Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 15 - Amy Bender PhD: Sleep, Performance, and How to Take the PERFECT Nap.

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

In today's episode, I sit down with Amy Bender Ph.D. and we talk all things sleep science. Dr. Bender is a Senior Research Scientist at Calgary Counselling Centre and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. She received her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in Experimental Psychology from Washington State University specializing in sleep EEG. She has helped develop the only validated sleep screening tool for athletes and has implemented sleep optimization strategies for numerous Canadian Olympic and professional teams. Her current interests focus on how sleep and exercise interventions can improve mental health outcomes.To get more from Dr. Bender:Follow Her on Instagram HEREFollow Her on Twitter HERESupport the Show.

Hey, you guys, welcome into another episode of the Dynamic Dialogues podcast. Today's guest is Dr. Amy Bender. Dr. Bender is a senior research scientist at Calgary Counseling Center and an adjunct professor of kinesiology at the University of Calgary. She received her PhD and Master of Science degrees in Experimental Psychology from Washington State University, specializing in sleep. She has helped develop and validate sleep systems and screening tools for athletes implemented for sleep optimization.

The only validated sleep screening tool, by the way. Her strategies have been used by numerous teams, including the Canadian Olympic team and professional teams in the NHL and NBA, to name a few organizations. Her current interests and focuses are on how sleep and exercise interventions can help improve mental health outcomes. So today you'll hear me and Dr. Bender riff on a lot of things sleep related, including, riff on a lot of things sleep related, including, but not limited to how many hours a night you truly need to sleep. Can some people get away with less? What are the different stages of sleep? And how did they impact your performance? Can sleep impact body composition directly or indirectly? And how to nap like a pro just a few now, before we get into it, if at any point

during this podcast you go, holy smokes, that's a good tip. I really want to implement that. Do me a favor. Screenshot the podcast at that timestamp and just share it to your Instagram story because it might help someone else. And be sure to tag me so I can say thanks. So without further ado, here's my sit down conversation with Dr. Amy Bender. Enjoy. Amy, how's it going? Pretty good. Thanks for having me on. Anytime. So really quick, just to start, I want to hit a question that I think a lot of people will benefit from, and that's just debunking the three biggest myths and misconceptions about sleep, how it impacts performance,

and really anything in that avenue, but really, really highlighting and misconceptions around sleep. Yes, I would say the biggest misconception out there is that everyone needs eight hours of sleep. So for an adult, the recommendation is a minimum of seven hours. So you want to hit the range, you want to hit somewhere between seven and nine hours of sleep. But not everyone needs eight hours necessarily. So there's a lot of variability in the amount of sleep that you need with kind of seven hours being the minimum that you want to aim for. Now, if you're an athlete, obviously there's more demands physically and mentally. So it's going to be more, definitely more than that seven hour mark. But for those of us, you know, really, let's say there's someone out there who's trying to get eight hours, but they go to sleep naturally, wake up naturally after, you know,

seven and a half, I wouldn't fret over that, that last half hour. So that would be one major myth, I would say. Another myth that I hear a lot is that snoring isn't a big deal. But what we see in the research is that about 50% of snorers have obstructive sleep apnea, that about 50% of snorers have obstructive sleep apnea, which is a very debilitating disorder where you stop breathing in the middle of the night and can really impact your health and your health outcomes. So if you're a snorer, if you stop breathing during the middle of the night, I would say definitely get that checked out from a sleep professional. And then the third one I would say is probably people that think that hitting the snooze button is a good idea.

So many of us will set our alarms and, you know, want to sleep in a little bit more. alarms and you know want to sleep in a little bit more so that alarm goes off they hit that snooze button and then maybe fall asleep pretty quickly again but what that alarm is doing is it's interrupting that sleep cycle that you're having and so it may be it's bringing you out of those deeper stages of sleep and so the best thing you can do is just set that alarm at the latest time possible. You know, if you do have to get up by an alarm clock. That's, that's actually really interesting, because I know a lot of people, I'm sure you do too, who kind of proactively set several snooze alarms so they can hit them. I know a lot of people who know when they need to wake up, so they'll set alarms just so they can snooze up to that point.

