Ep. #109: Shawn Stevenson on how to get the best sleep of your life

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Hello. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Mike Matthews, and I am back with another episode of the muscle for life podcast. Now, in this episode, I interview Sean Stevenson, who is the author of the popular book Sleep Smarter and host of the very popular The Model Health podcast. He’s also a super smart and super nice guy, so I was excited to get him on the show to talk specifically about the subject of sleep, because while I have written a bit about it on both Multiple Life and Legion, I haven’t really dived into it here on the podcast.

Now, everyone knows that getting enough sleep is important, but not everyone knows just how important it really is. And especially for us fitness fanatics, for example, sleep insufficiency has been linked to car crashes, industrial disasters, and medical and other occupational errors increases the risk of [00:04:00] chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity, and cancer.

And it dramatically reduces our quality of life. And productivity levels. Research shows that inadequate sleep can also slow down weight loss, lead to weight gain and muscle loss, and reduce testosterone levels. So the bottom line is that your sleep hygiene is pretty much like your diet. It’s either working for you or against you, regardless of whether you realize it.

And in this interview, you’re going to learn all about what good sleep hygiene really is and what you can start doing tonight to get some of the best sleep of your life. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to sleep more than you already do. In fact, you may even be able to sleep less than you currently do, but feel more rested every day.

And you can get there by improving the quality or the efficiency of your sleep. As you’ll see in this interview, if you really have your sleep efficiency dialed in, you shouldn’t need to spend more than maybe six and a half hours in bed every night. [00:05:00] And that’s something that Sean has helped many people achieve.

You don’t need anything special to get there. I myself sleep six to six and a half hours every night. And I can do that because my sleep quality is very high and I know that because I’ve used, those sleep tracking devices that let you see not just how much you’re sleeping, but how that sleep breaks down in terms of the different phases of sleep with deep sleep being the most important for rejuvenation and recovery, which is something that Sean breaks down in this interview.

So if any of that sounds interesting to you, then I think you’re going to enjoy our talk and here it is. Hey Sean, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. It’s my honor to be here, man. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanted to get you on the podcast because I’ve written a bit about sleep and the importance of sleep, but I haven’t really spoke much about it.

Haven’t done a deep dive like what we’re going to do. And, but it is something I get asked about fairly frequently, people asking how if getting, I get X number of hours of sleep at night, is that enough? Or, how much, how do I know [00:06:00] if I’m getting enough sleep or not, or how can I get better sleep?

And then also just for me personally, I’m interested in the whole discussion because like I was telling you before we were recording for the last year, like last year, I probably averaged maybe five and a half hours of sleep. and yeah, the reason why I did that is because I guess I’m a workaholic kind of person and I thought it’d be a good idea if I could just get some more time.

If I could just never have to sleep again, I probably would take that over anything. Like I would take that’d be my superpower. That’d be my superpower of choice. If I could just never have to sleep again, live two lives almost live an extra third or whatever. But anyways, previously I, I was sleeping six, six and a half hours a night and that was, So normal, like whether I would wake up before my alarm and I would be rested, and I did totally fine in my training.

Like I had no, there was, there were no signs that wasn’t enough sleep for me. And that was for a few years. And then I was like, oh, maybe I, Hey, if I feel good on six, six and a half, maybe I’ll feel good on five and a half. Not so much. Didn’t really work out. So one of [00:07:00] my little new year’s resolutions is I have to get, I have to get more sleep.

I have to make it more priority. But now I’m even questioning previously cause I’m getting older now. Like I don’t know, three or four years ago, six, six and a half was totally fine. But I don’t know if you’ve had this before, but I almost feel like my decision on how much sleep I want to get or my thought, my ideas about I don’t like sleeping.

It’s not, I just, it just I would prefer to sleep as little as possible. Tends to mess with my sleep almost. Like I wonder if I’ve just kind of Jedi mind tricked myself into, but like physically there are going to be ramifications over time. So I have a personal vested interest in this conversation as well.

Shawn Stevenson: Quick question and just elaboration. When you did that experiment of taking more sleep off, what was the symptom that you experienced? Because you kept trucking through and doing great in your work, but what was the thing you experienced? 

Mike Matthews: I experienced it in my training actually. So my workouts I wasn’t progressing much.

Hit a rut where weights that were [00:08:00] previously Everything started feeling heavy. My workouts just were quite like the perceived exertion rate, was going up in my workouts, despite, doing more or less the same stuff as I was doing previously. And I noticed I got sick a few times last year and I don’t normally, maybe I’ll get one kind of mild little cold thing a year.

But I got sick several times last year, not like super sick, but it’s just not normal. And I noticed I got, I had more little nagging aches and pains like in joints and stuff. Which is obviously related to the training because I do a fair, like a lot of my stuff is just heavy compound lifting.

And I had a sense that my body just wasn’t recovering as well as, when I was getting more sleep. And, yeah, those are the main, those are the main things. Got 

Shawn Stevenson: it. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Shawn Stevenson: so this is, these are common things, but these are usually people are subject to these things with a little bit more sleep than what you were getting, when people start to ratchet back and cut away into their sleep time.

So there’s a couple of things here and, there’s there’s a lot of different camps out there, a lot of different [00:09:00] arguments, but, I’m really sticking to what the studies say. I’m really sticking to the facts. I’m really sticking to what actually works. There are anomalies like Arnold Schwarzenegger and he’s six hours is what you need.

If you need more than six hours, you need to sleep faster. That’s his whole thing. And even he’s changed his pitch on this stuff, too, you know recently. Has he? Yes, in an interview he’s saying, that’s like the bare minimum. A lot of times, it’s more than six. It’s closer to seven hours of sleep, especially as he’s getting, gotten a little older.

And that’s one of the things you mentioned as well. Because when we’re younger, we can quote get by. And it’s because we’ve got, Hormones like Greek gods when we’re young, like all of these things are really pushing forward and to get right to the heart of the matter, I talk a lot about, epigenetics, nutrigenomics, what’s going on at the cellular level, and some of these responses that the body has when you’re younger, even against that stress is the world In order for you to push the culture forward, to push the [00:10:00] population forward, literally giving you additional energy, so that you can procreate, because historically, we would have been having babies a lot younger, than a lot of people who make a decision to have a baby, and make sure when you turn 30 or whatever the case might be so we get all of this extra insurance, but here’s the issue, and there’s a study that I actually, this was published by University of California, and they found that sleep deprivation is one of those epigenetic triggers, and what it does is, this literally shortens your telomeres.

