm just very sad that i don't have
a bath here at home but hot shower is
okay hot shower is okay
but you really want to get under the
heat and really let your body get
hot at night because that heat then
lowers
um and you want to do the opposite
actually in the morning so one of the
things that i do and i'm glad you
brought this up greta is
i actually start when i'm in the shower
in the morning i make it colder
colder colder so i do like a wim hof
like cold plunge
but in my shower in the morning that oh
that wakes me up i'll tell you what
that's amazing i also um i was so proud
of myself that i was
showering under cold shower here in
malaysia and then
last year in february i went to visit
japan
and i realized that there's no cold
water in malaysia
it's warm and then in japan my all cold
showers went went away
but um actually you mentioned that uh
the mastery of sleep is amazing quest
and i have to agree with that
i took it and i really love it and i
think it's full of amazing information
now very interesting thing that some
people are asking and i am curious all
the time because you know we are super
achievers we want more from life oh yeah
so one of those interesting questions is
so
how can i make myself sleep less
so i would like you not necessarily to
answer exactly how but what is your take
on that on actually minimizing the hours
um so i'll i'll explain it um because i
believe in it
so here's what i've discovered and this
is over many years of research and um
we've had
oh my gosh now probably over 1.5 million
people take the quiz
here's what we've discovered when people
sleep
only during their chronotypical bedtimes
the amount of sleep begins to shrink so
what happens is the quality of sleep
improves
so much just based on sleeping during
your chronotypical bedtime
that the sleep cycle begins to shrink
that's why i only sleep six hours and 15
minutes
i go to bed every single night at
midnight
and my body naturally wakes me up at
like 6 15 every
day i'm the sleep doctor guys and i only
sleep
six hours and 15 minutes because my
sleep has become so high
in quality because of the consistency of
my schedule so if you want to learn how
to sleep
less consistent
so so does it mean that this should come
naturally right it's not that i'm
forcing myself to sleep less and less
but
i'm doing this according to my
chronotype yes exactly
exactly okay okay that's good another
thing um so there are some people who are not using
any caffeine and they're very curious if
there
are any substitutes for urine
yeah what did you know yeah so people
can use green tea
if you like green tea instead um people
can use
um anything that's a stimulant is really
the goal here caffeine works the best
so if you don't drink coffee you can
have like a caffeine tablet
um or you can have some something like
that but caffeine is really the thing
that works the best because the molecule
is so similar to the same molecule that
helps with um with sleep so you really
want to have something that is
caffeinated
if you can okay okay okay that's good
and then for for banana tea if let's say
people don't eat bananas are there any
substitutes
so the only thing that i've so remember
bananas
is really for magnesium and so the goal
is to get as much magnesium as possible
so if you don't like bananas the best
thing that you could probably do at that
point would be take a magnesium
supplement
so maybe a pill of magnesium you're
looking for about 250 milligrams
i can tell you that there are powders
that are really great that you can take
before bed so like
it's like a teaspoon and you put it in
some water and then you just drink the
water before bed and you get all the
magnesium again that's in a supplement
form and here's the big thing to
remember
is magnesium when it comes from a banana
is so much
easier for your body to be able to
absorb it
now there are also topicals so there
there are um like oils and lotions that
can work
quite well for magnesium i've had a lot
of people who who like
who have a tendency to like those so i
like that um
and um you just it's okay like you got
to eat a banana every once in a while
it's just not going to kill you
that's true that's allergic exactly yeah
that would not be good
and talking about naps i saw several
questions
let's see if the person had a bad
night's sleep right or could not sleep
properly or let's say
now it's after midnight in my time and i
would need to wake up for work tomorrow
so how long would i need to take naps if
we're not talking only about
napalatas but maybe usually so
great question so here's the thing to
remember everybody is you don't want to
nap
too long i would say you never want to
take a nap that's longer than 25 minutes
and i'll tell you why
so when you fall asleep remember you go
from wake to stage one
to stage two then eventually you get
into deep sleep
when you get into deep sleep it takes
roughly 45 minutes
to get there so if you stop sleep at 25
minutes you wake up out of lighter sleep
and it feels better have any of you ever
taken a nap and felt worse
not better after you've taken that nap
like you're groggy
i can't right that's because you nap too
long
25 minutes that's the longest the nap
that you should have
believe it or not there's data to show
that a seven minute nap
seven minutes is actually incredibly
refreshing
they did it on the space station for the
astronauts and they discovered that it
was very very refreshing so you could
even take a seven minute nap if you
wanted
okay then a challenge or follow-up
question is
how to fall asleep for that because i
was trying to nap before this session
