Track Your Sleep to Optimize Your Life | Harpreet Rai on Health Theory

There's more people that we can meet through social media, right, follow, and learn from. Sounds amazing, but I think also in those two things, right, we we are getting a little bit pulled away, and it in fact is hurting our sleep, um which eventually actually hurts our productivity in the long run. You don't get stronger in the gym. You get stronger actually out of the gym. And in the gym you're actually getting weaker. Right. You're breaking that muscle down, right? It's that recovery process, right, that actually happens that allows the muscle to grow stronger and take a more continued load. If I could give you a pill, and this pill would improve your memory, right, help you live longer and fight off cancer, reduce your blood pressure, increase the quality of your skin and your hair and how you look, um you know, also your testosterone production and your muscle repair, who wouldn't want to take that pill? Everyone would, right? And and that pill is sleep, right? Yet 45% of us get less than 6 hours a night. Hey everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Harpreet Rai. He's a former investment banker turned entrepreneur who is the CEO of Oura Ring, a sleep tracking company that is doing its best to help us all live our best lives. And Harpreet, what I want to know about is why exactly does sleep matter? It's a loaded question. A great way to start. Um I think sleep matters for a bunch of different reasons. I think Shawn Stevenson said it really, really well, you know, to your overall well-being and your health and your performance, sleep probably does have a greater impact than both diet and activity combined. Um you know, but the reality of it, we all know it when we get a bad night of sleep. We feel like crap, right, we're not productive, we're sort of grouchy to the people around us, can't perform well in the gym, right, and oftentimes just have low energy. Um so there's a whole host of reasons on the health side, um but also just literally how you feel and how, you know, how you feel about life and your mood. Um a lot of that has to actually come comes back to comes back to sleep. If you had to push beyond what we know, cuz I know people are super tense about what I'm about to ask you. If you had to push beyond what we know and went into um hypothesis or what you suspect, what is it exactly that you think is happening when we sleep? Like So, we know that the the brain is like cleaning out things, but what what else is going on? I think if you um one way I like to think about it is, you know, your your body actually is operating, you know, mainly because of release of certain hormones at certain periods of time. And a lot of that is governed by something called like a central clock, right? Um to your body, right? So, we call that that kind of science circadian biology. And it's a relatively new science. So, as you pointed out, there's not a lot we know. But if you want to think about actually, hey, what time do I get tired? And then when I get tired and I go to bed, what's actually happening? Why are certain fluids moving through my brain and removing toxins, right? Why are actually memories throughout the day being sped up at three times the speed during REM sleep to help you learn? Why are certain hormones being released to actually bring your heart rate and your blood pressure down? You know, probably for you to recover a bit, right? And why is more testosterone and growth hormone released? All these things are happening because of this master clock, right? And sleep is actually one of the governing factors that sets the time for all those things to happen and for the next day as well. So, you know, I think if I were to theorize that having disrupted sleep or starting this clock or your engine, you know, if you want to think about that at different times or fragmented times, doesn't allow your body and your mind to recover and function the way it should to lead, you know, a normal life or you know, a great life where you can achieve your potential. Yeah, so one thing like in today's society where and I'm certainly somebody who talks a lot about this, like working your ass off, grinding hard, like really pushing. Um part of the reason that I'm so into talking about sleep and I want people to really understand how powerful it is is I worry that people think when I say that that I'm saying sleep doesn't matter and when in fact I'll say that it's probably from an experiential standpoint is one of the most important things from a cognitive optimization standpoint. Yeah. Um, what drew you to sleep and like what's the background with the investment banking and all that stuff? I think it's pretty interesting. Yeah, I mean I would say I was always interested in technology. Um, that was probably like a passion of mine along with performance. So, I did study electrical engineering in college and worked on actually a lot of the sensors that go in these type of devices. Um, I got distracted as most people do in life and I decided to go into finance really because I had a lot of debt and I thought it was a cool thing to do, right? And um, I guess what I just experienced firsthand was in my first year of investment banking I came in weighing about 140 lb. And I'm like 5'5" on a good day, maybe 5'6" with my turban. But like, you know, I went from 140 lb to about 185 and about Yeah, and about 50 weeks. So, almost a pound a week. And I actually even back in college was probably like more health conscious in what I ate, right? Didn't really drink that much. Um, you know, was actually eating a lot of plants. My parents were vegetarian, grew up vegetarian. And my diet didn't really change a lot. And so, I'm sitting there thinking, well, I'm basically eating the same. In fact, I'm eating less. Right? I'm not moving around much. So, yeah, I'm not working out, but I'm eating less. Why am I gaining a pound every week? And that's actually when I started to realize like, well, okay, I'm gaining a lot of weight. I'm actually losing hair. You know, you can't see it, which is great. But um, I'm losing hair, right? And you know, my skin is actually starting to look grayish. Like I literally had friends who I hadn't seen from college, see him after the year and they're like like, dude, we know you got a great job at, you know, on Wall Street, but like looks like you've gained 40, 50 lb and like you look like crap. So, um, that's when I started actually just researching a lot and learning about sleep. I just started to, like remember forgetting things and that never happened to me. Um, so I the more and more I learned about, you know, the issues, you know, the the correlations with lack of sleep and weight gain. And, you know, same thing with skin and how you look and also how you feel. Um, it became obvious to me how how important sleep was just from experiencing it. Right. So, what what is some of the the biological disruption that happens when we don't get sleep? Like I know that there's, um, some pretty crazy, um, like if you're just looking at somebody's data and they had a bad night sleep in terms of them looking like a pre-diabetic from their insulin response levels. Um, what else is going on at a biological level that that sleep affects? So, um, you know, there's tons of studies