Alright your telomeres are basically, and I don’t know if you talked about this on your show before, but Basically at the end of your chromosomes, and this is where you’re containing, this is where your genetic information, your DNA is contained, that has basically information for printing out copies of yourself.

Good copies are really crappy copies. And at the end of them, there are these little telomeres that keep your chromosome, Basically from unwinding or your your DNA from unraveling. I’ll put it like that. And as you [00:11:00] age, the telomeres get clipped off. They get a little bit shorter and shorter as your cells divide.

And so they found that sleep deprivation is something that’s an epigenetic trigger that Accelerates the loss of that of your telomeres and basically that ages you faster, right? So to put that in a little nutshell is when you were sleep depriving yourself when you’re younger You can get away with it, but you’re accelerating the point when you can’t get away with it, right?

And this is why today we’re seeing so many people in their 20s Experiencing chronic illnesses you would normally see in 60 year old 7 year olds 80 year olds arthritis Diabetes, heart disease. I just 

Mike Matthews: saw it was, they were linking, they were talking about a study, but it was colorectal cancer.

It’s also because millennials, our diet is generally shit as well. So you have shit, sleep, shit, diet, smoking, alcohol, blah, blah, blah. It’s just like a perfect storm of shit to just kill you basically. 

Shawn Stevenson: And so all of those things are known epigenetic influences as well, but the biggest component here and what my argument is, and again, with the proof to back it up [00:12:00] is that sleep is more impactful on your genetic expression than your diet and then your exercise combined.

And it’s because of the huge influence that it has on your hormones. And the biggest thing and another thing that you experience, the influence it has on your immune system. All right. If you’re not sleeping, you’re not healing. This is when your body produces the vast majority of reparative enzymes, anabolic hormones, the things that enable you to train and to recover and to keep training.

Because you know that we don’t get in shape when we’re working out. We’re really breaking our body down. And that’s a catabolic experience. And you need anabolic. Anabolism is happening mainly during sleep, specifically the stages of deep non REM sleep. And so if you’re not going through those cycles, and here’s what the issue was for you, and so for everybody, when they ask the question, how much sleep should I get, we need to stop thinking in those terms.

It’s really about optimizing your sleep cycles, and how many complete sleep cycles you’re getting. And your sleep cycles are anywhere from 75 minutes on the low end to [00:13:00] 120 minutes and you need to be getting a minimum about four of those Every single night and so for some people it’s between four and six of those But the average person is four and five and so With that you’re going to be cycling through all these different stages of sleep and different brainwave patterns that have that elicit programs For each one of those stages.

So when you’re in, we’ll just say stage two of the non REM sleep. And for people that are like, what is this REM sleep anyway? So REM sleep, that’s rapid eye movement sleep. This is where literally your eyes are darting around, moving rapidly and irrationally all over the place. And that stage is, corresponds with beta brainwaves.

So there’s like even a waking state of your brainwaves. Alpha and theta. Okay. And this is also where you’re doing a lot of dreaming, but why does that matter is because there’s also memory processing happening then. So this is converting your short term memory like stuff that you’re learning right now into your working short term memory and eventually your long term [00:14:00] memory.

For people that are cutting away their sleep trying to perform better at their job, you’re literally messing up your ability to remember things. And I’m not saying that we can’t, but your brain and your body has to work harder at doing that. And all of that starts to decompress and puts more stress on your system.

The point I want to get to with the non REM sleep, like stage two. There’s three stages of non REM sleep, and anybody could just go to Dr. Google and look this stuff up, and I do talk about it in my book as well, but each one of those stages, this is known as the anabolic state, when we’re talking about non REM sleep, and the deepest, most anabolic stage of sleep that Stage three deep sleep is where you’re really getting a nice dose of HGH, right?

This human growth hormone, the greatest secretion of that is happening while you’re asleep. And so if you’re interrupting your cycles, man, so if you’re like, I’m just gonna take another hour off my sleep, see what happens. Yep. You might be cutting out a whole chunk of your 

Mike Matthews: healing, a 

Shawn Stevenson: whole [00:15:00] chunk of your memory processing, a whole chunk of your recovery.

And last thing is that huge hit to your immune system because. It’s like a changing of guard happens. The vast majority of your immune system is located in your gut and so your gut bacteria cascade your microbiome every single day as a day goes on and you’re awake more of these opportunistic bacteria start to Wake up and take hold.

If you don’t go to sleep and reset that system and researchers out of Cornell University found this out. And so you literally have to sleep in order to keep your immune system strong. And that’s why you start to notice those things like the colds and the lack of recovery. And it’s really that simple.

So what I want to tell people to do is target getting 4 to 5 complete sleep cycles every single night. And that’s generally for most people is going to be around. Seven ish hours of sleep, seven and a half for some people, but some people require more. Some people need more closer to nine. Some people can get by with less, closer to six.

But I do recommend And for that, do you recommend tracking in 

Mike Matthews: some way? [00:16:00] Because you have all kinds of apps and gizmos and things that will I’ve tried different ones. So I was curious how much deep sleep I was getting on average. And it was maybe four hours of deep sleep a night on average, for example.

Shawn Stevenson: I’m not really a big fan of tech when it comes to my sleep, and I’m a fan and proponent of self quantification for sure. But for me, and being somebody that’s been teaching this stuff for half a decade, easily, as far as sleep is concerned, and working clinically over 15 years, My bedroom is like a sacred space.

I’m keeping as little tech in my bedroom as possible. I’m not trying to deal with any kind of EMFs and that kind of thing, and there are some. You can operate without Wi Fi, that can track your information. And I’m actually working with a company now to try to, do a little experimentation.

But for me, I just go off of, and this is what kind of answered one of the questions too, how would people know if they’re sleep deprived? Yeah. I go off of how I feel and very, What I really want to [00:17:00] encourage people to do is start to pay attention to yourself again. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Shawn Stevenson: We’re usually running around, we’re so external, and we’re not just, we live inside our body.

How can you not know if something feels a little different? Because that’s just feedback from your body that you need to change. Yeah. If you’re not feeling your best. And I know this for certain, of course, number one, being, just feeling refreshed when I wake up in the morning. Is it very difficult to get out of bed?

Okay, that’s a good marker. Number two, after just even getting out of bed and get moving, is it taking a long time to get out of this, what we call clinically sleep inertia? Like we’re getting out of that kind of pull that wants to tell us to get back into bed. And outside of that, to Our energy through the day, when we start to get into our workouts and we start to get into our day and get into work, are we just dragging ass?

