Why Sleep Is MORE IMPORTANT Than Diet! | Shawn Stevenson

I know now that our sleep quality is more important than our diet and exercise combined. What it does for our health and also literally our physical appearance. Everybody, welcome to Health Theory. My mission in life is to pull people out of the matrix by helping them build an empowering mindset, but the reality of personal empowerment is that while mindset is critical, the body and the mind are so interconnected that if you don't get your health in order, you will never unleash your full potential. To that end, with this show, I'm bringing on the world's most important thinkers on a wide variety of health-related topics, so you can learn how to maximize your potential. Today's guest is the best-selling author of Sleep Smarter, host of The Model Health Show, one of the most popular and longest-running podcasts on health and fitness, and he's one of the top nutrition experts in the country. Additionally, he's the founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, a functional medicine clinic, as well as someone who's been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Men's Health Magazine, and countless other major media outlets, including ESPN. He's also a frequent keynote speaker for numerous organizations, universities, and conferences. So, please help me in welcoming the man who cured his own incurable degenerative spine disease, Shawn Stevenson. Shawn, thank you for being here, man. Very grateful. Grateful. So, I'm super stoked to have you. We've flipped before where I had a chance to be on the other side of you asking me questions, which was a lot of fun. And now diving into your world, and I think virtually anybody starting an interview with you would start with the sleep stuff, but I want to flip it and I want to talk about sprinting. We're coming around the corner, we hit that final stretch, and your hip breaks. Yeah. What happened, and then what were the the knock-on effects? Wow. You know, this was Make sure that this is this is incredibly important. At track practice, I'm coming around the the curve onto the straightaway, and I broke my hip. And there was no trauma involved, nobody hit me, I didn't fall. It just broke because, you know, cut to a few years later, I finally get diagnosed with this degenerative bone disease. And at the time being 16 years old, you know, you have the hormones of like a a Greek god, you know, so, you know, you get the kind of standard of care, you know, take these NSAIDs, stay off the leg, you'll get better. And I did, but nobody stopped to ask a question, how can a young man break his hip just from running? And once I finally got this diagnosis, it was it felt good to know what what the issue was, but also it kind of sent my world into a tailspin. Yeah, that it's pretty crazy that it broke. It's really crazy that they didn't ask why it happened. But the thing that I find most interesting in the story is that you decide to ask the question, what are my vertebrae made of? And taking that ownership, which you must have been like your late teens at that point. Yeah, so this is cut to so this was 20 years old when I finally get the diagnosis. And I'm in college at the time. And, you know, I went from like a chronic kind of nuisance of a pain to chronic debilitating pain over the course of a few weeks. And this is important for and I always like to share this whenever I can. My very first physician, you know, he put my MRI up for me to see and he told me that I had the spine of an 80-year-old man. You know, I had two ruptured discs and my vertebrae were deteriorating. And so, when he says this to me, you know, I'm immediately like, okay, so what do we do? Like, let's fix it, you know? And he's like, you know, I'm sorry, son, there's nothing you can do about this. And what happened, and I know you've heard about this several times, the placebo effect is something where you get a positive injunction from somebody who's an authority figure and you proceed to have certain symptoms happen or changes in your physiology. And a lot of people don't realize this, but placebos are actually 33% effective. That's the power of the mind. But what he did for me was something called a nocebo effect. This is giving somebody a negative injunction that something bad is going to happen and your physi- and your physiology begins to change from that. And so, I spent the next 2 and 1/2 years in a lot of pain, a lot of drugs prescribed and over-the-counter and just laying on my floor, you know, because not only was this painful, but it was embarrassing. You know, I went from kind of being one of the cool guys to like I'm walking around campus with a back brace and just, you know, really kind of losing myself. I saw different doctors. I, you know, went through the whole gamut of why me, why did this happen to me, why won't somebody help me and really playing this victim role and it wasn't until I actually decided to get well that everything changed. And most people never do that with their bodies, with their health, with their relationships. It's mostly like I'll see what will happen. Wishful thinking. I'll give this a try. But when you really decide something, you're cutting away the possibility of anything else but that thing. And I'm a big student of lexicon and the word decision is from the Latin day meaning from and caedere which means to cut. So, when you make a real decision about something, you cut away the possibility of anything else but that thing. And so, I decided, no matter what, I'm going to get well. And that sent me and it wasn't like, you know, the clouds parted and like the sun shined and everything was okay. I'm a very analytical person as well and so, I put a plan together. I decided and now it's time to do something, you know. Number one, put a plan together and that plan entailed three specific things. I changed the way I was eating which giving my body the actual raw materials that it needed to regenerate me was important and I was on what I called the tough diet at the time which is a typical university food. So, I'm no joke. I'm eating pizza daily. My vitamin C's coming like from SunnyD and so, it's no wonder I was made out of like I was made out of terrible stuff, you know. And so, I asked this really important question which you mentioned, okay, if my spine is deteriorating, if my bones are deteriorating, what what is it actually made of? And that sent me down this incredible path of discovery because what we hear in kind of common culture is you know, if you want strong healthy bones, drink milk. And come to find out calcium is one of the least important things and even getting it from your diet, it doesn't exactly work in your body the way that we're marketed to to because it's marketing. And so I found other things like silica, magnesium, sulfur bearing amino acids, all these things are in some cases even more important. And so I start to get all those nutrients in my body through food primarily once I really got it like food is going to And was that So how did you get that? Cuz that's where it's it's becoming a lot more popular now, but when you would have