before being validated online and then
my thoughts are all there so how do i
make sure
so here's the thing to remember so
people never never get this but i want
to be very very clear
an hour of just rest where your eyes are
closed and you're just lying
is worth about 20 minutes of sleep
aha interesting
so even if you're just lying there with
your eyes closed for 25 minutes
it still has some form of rejuvenation
you're still
relaxing you're taking yourself out
you're really
you know again what we're trying to do
is give yourself
a break i saw a quick question is guava
leaf extract okay instead of the tea
i've never used the extract so i don't
know but it's
the guava leaf is the key factor here
that's what the science is on so i would
argue that it's probably okay
okay that's right so that's that means
that when we have breaks in between
obsessions
for those people who are in especially
on my side of the world where malaysia
australia japan is
we can just rest a bit recover and then
learn more right
absolutely and and remember everybody
that um
you don't napping generally speaking
your body shouldn't require a nap like
if you're getting good quality sleep at
night
you probably shouldn't have and one
thing to really remember is
um uh if you have insomnia you should
not nap
if you're a dolphin no napping you do
not want to nap if you're a dolphin
because that lowers your sleep drive and
makes it harder to fall asleep at night
and you already have a hard time
sleeping so
if you have difficulty falling asleep or
staying asleep i would say you really
don't want
to nap if you possibly can but if you
want to take
a seven minute nap in between sessions
at mine valley university that's okay
too
right i mean i don't mind right like
chill out you know because here's the
other thing
is there's lots of information going in
right like you're learning and that
takes up a lot of glucose so you could
be a little
tired after one of these sessions i
don't worry look i'm the sleep doctor
i'm giving you permission right
take a little you know seven minute nap
in between sessions you might be
surprised
um meditation is one thing that i also
want to talk to people about
is sometimes people would rather do
meditation than napping i'm
totally fine with that there's even some
data to suggest that meditation
deep deep deep forms of meditation we're
talking like tm which is called
transcendental
meditation this is a long study process
that people go through
that actually replaces sleep for some
people i have one patient he does
transcendental meditation and one of the
things that he finds is he only sleeps
four hours a night
but he does two hours a day of tm and it
works out perfectly for him so
it's very very interesting okay and then
um as you talked just now about those
few hours per night
let's say there are people who work in
shifts right at night time
um are there any specific tips for them
or just they need to
live it through so here's the thing it's
tough
okay being a shift worker is hard to do
our bodies were not meant for working at
night
unless you're a wolf right so if you
take the chrono quiz
and you discover that you're a wolf you
may actually
do better working at night than an early
morning job whereas if you're a lion
you might be great at getting to work by
7 a.m because you're already out right
so looking for work based on
your chronotype can actually be very
very helpful that's
number one number two
if you're a shift worker these are your
best friend
these blue light blocking glasses and
i'll tell you why because remember
you're going to work at seven o'clock at
night maybe you're leaving work at seven
o'clock in the morning
what you don't want is direct sunlight
while you're driving home
right that's where these glasses can
come into play so
again limit the amount of light that you
have in the morning and stay
consistent with your sleep i know it
doesn't feel good
when you you come home at seven o'clock
in the morning right you see your family
for maybe a half an hour you eat a
little food
and then what happens you kind of want
to go to bed here's the problem with
that
that's not what a normal schedule looks
like right so when i come home from work
i don't eat and immediately go to bed
right i
sit down i relax i spend time with my
family then we have a meal then when i
spend more time with my family maybe i
read a book and then i finally go to bed
right so you should be doing that same
process even if it's at seven o'clock in
the morning
right but do it while wearing these blue
light blocking glasses
and maintain your environment because
you really want your environment to be
helpful at this point
so you want to have you know blackout
shades you want to
have noise reduction maybe a sound
machine earplugs things of this nature
can be very very helpful because
remember
the rest of the world is still going on
while you're sleeping
and that can be very disruptive yeah
that's true
actually there was one question that a
lot of people voted
for and lean asked that about dreams and
rem sleep and the question is why some
people
do remember and some people don't
remember and what does it depend on is
it
rem sleep or brain functions or what is
it about
sure so i get a lot of questions about
dreams and dreaming
and i actually have an e-book so if
people want on my website you can
download an e-book to learn all about
what is dreams and how does it work and
things like that we can put the
link in the in the notes afterwards
that's easy amazing um but when we look
at
dreams and dreaming there's a couple of
different kind of