out there, not just one, but literally probably close to a hundred showing that the lack of sleep is associated with elevated glucose levels. Um, I think that happens for a series of reasons. Um, there's two hormones that, you know, we know today are pretty popular in controlling your appetite and also how full you feel after you eat. Those are ghrelin, um, you know, controlling your hunger hormone, right? Like how hungry do you get? How hungry do you feel? And then leptin, right? How satiated are you after you eat? How full do you feel? And so, I think one of the studies that was done showed that basically, um, a four-hour versus eight-hour night. And, you know, it was almost like your your leptin levels, right, went down by 50%. So, even after you eat, you still feel hungry. And then your ghrelin levels, right, are actually, you know, shooting up. So, you feel hungrier, you eat, and you feel, you know, less full. And, um, you know, I think probably the reason that's happened in the past is if you if you think about the times maybe, you know, historically in a paleo era, paleolithic era, where we were probably operating on very little sleep, they're probably under extreme conditions. Maybe we're being hunted, maybe we were hunting, right? Um, and so I think some of that was designed and this is designed for your body to happen that hey, under periods of stress like you're looking for food more, you're trying to eat more, store more, right? But, in today's world and society, right, those those same conditions of less sleep, you know, aren't aren't applied, right, in the same way. So, it might have been designed for a good reason, but but in fact now it's probably hurting us. Going back to that first year in investment banking and thinking about the modern context when we're not getting sleep, um I know that while I am a huge proponent of sleep, there have been times where my Oura Ring has told me off for not getting enough sleep. Um and I'll say that 20% of the time I am knowingly reducing my amount of sleep. And how do you think about that as as the CEO of a, you know, sleep betterment company, are there times where you'll intentionally not get sleep because there's a bigger priority? It's sort of like goals versus sleep. Where do you fall on that? I think there's definitely a period that we all will have to go without getting enough sleep, right? I think that's inevitable. Um the question is how do we make people more aware of it and more conscious of it, right? And how do we also then, once that awareness and consciousness happens, choose to act on it. Even while on Wall Street, um I ended up going from an investment, you know, I was at Morgan Stanley for a year in investment banking group. I ended up going to a hedge fund for 9 years. And I still worked really hard there. Got more sleep luckily, but there it used to be hey, I want to work out. I want to get fit. Uh so, I'd wake up at, you know, 4:45 to be in the gym by 5:15. So, I often battled, okay, you know, getting enough sleep to work out, right? Um and that probably actually led to a lot of injuries for me over the years. Um I also think it's about, you know, social activities with friends. You know, it's natural to want to spend time with people, and often times, you know, everyone's sort of sacrificing their schedule a little bit to do it. Um I think if you have families or loved ones, so can be another area where like, hey, you got to take the kids to an event or you got to take them out to a party and that may throw your schedule off. But the big one I do think is work. Um I think it's there's a lot of people, you know, probably a lot of your audience, right? Even even me, like we want to kick butt, right? We want to get in, we want to work hard. As the CEO of a company, a sleep company, I'm like, do I want those guys sleeping an hour less and working on this to get it out on time or, you know, there's always a balance and I think, you know, we're not going to be able to to, I would say, change people's lives and, you know, not say prioritize those projects or not, but we want to make people more aware of it and that they can see the impact when they are choosing to do it. And then, frankly, come back and recover. I'll I'll have people now that tell me, "Hey, man, I still go on those business trips where I am back-to-back-to-back meeting, right? 9:00 to 9:00, right? And then like, maybe I brush my teeth and maybe I don't cuz I'm that busy that night, right? But then when I get back, I see, "Hey, it takes me a week or two to get back and recover." And then I take it a little bit easier, I book less meetings then, right? I tend to try to actually get that extra hour of sleep. And I'm not saying that kind of behavior is great, but at least you become a little bit more conscious and don't try burning the candle, you know, on both ends forever. So, I think it's um there's a lot of things that have happened that we have abundance of information, right? You know, look at look at Google's mission statement, right? Organize the world's information and provide access to it. Sign me up, right? I want to I want to always be learning. I want access to information. You know, Facebook, right? Like, bring communities together, bring people together, right? There's more people that we can meet through social media, right? Follow and learn from. Sounds amazing, but I think also in those two things, right? We we are getting a little bit pulled away and it in fact is hurting our sleep, which eventually actually hurts our productivity in the long run. In what ways do you think that that kind of stuff is hurting our sleep? Is it just that we're allocating time to it or is there a whole another host of I I think it's a much deeper than just time. Let's take Facebook as an example. All right, let's say, you know, when we were all in high school and hung out in one friend's basement, right? Or you you have a couple friends over. All right, we're hanging out, we're shooting the [ __ ] right? We're talking about whatever, we're catching up on, you know, some cute girl in math class or sports or, you know, some the New York Knicks game that just happened, but think about it this way. Um, every 10 minutes the doorbell's ringing. You're hosting. You're going up and letting that person in, making sure they're comfortable, making sure that they have a drink, right? Making sure that they have a place to sit and hang out with friends, introducing other people. What if that happens every 10 minutes, not just for the first hour, but for the next 12 hours? Right? What happens to you? Right? What happens everyone else in the room? Right? Like it's just think about that as a human. I'd be like, man, you never you never even get a chance to see how you feel, you never get a chance to really spend time with your friends, right? You're constantly being bombarded. So, I think I think that's part of it. I think the same could go true for Google. Like I love learning, right? I would say that's like one thing I've always been passionate about and why I like doing different things. But if every 10 minutes something new pops up, where like, "Hey, I was learning about this. I didn't get to go that deep and understand it." and something else comes in. Like you're just getting distracted. And so, I I literally look at the numbers. I'm