Are we actually feeling good? Another thing is do we have that sleep inertia kick in? During the day where we feel so compelled that we have to take a nap now We could do a whole talk just on naps alone I wanted to ask you about, 

Mike Matthews: [00:18:00] is there a quick can you make up for lost sleep at night by taking a nap?

Do you recommend napping? 

Shawn Stevenson: Okay. I would give, I would compare napping a good nap to taking a good supplement. It doesn’t replace real food. Okay. All right. And generally for most people, the strong desire. Physical desire to take a nap is due to them getting poor quality sleep and not cycling through their sleep cycles correctly at night.

All right. Now a good nap is a good nap. Sometimes your mind and body just wants to shut down like a good Sunday nap and just get a little bit more time in. But. That can also for some people can mess up your sleep cycles, you know So with the nap it can definitely be a supplement if somebody did get a crappy night’s sleep before definitely if you can set aside You know 20 minutes during the day to get you a power nap in go for it But we’re also forcing a hormonal change, and can you throw people off?

For the long term. So I would recommend most times if it’s just a slight slept sleep deprivation [00:19:00] Just stay up do your normal stuff during the day We could talk about some of these strategies to ensure you get great sleep that night. So you get fully recovered Yeah, so that’s another marker is The sleep inertia if you feel like you have to take a nap chances are your sleep quality is not that great digestion Immunity, if you’re finding yourself getting sick, chances are you’re not getting that high quality sleep.

Everybody, gets sick every now and then, but generally most people and myself included, I hardly ever see anything like that. And I know if something’s creeping up on me and nine times out of 10, it was some kind of issue going on with my sleep and my sleep schedule. Great. 

Mike Matthews: Then, yeah, maybe if you want to just jump into some strategies for getting really good sleep.

Sure. Sure. 

Shawn Stevenson: The first one is I like to have the low hanging fruit, first of all, and even, excuse me, this timing of your exercise is going to be something that can help with your sleep quality. So Appalachian State University did this study that I cited in Sleep Smarter in my book, [00:20:00] and they had exercisers to train at three different times throughout the study period.

And they had him train exclusively in the morning, then the second period they had him train exclusively in the afternoon at 1 p. m., and in the morning it was 7 a. m. And then the third phase of the study they had him train exclusively at night at 7 p. m. And they found that the people that were training at 7 a.

1. in the morning spent more time in the deepest, most anabolic stage of sleep. They tended to sleep more, so they had longer sleep time, and they had a 25 percent greater drop in blood pressure at night. 

All right. Simply from exercising in the morning makes your blood pressure drop more at night.

What? How is that possible? Really what that is you’re falling in sync with the natural kind of durnal pattern or circadian rhythm of the earth. Sure. And that sleep. Wake up and do 

Mike Matthews: stuff. 

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, and what it is by you exercising in the morning That’s, first of all, that’s what our ancestors would be doing, not necessarily exercising, but getting up, doing work, hunting, gathering, that kind of thing.

But today, we gotta manufacture that [00:21:00] stuff. What we call this clinically is a cortisol reset. A lot of people We’ll see when we call them tired and wired where their cortisol is too low in the morning and It’s too high in the evening So this is why it’s causing them issues getting to sleep and staying asleep because their cortisol is too high So to get their cortisol Reset to get the cortisol elevated in the morning simply getting up and doing even four minutes of exercise They’ll do a quick Tabata And you’re going to be able to ensure that you’re going to stack conditions for you to get sleep better at night.

All right. So some people, this would be, if it’s your gym time to hit the gym in the morning, go for it. You just haven’t doing it. But if people are working out in the afternoon, that’s okay. You can still get this. And I did a year experiment because I’ve been a morning exerciser same for, or, over 10 years, but in preparation for the book, I had to test it out and see.

So for an entire year, I got up in the morning. I did. Maybe around 5 10 minutes of exercise, most times just jumping on this rebounder, my mini trampoline, and then I did a full workout at [00:22:00] like 4pm in the early evening, slash afternoon. And all of my, everything improved, because for guys, it’s we don’t want to mess up our gains by some kind of random workout in the morning, am I going to be able to perform later?

My testosterone went up, my strength numbers went up my reaction time went up. Everything that you can mark everything improved. All right And so this five minutes of exercise in the morning didn’t impact my training later and I continued to sleep great even though I was worried about it because it’s if i’m working out later Is it going to mess with my sleep and not at all?

It’s because I did the other things as well that we’re going to talk about So number one is get some morning exercise in even if it’s just me Three or four minutes, do some activity to get your cortisol reset. Cool. 

Mike Matthews: I like it. That’s great. I myself have worked out in the morning for for years and years.

But recently now I’m doing a couple workouts after work and then a couple morning workouts. But yeah, I guess if I look back over it, my workout schedule has been a bit random even actually even tried when I first, I moved from Florida, [00:23:00] Virginia. And I was like, yeah, I want to start working out later for that even reason of you have more energy later, but looking back on it, I, when I would hit the bed at night in training early, I just felt more ready to sleep, I guess is the way to describe it.

So anyways, 

Shawn Stevenson: that might be why. Got it. Yeah, man, and a lot of people experience that but for some people that are listening They’re like I already work out in the morning, but my exercise, I mean my sleep is crappy 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Shawn Stevenson: so that’s not the solution for me again. This was a low hanging fruit Sure, and I talked about 21 and these were just 21.

I have more of the clinically proven strategies To help people improve their sleep quality, not necessarily sleeping more, but sleeping better, improving those sleep cycles and sleep rhythms. And so morning exercise is a key component, but if you’re doing that, and then you’re, you’re working out at 7 a.

1. And then, you’re up at midnight that night watching game of thrones or whatever. I think a new season’s coming out. [00:24:00] That’s going to mess up your sleep, like you you can interrupt this process at many different points along the line. So another strategy here that during the day that we’re missing out on that can help to reset that sleep rhythm is getting access to sunlight.

Okay. And there was a study, and this was published in innovations in clinical neuroscience, and they found that people who get. Sunlight in the early part of the day. So what’s recommended is basically between 630 and 8 a. m. Sunlight sun exposure They had a lower they had a much lower drop in their cortisol in the evening All right, so getting sunlight in the morning drops your cortisol lower in the evening Alright, and so what’s the big deal when I keep talking about cortisol?