functions with that and trying to
remember those dreams becomes very
interesting so
i want to be very clear i can teach you
how to remember your dreams
but i cannot turn it off so once you
learn the skill
you will remember your dreams every day
i'm not convinced
that everybody wants to do that right so
just to be very very clear here if you
want to
remember your dreams it's not that hard
and i'll explain to you exactly how to
do it
so first of all we have a tendency to
remember our dreams when we wake up in
the middle
of rem sleep so for example if you have
a tracker like i have the aura ring
tracker or you're tracking your sleep
and you can figure out when your rem
period is if you set your alarm
for that rem period and you wake up
during it you will absolutely positively
remember your dreams
the easier way the easiest way to do
that is to keep this remember i talked
about having a notepad by the bed
when you wake up in the morning write
down everything that's in your head just
dump it out of your head within five to
seven days you'll start remembering your
dreams
again be careful don't
do it if you don't want to always
remember your dreams
okay that's because that's gonna it's
gonna once you start getting able to do
it your brain just does it naturally
kind of training right exactly i don't
know about you guys but
they're on occasion i can have some
dreams that i don't want to have
right i mean nightmares you know those
kind of things and so sometimes i don't
want to remember those because that can
have a big influence during the day
the only thing i've seen historically
um that can uh stop um both nightmares
and if you
if you want to stop remembering your
dreams is um antidepressant medication
like zoloft
and prozac and things like that that has
a tendency to lower dream content
as well as marijuana or cannabis
okay so actually do i understand
correctly that in order to remember
our dreams it's more like of a natural
process training our brain and
remembering
but the reverting is a bit harder one
that's correct
okay okay so i what i noticed that with
a lot of things what we want to
improve or or learn there are actually a
lot of simple ways
because if you want to remember the
dream just start writing down but what
if there are people who
don't even remember at all now like what
would be your suggestion if they want to
start experiencing that so
remember track your sleep and then wake
up during rem
sleep and then you will naturally begin
to do that
if you can't figure out that just
writing down anything that's in your
head
over about seven to ten days it'll start
to form so it takes a little time
okay okay that's good so and then for
people who remember don't remember
why what is the difference why is it
is it brain function so we don't really
know the reasons why we remember it
other than the fact that we know that
during
rem sleep is when we move information
from our short-term memory
to our long-term memory so in order to
remember
we have to get through that rem process
right and so if you want to remember the
dreams if you get in the middle of that
process
it's very the data is just very
available it's what we think we don't
really know
okay so people call you sleep doctor yes
and then if we think about people who
experience
other illnesses that might affect their
sleep would sleep doctor help or
actually they would
need to first go to other doctors and
just then come back how does it work
with illnesses
so this is a very interesting question
i'm really glad you brought this up
greta so
you can go either direction so many
people
they think they have a sleep problem and
it turns out to be a medical problem
and many people have a medical problem
and it turns out to be a sleep problem
or even a mental
health problem turns out to be a sleep
issue so
let me give you an example so if
somebody on here turned to me and they
said
you know dr bruce i need nine hours of
sleep
or 10 hours of sleep right you might
think wow they just sleep a lot
not necessarily could be the quality of
their sleep what if they have sleep
apnea
and their body is making them sleep
longer just to get the sleep because the
sleep isn't so good
what if they have depression and they're
escaping their feelings
by going to sleep right and so we always
have to so what we're always looking for
in sleep
is people who are outside the norm so if
we know that the average individual gets
somewhere between
seven and let's say eight and a half to
nine hours of sleep
if you get less than that or if you get
more than that
that's the time to start investigating
remember sleep can be a window into your
health
in many different ways so let me give
you another example i had one patient
a female patient um who had um
uh she had uh a deficiency and magnesium
it turned out i know iron she had a
deficiency in iron and it turned out to
cause restless legs syndrome where she
got this creepy crawly feeling on her
legs every night before she went to bed
right now when she went to the sleep
doctor the sleep doctor said aha i need
to do a blood test first
now i could give you medication for
restless legs but what if it's your iron
so we did the blood test and we
discovered that it's iron right
so that's an instance where the sleep
doctor found a medical situation
the opposite holds true as well right
sometimes in the medical universe people
might see something but again
it turns out to be sleep so here's an
instance where for example depression
actually may look like sleep apnea right
so some people who say oh
i'm so tired all the time i'm so