a numbers guy. You know, there's you touch your phone, the average person does about 150 times a day. Right? So, if you're awake for 16 hours, that's about 10 times every hour. That's, you know, once every 6 minutes. Right? So, I think there is a deeper level of, "Hey, there's some satisfaction in just like the buzz you get at the party when you say hello to someone that you haven't seen in a while and you're excited." but that constant bombardment, right? Is is actually, you know, increasing anxiety. Right? It's I don't think it's, you know, we have abundant access to information and people, and I think that's great, but also let's, you know, look at some of the other numbers. Depression, all-time high. Suicide rates, all-time high. Lack of sleep, all-time high. Right? Obesity, all time high. And so, I think it's not just that you're spending the time doing it. I do think it's a little bit in the way we were designed as humans that's distracted us. Um and and I think it's ultimately, you know, taking us away from our being conscious and being focused. What do you mean, really fast? What do you mean that the way that we're designed as humans is part of what distracts us? So, I mean, I don't I don't think as humans, you know, when they look at some of the network theories out there on the brain and how it compartmentalizes information, you know, really more than 50 people in your immediate circle like that you interact with tends to be overloading. But like, you know, you have these different groups, right? It might be immediate group, family, and really close friends. Then maybe one degree of separation. Then it may be another host of work, right? But now that that has 5x, 10x, 20x, right? Um and I think like it becomes harder for the human mind, right? And even just from a social anxiety perspective, whether you have it or not, to manage that as all these networks grow so much. Yeah. When I think about what really plays on people's sleep, lifestyle definitely comes up. Um one thing that I think a lot about, and partly because I guess I'm so, like it doesn't work for me, is how many people now smoke weed Yeah. and its effect on REM sleep. Yeah. So, I've looked at the Oura Ring stats of people that I know smoke weed. Dude, it's [ __ ] crazy. Like their REM sleep is next to nothing. Yeah. Um walk me through some like what are the phases of sleep and what are some like known lifestyle stuff that people may not be thinking about that have like that big impact like weed does on our REM sleep? Sure, yeah. I mean, um sleep scientists aren't that imaginative, so they numbered the stages of sleep. Um but um I guess, you know, aside from the numbers, the way most people now know them as sort of light sleep, you know, REM sleep, and deep sleep. And then the fourth stage, you know, let's or one of the other stages being awake. Um so I'll I'll focus on REM and deep. Um I think there's been more research done there and actually what happens. So in in deep sleep, what we know is that this period happens in the earlier part of the night. Um it tends to be when more things are related to your physical body, right? Like your testosterone and growth hormone are mainly released during deep sleep. Your muscle repair, even your skin and collagen repair is happening in deep sleep. REM sleep, from what we know, and a lot of this is a very new science, right? A lot more about memory consolidation, right? Um that that's actually when your brain is playing things, you know, at 3x the speed to help you remember them, you know, by repetition. How do we know it's happening at 3x? Uh so that's um by looking at just um fMRIs and various other EEG type of equipment. Um there's even some new work being done and one of the things that they're showing is if you can actually implant a thought um during the early phases of sleep, um you know, actually you can almost potentially trick your brain to work on it during REM sleep. You go on. Tell me more. What do you mean? How do you implant the idea? This is very very experimental. So I think the idea is, "Hey, can you actually bring a thought either through a visualization, either through an auditory Before you go to bed? Or you're saying immediate minutes while you're falling asleep. Wow. Yeah, sort of like Inception. It's starting to get pretty nuts out there. Okay, so finish that because this is so interesting. So what have they done in the studies? Like what method This is all new. Is it putting headphones on? Is it someone saying something to you? Are you saying it to yourself? is super experimental. Like nothing's been published yet. They just had a conference all about this. Like basically helping people dream and have certain thoughts during REM sleep that can help them solve problems in in their lives. Um so it's some really cool work, but um yeah, I wish I wish I knew more, but it's it's literally happening as we speak. Wow. I But getting back to sort of like why these things are happening and what you know, so you know, deep sleep your physical body being restored, right? Um REM sleep think about your mind and your memories and your consolidation. Now, we also know deep sleep has some other some other things are happening there that are also related to your brain. So, um I think uh actually Matthew Walker talked about this. He runs Berkeley Sleep Lab. That um there's certain proteins and you know, inflammation that's actually cleared away um at certain periods during deep sleep. High prevalence of that plaque has been shown to correlate with Alzheimer's and early Alzheimer's. So, during deep sleep it turns out that actually certain types of these fluids, right, are actually clearing your clearing your your brain, which is pretty cool. So, there's a lot we're still learning um about the different stages of sleep as certain things that help or hurt the different stages. Um I would say excess use of of you know, cannabis or alcohol um definitely hurt sleep um across all stages. Um I have seen actually though on the other side specifically with um cannabis that certain types, whether it's CBD and actually CBN, that actually have been shown in small amounts to actually help improve sleep. Um so, I think you know, there is different things All stages or it improves one stage? It looks like it helps people A just fall asleep and stay asleep. So, some people that may have, you know, trouble falling asleep, which is almost greater than 15% of the population now. Oh. Um yeah, and then also helps with um specifically deep sleep from you know, but this is early research. Again, hard to do just cuz of the rules with cannabis today and you know, doing academic or medical research. Um you know, some of the things we see though from our data is being consistent in time helps your body gets used to that clock, that circadian clock and you know, that master clock that's governing everything. So, then you start if you go to bed at certain time you end up waking up at the same time, even without an alarm like yourself. Um that's one big thing. I think timing of food happens to be another. Dude, I I will tell you from my wife's experience who has had massive microbiome issues. Yeah. I totally discounted food timing. I was like, my entire life I'll eat and go right to bed and never once thought about it. So, when people first started saying that