And they say it feels really good to hit that snooze button. Is there something going on there in the brain with going back to sleep after that? Why do people seem to enjoy that so much? That is a great question. I'm not actually sure if there's something satisfying within the brain of just hitting that snooze button and being able to fall asleep, you know, get back into the stages of sleep. But yeah, ideally, you want to set that alarm just for that latest time that you can and just get up after the alarm goes off, because then you're not interrupting that sleep cycle that you're in. And interestingly, there was some research about the selection of the alarm, alarm noise. So more melody, more harmonious,

not that harsh beeping sound actually puts people in better moods and affects their alertness. So when you do have to set that alarm, pick more of a less harsh type of noise. That's actually a great little golden nugget for everybody out there who wakes up to the iPhone duck quacking sound. Really quick, before we move on to the next question, you said that the myth of, you know, needing X number of hours per sleep, but then you did highlight that range of seven to nine. What percentage of people would

you say can really perform well outside of that range in that like six hour of sleep area? Because a lot of people say, oh, I of us are not hitting that seven hour mark. So this is an area that people need to work on. Just because of all of the busyness of how busy we are. First, sleep is kind of the first thing to go once we get busier and busier. We just try and, you know, stay up later to try and get things done. And then that negatively impacts how much sleep that we're getting. But when we look at the percentage of people that can perform well on, you know, have no performance decrements, it's typically about less than one percent of the population can perform well on six hours or less of sleep per night there was one study

showing it was looking at specific mutation in a gene and they found a father-son duo who were sleeping five hours, four and a half hours, had no memory impairments, had no performance impairments from this, ended up being a genetic mutation that they had. And when they looked at that genetic mutation across the entire population, the entire population. It's literally like one in 4 million people that have this mutation. So if you think you're doing fine on less sleep, the chances that you actually are, are very low. And our brain is, is kind of leading to that effect. So we think we're performing well in the studies with sleep deprivation. But when you actually look at their performance, they're performing horribly. That's interesting. So the perception that people have of perhaps needing less sleep doesn't actually show up.

It's more of just you kind of get used to that level of performance and that becomes your baseline. So actually, yeah, that leads into the next question I have for you, which I think a lot of people, they know they need to sleep more. They've heard that it's valuable, but for people who are fitness enthusiasts, lifters, athletes of any kind, like what are some of the most tangible ways that sleep impacts your performance, your body composition, all of that stuff? Is there really some tangible things that people can look forward to if they improve their sleep? Yes. So reaction time is a big one. So we see in the sleep deprivation studies that reaction time is impacted. So you're slower to react to a stimulus. You have more lapses in attention

where you don't react to the stimulus after a second or so. It also impacts our decision making. So when you're sleep deprived, you make riskier decisions. Number one impacts our mood. So sleep deprivation can impact our mood. And when we're performing a sport, we want to be in a good mood, an optimal mood state, which will help our performance. in a good mood and optimal mood state, which will help our performance. Also, the studies have shown better sprint times with, with more sleep. So it can impact how fast you are on just sprinting as along with that reaction time. Those are just a few of the kind of direct measures that we see for athletes.