fatigued all the time i'm so depressed
maybe it's because they're not getting
good quality sleep at night right and so
i think it goes in either direction but
here's one thing i will tell
everybody who's listening if you're not
sleeping consistently
and you don't feel as though your sleep
is of good quality it doesn't have to be
perfect
okay nobody's sleep is mine i'm the
sleep doctor my sleep's not perfect
right it doesn't have to be perfect but
if you're noticing on a regular basis
that you're not feeling so good
it's a sign there's something else going
on sleep is a window
into both our mental and our physical
health so when we notice that something
isn't going very well
we need to take a look okay okay
that's very interesting and i think this
session is super beneficial
guys do you do you agree with me we have
more than 700 people here
listening to these amazing tips thank
you so much and
please let's have some more questions
okay absolutely throw it out
we can serve the community so some
people are asking about
snoozing and not waking up immediately
is it still okay or it actually affects
our sleep no
i hate the snooze button i hate it
i hate it let me be clear snooze is bad
i'll tell you why
so the average i know so the average
snooze button is seven
to nine minutes long so it's not enough
time to get into deep sleep
right because remember it takes almost
45 minutes to get there so when you hit
the snooze button
all you're doing is giving yourself
light crappy
sleep it's better for you to just wait
until the last possible moment and get
up and the best
is to not use an alarm clock at all but
to wake up naturally
at your chrono typical wake up time
remember if you go to bed at the right
time for your chronotype you will
naturally wake up at the right time i
promise
but yeah alarm clocks suck that's just
the bottom line
okay well then if we could be like
practical let's imagine
actually i had this problem for a while
that i would be snoozing all the time
and i know
people in my community they always have
five alarm clocks
which is crazy it's terrible then what
would be let's see first step they can
take in order to
um make their life easier
to do what to make their argument like
yeah just to stop snoozing
oh just stop snoozing so number one
is if you sleep with somebody sleeping
next to you tell your bed partner
that you don't want to hit the snooze
button because they will hit you in the
in the shoulder and wake you up so
that's number one
number two take the alarm clock if you
if you need an alarm clock
and put it across the room force your
body to get up
out of bed walk across the room to turn
that thing
off okay that's number two number three
if you have an animal that you live with
like a dog
right set a time every single day to
take that dog for a walk
in the morning like when you wake up
that dog
will be your permanent alarm clock i
promise you
um because that's what my dog does is
it's 6 15 he starts licking my face
and we're up and going how about six
cats at 5 00 a.m
that's funny i like that one we have a
cat as well i'm a cat and a dog fan all
of which
are great um hey let's talk about pets
in the bed because that's certainly
something that happens a lot
i have two i have two pets in my bed so
it's me it's my french bulldog
it's my cat and it's my wife okay all of
us in the bed together it's like line
country safari right it's crazy
all right here's the thing when you look
at animals
if they're not disruptive it's all good
right if you've got a like i have a
french bulldog
okay and he snores right so what do i do
i
point his head away from me so i send
the snore
out into the the rest of the room and it
doesn't bother me
right so again you've just got to decide
what
you need um and what makes sense with
the animal
some animals i've trained to sleep in
different rooms some animals would like
to have a little bed that sits on the
side of your bed there's lots of ways to
do this i promise
and if we talk about animals and when i
think about
dr michael bruce i remember talking
about kids right
ah no crown attacks oh i thought you
were going to talk about kids in the bed
we can talk about kids in the bed then
okay cool what about that
yeah well and also for folks out there
within the mind valley universe you
should definitely check out tiny humans
because that's a program that you guys
are going to be doing soon and it's got
a lot of great stuff about kids but when
we talk about kids in the bed
one of the things that you really want
to be thinking about here is remember
don't do anything once that you don't
want to do for three years
okay three years i'm not joking right
oh little humans yeah not little humans
not tiny humans i'm sorry humans
tiny well they are tiny humans right
well they're little they're tiny what do
you want to call
so little humans thank you guys so one
of the things you want to remember is
when you put a baby in your bed
there's a lot of different things that
can happen right so number one you need
to be careful
right because you can roll over and hurt
the child so
number one rule is if you have a child
in your bed nobody drinks alcohol
period nobody has alcohol at all that
night because here's what happens is you
go into such a deep
sleep that you roll over and you hurt the child
um that in almost every incidence where
we have a child that gets hurt in
a family bed it's because there's
alcohol somewhere around so
no drinking whatsoever number two i had
a basket for my son
so we had it's called a moses basket so
it's a little you know a little basket
we set it right between the two of us