I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Like, there's no way it's that impactful. It's that impactful. your vagus nerve connects to your brain and your stomach. Um and so, if you think about this first few hours of digestion that happen in your uh happen, you know, when you eat, it's sort of hard for your vagus nerve to relax, right? Um right during those first few hours. So, if you just eat an hour or two before you go to bed, like your brain is actually not going to be really relaxing. And so, hard to get actually a lot of deep sleep. So, we that's one of the biggest um hacks we've seen sort of people uh change, right? And see an immediate impact in their data. Um I would say also, you know, timing of caffeine. So, trying to get your caffeine in, you know, almost like more than 12 hours before you go to bed. Woah. Um so, I think that's another big one just given the half-life of caffeine. And now, not everyone's sensitive to caffeine, but I would say 80% of the population is. Um and then also getting enough sunlight. You know, we sit a lot indoors, like, right? Like, we're and and that affects us at certain points at night if we're looking at our screens, looking at a blue screen, right? That that doesn't help us produce melatonin the way we used to, but also the opposite's true. Just getting light exposure during the day, right? Lets your brain know, "Hey, it's daytime and you're alive, right? And you should start releasing these hormones." Um and so, I think that's that's another big thing that probably would help a lot of people. It's really interesting. What do you think about blue blockers? I think blue blockers are excellent. Um I think All day or just at night? Uh so, if you look at sort of the reason as to what happens, you know, when sun goes down, there's no longer any blue light out there. And so, that's actually signal to your brain to start producing melatonin, which helps you feel drowsy, which helps you go to bed. And so if you have exposure to that blue light at night, your brain doesn't get the same reaction to release that melatonin. And so I as a result, I would say, "Hey, when the sun goes down, you know, put on those blue light blockers." Um some people I think if you're under certain light conditions like, you know, which most people unfortunately are with certain types of fluorescent light or really close working to a screen, you may want to try a blue blocker during the day as well. Um but we've seen that have a huge impact on our users' data. So if we were going to optimize the [ __ ] out of our sleep and we were going to become like Olympic level sleepers, get the most recovery, which is something that we should definitely talk more about. Yeah. Um what what's like that optimal forget that I have a job, forget I have a life outside of sleeping. Just like my job in life is to optimize sleep. Yeah. What would I do? Um so Start me I wake up now. You wake up and let's get the consistent time of waking up, right? So get that exposure to to sun and light in the morning. Um Within the first hour. What if I wake up like I wake up typically two to three hours before the sun comes up? Is that actually bad? Should I be trying to change my sleep cycle? No, there's probably still ambient light out there from the sun even though you can't directly see it. Interesting. Uh so just So go outside even if it's dark. I would say especially as the sun starts to rise, it'll be more effective. So at sunrise, I'm going outside. Get some sun exposure. Stand there, lay there, walk? Run? Doesn't matter. Just any exposure. Your skin's going to like what do you walk, what do you sit, what do What if I'm clothed? Do I need to be Am I standing out naked no matter what? Uh I mean I would say the less clothes the science would say the better, but at the same time I think a lot of it is, you know, built into sort of your face and specifically right your glands behind the eyes. So I think just getting exposure to your eyes is really important as well. Okay. So get some sunlight. How much sunlight should I get? So the sun Sun rising, as out for an hour? Uh I would say at least This is my job. your job as much as you can if this is your job. I should be outside literally, I'm assuming in the shade to not burn, but out in the sun as much as I can. the sun as much as you can. I would say second, if you're going to have caffeine, um, have it within those first two to three Should I avoid caffeine? Um, I'm not going to tell people to avoid caffeine because I think most people won't. I also think coffee tastes phenomenal and there's also antioxidants in coffee. So I'm I'm actually, you know, a believer of everything in moderation. But have that first cup or second cup, you know, greater than if if I can, if it's your job, you know, 14 hours before you go to sleep. So within those first two hours of waking. Um, I would say next after that, getting exercise, specifically getting exercise earlier in the day, um, and, you know, not in the late afternoon will help. 7 days a week? This isn't exercise, that's an exercise conversation, not a sleep conversation. I think, um, there's certain days you want to go hard and certain days you're going to want to go light. I think the problem is most people go hard all the time, right, which doesn't help either. Um, light activity especially can help improve sleep. And not to complicate this and I don't want to get distracted from our optimization, um, conversation, but so knowing when to work out, I know is one of the things you guys talk about in the app. So the heart rate variability, is that going to be my ideal thing to look at to know whether I should be working out or is there something else I should pay attention to? Um, I would say in terms of like when to work out, you know, the best way we tell people to do is is try different things and then see what happens to your data. Like I used to play a lot of soccer growing up. Whenever we had away games, I never knew why the next day I was so tired. It's normally because the game was later and I got home later and I slept later. And even if I got 7 or 8 hours of sleep, I still felt like [ __ ] Because of the timing. Because the timing was thrown off, right? And also most likely because like your body gets all jacked up playing under the lights, right, right before you go to bed. Um, so that, yeah, that would affect that that definitely affected it a lot. So, I think ideally what we've seen is some people have rhythms where they want to work out, you know, early in the morning, which is fine. Other people tends to be sort of right after the afternoon lull. So, you know, not 7:00. I would say generally not 7:00 or 8:00. That's typically too late. But, if you want to think about from like 4:00 to 6:00, that might be more ideal. But, better yet, what we've seen from our data is people who work out earlier tend to sleep better. So, even in those first, call it 5 hours to 6 hours of waking up if you can fit it into your schedule. Right. But, just really fast on the the data point. So, what do I look at that would tell me whether today is like a day to go hard in the gym or a day to take it easy or or even not work out. What actual data So, we we actually have come up with a score called a readiness score. And that's based on? That's based on actually your rolling 