been going through this people didn't really think like that. Yeah, and this is around the time I was thinking I was eating licorice and it was fine because it was fat-free, right? And somebody said, "Well, I think if you eat too much sugar it turns into fat." And like that didn't even make sense to me. I was like, "How would that be possible?" Yeah, especially I I'm from the Midwest. And so like there was like a Wild Oats market, Whole Foods had just opened. And so I think it's really important the environment, you know, and I had some friends they would take me to the stores and then, you know, that gradually got me into like not just the supplement aisle. And so I just began to flood my body with all these important nutrients. And also hydration. Well, your disc in between the vertebrae in your spine and you would think like if I want these to be more hydrated, I need to drink more water, but it doesn't work like that. Your disc get hydrated through a process called remote diffusion. And so literally it's like the last place in your body that gets nutrients and hydration. And so you needed to really super hydrate yourself. Make sure your body has an abundance, like an overflow of nutrients to make sure they get to the right place. So that was number one was nutrition. Number two was movement. And so exercise is really about two main things. Number one is assimilation. And I came across some research that showed that um when you actually are doing walking while taking on specific supplements for your bones, your bone density goes even higher, all right? Because that walking helps your body to assimilate. Number two is elimination, you know, elimination of toxins. Because your lymphatic system, which especially when you're getting healthier, your body is trading out a lot of stuff. And there's a lot of dead cells, there's a lot of metabolic waste products. And so, how do you get that stuff out of your system? You have to move because your lymphatic system doesn't have a pump like your cardiovascular system does. And you actually have four times more lymph than you do blood. And so, that movement was so important healing. And here's the problem is that often times when you have, you know, an injury or an issue like this, we're told not to do anything. That's often the worst thing you can do because things will start to atrophy. If you don't use it, you lose it. And so, I just started to And it's Of course, if anybody's dealing with like an acute problem right now, like take a day or two off, but I encourage people to do what you can in an intelligent way. And so, for me, I could barely walk properly. And so, I started off on a stationary bike, progressed to treadmill, I started jogging a little bit, eventually I picked up the weights again. And um, you know, just to jump really quickly to the end of the story, I'd lost 28 lb in the next 6 weeks. Wow. And the pain I've been experiencing for 2 and 1/2 years was gone. But the third and most important part, now I know, was the rest and recovery, all right? It seems like I was resting a lot by not doing anything, but I it really wasn't, you know? It was a lot of uh suffering, and my greatest struggle was at night going to bed because the pain was so bad it would wake me up. And so, I was on, you know, uh various medications, and I basically had to drug myself to not wake up. And so, it was like a pseudo sleep, and it would take several hours before I really like felt like I was awake. And um the things that I was doing during the day, changing my lifestyle, showed up for me on the pillow. Because what I really wanted to promote for people is this understanding that if you're not sleeping well, you're not healing well. And this is where your body releases the vast majority of human growth hormone, of the you know, these various anabolic hormones, reparative enzymes. So, when my sleep got improved, I got better so fast. And so, I shifted all my coursework over to biology and kinesiology and eventually opened a clinical practice and you know, often times I would get those people who they were told there's nothing you can do. You know, you have type 2 diabetes, blood sugar's 400 without Metformin, there's nothing you can do about it. And consistently seeing these folks be able to naturally regulate their blood sugar, often times get off their medications, insulin, things like that. Because where there's a will, there's 10,000 ways. But, it's also understanding that it first of all, just acknowledging that it is possible. And that's what I love about your story, man. That like hearing you tell that, the And I've heard you quote the Einstein quote before that the most important decision anyone will ever make is whether or not they live in a hostile or a friendly universe. Which A, most people don't recognize that as a a choice or a decision. And then two, that from that then people will take action because they believe that they will get an outcome. How did you come to that decision that you live in a universe that's going to work for you? Yeah. When the doctor is the one telling you, multiple doctors in fact, cuz you said, look, I was, you know, conscious of going and getting multiple opinions. This wasn't one guy. They all said the same thing. So, how in the face of that do you make that decision one day, I am going to get better? I think it's really valuable to understand the the benefit of rock bottom. You know, like for me, after getting those uh the words from the other doctors that you know, there's nothing you know, the same diagnosis, I had a choice to make. I'm either going to buy into this and continue to live as a victim or I'm going to do something about it. At least try, you know? But for me, I'm it's beyond try. Like it's the decision, right? And so, how I got to that place really was you know, I had nothing to lose at that point, you know? Um I can continue as things are and continue in the suffering. And I think it was just a matter of like realizing that and I think this is really important. Even though there are other people in our lives that might care for us, they don't walk in our shoes. You know, so when the physician would tell me that you know, there's nothing that I could do, I knew like I it hit me like they're not laying at home thinking about me. I'm thinking about them and why they can't help me. I have to really take responsibility for myself. And it's just basic logic, you know? If somebody's saying they can't help you, believe them. You know? And so, I made the decision like if if I'm going to get better, I need to do it, you know? I need to take action. It doesn't mean I'm not going to have great people to support me along the way. But, you know, as Jim Rohn says, no one can do your push-ups for you. You know, so I really had to take action and it became you know, and also I want to share this is that if you really want something, you should make a study of it. You know? Especially if you don't necessarily have a blueprint for a successful relationship, make it a study. If you're not doing well with your finances, make it a study. And how what does that look like for you? I generally go right