and my wife could scoop him out
breastfeed and then put him back in
and then we moved the basket to the side
of the bed and then we moved it
to the other side of the room and then
we moved it into his room and so it's a
process
of slowly getting your child out of the
bedroom if
they're in the bedroom to begin with
many children um
go to sleep just fine and um and there
are no issues with that at all so i
don't want people to worry about that
yeah
yeah so natural process to move them out
to sleep alone
but can we move our chronotypes
like because some people are asking like
do they change naturally over time
so we do um and so when we're children
we actually go through all of the
chronotypes so when you're an itty-bitty
baby
you're a lion right because think about
b babies they go to bed early and they
wake up really early
right um and then when you're a toddler
and in middle school you're a bear
you kind of go to bed when the sun goes
down you kind of wake up when the sun
comes up
and then you're a teenager right and
then you become a wolf
right so i have two teenagers it's
terrible
let me just be clear it's awful okay i
have an 18 year old and a 16 year
old and they're a pain in the butt i
love my children more than anything in
the universe but they
are crazy right especially when it comes
to sleep because what do they want to do
they want to sleep they want to go to
bed late and they want to sleep late
they are
all wolves right then
around age 18 1920 your chronotype has a
tendency to set
and your body will pick one um it's all
based on genetics by the way so if you
do 23andme or ancestry.com
um we can tell you exactly what your
chronotype is pretty pretty easily by
the way
then you stay there until you hit about
50 55.
so i'm 52 and what i've started to see
is
all of a sudden i'm getting tired a
little bit earlier
right it's not midnight for me anymore
now it's more closer to 11 45
so my entire universe is going back a
little and so i'm moving
away from being a wolf and i'm probably
going to start becoming a late
bear is what i like to call it so that's
the other thing to remember is within
the chronotypes we've had almost
a million and a half people take the
quiz now we've discovered that there are
early bears and there are late bears
right so there are people who still fit
in the bear schedule but
they like to actually um go to bed a
little bit later or
like to go to bed a little bit earlier
that's okay there are hybrids out there
and i actually wrote an entire article
on hybrids that we can get to people as
well
that is good that's good and again what
is your crown type
i think i mean my prototype is a wolf
i'm a i'm a late late person i
never go to bed before midnight ever
although
lately let's say in the last six months
i'm definitely getting sleepier around
11 45.
and i like i said i'm 52. so my guess is
is that i probably should
like test my melatonin and so i'll take
a look because this is the one time that
i think melatonin as a supplement makes
a lot of sense
is for many people because the melatonin
production becomes low in the body
you can supplement with melatonin so you
would want to take somewhere between a
half
and one and a half milligrams and
remember melatonin is
is easy to come by in the united states
but in many places in europe it's by
prescription only so you probably have
to talk with your doctor
okay that's good what i see that we got
today a lot of practical tips and not
only that i saw a lot of people in the
chat
resonating with your beautiful words
about your teenagers
that's beautiful you know they say that
people for people it's so important to
belong
and feel that they're not alone so
definitely i believe that
we understood that we are not alone life
happens and if our
sleep is not perfect even the sleep
doctors sometimes
like of course not perfectly right of
course i'm a human
i'm not a tiny human or a little human
i'm a big human
yeah i i would like to ask you to let's
say
uh wrap up this and maybe there's like a
summary or a magical tip or something that you
would like to leave us with today
absolutely so so here's what i want to
do because i gave everybody a lot of
information today is i'm going to break down and i'm going to just do the the top five tips of what you should do to help with your sleep right now .
actually i'm going to give six i'm gonna
give six step number one
stick to one sleep schedule right so
each number
step is gonna have that number inside
the step step number one
one wake up time step number two stop
caffeine by 2 p.m okay
step number three is to stop alcohol
three hours before bed
right step number four is to exercise
daily but to stop
exercise four hours before bed
and step number five is to give the sun
a high five
every morning and get 15 minutes of
sunlight every morning
if you do those five things you are
going to be in good shape but there's a
sixth step
so after you do those five things if you
still have issues or you want to learn
more
go check out my quest check out my sleep
quest
i promise you guys we spent a tremendous
amount of time and energy on this thing
it's super interesting
you're gonna learn things that i i don't
even have the time now to explain to you
all the different things
that you can learn from this quest but
everybody that seems to be going through
the quest is coming out the other side
and
really feels like they have a great
understanding of sleep
they feel like they know what to do
about their sleep and
they're really progressing in a very
positive way so if i had one super big tip
go check out the quest i think you'll dig it