2-week average of both your sleep and your activity. So, if your heart rate is really elevated at night, that'll actually impact your readiness score the next day. So, there's a bunch of different factors in the app and you can click on each one and actually see it. So, the time of your resting heart rate, like how when that happened, that lowest curve happened, and the absolute value is something that'll affect it. And that's impacted by when you work out and when you eat. You know, we also look at respiration rate as well throughout the night as another indicator. But, I would say it's a combination of like your rolling sleep average, right, plus some of your heart rate and physiological data and your general activity balance that will tell you to like work out hard or not. So, if you're pretty sedentary and all of a sudden you go work out quite a bit, right, that one day, like you're going to feel tired the next day and you should take it easy cuz your body's not used to that load. And you'll see that reflected in the readiness score. Okay. So, that's what we've used and we've created to help people sort of figure out what day they should work out and what day they should push hard. I would say generally some other things like data within the data like that people look at are the amount of deep sleep Um, to see like, "Hey, you know, do I feel physically really good, right, to actually work out hard today? And then also heart rate variability. What impacts deep sleep? So, if if weed is one of the things that can It is so pronounced, and that's why I keep harping on this, in terms of like, you could compare my REM to somebody who smokes weed, and it it is night and day, the amount of REM that they're getting. Um, so, what's something that impacts deep sleep? Um, I would say all these things we've talked about, they they impact both stages. So, eating late will impact both your deep and your REM. Smoking too much marijuana will impact both your deep and your REM, right? Shifting off the timing um, of when you go to bed, and, you know, how punctual and regular that is, will impact your deep and REM. So, um, I don't know if there's certain things specific to certain stages. I do tend, from what we see, people that have late meals tend to impact the deep sleep more than REM. Um, but I don't think there's been a lot of studies done yet with certain phases of sleep and certain activities. So, if you tend to be extremely athletic and work out a lot, we have seen those people actually have more deep sleep. So, when we we had some Tour de France riders who were willing to share their data, you know, without revealing their names and the teams and stuff like that, and it was phenomenal, the amount of deep sleep they got, even in their like, you know, mid-30s, some of them even later. I mean, these guys were getting 2 hours a night. And we'll we'll often see that even in some of the pro athletes as well. And so, I think, you know, if you think about what's happening during deep sleep, all that muscle reconstruction and repair, growth hormone release, testosterone release, your your brain is adjusting to what you need, right? Um, on the other hand, if you're super creative, you are focusing a lot on, you know, maybe concepts type of work, artistic type work, um, you know, maybe even just, you know, guys thinking with numbers all the time, sitting behind a desk, trading in stocks, um, you know, you you might see lower deep sleep and a higher REM sleep. So, you know, your brain Because of the lack of physical activity? Um and also probably the more the more mental load as well. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, your your brain is realizing that you probably need to consolidate those memories more, right? There's more to remember, there's more things you were trying to learn during the day. So, you know, your brain your brain's pretty smart. Yes. Okay, so um we got through exercise. What are some other things? Type of diet? Do we see that there's any influence on sleep with that? I generally do think that heavy sugars and carbs late too much in excess to bed can really hurt you. Carb-wise specifically. Sugar-wise specifically. Interesting. So, um And what data do you have like that feels right to me, but it just feels right. Is there any data that backs that up? There's been a lot more studies on food timing and sleep. As far as the actual particular macro contents of that meal, you know, carbs, protein, fat, haven't seen that. Proteins and fats do take longer to digest. So, you know, in that sense like as we talked about with the vagus nerve and digestion, maybe that's probably not helpful if it's within a short amount of window. So, if you were to eat something closer to bedtime, you might be better off with like a lighter carbohydrate meal, but not too much sugars, but you know, not too much fat or you know, or protein. Interesting. Um What makes you think and then that it sugar plays a role in disrupting sleep? Well, I would say most people tend to eat desserts, and when they eat desserts, they eat them late. Mhm. Right? Um and so, the other thing we know also about sugar is there there tends to be a pretty big correlation with sugar consumption and heart rate variability. It lowers heart rate variability? Yes. So interesting. Why do we want heart rate variability? Like I I get it and I've heard it a million times, but I don't actually understand why that's good. So, first of all, I guess explain to people what heart rate variability is, and then um giving some numbers I think would be helpful. I know you guys are a little cagey about telling people exactly what their number should be. But, generally with heart rate variability, the higher the better? The higher the better. Okay. Um, so, what is heart rate variability? Your first question. Um, like the name says, it's the variability within your heartbeats. Um, so, what does that mean? You and I are sitting here, you know, um, let's say we're at 60 beats per minute. Um, every single beat on every second is slightly different. So, maybe one beat there is 1 second between the two beats. Maybe the next one there's 1.1. Maybe the next one there's 0.9 seconds. But, over a minute, it'll average to this 60 beats per minute. Right. So, high variation tends to actually be a sign, it's counterintuitive, of low stress, right? So, yeah, it is it is counterintuitive, right? Versus if each beat is super succinct, tends to be, you know, individuals tend to have like a lower HRV score, which means you're more of a sympathetic state within your autonomic nervous system, meaning you you react quickly to your surroundings. Yeah. Over react, maybe like the fight or flight way. Right, exactly. So, you might you might actually freeze. Um, so, versus if you're if you're in a very fluid movement, if you think about it, all of a sudden, you know, uh, I don't know, a tiger jumps out there, right? A tiger be weird. It would be weird, right? And we'd be freaking out, right? But, someone who probably has higher heart rate variability, that's more of a parasympathetic state controlling himself, right? Would be like, "Okay, I'm going to push Tom away and run that way, right? And the tiger's there, cool, right? Like But, I'm going to, you know, I I might think on my feet a little bit quicker. I'll grab this mug when