Cortisol is so important and so valuable, but it’s gotten a bad name. It’s the person who actually wrote the foreword for my book, Dr. Sarah Godfrey. She’s Harvard trained, MIT trained, that kind of thing. She calls cortisol the bad boyfriend, right? This is this, they still have this [00:25:00] attraction.

They’re still interesting and that kind of thing. They’re doing some things for you, but it can mess your life up if you spend too much time with them kind of thing. So that’s basically the summary with cortisol and I don’t want to just make it like a bad boyfriend, but just, somebody in your family that they’re great as long as they don’t drink.

As long as they don’t go too hard. They’re great to be around. They add value. And I’ve never talked about cortisol like that before, but I think it’s a good analogy. It’s a good analogy. 

Mike Matthews: So just 

Shawn Stevenson: so everybody, 

Mike Matthews: I think everybody listening, at least most people are in no cortisol, but it’s the stress hormone.

All right. One 

Shawn Stevenson: of our stress hormones, but this is the most popular so there’s also all these Catecholamines, you know if people know about adrenaline noradrenaline this kind of thing right a cortisol really gets the baddest rap, and it’s not fair It’s cortisol is a problem when it’s produced at the wrong time in the wrong amounts And so if it’s elevated in the evening It’s very biologically.

That’s not accurate and how your body should be working 

Mike Matthews: because cortisol makes 

Shawn Stevenson: you up, right? That’s yes, exactly. Exactly. And it suppresses melatonin. [00:26:00] That’s the other thing. Melatonin is glorified sleep hormone. And why do people say that? It actually helps for your body to manage and modulate those sleep cycles.

We’ve been talking about if you don’t have melatonin produced properly, You’re not going to go in and out of your sleep cycles properly. And again, you might get eight hours of sleep and you’re still going to wake up feeling tired. All right. So we’ve got to make sure cortisol is low in the evening and melatonin is high.

So another one of the ways to do that is getting light exposure, specifically the sunlight preferably on your skin, but at least having it coming in through the windows, even on an overcast day, because you have your optical receptors pick up that light and it sends information to your brain and nervous system that sets that rhythm.

All right. And so there’s also for people that are like I work in a cubicle dungeon during the day. I just can’t do that. First of all, that’s not true. There’s always a way. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. It was just a five minute break 

Shawn Stevenson: or whatever. We literally putting ourselves in a box, if we’re working in this kind of cubicle dungeon, but there are [00:27:00] clinically proven.

Light devices right so light therapy devices that are used to treat things like seasonal affective disorder So there are light boxes. There are visors you could put on these visors that shoot this kind of Daylight spectrum of light into your eyes. They’re even earbuds Because there are photoreceptors in your ear canal, it’s so crazy.

And there is so much research coming out of backing this, just putting this light into your ear, helping to improve your sleep quality by doing it at the right time. Alright, so there’s different hacks we can use. But 

Mike Matthews: ideally, maybe you wake up and you go outside and do some exercise then, right? If it’s not bad.

Shawn Stevenson: Stack it. You just said it, man. Yes, stack the conditions. You can knock it all out in that nice little chunk, even if you got a meeting, a morning meeting, you can go for a walking meeting. But sometimes, it just depends on where people live. We’ve got different conditions and things like that, but there’s always a way that we can.

Tweak things and adjust things to get what we want. So that’s part one. We’re talking about the morning now. Let’s move into the evening So if this light [00:28:00] exposure in the daytime helps to increase One of the things it does is increases cortisol. Sure. What’s going to happen at night? Harvard researchers confirm that light exposure from our artificial light, not moonlight artificial light Devices tvs and stuff.

You got it. So they’re calling it light pollution today. And what it does is it elevates your cortisol and suppresses melatonin, the exact opposite thing you want. Not 

Mike Matthews: applied to not just blue light, but like any light. 

Shawn Stevenson: So it’s different. All of these organizations send me stuff all the time now sleep related gadgets.

So NASA scientists, so they reached out the company that they use and they’ve got biological light for improved natural sleep, right? So I’m not trying to plug them. I don’t really know them that well, but they’re sending me this stuff and basically it depends on. The Lux so the power of the light and also depends on the color of the light this is key because not [00:29:00] all of these various spectrums of colors impact your body the same way so the blue bluish white spectrum so when you think of blue in our culture we attribute that to being cold.

But if you look at something like the Kelvin scale, blue is very hot. All right? And so red is cold. If you flip it and put it on, if you look on the Kelvin scale, we tend to think of red as hot. But as far as this exposure for us, red light hardly had any impact on elevating cortisol and suppressing melatonin.

Compared to the blue and white light, right? So and what they found was that blue and white light exposure like just from being on our laptops at night or watching television suppresses melatonin every single hour you’re on your device. It suppresses melatonin for an additional 30 minutes. 

Wow 

Shawn Stevenson: Alright, so there’s the marker and I’m just giving you the summary of what that looks like.

It’s basically That those are the amounts and so what can we do about this? Number one, you can give yourself a little bit of a screen curfew. Get off your device a little [00:30:00] bit before you plan on going to bed. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Shawn Stevenson: I know for many years, man, when I had my health problems when I was younger and in college, I would literally fall asleep with the TV on and eventually wake up and go to bed.

Or I would last thing I would do is turn off the TV and go get into bed. I’m like, I really should get some sleep. I got to get up and go to class in the morning, and so a lot of people are living like that. We’ve got to stop. We’ve really got to stop and get ourselves in check with that. And plus our dreams would be weird.

We’ll have that weird Wayne Brady, Bobby Brown, with Mike Tyson, but anyways. And the other thing is we can utilize some of these great technological hacks that we have which is. Like these lights, using these lights, if we’re going to stay up and we’re like hanging out playing a game, reading or whatever the case might be, stuff like that are on your laptops and desktops.

Please put everybody. If you’ve not done this yet, this is totally free. Go to F dot L. U. X. Just Google it. Type in F dot L. U. X. So it’s flux. It’s a free app. Free. And it’s totally free and super easy, a couple of [00:31:00] clicks, it installs in your computer. I’ve been using it for, I think about four years now, and it is fantastic.

It pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light from your screens automatically. When it gets dark outside and it puts it back in your screen when the light comes back on, on the planet. But here’s the thing is that you can easily disable it if you need to check a design or something like that, but it’s going to save you a lot of issues with cortisol problems and melatonin.