to the medical journals. You know, I dig through there and I and another quote from Einstein is that, you know, if you can't explain it simply, you don't know it well enough. And so, I really strive to make sense of these things that can be incredibly complex, but for no reason. It wasn't until I really honored my own voice and my gift in helping these things to really make sense for people. And so, I'll dig around in that data and um that's the first thing I'll do. And then I'll look for some anecdotal and evidence as well, you know, people telling stories about it. But here's something else I do. I also, and this is the scary part, I also look at the problems with stuff. I also look at the things that are against what I might be believing. Most people don't want to do that. Like we believe this particular supplement is going to work and it's the best thing, you know, since sliced bread, and then there's these other things that say, "Hey, wait a minute, this might not be the case." You have to have the courage to look at this, too, and come to and a a a truly well-evolved thought construct, you know, and we all have that opportunity, but we tend to just want to believe what we believe and look for things to confirm that. You know, and you got to be careful with studies that do the same thing and who's funding the study, as well. So, I really get to that level most of the time in my research. It's really interesting to me how, and look, like you said, the look at the benefits of rock bottom, but it's really interesting to me how early you came to a lot of this and I find how people tell their own story to be fascinating beyond all measure. And the opening of your bio says, "The beginning The first half of my childhood was spent in an idyllic suburban neighborhood and the second half of my childhood was in the rough-and-tumble inner cities around gangs and drugs." And you said the power came from both places and it it really helped me understand perspective. How much of that, if at all, played into your ability to sort of see through the trappings of everyone telling you it can't be solved in a way that I you say it's just logic, but I think most people fall prey to that and they live there for 60, 70 years. Yeah. So, how much of that mindset that you got from that sort of dual beginning do you think played into it? Man, that really hit an emotional chord uh hearing you say that. You know, um that initial environment was really a lays a foundation. Well, before the age of about seven, we're in like a theta brainwave state where a lot of things kind of get deeper into our psyche and our subconscious, our programming. And so, it's really important, especially for for parents, you know, and people who are just uh that can be involved in kids' lives to really understand how impressionable they are. And so I really got a great formatting, kind of formatting disc from my grandmother who really kind of instilled this greatness. She instilled the value of education. I love learning. Like I love the process of learning. And so I really picked up early on that you don't want to just learn stuff. You want to become good at learning. And when I shifted my my residency, you know, going from this very protected uh, safe, loving atmosphere, you know, I'm in an environment where um, you know, there's a lot of abuse, you know, physical abuse towards myself and my two younger siblings. Um, you know, abuse with my mother and stepfather in the fight, you know, physical fighting. You know, holidays were not like they are now, like get-togethers and family fun. We know the holidays is going to be police are going to show up, you know. That that environment also taught me something really really valuable, which is you know, even though things aren't going well, even though we're we're short on money, there's always a way to figure it out. No matter how bad things look, we're going to be okay. So that really was a powerful seed and combine that with the the sense of greatness, the sense of the value of education, the sense of there's always a way to figure something out, really helped that that moment of insight to take place of that decision, that that moment of decision. And this is the first time I've articulated this, but that's really how those two things come together. Dude, I'm shocked that you shared that. That's, um, it's so powerful and in taking you as a whole and watching your show and watching you on other people's shows, there's this incredible Zen-like quality to your delivery, to your mission, to what you want to do. Like everything about it is is so even keel, right? Because what I find with people that make that transition is it normally breaks them. And one of the things that I'm most intrigued about in life is and we were just have the chills. We were just talking about this before we started rolling camera where you were saying with schools, right? Do you go to one ultra tailored or do you go that's going to be the hardship where my kids have to adapt? And I don't know what's better because the number of people that are broken by the inner cities that the percentage has got to be absurd, right? And 80, 90, I it's just crazy. Yeah. But the people that make it, the ones that find that center, whether it's to be self-centered or not, they find that sense of self. When you said that that really hit me. That finding that sense of self, not letting the outside world dictate who they're going to be. Like now all of a sudden adversity is not such such a big deal because you've got like that compass inside of you and you know where you're going. That feels to me um very appropriate for what you've become known for, which is sleep. Which even your own publisher was like uh write a diet book and you'll be huge and famous and we'll all be rich. And you were like, but that's not the truth that needs to be told. Yeah. Um did that play in? Like was that a moment of Shawn being knowing who he is and what he's trying to do and he's just going to get to that end no matter what? Mhm. You know what? Wow, yes, there definitely was. You know, I I don't want to cut corners. I wanted, you know, it's um integrity is a big word for me. And I wanted to take righteous action, you know, this was this is all bigger than us, you know, the impact that you're making, the legacy that you're leaving, you know, is so powerful. And we're part of like a big change that hap that's happening uh with our culture overall, you know? And I knew that this particular topic is and me being a nutritionist, like I was all like food matters, food first, food is the most important thing. But in my practice and seeing people coming in that you know, we've got these folks over here, you know, 80% of the time are able to reverse type 2 diabetes, heart disease, get off their lisinoprils and all this different stuff. And then we've got this category of people who just like literally sometimes would ironically kind of keep me up at night. Like what is wrong? Like I'm doing all these things right. Are they lying to me? And then it wasn't until I started to ask people about their sleep that it just like it changed everything. And