If we look at more indirect measures, we know that poor sleep is associated with a higher injury risk, also associated with immunity. So if you're getting poor sleep, you're going to be more likely to catch a virus, a cold, which, you know, you want to be healthy and be out there on the field. And then also nutrition choices as well, which we can dive a little bit deeper into body composition and nutrition if you want. No, yeah, I like that a lot. I think that the direct measures, particularly the sprinting, Oh, yeah, I like that a lot. I think that the direct measures, particularly the sprinting, is worth hitting it on and really noting because sprinting is a very power-driven activity. And for anybody who's lifting weights, that's also very power-driven. And if you're going to see

a decrease in sprint outputs, I don't think it would be too great of a kind of inference to assume it would also impact other high power things like weightlifting. And then on those more indirect things, the way it can impact immunity and even decision making, like those are things that allow you to stay active and stay moving towards your goals. So if you have those compromised, they might not directly hurt your performance, but they'll certainly impact how much you can train and work towards your goals. So with that decision-making stuff, I'm sure that plays a little bit into body composition, right? Because if we're not making good decisions, it probably impacts the nutritional choices we make. But are there other factors with nutrition and body composition that are tied to sleep that people should be aware of? Yes, we see poor, generally what we, now there's not a lot of

research out there on this, but from what I could gather, poor sleep quality is associated with lower lean body mass and higher fat mass. So if we kind of unpack that a bit, what we'll see is with less sleep, we see less growth hormone is being released. So during sleep, we have deep sleep that's occurring. And this is typically where growth hormone is released, where tissues and muscles are being repaired. So with less sleep, we typically see less growth hormone being released. We also see less testosterone being released as well. There was one study where they had participants sleep five hours a day for one week, and they found about a 15% reduction in testosterone, which if we look at normal aging, you know, maybe one to 2%

per year testosterone reduction. So that would equate to, you know, about a 24 year old aging to that of a 40 year old in a matter of a week when we're looking at testosterone. Wow. Is that because those hormones are synthesized during sleep or is there another reason for that? If we look at growth hormone specifically, about 70% of growth hormone hormone is released during sleep. So I think that yes, so I think that has plays a lot into this is that a lot of these hormones are being released during sleep. Very cool. Very cool. Anyway, I didn't I didn't mean to cut you off back to the the beyond kind of the hormonal stuff with body composition, fat mass and lean mass. Let's say somebody's in a calorie deficit where their intake of calories is limited.

Does sleep play a bigger role for those people? Yeah, I mean, if we look at, you know, appetite hormones, for example, so ghrelin is increased with sleep. So you feel hungrier. Leptin is decreased, you know, so you feel less full. And then we see an overall kind of gravitation towards more calories consumed during sleep. So there's about a 400. If you look at all the literature on sleep loss, they find about an average of 400 calories increased due to sleep loss.

So yeah, I think it's related a lot to the hormones. Also cortisol is increased with sleep deprivation, which is related to muscle breakdown as well. So yeah, I think it's a number of different things that are occurring during sleep, mostly related to the hormones, but then has downstream effects as to what you're actually consuming. So it would be safe to say that anybody who's getting lackluster sleep is probably creating a hormonal environment that's very suboptimal for performance. Absolutely. And with the decision-making stuff, are there examples in the literature particularly correlated with food choices and sleep loss? I know you said there's about 400 calories more that people eat when they are deprived of sleep.

Is that just purely because they're more hedonistic maybe? Or does it really come down to the fact that they are just making poor decisions? So it's related, what they see is they see less vegetable and fruit intake with sleep deprivation. There's more of a craving for carbs, fats, sugary foods is what some of the research has found. And yeah, so that's and also an increase in snacking in the late evening. So it's also the timing of that consumption as well. That's interesting. Are there particular times if sleep and optimizing sleep is something you're focusing on? Is intake of food going to impact your ability to sleep? So for example, if I am somebody who eats very late at night, close to going to bed,

is that going to impact my sleep positively or negatively? Do we know anything from the research about when we eat towards closer to bed impacting our sleep? Yes, there is research to show, you know, one of the sleep hygiene tips that you'll see out there is to not eat too close to bedtime. And in particular, you know, when we're dealing with athletes and we're a little bit more lenient in this area, we still recommend that you shouldn't eat a large meal within three to four hours of bedtime, but potentially adding in a little snack right before bed may not be as a big of an issue for people. So trying to limit those big meals to earlier in the day. And then if you're really starving before bedtime,