It’s not perfect. Because we’re still stimulated on our device, but it’s a hack. And also there’s blue light blocking glasses. There’s lots of cool stuff we can use. So that’s another big thing. There’s a lot out there in the media about this. So a lot of people listening, probably I know that already, but hopefully I’ve tied in some deeper, given that belief, some greater legs to really understand why it’s so important.

And plus one of the people that really helped to push that in the culture was me, I’ve been pushing this stuff out there for five years now. And even folks like Ariana Huffington, Use my book and her research. She’s got an incredible book on sleep health as well But my book is really [00:32:00] dedicated to she’s telling a story i’m dedicated to giving you the strategies, right?

Here’s what works try these things put these spots in like each thing has five different ways of implementing it You know because we still have to find out what works for us. We don’t want to we don’t want to be The sleep police, we want to still enjoy our life. And like you said You want to live more and sleep as little as possible And I get that so what we want to do is stack conditions in our favor.

So the time we do spend Horizontal It’s really gonna help. 

Mike Matthews: It’s the most efficient sleep we can get so to speak I guess exactly so we can really live our life Hey quickly before we carry on if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth.

If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them [00:33:00] about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness.

So can you touch on caffeine? Because especially among, us fitness people, a lot of us have caffeine whether it’s coffee or pre workout 

Shawn Stevenson: or whatever, it’s obviously popular. Yeah, full disclosure. I’m a fan of caffeine. I enjoy caffeine. That’s my one vice. I don’t even, I don’t even drink alcohol.

It’s not a bad vice to have, but it can be, just like anything, but that whole talk of anything in moderation, that’s just BS because cocaine in moderation can be a problem, you understand? We have to, everything has a different point at which it can, begins to become disabling.

And with caffeine, what it really is not so much just the amount, but the timing [00:34:00] of it. And this is key. Caffeine has what’s called an 8 hour half life. All right. It has a half life of eight hours. So basically for the average person, after eight hours, just say you have a 200 milligram cup of coffee.

Okay. 200 milligram. I’m sorry. With 200 milligrams of caffeine. Yeah. And that’s like a small cup of coffee and nobody gets a small cup of coffee. 

Yeah. 

Shawn Stevenson: All right. But 200 milligrams after eight hours, half of it is still active in your system. All right. So a hundred milligrams is still active in your system.

That can be enough. And for many people it is to disrupt your sleep quality because caffeine is a very powerful nervous system stimulant. And I break down in the book how it works and we can talk about it if we have time, but it affects something called adenosine, which is nudging you to go to sleep and it fits into those receptor sites for adenosine.

And basically your body’s building up this adenosine as a byproduct of you being awake and they should be plugging in to these receptor [00:35:00] sites to make you sleepy. But caffeine is sitting in those receptor sites and so all of these products are building up and basically you’re tired But you don’t know it, right?

That’s the power and then it also 

Mike Matthews: stimulates you as well, too so you have that 

Shawn Stevenson: double effect. That’s number one. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Shawn Stevenson: is that effect is you’re tired and you don’t know it But also it is a nervous system stimulant so it can effectively light up your nervous system like a Christmas tree and so one of the studies that I cited was They had individuals consume caffeine Immediately before bed three hours before bed and even six hours before bed and six hours before bed having caffeine Was enough to pull away literally cut away an hour of the person’s sleep.

So what let me make that clear So basically the person thought that they got eight hours of sleep, but it was only seven According to the sleep devices sleep monitor devices that they were using that actually tracks So they lost a full hour of their sleep because of the caffeine, right? so [00:36:00] Even six hours out.

So simple thing is, if you’re going to have caffeine, get your caffeine kick in the morning, so your body has some time to basically detoxify and break it down. And I’m going to give a little hack. I think this might actually be the first time I’ve ever shared this publicly. But tyrosine, there’s a supplement you can get in a supplement form.

Tyrosine can actually help to buffer the effects of caffeine and basically like we talked about adenosine in the receptor sites to kick that stuff out and allow for the adenosine to do its job. All right. But that can be a whole show. I don’t want people taking a supplement or a drug to try to treat a symptom, but that’s just in a spot case.

That might be something you might be interested in. You just go to Dr. Google and check out tyrosine and so just something a little extra thing to throw out there. Cool. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And it also makes sense like with what you were saying in terms of circadian rhythm to have caffeine early in the day when your body’s getting up and going as opposed to later when it’s supposed to be winding down even just naturally, 

Shawn Stevenson: [00:37:00] right?

Yes, exactly. And guess what? It does. It also elevates cortisol. Sure. That’s another thing about the caffeine, that we don’t think about. And so again, if you’re doing that too late in the evening and your cortisol levels can’t drop, it could be a problem. Totally. What about, 

Mike Matthews: I’m just coming off the top of my head, things about what’s an ideal, what, how do you have your bedroom set up in terms of, you mentioned earlier, no electronics.

Do you have, how, Nazi about it? Are you, how do you have it set up? 

Shawn Stevenson: Oh man. In our culture, and I even enjoy this when I’m on the road, I’m about to travel for a speaking event. In the Philippines, for example, and the hotel room is probably going to have a TV in the room. So it’s just it’s such a cool experience to lay in your bed and watch TV.

It’s that’s like when you really made it. I remember when I was a kid, we didn’t have a television in our bedroom. Like you could forget about it. But as I got a little bit older, got to in my preteens and. We started to have the TV in our bedroom. I didn’t want to come out, just having that TV in your bedroom is really awesome.

The issue, obviously, we’ve been talking about the screen [00:38:00] exposure before bed, but also is our neural association. So your brain is always looking for patterns. And I think many of us listening, we had the experience of having a bedtime ritual when we were kids, we get ready for bed, maybe moms would get us into the bathtub, maybe read a story if had that kind of thing going on, maybe, I don’t know, you’re doing some homework or having a little talk with your parent or grandparent.

I don’t know what your sleep ritual looked like, but many of us had them. I know I had them for a small chunk of my life when I lived with my grandmother and it was an awesome thing. Always just drifted off to sleep. It was a normal pattern. Now, today we don’t do that anymore. We don’t have a sleep ritual.

We just stumble into it, right? It’s just more so like I really should get to bed. Oh yeah. Or 

Mike Matthews: frantically Oh shit, I better, I need you. And then you’re like, I need to fall asleep. I need to go fall asleep fast or I’m going to be fucked. And 

Shawn Stevenson: it’s stressful, right? It turns sleep instead of this beautiful, attractive, seductive, amazing thing, we turn it into a [00:39:00] problem, right?