this was about 6 years ago. And so then, and here's the key, I can't just tell people they need to sleep more. You know this. Like people don't want to change that much. Like we want change, but we want it to be a little bit, right? And so I found clinically proven strategies that are super easy to implement. Almost things that can happen on automatic to help them improve their sleep quality, right? And once we did that, it's like the floodgates would open for people, you know, who'd been struggling for sometimes, you know, 15, 20 years with their weight. Finally the weight comes off, you know? And seeing people struggling with heart disease or high cholesterol, you know, the so-called bad cholesterol. Um and seeing those numbers finally get regulated once we got their sleep optimized. And I knew that this was incredibly important part of the conversation that was left out. And as we'll talk about I know now that our sleep quality is more important than our diet and exercise combined. And what it does for our health and also literally our physical appearance. Fascinating stuff. How much more fat you lose when you get optimal sleep. It's it's insane. That's a bold statement. So walk me through what are some of the um the just core benefits that I'm going to get assuming that I'm sleeping suboptimally. Like why is that a problem since that's probably one of the most celebrated like things like when you get a little sleep people like champion you. Normally I'd sleep 5 to 6 hours a night with no alarm. Okay, I haven't set an alarm in 15 years. So that's just that was my cycle. I go to bed early very consistently. My diet is on point. My exercise is on point. And so I'd wake up feeling awesome. Yeah. And so I thought this is cash money. But because I don't set an alarm that my sleep cycle will change and right now I'm getting like 7 to 9 hours out of nowhere and super consistently. And I literally have no idea why. I'm warmer now. So I used to be freezing cold at all times and then at the same time that my and I don't know correlated positive no idea. Um I've started being warmer while I sleep and then during the day. So what are like the core components of sleep? Was something bad happening to me or less than optimal when I was only getting 6 hours even though I felt good. Um any correlation between those heat and the extra sleep? There's there's there's a lot to unpack there. Number one, what's so interesting is that you you were doing something exceptionally right as far as what the research shows with improving your sleep. Which is you were going to bed kind of consistently a little bit earlier than other folks might. And so what we call what we call this is this anabolic window or what we call money time sleep. And this is generally between the hours of 10 and 2 because it's more lined up with your natural melatonin secretion. So if you go to sleep during those times you actually spend more time in the deepest most anabolic stages of sleep and you tend to produce more human growth hormone than other folks. So you were already winning with that. This is why you have a tendency to feel better even if you're getting less sleep because I this isn't called sleep more. Right? It's sleep smarter. And there are many people who sleep you know 8 to 9 hours and they wake up feeling like straight up you know, hot garbage. You know what I'm saying? And they're just wondering why. It's because it's the quality of sleep. When I say quality of sleep, what does that mean? Let's break that down. So, your sleep is regulated by changes in your in your brain waves. It's really fascinating stuff and we still don't know really what sleep is. Trying to define sleep is like trying to define um you know, when Forrest Gump is like life is like a box of chocolates, sleep is like pretending to be dead. We don't really know, right? But we do know the changes that happen in the brain. We cycle from kind of a normal waking state with with gamma, beta. Um we're probably in beta right now. We move to alpha, theta, delta is where the deep anabolic dreamless sleep takes place and we need all of them. And there's a certain percentage we spend in each that helps to rejuvenate our mind and bodies. And if you optimize certain things, you'll do it more efficiently. One of those gear shifts, like if you think about your body like this kind of manual transmission, is melatonin. Like people hear about melatonin as a sleep hormone, it just helps your body to efficiently go through your sleep cycles. And if your melatonin is suppressed by various things, you know, I'll share a couple, then you're not going through those efficiently and you can wake up feeling like a piñata after the party the next day even though you're spending all this time on the mattress. So, that's number one. Number two, there's this interesting process called thermoregulation. There's a natural drop in your core body temperature at night to help facilitate sleep for all of us if things are running properly. But what was fascinating and I shared a study about this is that uh they tested insomniacs and everyone in this particular clinical study all had too high body temperature at night. It would not go down. And so, what they did was they fit them with these thermal suits, right? That lowers their skin temperature, not even their core temperature, just 1 degree and virtually eliminated all their symptoms of insomnia. Wow. Ambien can't do that, all right? And it's as simple as paying attention to how your body temperature influences your sleep. And so with your body temperature changing like that, it's kind of feeling more of an insulation. As a result of having more sleep, there's a ton of different things that could be correlated there. So, I'm not going to say that the sleep is a causative factor. But it's really interesting how your body does change in accordance to sleep. There's a natural rise in your core body temperature as a day goes uh as I'm sorry, as the night goes on that helps to kind of wake you up. Mhm. Um so, what I did want to share though, when I said that kind of bold statement in the beginning when we're talking about how sleep influences your body composition, I think everybody needs to know this. There was a this study really blew my mind and this was done at the University of Chicago. And they took people and they put them on a calorie restricted diet, kind of typical stuff again I'm taught in college, to see the impact on weight loss when they're sleep deprived or getting enough sleep, all right? So, they put the people on this particular diet, monitor everything. One phase of the study they're getting 8 and 1/2 hours of sleep, all right? And then they track all their metrics. Another phase of the study, same exact diet, same exercise, they don't change anything else, but now they sleep deprive them. And they take away 3 hours of sleep. So, now they're getting 5 and 1/2 hours of sleep versus 8 and 1/2 hours of sleep. At the end of the study, they found that when individuals were well rested, they burned 55% more body fat just by getting more sleep. And so, the question is how does this happen? Melatonin, when I