maybe have a little bit of a snack, nothing spicy, nothing fatty, because, you know, our body needs to rest and digest during sleep. Sorry, our body needs to rest during sleep. And if we're digesting the food that we just consumed, it's shown to decrease our sleep quality. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because I feel just from my own experience, fattier foods tend to digest more slowly and spicy foods could cause digestive distress that might impair sleep. consistent timed meal in the evening, meaning I really try to put my dinner at around 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., three to four hours before, would you say that that's a practical thing that people can do daily to really help their sleep? Absolutely. I think any kind of regularity in our schedule,

so even having to do with sleep timing, meal timing, exercise timing is good for our body. And so having regular meal times, you know, is really important. I don't think there's been a lot of research kind of looking at the variability in meal times. variability in mealtimes. But I would guess that having a regular mealtime is going to be important for our body to function properly and to really anticipate when I should be digesting, when should I be sleeping, when should I be awake. And as it relates to sleep timing, having a consistent schedule is really important for us to know when we should be awake and when we should be asleep as far as like hormones and things are concerned.

So a lot of those kind of practices tie into that management of the circadian clock, if you will. Yes. And another one, this is a big one that I find comes up a lot. We know that caffeine has an impact on wakefulness and giving us energy, but to what degree does caffeine consumption negatively impact sleep and are there some parameters or guidelines for caffeine consumption that you would give to the general population because I find that almost everybody at least here in America consumes some form of caffeine every single day are there things people need to be aware of when consuming caffeine or caffeinated products?

In general, caffeine increases the time it takes us to fall asleep. It decreases our continuity of sleep, so we have more little awakenings. And it can also decrease our slow-wave sleep, that deep sleep that we're getting. But I would say those effects may be related to how you metabolize caffeine. So there was some research by Dr. Guest showing that four milligrams of caffeine prior to a cycling time trial, four milligrams of caffeine per kilogram prior to a cycling time trial impaired performance by 14% in slow metabolizers of caffeine, whereas the fast metabolizers, it actually benefited their performance. So I think there's relationships with performance and sleep as it relates to how you metabolize caffeine. So that's something to throw out there to people that it may not be improving your performance that much

depending on how you metabolize it. And so if you're more of that slow metabolizer, which is kind of related to your sensitivity of caffeine, you may want to restrict your caffeine use to before, definitely before, you know, maybe 10 a.m. But I would say in general, we want to avoid caffeine in the afternoon if possible. And so no coffee past noon, maybe adding in a green tea or a black tea in the afternoon if you're really tired. But caffeine use is something that I was an avid coffee drinker during my graduate work. And then just recently, with about a year ago, I completely went off caffeine and am doing more decaf coffee in the morning.

Sometimes I'll have green tea, black tea, and it's made a huge difference for me in my sleep quality. So I think that's something that people can play around with is, are you needing coffee to get you through the day? What happens? I think more drinking it strategically and not automatically is a good piece of advice for people. Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think that you highlighted some nuances there for people who perhaps were unaware that there's variability in how we metabolize caffeine. And that can explain why some people respond more intensely to it or notice that acute energetic effect. Other people might not. And it also might be why some people can't fall asleep after they have caffeine

where other people, it doesn't impact their sleep as much. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Another question that I have that I think is interesting, given that most people do not get, not most people, but you said about a third of people probably get below that seven to nine hour mark. Is there any utility to napping? And if there is, are there

guidelines as to how to nap effectively or how to nap without waking up feeling incredibly groggy? Because I know that's something that happens a lot. If I nap too long, I wake up and I feel exponentially worse. Do we know anything about napping? Is there any benefit to it at all? Or should people just wait and try to get more sleep that night? Napping is a great tool that people can take advantage of. And those people that nap are more productive than those who don't, even if they're getting a proper amount of sleep per night. So even just a five-minute, 10-minute nap is going to boost your productivity, boost your mood, boost your alertness. And so I would recommend napping even if you are getting a sufficient amount of sleep at night.