And it’s as simple as creating a strong neural association to having great sleep and having it be a great experience. So creating an evening ritual. And so if your bedroom has been an entertainment hub, where you’re going and watching TV, there’s a strong neural association to your brain that when you go into your bedroom, it’s time to watch TV, even if your intention is to go to bed, right?

And so I could break this stuff down. This is not a joke. I could break it down to the degree, like some people, people might be like when I walk into my bedroom, I could just tell myself it’s, but when I’m saying it’s a strong neural association, I’m talking about, depending on how long you’ve had your TV in your bedroom, myelin, so myelination is basically insulation over these nerve pathways have been laid down so thick that even if you think You’re trying to go in there and go to sleep.

Your brain is literally lighting up certain parts of your brain that are going to keep you up. And it’s potentially, even when you do go to sleep, if you don’t turn the TV on, potentially that can interrupt those sleep cycles. Wow. [00:40:00] Okay. Because this is a point of physiology. 

Mike Matthews: This isn’t somatic. This isn’t psychosomatic.

It’s not psychological. It’s, this is very physical. Very physical. It’s yeah, if you can think a thought and change that, then you can think a thought and maybe double your testosterone production or something. Yeah. 

Shawn Stevenson: My bicep has a new bicep because I just boosted my teeth just now, but that’s really what it is, and of course, every physical thing does have a psychological, emotional, mental component to it for sure.

But for some people, that psychosis is rooted in something very physical, right? And so to stack conditions in your favor with the television, for example, just want to get that bad boy out of your room. And also I did site because Oh, I’m a basic psychology. There’s like the carrots and the stick.

Some people are more motivated by rewards. Some people are more motivated by pain and punishment. Crazy as it sounds, we’re all motivated by each in different ways, but I’m a rewards based thinker, and so there was a study that I cited in sleep smarter. This was a study that was done on Italian couples.

And they found [00:41:00] that couples who had a television in their bedroom had 50 percent less sex. All right. So getting your TV out of your bedroom could be. Huge double wind transformation in your sex life. All right. But some people again, there are the anomalies, and people gonna be like, I have a TV in my bedroom.

I’m doing it like a bunny. Sean, it’s not an issue for me. 

Mike Matthews: Why 

Shawn Stevenson: am I talking about you? You probably do it, in the, I don’t know. What if you got rid of the TV then? 

Mike Matthews: Then maybe get rid of the TV and then it’s like. It actually becomes a problem or something you like 

Shawn Stevenson: exactly a higher quality problem Yeah, so but for a lot of people what it is really it’s number one the impact that it has on our health And if you’re not feeling good, chances, you know It can start to decrease the opportunity for that to happen and also it’s a distraction and not being able to connect with the people the person that you most want to connect with in your life and so That’s another big thing we talk about on my show, with it’s called the model health show.

So we talk about all things that create this and give people this [00:42:00] model for a healthy life. And that’s includes your relationships as well. I truly do believe this man. And I’d say this every opportunity I get, I believe that your relationships are the number one, most influential thing on your health.

And your success in life ends down, not even close. And so to cultivate that and work on that, especially part of that bedtime ritual, maybe instead of being on your device and scrolling through Instagram, maybe you actually talk to your significant other. Huh? What a concept. You guys talk, or, maybe the possibility of sex happens prior to you, whatever most people have sex out of convenience.

Crazy as it sounds, especially if you have kids, you got a job, you got all this stuff, and that, it can be a component, and especially for guys who are like, whatever, whenever we can get it in, it doesn’t matter, but, it’s, We want to move away from that and have it to be a like a natural part of life like it Quote used to be for a lot of people before things change and you got so drone like in your processes and [00:43:00] so creating a sleep sanctuary create a place that when you walk into your bedroom It’s like we’re you know Two things are happening only sleep or sex.

And that’s it. And that’s the environment that I encourage people to create a big part of that also is getting artificial light exposure, making sure that it’s not getting into your bedroom. So getting yourself some blackout curtains, if you live in an area where you would be exposed to that kind of thing from streetlights and cars and things like that.

Because another study, and this was from Cornell University, and they had the subject to sleep in an otherwise dark room, so they’re in a dark room, and they took a light that was just the size of a quarter and put it behind their knee. That’s the only light in the room, and just it hitting their skin was enough to disrupt their sleep cycles.

That’s crazy. Talking about sleep cycles. It’s being the thing, right? So it can change their core body temperature and disrupted their sleep cycles. Absolutely nuts. And it’s like, how is that possible? Your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light and they send information to your brain and your endocrine system that tell [00:44:00] basically you’re trying to tell you what time it is.

Your body’s always trying to figure out what time it is, right? And the more that we can stack conditions in our favor to help our body to be in sync with the natural journal pattern of the earth, the healthier we’re going to be. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I’m still that’s amazing with the light. I’m really surprised. So that’s like any devices again that if whether it’s not just phones, but it could be other things that blink and, just throw out light, get it out.

Just so you want. More or less pitch black than 

Shawn Stevenson: exactly unless it’s natural light. Okay. Moon. If there’s some moonlight coming in, humans have evolved with that. And if you look at, you can go to, Dr. Google, or there’s also a chart in my book. And look at a Lux chart, L U X.

And you see how moonlight as compared to even the dimmest. Artificial light, it’s not even comparable how little effect that it has on your body. 

Mike Matthews: Interesting. It makes sense. Of course, I guess from evolutionary perspective. And what about temperature? Yeah, this is another 

Shawn Stevenson: really simple kind of hack that we [00:45:00] can utilize.

There’s one study that they tested people with chronic sleep issues. So AKA insomniacs, and they found that every insomniac in the study had a problem with their something called thermal regulation, right? So their ability for their body to modulate, to cool down when it’s supposed to.

So for a lot of us, we, and I was taught this in college as well, that human body temperature should be 98. 6 degrees, end of story. That’s just not true. Your temperature modulates throughout the day a lot. Okay. If you’re working out, for example, your temperature goes up, that’s normal. But. We have this thermogenic response and so in the evening when the sun starts to go down, our core body temperature literally starts to go down as well and that when the core body temperature goes down, it elicits certain kind of the sleep programs, right?

Increase in reparative enzymes, hormones start to change in accordance with that drop in your core body temperature. So all that to say that. Great. If your [00:46:00] body has to work harder to drop that core body temperature down, it could impact your sleep quality. And so what they did with these insomniacs was, they put these cooling caps on their head that just lowered their temperature just one degree.