talked about this a little bit earlier it's not just that it's involved in sleep, it's also involved in fat loss. And this study, this was done in the Journal Pioneer Research found that uh melatonin production helps to increase your body's mobilization of something called brown adipose tissue, right? This is a type of fat that burns fat, all right? The reason that it's brown is that it has more mitochondria. So, it's very energy dense, right? These mitochondria, just for people who I'm sure people have heard of this, but it's like these energy power plants in your cells that are creating the energy currency of your body, like how you experience energy, the energy exchange, something called ATP. And so, when you are producing adequate melatonin, you're producing and mobilizing adequate amounts of brown adipose tissue, which just puts you in a metabolically advantaged state, all right? But if you're not getting the melatonin production, which you've got to meet two requirements, number one, you need a biological night. So, that means it could actually be during the day, but it's a consistent cycle of when it gets produced. But the other requirement needs to be met, that you need darkness. Your body produces melatonin exclusively in darkness. And so, that's one. Also, how do you get How do they get that body fat change? HGH production, which we talked about, too. Human growth hormone is muscle sparing, and it's a big driver of energy. It's also known as a youth hormone. Kids have an insane amount of HGH being produced. This is why they have so much energy. We have a pretty sharp decline in our production right around 18 to 20. But my argument is that around 18 to 20, we generally in our culture, like leave the house, we might go to college, that kind of thing, and we no longer have structure, we no longer have rules, and we're not going to produce as much HGH. Third thing, really quickly, um is And this is all has to do with the diet and the food choices, is leptin. All right? And I know people have talked about leptin before, but leptin is your body's kind of glorify satiety hormone. And so, when you're producing adequate amounts of leptin, you feel more in control, right? You feel more satiated. But when when leptin kind of falls off the map, or you have leptin uh resistance can take place, then we're going to have some pretty big issues with you regulating your cravings and your appetite. And so, Stanford University researchers found that just one night of sleep deprivation radically suppresses your leptin. And now, I hope folks can start to pay attention whenever you might not get the best sleep, how your cravings change the next day. You're going to have a tendency to want to number one, eat more. Number two, to want to eat more kind of the starchy, crunchy, salty, sugary type things. And I remember my wife, who's actually here, uh when we had our son, and I she she's never seen me eat the this food. I was sitting there like waiting for the baby to come. I was eating uh chocolate-covered raisins. I was just like and I didn't even realize I was doing it, you know, it was like 3:00 in the morning, you know. And so that's another thing. And uh last one I'll share, and there's so many that create that change in your body composition. But this one is incredibly important. Is cortisol. Cortisol's been dragged through the mud recently. You know, it's getting blamed for everything, but it's not really a bad guy. It's just misunderstood. All right? Cortisol's incredibly important. For example, cortisol's important for your thyroid to work, right? And that's kind of like the metabolism regulator of your body. But here's the thing. Just one night of sleep deprivation radically increases your cortisol and suppresses melatonin actually as well. But this rise in cortisol has a really powerful ability to start to break down your muscle tissue. Which your muscle's your body's kind of fat-burning machinery. And so it can convert your muscle tissue into glucose. It's a process called gluconeogenesis. As a kind of fight or flight response because your physiology doesn't know why you're not sleeping. You know, it must be some danger about. You know? And so understanding those major hormones, and there's many others, you start to see the picture that gets painted with just how much your sleep quality impacts your physical appearance. It's really crazy. I've always known you need sleep, but I didn't know why. And so getting into uh or transitioning, I should say, because I always knew you needed sleep because if I didn't get it, I felt terrible. But that was sort of the the end of it. And I even let myself just stop at that. we don't really know why you sleep, but not diving into to the real breakdown which is really fascinating. So, what are things then that people can do to actually optimize their sleep? Yeah, this is what it's really all about. You know, I would I like to start with the low-hanging fruit first. Um and something really really fascinating is just simply changing or embracing the time of day that you exercise can improve your sleep quality. And so, Appalachian State University did a really cool study and they wanted to see what time of day exercising at various times of day, how does it impact your sleep quality? And so, they had the study participants to exercise exclusively at 7:00 a.m. and another phase exclusively at 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon, another phase exclusively at 7:00 p.m. in the evening. They compiled all the data and at the end of the study they found that morning exercisers spend more time in the deepest, most anabolic stages of sleep. So, they're producing more human growth hormone. They have more efficient sleep cycles, what we've been talking about. They also tend to sleep longer and and this is the one that kind of can get glanced past. On average, they had about a 25% greater drop in blood pressure at night. So, what's what's up with that? That's correlated with a deactivation of your sympathetic fight or flight nervous system. Right? So, you're actually able to shift gears, get to that parasympathetic rest and digest, calming down by getting some exercise in in the morning. And so, how do we employ this though? That's the question because some people are just like, you know, I can't exercise in the morning. And there's also people who exercise in the morning who might have terrible sleep. And it's because this is not like the magic bullet. This is a thing to stack in your condition. If you're doing this and then messing up the one I'm going to talk about next, you're probably not going to have the best sleep. So, here's how to employ this. Just 5 minutes. And I tested this. Each morning I do this 5 minutes of exercise. You know, it might be just jumping on a rebounder, you know, a little mini trampoline for 5 minutes, go for a quick power walk, uh do some Tabata, which is just 4 minutes, and a little mobility work. I'm going to guess most people don't know what Tabata is. It's high-intensity interval training, basically. It's 20 seconds of exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest repeated over and