But absolutely, it can be a way to supplement for you if you're not getting the proper amount of sleep at night. So for example, I use napping when maybe I went to bed a little bit later, or I got a really poor night's sleep. My kids woke me up in the middle of the night. I'll still get up at the same time, which is really important for people. You still want to get up at the same time, which is really important for people. You still want to get up at the same time, but I'm going to supplement a nap, which is going to help counteract some of that poor sleep that I got that night.

I would say timing of the nap should be between 1 and 4 p.m. That's when we see a dip in alertness related to our circadian rhythm and then you also don't want to make it too close to bedtime because that's going to impact your ability to fall asleep potentially so keeping it between 1 and 3 1 and 4 p.m and then limiting the nap to a short duration is going to help you avoid getting into those deeper stages of sleep where you're going to wake up feeling groggy. So for me, I'll set my alarm for 30 minutes. It takes me about 10 minutes to fall asleep. And then I'll have about a 20 minute nap. And I try and wake up naturally from that nap if I can. And I feel great. I feel good to go. If, for example, you maybe have some shift work

where you're not able to get a sufficient amount of sleep at night, you can supplement the following day with a longer nap opportunity. So something around the lines of about 90 minutes, which is about a complete sleep cycle. And that will help. We recommend this a lot for athletes, actually, if we're working with the swimmer who's having to get up at 6am for training, we'll recommend more of that longer nap to help supplement some of that lost nighttime sleep because they simply just can't go to bed early enough. some of that lost nighttime sleep because they simply just can't go to bed early enough. That's super interesting. So that's a huge nugget of gold to take home there that 20 to 30 minute nap between 1 to 3 or 4 p.m. is probably the best time and the best duration. Yes. That's solid gold. So with that, you, you brought up now twice, um, sleep cycles

and different stages of sleep. Um, how many stages of sleep are there and how long does it take to complete the entirety of a sleep cycle? Or I guess you would call it a kind of journey through each of those stages and then if you feel like expanding on it what are the differences between those stages of sleep because I've heard I hear all the time people say deep sleep shallow sleep could you expand on that a little bit sure so um we cycle through non-REM and REM sleep throughout the night. So non-REM, non-rapid eye movement sleep, and then REM sleep is rapid eye movement sleep where we're primarily dreaming. And we'll start off in a lightest stage of sleep, stage one, non-REM one, which takes up about 5% of our sleep time. We'll then go into stage two,

which is a bigger chunk of our overall sleep time, takes up about 50% of our sleep time across the night. And then we'll get into that deepest stage of sleep, stage three, where the growth hormone is being released and where it's really hard to wake someone up during that sleep. So we'll go from non-REM 1 to 2 to 3. We might cycle back into 2. And then we may have a couple awakenings that you wouldn't even remember during the night. And then we'll get into stage REM sleep, that rapid eye movement sleep where we're primarily dreaming.

And that's gonna occur approximately 90 minutes after we fall asleep and we'll have a lot of our deeper stages of sleep stage three occurring in the first half of the night where we'll have a lot of that REM sleep occurring in the last half of the night although we recycle through non REM and REM throughout the night, although we cycle through non-REM and REM throughout the night. And people get hung up on, people get hung up on, you know, how much REM sleep should I be getting? How much deep sleep should I be getting? And there are ways to kind of boost our deep sleep, which would be things like exercise, reducing some of that caffeine intake. And so there are ways to kind of change that,

but we can't really control how we progress through each of those stages across the night. We can maybe adjust some of the overall numbers, but we can't really control how we progress through these stages. And so non-REM sleep is important for memory, clearing out some of the toxins in the brain. Those are some of the processes that are occurring during non-REM sleep as well as that hormone release. And then REM sleep is kind of where we assimilate previous experiences with our current experiences that are happening to try and consolidate some of those memories and really kind of put the whole picture together of our experiences that occurred