I'm running away so I can chuck it at the tiger's face. Not that that'll help. I'd appreciate that more than throwing me in front of it, but thank you. But, um, you know, someone in a fluid state, if you think about it, when you're fluid, like something happens and you're just able to shift around it, right? But, if your if your heart rate is like in that very, you know, mechanical beat, you you almost you're you're like stressed, you're frozen. So, that comes and you just like like you're you're stiff, right? You're not able to shift. And so, um that's the best way I can sort of describe it physically. it's super interesting. Um okay, so how how does one drive their heart rate variability higher? Sure. Um I think, you know, a lot of the things we talked about sleep tend to also help. Sleeping itself will change your heart rate variability. Most people will have higher HRV during when they sleep versus during the day. Um there tends to be lots of micro stresses during the day, you know, whether you have two cups of coffee, you have to go to the bathroom, it's a stressor, you're in traffic, it's a stressor. And actually, it's how you, you know, sort of your body and your mind like accumulates all that stress and reacts to it over the course of the night. So, um sleep definitely, like you'll tend to see your HRV dip in the early part of the night and go up towards the morning. Um so, meaning like you're recovering throughout the night. Um so, most people I would say what we do know, there's been a lot more research done on meditation. So, in the beginning, actually, bad meditators are stressing out, so their HRV tends to go down, but more experienced meditation um meditators um tend to actually raise their HRV. stressing out if they're bad at meditation? I mean, it's like you want to focus on certain, you know, not you want to focus on not, you know, having all these thoughts come to your head, right? So, you tend to like try to focus and think too hard almost, and you're like, "Wait, I shouldn't be having that thought. I shouldn't be having that." And it tends to be stressful. Um so, I think that's like what we've seen. So, we we have a meditation mode coming out soon that we have in beta. on that. Yeah. So, what are you guys looking for in that? In the meditation mode? Yeah, like heart rate variability? We're looking at heart rate variability, we're looking at heart rate, uh we're also looking at actually um peripheral body temperature. Your core and your periphery tends to be pretty correlated at night. So, we look at that, you know, change every single night in in the aura ring. But actually even during meditating, um very good meditators, and this has been documented even with some like Tibetan monks, are able to actually like um increase the circulation and the blood flow and and actually have a positive impact on their on their temperature. It's another metric that we will report to people where you'll be able to track uh your meditation. biofeedback in real time so that I could see what I'm doing? We're trying to do it after the session. Um I think you know, one of those things you don't want to be distracted during it. Um but we're going to play around with it and we'll see what people want and how they feel. Um but I I do, you know, one of the things we're looking at is doing different types of modes of meditation, seeing if that has an impact on different types of people, you know, whether it's, you know, TM or Vedic or whatever it might be. Um so maybe mindfulness sessions, right, just having self-gratitude and breathing, right, over trying to focus on a specific meditation type might be pretty interesting. So, you know, we're excited to release it. We should have it out, you know, I would say before the end of April. Woah. Yeah. One thing I will say that I was um I was I was sad by is that if I take a nap, you can't tell me if I like what my things were. It just shows up as rest. Yeah. So without the breakdown. Most people during naps, first of all, you don't tend to go into REM and deep sleep. Really? Um yeah, REM Just light. Just light. Um that's That would say that's the first reason. Um the second reason is um whenever we, you know, when we created the aura ring, right, and we what we actually did is, you know, like all these other devices do, you go in a sleep lab, you get the full EEG equipment, and you put some your devices on them, and you calibrate the algorithms. And so trying to do sleep studies for naps is actually a lot harder. Um there isn't a lot of like good data on that versus overnight sleep labs. Um so that's that's another reason. We are trying to make it more apparent in the app that you are having a nap versus just that rest feature, but we're working on it. And maybe even for certain people, maybe getting back to your your your question of, "Hey, if we want to be professional sleepers, don't nap late." Right? If you nap late later in the day, you know, I would say like after 4:00 or 5:00, you actually end up hurting your sleep most often um that night as well. So, I think if you do look at some of the older cultures who would nap, you know, they tended to actually nap even some of them in the in the early like in the call it mid-morning like before noon. Um and then I think also that's more in in some in Africa. Um if you look at some of the old cultural, you know, just sort of how, you know, anthropologic type stuff. Um but then also I would say in the Latin culture, you know, it tends not to go too late, right? So, like you want to hit that siesta time period not at 5:00 or 6:00, but, you know, maybe at 2:00 or 3:00. Right. What are some things you can't track right now that you think would be super meaningful if you could? Ooh. It's a great question. Um I do think there's a lot of work being done on um emotional like tracking motions emotions. There's some work being done in St. Louis, I forget which university, that shows using HR and HRV mainly HRV data being able to with some self-input be able to track emotions. I think that's pretty cool. So, one one of the things that's super interesting about um Oura Ring and and wearables in general quite frankly is the amount of data you must have is is really incredible. Sure. So, would you start associating and saying, "Okay, these like three or four metrics and this pattern equal anger, frustration, sadness, like that kind of thing?" So, the way you would have to typically do that, right, is you again you'd have to do it with the gold standard first, right? So, you would have to get a certain amount of participants or subjects, right, set up a study where you have 50 of them, and you know, get them to report certain emotions and see if there's changes in that physiological data that you can now create an algorithm against. And then and then you go and you predict it on another cohort, let's say another 25 people, and see if it's true. Like, you know, "Hey, show certain screens, you know, videos and you know, or audio. Like, are you Is this causing anger?" Right? And if we see anger on the algorithm. Wow, man. I really think that would be pretty extraordinary. So, going back to what you were saying earlier, we've got all this data coming in and but we didn't we didn't even dive deep on this and you mentioned like the suicide rates are like the highest they've ever