over again for 4 minutes. And in his clinical studies, this was found to outperform, you know, traditional cardio, like the kind of moderate-intensity 45-minutes of exercise in 4 minutes. The change in your cardiovascular benefits, body composition, and also change your mitochondria as well. This is why it works. It does something called a cortisol reset. All right, and we talked about cortisol, but again, it's a good thing if it's in the right time in the right amounts. Clinically, I would call these people tired and wired that would come in and looking at the hormone panels, and the cortisol would be really low in the morning and high at night. Thus, they have sleep problems. So, you naturally, if your if your cortisol is on a natural hormone rhythm, it would be elevated at its peak in the morning, right around 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., and then gradually decline as the day goes on. Does that have to do with what time you wake up? Sort of. I mean, the cortisol will kind of tend to nudge you out of sleep, but also will tend to notice that as the day is a your sleep goes on, it becomes lighter and lighter anyways, right? This is when you tend to remember your dreams, like at the at the end of the sleep. And so, getting this little boost, like helping your body to propel and get your cortisol up via exercise helps to reset that rhythm and get you back on track. So, that's why it works. So, that's number one, low-hanging fruit. Just get in 5 minutes of exercise. Start in the morning, no matter what. Just 5 minutes is all you need. It's going to help to create this snowball effect of good things for you. You know, 5 minutes. If this is the time you do go to do to the gym and do your full workout, so be it, all good. But everybody who's not already doing that, just get that 5 minutes in. The second one, and this one is more of the tough love, and the the the most difficult, but this is the most important one in our culture today. And this has to do with our tech. All right? So, Harvard researchers have confirmed that blue light exposure from our favorite devices, you know, iPads, our iPhones, Androids, tablets, televisions, they do in fact suppress your melatonin substantially. Because that your body essentially thinks the sun's out? Is that the problem? So, we have photoreceptors that are always trying to gauge what time it is, right? Because our bodies are wired up to be in sync with nature. But, only recently, like literally just the past few decades have we been able to manipulate and basically create a second daytime, right? So, your body just it doesn't really know how to figure it out. And so, the blue and white spectrum specifically are the ones that are more similar to daylight. And so, what it's doing is and so, here's what the researchers found. Basically, every hour you're on your device at night suppresses melatonin for about 30 minutes. All right? So, if you're on your you know, you're watching a movie, a 3-hour movie, for example, your melatonin is going to be suppressed. Even if you go to bed right after, you're not producing adequate melatonin for about an hour and a half. And so, again, you can be unconscious from sheer physical exhaustion, but you're not going to go through your sleep cycles efficiently. And so, just be mindful of that. What I encourage people to do is to give yourself a screen curfew, just 30 minutes. All right? I don't want to make this complicated, just 30 minutes. But, here's the rub. We are addicted to our devices, like straight up. We just need to be on it. I am. We all are, you know? Basically, it's because of this dopamine loop, right? Dopamine is so powerful, so interesting. Dopamine is one of the things that truly feel has helped to create our civilization as it is, because it drives us to seek, right? Dopamine drives us to to to seek and to grow and to find to discover. The internet is perfect for manipulating this because every time you look for something you find something. Especially social media, you seek find seek find. You produce the dopamine it drives you to look. But why do you keep going is every time you find something you get a little bit of a a hit from your opioid system. It's like a slow drip of morphine. And so it starts to like feel really good. And to the point where you might be doing your work and like you got a deadline and you'll just be like I'll check Instagram real quick. Before you know it it's like 30 minutes later and you fall into the internet black hole. It's like it just pulls you in. So be aware of that. I'm not saying again our connection with tech is just going to grow. So I'm not bashing that. It's just be aware of it. And that when you try to abide by this principle which will really really help your sleep quality to give yourself a screen curfew, you can't just sit there and twiddle your thumbs because you'll get what I call the internet jitters. Right? You'll start getting like a little bit of a withdrawal effect. Like I'll just check one just one one post. What we have to do is this. You have to replace it with something of greater or equal value. It's really that simple. Hopefully is what I encourage people to do. This is an opportunity to connect. Right? Connect with your significant other, your kids, the people like physical like have a real conversation with somebody. Right? I know it sounds crazy but it really works. It's really really good. And also this is a great opportunity if you you know if you're in a relationship or not whatever you're into you could you know utilize and I have got a chapter on this as well. Intimate time because there's a big connection between sex and sleep. And there's also big connection between sleep and sex and how it impacts your sex life. That's interesting. And so when we have an orgasm for example we produce a chemical I'm sorry cocktail of chemicals including oxytocin, norepinephrine, prolactin. And oxytocin for example, has been found clinically to uh basically combat the effects of cortisol. And hopefully, sex is more interesting than Instagram, but you know, I don't know. It depends on how you're doing it. And so, that's what I want people to do, a screen curfew and or use these hacks. Utilize some blue light blocker blockers. And so, for your desktops, laptops, things like that, you can get an app called f.lux that pulls out the most troublesome sleep sucking spectrum of light from your screen. It basically cools your screen off. And it's a simple app. You set it and forget it. It's totally free. You just go to Dr. Google, type in f.lux, and a couple clicks and it's on your device. I've been using it for maybe 5 or 6 years. I love it. And uh for your uh telephone, you know, your uh cell phone, we've got on the iPhones built-in now is night shift. Uh with Androids, the best one out there uh from my research is one called Twilight. You know, so there's options for everybody. Then what about the ambient light at night or if you're watching a movie? Again, I don't want to get Don't get too neurotic about it, but if this is a problem for you and you're not sleeping as well as you could be or your results, your body