from the previous day. That's super, super interesting. So I think there's two things that really come to mind that might impact sleep. I don't know how much each of these does, but alcohol and then cannabis consumption. are those two things that people need to consider as to potentially being detrimental to sleep yes so alcohol can help us fall asleep more quickly similar with cannabis but it does impact the quality of your sleep. So with cannabis in particular, we see reductions in REM sleep. And we also see that with alcohol as well. But people may think that, oh, you know, I can fall asleep much quickly, much more quicker. That must mean that this is improving the quality of my sleep. But in reality,

it's not. It's actually leading to poor sleep quality. That's actually, that's really, really interesting. So on the flip side of that, as we kind of wind down here, are there any supplements that have been shown in the literature to be positively impactful for sleep or perhaps help us fall asleep or get better sleep? So melatonin is one that people are, at least a lot in the younger athlete community, we're seeing a lot more melatonin use And kids are, you know, they're nicknaming it Mellies. But what we see with melatonin is number one, you don't, it's not a regulated substance. So you don't really know what you're getting. And so there was a research study showing that the range of what you're actually getting is just completely way off of what the label is saying.

So that's something to keep in mind. You want to make sure if you are using melatonin that you use a reputable company. But melatonin in general is more valuable for jet lag, and it works in more of a circadian rhythm type of scenario so if someone is preparing for jet lag melatonin might be a good use of a supplement in that instance or if there's a night owl out there who's really having a hard time falling asleep before 2 a.m., taking melatonin would potentially be useful in that instance. I would say that tart cherry juice is actually kind of an up-and-coming supplement

that has been shown to help people with insomnia as well as improve the quality of sleep in just the average person. So increasing some of the deeper stages of sleep, just improving that overall sleep quality. So I'd say maybe tart cherry juice would be something to look into. Personally, I don't really use any supplements. There's nothing out there that's so convincing to me that I would use a supplement. I think there's so many more bigger rocks out there that people can do.

For example, putting away your phone an hour before bedtime that you can do that will help versus just taking a pill. Yeah, that's actually segues nicely into essentially what would be my last question, which are given the populations that you work with, all the practice you have, the education you have in the sleep space, what are some of the best practices that people can implement to increase the quality of their sleep, to get into a routine with sleep. And you can fire these off as rapidly as you like or dive into them as much as you like. But I know that there's a lot of things out there that people can do. You hit on one big one with the phone, but what else can people do to really start to move towards better, more restful sleep?

start to move towards better, more restful sleep? Getting lots of light in the morning is really important to help set our circadian rhythms to the current time. So that is a big one, especially, you know, a lot of us are inside more with the COVID-19 recommendations, you know, we're supposed to be in our house as much as possible, which is great. But trying to get maybe a walk in the morning, getting at least 30 minutes of light exposure in those morning hours is really, really useful for people at improving their sleep quality. So that's a big one that I think people can take advantage of is just trying to get light exposure in the morning outside, which is way brighter than our indoor lighting. So that's why it's important to get outside even on a cloudy day, we see much greater light exposure when you're outside versus being indoors. side versus being indoors. Another thing that I would recommend would be having a good pre-sleep routine. So starting off with a bedtime alarm. So setting an alarm about an hour before you want to be in bed and that will be a reminder for you to you know put away those electronic devices.

Maybe take a warm bath or shower, which has been shown to make it easier to fall asleep. Another tip would be having a to-do list. So writing a to-do list, which will help offload those thoughts from your mind and make it easier to fall asleep. And then just kind of incorporating maybe reading a paper book before bed, which kind of activates that relaxation system. Just doing more relaxing activities is really, really great for people. So having that light exposure in the morning, having a good pre-sleep routine, making sure your sleep schedule is consistent is really important. Potentially adding in a nap, watching your caffeine, alcohol, cannabis consumption. And then another one, I would say kind of a neat tip that people might not be aware of is to bank sleep leading into sleep deprivation.