And that was enough to almost eliminate all, literally, they slept more, they fell asleep faster, and slept more than people that were not insomniacs, that had, that were quote normal people. Wow. It’s absolutely crazy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say more. They slept more. They slept as much, but they fell asleep faster, which is crazy.

Simply by cooling their head. So that’s that saying of like cooler than the other side of the pillow. Like your head likes to be cool, especially is one of the things. And so making sure that the environment around you in your bedroom is cool. Do you have a 

Mike Matthews: temperature that you like to keep your bedroom set at?

Shawn Stevenson: This is going to depend on the person, but experts recommend, scientists across the board between 62 and 68 degrees is the ideal room temperature. Okay, between [00:47:00] 62 and 68. And so for some people, that’s going to sound super cool and chilly is I can’t do that. But while we get cold, it tends to be the extremities.

So just make sure you wear some nice warm socks and you should be good to go. But also we know in some of those same people would be, they’ll know if they’re too hot trying to sleep, it sucks. Like it’s like the grossest thing and the most uncomfortable thing if you’re too hot. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So consistently we’ll all wake up if I, the temperature’s not low enough or like my wife, she had bought a duvet that was too thick for me.

It just, I would wake up sweaty. And, but it would mess up. And then once I I she she liked it. So at that time I was like, okay, then she can use that and I’ll just use a sheet. And that was fine for me. And then I was sleeping fine again. 

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. And that’s one of the big things with couples as well is some, a lot of times, not just some of the time, a lot of times.

They’re going to enjoy different temperatures and there’s something called the chili pad and this can actually cool off you one side of your bed, you can basically put it on one side of the bed and you [00:48:00] can lower that temperature so that the other person doesn’t have to suffer in a way and so my wife is actually from Kenya and so there is no such thing as cold days really.

It’s like warm and hot. And so for her, she really does not enjoy the cold, but she’s seen the benefits. She’s seen how much better she does sleep when it’s cold. Her issue in a lot of people is getting up in the morning when it’s cold, not wanting to get out of those covers. So what I do in the morning is I get up first and she gets up five or 10 minutes after me, after I go and turn the heat up.

And it was a simple, easy fix. We battled with about this a little bit for Yeah. And now we’re at a really good place with it. So that’s what we want to do. Shoot for that kind of temperature, maybe just drop it down right before you go to bed. Yeah. And that’s going to help with their sleep quality.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. My thermostat, it has a little scheduler thing in it. I could just, I have it, but I actually don’t have it set as cold as you were saying. I think it’s set to like I don’t know, 70, 71. 

Shawn Stevenson: Hey, that’s better. That’s better than 80 or 78. You know what I’m saying? I wouldn’t be able to [00:49:00] sleep 

Mike Matthews: like that.

It would, I would wake up every hour. Probably 

Shawn Stevenson: where we’re at right now is like the end of that spectrum. So we’re at 68, but if I travel and I’m by myself, I will knock that bad. Why not? 

Mike Matthews: I love it. I love sleeping. That’s really cold in the room, but my wife, she’s pregnant now. She weighs a little bit more, but previously she’s a small girl.

She weighs a hundred, 105 pounds. So for her, what’s 

Shawn Stevenson: comfortable for me is cold for 

Mike Matthews: her. 

Shawn Stevenson: So it’s just finding that happy medium. And even with this, there are so many other things to stack in your favor. And I know we’ve covered a lot and we’re getting close here on time, but that’s really what it is experimenting and finding out the things that work best for you because everybody has their own unique kind of Health type or sleep type and also genetic expression But I do recommend for people to stack as many conditions in their favor that they can So they can get this great sleep thing on automatic 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I think I totally agree and so then let’s close with before we get to where people can find you in your Work stuff.

Let’s close with what are the big benefits that are because you know [00:50:00] with Modern living being we there’s so many things now that are vying for our attention and buying for our time and so many different You know, entertaining things from enter, ranging from entertainment to, hanging out to work, to whatever.

I know I’ve run into this again, like I even said when we went in the beginning of the podcast, I was, I’m just that person where I wish I didn’t have to sleep at all. I wish I could just plug myself into the wall. You know what I mean? That’d be amazing. Yeah. So what are the, what would you say are the big benefits for people out there?

Maybe. They aren’t sleeping enough right now. What are the type of things they can look forward to if they take the time to, let’s say, read your book and really put together a little plan and start caring about it. You know what I mean? 

Shawn Stevenson: We talk about, it’s a great question, man. When we talk about in depth, the impact that it has on your brain function.

The impact that it has on your your tie in kind of, your hypothalamus tie in with how you’re reading the environment, your perception of reality and your endocrine system. All right. So that kind of tie in and how you speak, how you feel, your emotional fitness. We talk about how this impacts your [00:51:00] performance in the gym.

And also in athletic performance. So we can talk about so many different areas and, but what I’m going to share is something very visceral for people. And we all want to look good. Nobody’s waking up in the morning. They’re just like, you know what? I want to look so ugly today. I’m just going to, I’m going to make people bags under my eyes.

When I walked by and just I want to look diseased. That’s really what I’m going for. I want to look sick. Yes. That’s it. That’s it. You’re the sickest guy I’ve ever seen. Literally. Is that good? Yeah. So that we all want to look good. And so there was a study that was done recently by the University of Chicago and it was so fascinating, such a powerful like exclamation mark on this whole thing.

And today, two thirds of our population are either clinically obese or overweight. And so there’s been a big battle that we’ve been in as a culture, as a society. Things are not moving in the right direction yet, but there’s a big shift that is starting to [00:52:00] happen now. Thanks to podcasts like this one but what they did was they put people onto a kind of conventional calorie restricted diet and This is what I was taught in typical university setting which those diets generally don’t work that anyways, but calorie restricted diet and They tracked everything and they allowed them to get eight and a half hours of sleep per night.

Okay, so Diet Eight hours of sleep. So now another phase of the study, same exact diet. They don’t do anything different in their life, except they sleep deprived them. Now they’re only getting five and a half hours of sleep. At the end of the study, they track their fat loss results, not weight loss, fat loss results, and they found that when individuals were getting.

Adequate amounts of sleep that three hours of additional sleep. They lost 55 percent more body fat Simply from getting more sleep. Nothing else changed in their life Just more sleep equated to 55 percent more loss of body fat and just to make this clear You cannot get 55 [00:53:00] percent drop in body fat or 55 percent increase in top if you’re doing like eight CrossFit works at workouts Every five days, you know what I’m saying?