composition not changing, you're not getting that blood pressure down, you're not having that focus you need through the day, um then you might want to address this, but another little hack is to get some blue light blocking glasses. The first ones I had were straight up like I just built a birdhouse. But now there's some really cool stylish ones that you can rock. As a matter of fact, you'll create a neuro association when you put the glasses on and you'll start to get sleepy. Mhm. You know, it's nuts. And that is another thing right there is to create an evening ritual. Right? Your brain is always looking for patterns. A lot of successful people, especially listening to the things that you're putting out there, have a success ritual in the morning. But a great morning starts the night before, you know, a truly great morning. And so, a A of quick things people can do is the thermal regulation piece. Turn down your thermostat, all right? Now, this one's again, this is going to hit a pressure point for some people, but according to research between 62 and 68° Fahrenheit is ideal for sleep. And so, for some people it's going to sound a little bit frosty, but it lowering the thermostat a little bit can have incredible benefit uh for your sleep. But, this doesn't mean you can't use your covers and put on some warm socks, that kind of thing. So, cooling off this thermostat, um making sure that your bedroom, ideally, I I call it a sleep sanctuary. And so, that when you walk into your bedroom at night, if your brain has a neuro association when I go into my bedroom, I'm watching television or I'm working, those channels are going to fire because of the myelin getting laid down over the years of you doing that behavior, or even months it can get laid down. And so, you might have the intention of going to bed, but if your TV's in there, your brain is going to be firing expecting to watch television, and parts of your brain are going to be waking up in a way. And so, I encourage people to get the tech out of your room. Have your sleep Have your bedroom be a sleep sanctuary, you know, some place that's just for the the double S, which is sleep and sex. Here's also a really interesting reason why. There's an Italian study done, they found that couples who have a television in their bedroom have 50% less sex. Really? Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And you know, this is a little bit more middle-aged, little past middle-aged the people in the study. But, and I know some people like, "That's not true. I have sex all the time." You probably do it in a snowstorm. Like, it doesn't matter where you are. Like, you're human rabbit, it doesn't matter. But, for other people, it's like a distraction, right? It's a distraction, and it can also, you know, um create all of those kind of chemical soup issues that we've been talking about with elevating cortisol and those kind of things. So, ideally, get your television out of the room, uh the other tech, and last thing with the sleep environment I'll share. When I talked about melatonin, you need those two two conditions biological night and you also need a dark environment. And so if you're in an environment where you're maybe in a suburban or city environment where there's like neighbors porch lights coming in, there's LEDs outside, cars coming up and down the street. As crazy as this sounds, that that small amount of light what we're now dubbing light pollution can have a significant impact on your sleep quality. And here's here's why we know this. Cornell University they I think they did the best study on this and they took a test subject and had them sleep in a otherwise dark room and they took a a light a fiber optic cable and a light the size of a quarter and put it behind their knee and that was enough to disrupt their sleep cycle. Because your skin also has photoreceptors that is sending information to your brain, your nervous system, your internal organs to try to tell your body what time it is. It's trying to figure it out. You know, so we want to get rid of that artificial light exposure. Now, does this mean moonlight and stars? No, humans have evolved with those things and their lux like I actually put a lux chart in the book is so small compared to even the weakest fluorescent bulbs. And so get yourself some blackout curtains if that external light is an issue. Internal light, you know, your alarm clocks and you know, light you know, lamps. You know, some people still are sleeping with their lights on and things like that. Be mindful of that and also what you can do is just change the bulb color. You know, if you still have issues with the dark which some adults do and that's okay. Um you can change the bulb cover color and I actually had some NASA scientists or people that work with them to send me some different bulbs because folks in space they don't have that biological clock. And so they would experience all these different health challenges and they had to try to figure it out. They knew that it was an issue with their sleep and so they start to give them different bulbs for different times of day in a way, you know, even though they're in outer space. So it's really cool what you can do with these little hacks but bottom line is you want to have a dark cycle so you can produce melatonin. And you know, those are just a few Those are just a few of the different things people can do. It's really interesting cuz you've talked about how um like the light behind the knee, it's you've got these photoreceptors and they're communicating. There's a lot of signaling going on. You've said that the brain makes the body. And then you've also said that food is data. Talk to me about what do you mean by food is data? I think that's a pretty powerful concept. Yeah, definitely. This was a big game-changer for me early on when I realized that, you know, food The food that I was eating wasn't just food. It It was information. And every single bite of food that I was eating, and this is something that I've been studying now for over 10 years. I um absolutely love this. It's something called nutrigenomics. And it's a study looking at how every single molecule of food that you eat impacts your genetic expression. Food is that powerful. You know, and several other epigenetic factors like sleep, which might be the biggest epigenetic influence. Um you get to choose what kind of copies are being made of you. You know, your genes are basically blueprint to print out certain copies. And there's upwards of like 4,000 different variations that one gene can do. And you get to have a big role a big part in how those genes are getting expressed. So, understanding that when we eat a, you know, particular food, it isn't just I'm just eating this thing. It's setting off a cascade of events. And it's incredibly empowering, but also can be really sobering. And again, I don't want to get people into the neurotic state because I've been there, but it's more like the majority of what we want to do is things that are hormone healthy, things that are uh healthy for your DNA, things that are healthy for your genetic expression. Because, you know, you