been and all this stuff and and you know, we touch our devices 150 times a day, which is once every 6 minutes, which is really, really terrifying. Yeah. And when I think about some recent changes that I've made in my life for for a different reason, but I'm seeing the impact that it has on my well-being, which is really, really interesting, is to shut off all alerts so that no one can ring the doorbell when I'm trying to have the party with my friends in the basement, nice analogy. And that, like, being able to give people feedback on their emotions, like, I'm even thinking, okay, as a CEO, one of the things I think about are are my is my team thriving? Like, are Is this the right place for them? Yep. And because I'm well aware of that this is not going to be the right place for every human being and knowing that they're able to like, "Yo, you've been 70% of your day has been spent in frustration or anger or sadness." Like, that would be so usable and I think people get so blind where they really are. Like, when I think about that my phone constantly like pinging me, it it didn't dawn on me how corrosive that was to my productivity for years. Years. Yeah. So, to think that I could have had or or am currently having the same kind of blindness to an emotion or that my teammates are having the same kind of blindness to their emotion. Yeah. Like, wow, that would be really, really powerful. It'd be I guess we think about this internally, right? And so, one of the things we think about is, you know, our our mission statement, right? So, you know, our our mission statement, right, is to empower people to own their potential. Ownership meaning like, you know what you need to do to actually be in a peak state, right? And and and or, you know, have high potential. And what does high potential mean, right? It can be, you know, sort of mental productivity, it can be emotional, right? It can be physical, right? Um it can also be dietary as well. And so, if we think about those states of sort of potential or even health, right? These four pillars of health, mental health, physical health, sleep, right? And and diet. Um you know, we want to help people achieve and figure out what actually works for them in those different states, right? In those different areas of health and well-being. And so, um I think what's interesting is, you know, there's been a lot done in activity and a lot in diet. Um I think the reality is only about 10% of people in the US work out every week. 99.9% of people sleep every night. Wait, wait, wait, go back. What percentage work out every week? 10%. Every week? Every week. Whoa. Yeah. Now, ironically, it actually is those who work out like it ends up being they end up working out like three times plus a week. So, the ones that are working out are actually working out pretty consistently. I didn't realize it was that bad. Yeah. And then um and then if you, you know, but just thinking about those four things on sort of health and well-being. So, there's activity, there's diet, sleep, and let's call it cognitive mental, right? Mhm. Um but 99.9% of people sleep every night. And 99.9% of people have some type of emotion or cognitive performance as well every day, right? And I would say, you know, trying to get people to eat a certain way is is pretty hard from a product. Um you know, and I I think we're going to get there in the future that we'll have better AR and VR to like make it easier to ingest like at what you're eating passively without typing everything in MyFitnessPal. Mhm. Um and then, you know, working out too. I think there's been a lot done. That was the first side of wearables. So, I think like as to where like I would love or things I would love to be able to help measure, you know, sleep cuz that's sort of how you start your day, how you wake up, how you feel, right? There's a lot built on sort of like that 30 seconds you spend with yourself in the morning when you're in bed deciding to get up or not. I think that that sort of sets the day and then also, you know, your feelings whether most of us realize it or don't anymore cuz every 6 minutes we're distracted right also have an impact in a sort of how you feel and perform throughout the day. Right? And so I think you know, if we think about what can go into a wearable that has an impact on your daily life like those two areas to us as a company are are extraordinarily interesting. I think I think emotions is hard and it's also scary. If you start to think about if you have that information if you were an advertiser. Think of you could design the perfect ad for the perfect person to have them feel seduction or arousal. Right? So that that gets a little scary but now I think there'll be a ground truth of like hey actually no this is how I feel. You know, the Ben & Jerry's carton of ice cream was designed for me to finish the whole thing in that pint. Right? The Sour Patch Kids had you know hundreds of engineers you know, figuring out exactly how to make it feel great no matter sort of who you are and what your taste buds are. Right? And so I I think at the same time like if you do have this type of a this type of technology there are going to be parties that are using it for their own profit. But I also think at the same time this technology is needed so people understand that hey this is what's happening to me. Wearing a continuous glucose monitor is awesome because when you eat that pint of Ben & Jerry's you see that data and you're like holy cow I am beyond diabetic when I eat this you know, eat that whole pint. So data's empowering and so can we be a platform that helps you connect with yourself and the like lifestyle choices that you're making during the day that have an ultimate impact on how you know, what your potential is. Yeah. What do you think about blood monitoring? Have you worn a continuous glucose monitor? yeah. It's dope, right? Um what should people be doing now to go out of their way to find that stuff or should they or maybe it's lifestyle like what what do you you wore a continuous glucose monitor so I'm assuming that you put some value personally in Yeah. blood measurements. Um what else do you track in your own life? Man, in my own life? Um I there's definitely been periods of my life when I do track what I eat, uh my body composition, my weight. Mhm. Um just as someone who gained a lot of weight and then wanted to lose it, I found that extremely helpful for me to learn what was working with my body and and what wasn't. Um and so like I did, you know, I probably tracked everything in a spreadsheet for 3 years. Every single meal. Wow. Um at one point, you know, and cuz after banking I got up to 185, almost 190, and then I got I got back I got down to 135. How did you What was your protocol for losing the fat? Whoo. Uh man, a lot of experimentation with spreadsheets. You know, Did you do it all through diet or were you working out as well? Diet and and working out. Okay. But um and uh still wasn't focused on sleep. I wish I'd known more about it cuz that helps a lot, too. Um so yeah, I tried first I did keto. Um I probably did keto for a period of 2 years. Straight. Always in ketosis. Yeah. And again, something I just didn't know at the time, right, that hey, it might be actually beneficial to cycle. Mhm. Um I probably lost the first 20 lbs doing keto and