You just can’t get those kinds of results. So the question is why is it so powerful for change? And it’s goes back to the things we’ve been talking about, the impact it has on cortisol, 

Mike Matthews: the 

Shawn Stevenson: impact it has on 

Mike Matthews: melatonin. It’s a known thing. Obviously, if you don’t sleep enough, you’re you, most people are experiencing an increase in appetite and depending, like I, I haven’t seen that study.

I don’t know if I have it. I don’t know if it’s that one. I’ve, again, I’ve written a bit about this, so I’ve read a bit of literature. But if, let’s say in this case, if diets were being reported, like in food journals, that stuff can be, people can fudge and not necessarily get it right.

So you can easily have people that they’re just more hungry, like they’re sleeping five and a half hours and they’re more hungry and they’re just more likely to overeat. 

Shawn Stevenson: Exactly. Yeah, you just said it perfectly, and that, that wasn’t seen, that wasn’t a part of this particular study, because they’re monitoring their food, but people can lie, number one, but also for, not [00:54:00] in the context of this study, that was done by Stanford University, and they found that just one night of sleep deprivation is enough to plummet, like crash your leptin, and leptin is your satiety hormone, and when it’s not produced properly, You’re just going to be ravenous, like you’re going to want to eat everything, especially simple carbohydrates.

Crunchy, salty things, sugary things, because your body is like a survival response, and it needs to get energy in to keep you, your brain wired, so that you can basically make it through life. That’s how we’re hardwired is for survival, but we don’t want to live there. We want to move into thriving and not surviving.

And so taking all this data in and understanding that sleep is that secret sauce, it’s like the Missing component for a lot of nutrition programs and exercise programs that actually get you five fifty five Percent. All right that gets you better results and helps to optimize everything So that’s really the kind of closing point that visceral connection for people to understand how valuable our sleep is 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I think that’s a [00:55:00] great point to close on and I totally agree.

I’m inspired. I’m gonna See, again, I guess in my case how much sleep do I ultimately need? But this was something this year that I was like, I’m going to, I want to be objective about this and take my feelings about, sleeping, whatever, out of it and and see really how much sleep do I need to feel?

Because last the experiment, what they didn’t go so well last year. Previously, I’d say I didn’t notice any effects from if my average sleep, let’s say average was six and a half hours. I didn’t at that time notice any negative effects at all. So that, I don’t know if that may be enough may or maybe that was then, and this is different now, 

Shawn Stevenson: but I’m going to find out.

Awesome, man. Yeah, I personally, and just being in practice for so long, six and a half would be solid. It’d be super solid, especially if you’re stacking conditions and making sure your sleep cycles are optimized. I’ve got high performing executives that I work with that same thing, they’re [00:56:00] getting their six hours of sleep, but their six is better than other people’s nine.

So it’s just funny because 

Mike Matthews: previously I was doing a lot of these positive things that you’re talking about and I still do I don’t do, I was exercising first thing in the morning. I also am eating no, I guess that doesn’t really change. I’m eating more food, larger amounts of food closer to bedtime, which is probably bad, right?

For sleep quality. That’s a whole other conversation. Okay. Anyways, I have experienced what you’re talking about. So maybe I can even get some of your time outside of all this. And I’d be very curious. 

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. You, since you brought up the point, man, people are gonna be like, I want to know, but really quick bottom line with this one is I’ll share two quick things.

So two of the major factors that can break apart your sleep that sleep cycle we’ve been talking about where you’re shifting from all those different brain wave states and different levels of sleep is cortisol and Irregulation of your blood sugar. All right, so abnormal blood sugar levels if it’s going to lower going to high.

So just be aware [00:57:00] of that. Definitely. So large amounts of carbs. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, but 

Shawn Stevenson: this is the thing. It’s the timing even of the carbs. Like I said, we could do a whole other show just on this topic alone. If you’re having some nice, especially higher quality carbs, eat maybe three, two to three hours before bed.

That actually can help many people sleep better, all right? But if you’re eating them right before bed, you’re going to get a little bit of a kind of blood sugar spike and then you’re going to go hypoglycemic while you’re doing sleep and that can interrupt that sleep cycle. You might not wake up, but it can throw that whole system off.

So we have to pay attention to those kinds of things as well. And it’s not like you can’t eat something late, but generally when we’re eating late, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but I never have. I’ve never been up at, one o’clock in the morning you know what? I really feel like making some broccoli right now.

Like broccoli with butter, it sounds amazing. Let me just steam it up and wait. Yeah, you’re going to go grab some chips or some cookies or some kind of snacky type of things. And that’s just the [00:58:00] nature of the beast and part of that survival response where your body needs to get more blood sugar to your brain.

That’s essentially starting to starve, 24 hours sleep deprivation leads to 6 percent drop in glucose reaching your brain. So again, that whole thing with nutrition. It’s a huge component and I did a whole chapter dedicated to that, actually two chapters dedicated to that in the book and how that all ties our sleep health as well.

Mike Matthews: Okay, great. Let’s just end with where can people find you and your work and where can they find your book? You already did. You said the name of it, but if you just want to remind everybody. 

Shawn Stevenson: Sure. Sure. So people can find me. Definitely. The place that most people know about me from is from my show, the model health show.

And you can listen to that anywhere that you’re listening to this amazing podcast. You could find me on that platform as well. And very honored to say we’ve been featured dozens and dozens of times as the number one podcast in the health and fitness category in the U S. So very fortunate and grateful for that.

And definitely could check that out and online. It’s the model health show. [00:59:00] com. So it’s the model health show. com. We’ve got videos to the episodes. I do some pretty Epic articles. My show social media stuff is there. I like to do a lot of stuff, especially on Instagram. And you could pick up the book, sleep smarter, anywhere you buy books, Barnes and Noble.

Amazon all that good stuff, but also you can go to sleep smarter book dot com and we actually have a free and I don’t talk about this enough. I’m starting to remember to talk about this more, but I did 21 videos that go with each of the 21 chapters that you get as a bonus when you get the book from sleep smarter book.

That’s 

Mike Matthews: great. All right. Thanks a lot for taking the time, Sean. It was super informative. I’ve learned and I’m inspired which is which is great. And I know it’s going to answer a lot of the questions that I get. So now I have something that I get those questions. I can be like, this is your guy.

Check this out. I appreciate you taking the time and yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s been a pleasure. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. [01:00:00] If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness.

Also head over to my website at www. muscleforlife. com, where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day, actually, I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife.

com. Alright, thanks again. Bye.