again, you have a big influence on that. And so, you know, early on really kind of having that that lightbulb go off, it really empowered me to start making food decisions that can help me cuz you know, if you really think about this, I had the spine of an 8-year-old man when I was 20 years old. I'm in some ways I'm like Benjamin Button, all right? Like I'm aging backwards, you know? Have you guys talked about telomeres yet? On the show, no. So, telomeres are basically the most the most invaluable asset that we have currently to basically tell us how long we're going to live, all right? And so, what do I mean by that? Your telomeres are like these little the eyelets at the end of your shoestrings that keep your your shoestrings from unraveling, that's kind of like how telomeres work. They're the end caps uh at the end of your chromosomes. And as life goes on, your cells divide and those uh they keep getting clipped off clipped off. Those telomeres get clipped off shorter and shorter to the point where your DNA basically unravels, right? And so, the crazy thing is that sleep, your your sleep spectrum, you know, uh whether you're getting high-quality sleep or sleep deprived, could be the biggest influence on your telomere length, all right? So, literally aging you faster when you're sleep deprived. So, because you know, when we're younger we're like, "I can sleep 3 hours, whatever, it's no big deal." And you can quote get away with it. And you can. But what you're doing is accelerating your aging process. I know that when this was happening, even before I got the diagnosis, it just wasn't just wasn't like I wasn't something I thought about, you know? And so, I was accelerating my aging process, little did I know. Another huge player in that is the information that we put into our body, you know, the food and the water. And also a big player is our environment, you know, our relationships, the people around us. And uh if you were to ask me, you know, sleep is the is more powerful than exercise and nutrition combined on your physical appearance and your health, but your relationships are the biggest governing force over all of it. Because that is the most influential thing on the decisions you make with your sleep, on the decisions you make with the food that you eat, on the decisions you make on whether or not you're exercising or when and how you do it. You know, so it's incredibly important to be mindful of we're looking at ways that we can stave off the aging process, stay young, vital, healthy, happy as long as possible. We need need to be mindful of all of those things. And again, I I don't want to create a neurosis today, but there is a way to go about it, and I think that the foundational piece is listening to people like you, you know, constantly, you know, every day getting that daily dose of like getting your mind right, getting your inner game together, and immersing yourself in information like this, and carry that with you into the world, and do your best to get around people that are uplifting you, that are supporting you in you being the person that you want to become. No question. So, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you online? Awesome. So, um the my big place that people find me is generally through my show. It's called The Model Health Show, and uh so people can check that out on anywhere you listen to your podcast, and I guarantee you're going to love it. And my home online is the modelhealthshow.com, so they can find the show there as well. We they can find Sleep Smarter there, too. And my social media's there, and also people can find Sleep Smarter just, you know, where you buy books, Amazon, all that good stuff, where you can go to sleepmarterbook.com. Nice. All right. And now my final question. If you could recommend people to make one change, but only one change to their life to have a massive improvement on their health, what would it be? You know what's so funny? It really does go back to the last thing I said. The number one thing, the very best thing that you can do, is to get yourself around healthy people. You know, you everybody's heard the statement by now, you know, you're the average of the five people that are closest to you. Um it has a tremendous impact and I always like to uh support everything I say with science, but Princeton University did a interesting study. They had individuals get together and create rapport, right? Just basic little small talk conversation. And within just a couple of minutes, their brain waves synced up. All right? Their the frequency at which their brains are moving literally started to match. That happens all the time. You're syncing up with the people around you. So, if you the the number one thing you can do to transform your health is to get yourself around healthy people. Get yourself in the environment because it's very difficult to go to McDonald's if you're with the healthy person. Like, you know, you guys are like out, you know, just came from the gym and you know, they're on their way to Whole Foods or whatever. You're like, "Can you stop and grab me a McRib?" You know, it's like highly unlikely that you'll do that. You know, just from a logical sense. But from this kind of even metaphysical deeper level, you really are a product of your environment. And the great thing about humans is that we're not just a product of our environment, we're creator of our environment. So, you can consciously choose that. And that's what's going to help you to take your things to another level. I love that, Shawn. Thank you so much for being on the show, man. That was incredible. Guys, this is I'm telling you somebody that you are absolutely going to love diving into the world. The The fact the way that he answered that last question tells you everything that you need to know about Shawn Stevenson. He should have said sleep because sleep moves more books, but he didn't. He said being around the people getting around healthy people. Uh he talked about relationships because that's the truth. And when somebody is far more interested in the truth than they are in moving units, that's when ironically, they actually move more units because you know that you can trust them and they really build credibility within their community. His show is amazing and that is but the tip of a very large iceberg of somebody who cares very deeply about actually helping people and that's what you're going to see as you dive deeper and deeper into his world is not only is he trying to get things backed up by science, but this is stuff that he's experienced in his own life. He's worked with thousands of people in his clinical practice, seen how it plays out with them. He doesn't look away from the things that disprove what he believes. In fact, as he mentioned earlier, he stares right at those things. Goes after them because he wants to continually update his thinking which makes him an incredibly powerful mind that I hope that you guys will really go and learn from because he has so much to offer. All right. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe, my friends, and until next time, be legendary. Take care.