working out, but then plateaued. Um I actually shifted to then just like carb cycling. Um so you know, more or less trying to be keto most of the time, but the days I work out really hard have more carbs. Mhm. Um and just moderation in caloric, you know, having caloric deficit. So if someone just tracking like if you don't know and you struggle with weight, um you know, like the Peter Diamandis saying that he has on your on your rules, right? Like if you don't have a target, you're guaranteed to miss it. Right. Right. So I think that that helps. Blood work I think is interesting. I think as we age, um you know, especially like there could be early indicators there that of long-term health that are interesting to look at. Um I think sleep is like the leading indicator. Um you know, from everything we know about sleep and the impact on your hormonal stasis and mental cognition, you know, as an individual, like that to me became like this is actually one of the easiest things to track that can actually end up not just impacting how you sleep, but your whole day the next day. So, that's that's why I was super fascinated by it. And And you do it every night, right? And it's it's I think it's it's harder to think of because it's not most people don't thinking think of it as something that it's an active state cuz it's a passive state. Dieting, you got to make a food decision when you walk in that salad bar, right? Or do you grab the burger and fries and the soda, right? So, it's an active decision. Working out, do I do, you know, high intensity workout, CrossFit, do I do aerobic? Again, an active decision. I think the sleep one of the reasons why it is now becoming popular, but it's taken some time to focus on it is because most people just think it of a just go to bed. I don't think about it. I just I turn off the lights and I lay in bed and I you know, um but now as more people are struggling with it, um I think now attention is coming to how can I improve it and how can I sleep better? Um but I do think sleep is a really good leading indicator um to track and one of the easiest ones, less painful than writing spreadsheets. You don't even have to work out. You know, you can just wear a device like ours and and start to get, you know, figure out some small changes that might lead to big changes in how you feel and perform. Do different types of exercise have different effects on sleep? So, if I'm just like for instance, I lift, I almost never do cardio. Yeah. Um is that going to have one sort of sleep pattern versus if I do just cardio, but I don't lift or Um so, you know what the best exercise in the world is, right? Do tell. The one you're not doing. Interesting. Why? Just because variation matters? Well, I think in in terms of just like mechanical structures and, you know, whether you're flexible or strength, right? Changing it up helps a lot. Um I I think what we see from our our data that I can speak about is that um later in the evening or or even just in general having light types of workouts mixed with heavy hard workouts, again that variation, do actually help you recover. So, we've even seen it with some pro sports teams we're working with. They'll end up actually seeing that, hey, you know, and let's say pro football, their HRV and their sleep may be totally terrible come come Sunday night. And so, when they look at it on Monday, what we're seeing some of the teams start to do is alter the actual exercise protocol. So, what they'll start to do is actually, let's not go super heavy on the weights, let's do some light cardio, maybe 30 minutes of cardio with like some intervals in there, right? Um and and do a lot of stretching and mobility work, right? To help open up, recover, um and that actually then improves their sleep, which means they can hit it harder on Tuesday or Wednesday. And so, I think we've seen that in our data that these light workouts, um and specifically probably more cardio and and, you know, sort of call it, you know, mobility or flexibility, you know, yoga or even just foam rolling, stretching, do can actually really improve your sleep quite a bit cuz it gets back into that same recovery state that you're in. Yeah, so recovery, that's really interesting. And and I've heard you talk about how um God, it was Brady and somebody else you were talking about clocking LeBron, maybe? I think LeBron like 10 hours or something crazy like that. Yeah. Yeah, something crazy. And and using the hyperbaric chamber, I mean, he does. Interesting. Now, that I didn't hear. So, uh tell people what hyperbaric oxygen is and then tell me why I actually haven't experimented much with hyperbaric, so I I can't speak to that one. I've seen it being used by couple different people, athletes, um also other certain types of individuals that are just super high performers, um super quantified self or biohackers, um where they use it for periods of time to almost cause that stress, which then causes you to sleep better and recover better. Um but yeah, I think it's it's really really interesting. I think, you know, if you think about it, you don't get stronger in the gym. You get stronger actually out of the gym. And in the gym you're actually getting weaker. You're breaking that muscle down, right? It's that recovery process, right, that actually happens that allows the muscle to grow stronger and take a more continued load. And so, I think people are sort of messing around with different types of stressors that might cause then greater recovery. Um so, I think that's why hyperbaric chambers, like as you put from a science perspective, are are really interesting. Yeah, super interesting. Yeah. All right, speaking of more interesting stuff, where can these guys find you online? Oh, uh website is ouraring.com. Uh just www. dot uh o u r a ring r i n g dot com. Nice. Yeah. If people could only change one thing to have the biggest impact on their health, what would you want them to change? Um well, I would say sleep, but in order to change your sleep, I think it's a, you know, a couple different things that we've talked about. Um I do think when you just look at the science, like I I think there's a great analogy that Matthew Walker had. If I could give you a pill, and this pill would improve your memory, right? Help you live longer and fight off cancer, reduce your blood pressure, increase the quality of your skin and your hair and how you look, um you know, also your testosterone production and your muscle repair, who wouldn't want to take that pill? Everyone would, right? And and that pill is sleep, right? Yet, 45% of us get less than 6 hours a night. And yeah, and so, it's it's it's sort of crazy what's what's been happening, you know, I think with modern technology and and and the change in our lifestyle as humans that, you know, now we're using technology to help bring some of that lifestyle and consciousness back. Awesome. Well, guys, sleep I I obviously cannot recommend this one enough. You can find more information on Harpreet and everything to do with an Oura Ring. Dive in, check it out. It's so powerful. Like he said, it's the biggest change that you could make. I really believe that. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Harpreet, thank you so much for coming out, man. Fantastic. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.