And we tell this a lot for athletes. They, you know, a lot of times they'll be anxious prior to an important competition. They may not sleep very well that night before. So we'll tell them get lots of sleep leading into that in the week or two before that important competition. So go to bed a little bit earlier, maybe sleep in a little bit later, kind of keep that consistent across those one to two weeks prior to that competition. And then they perform better during that competition than if they were just getting their regular amount of sleep. And so the research has shown that getting more sleep leading into an important event or even leading into sleep deprivation period.

So if you're, let's say traveling, or maybe you have a night shift coming up, if you can get more sleep prior to that, you're going to perform better with less sleep during that period of sleep loss. That's interesting. You said something that kind of piqued my interest. You said the word night shift, which I believe my phone and most people's phones have a mode that you can turn on called a night shift mode that supposedly limits how much, I guess, blue light comes out of the phone. Is that a replacement for putting the device away or should people genuinely just put the phone away and kind of not really worry about the night shift mode? I think having the night shift mode and on Android devices you can

use, there's a lot of phones now come standard with having a blue light filter. So you can program that on your phone. There's apps out there for our laptops, such as Twilight is an app that you can use that will gradually reduce some of that blue light depending on when the sun sets in your area so those yes I think absolutely at a minimum people should be using those and potentially maybe even adding wearing sunglasses maybe wearing blue light blocking glasses which will block out the blue light, which our circadian rhythms are most sensitive to in that two to three hours before bedtime. So that's when we're most sensitive to the blue light. So having those apps on is important for people, especially in, you know, let's say three hours before bedtime.

But then putting the devices away an hour before bed, because it's not just about the blue light, it's about the interaction with the device, the potential things that you're looking at, so can stress you out as well. So if I'm watching the news an hour before bedtime and I have the blue light blocker on my phone, you know, that's not really gonna, the actual news and the stress from that news and the anxiety from that news is gonna impact my sleep quality more than just potentially the blue light. That's really good advice. I think that that's something that probably could have gotten overlooked in all this. And that's just that the simple act of kind of being stimulated that late could impact

the restfulness of our sleep. Last question I have is, does temperature and does darkness of your sleep area impact sleep in any way? Yes, it does. So you want to keep your sleep environment like a cave, cool, dark, and quiet. And for me, this was kind of a recent switch for me. kind of a recent switch for me. About six months ago, I stayed at a cabin in Golden, British Columbia. There was electricity to the cabin, but there were no noises. It was pitch black. And this really made me realize when I stayed at this cabin, I slept amazing. All of my whole entire family slept in. And when I would wake up, I woke up during the middle of the night once, opened my eyes,

literally put my hand in front of my face and I could not see my hand. So that really made the difference for me to change up my sleep environment at home. And so I ended up getting blackout curtains, blackout shade. So I have a pull down shade, I have blackout curtains on top of that. I never really had electronic devices or anything in my room. But now I wear earplugs, I wear a mask. And I think that's really made a difference in my overall sleep quality. So for people, I think it's really important to know that your sleep environment is very important. And what can you do to help make it more dark, cooler, and quiet? So you mentioned temperature, our body naturally, our body temperature naturally drops when we fall asleep. So having a cool environment is important for that good sleep quality.

That's awesome. So if you guys get nothing else from this, just know that if you can't sleep, you needn't look any further than golden British Columbia. Rent a cabin out there and you'll be just fine. So, Amy, thank you so much for your time today. Just in closing, one quick question. You've obviously achieved a lot of success. You work in a very prestigious role with a lot of really, really important agencies, people. What is a piece of advice that you would give to the listeners that's helped you achieve the success that you've achieved?

I would say don't worry about your age, I guess. I would say like when it comes to your goals, don't think that you're too old to accomplish this or too old to accomplish that. For me, I started my PhD, my master's and PhD when I was 30 years old. And then, you know, from that point, I, I had kids, you know, it was like, I knew I wanted to get a PhD. And, but I was like, Oh, I want to have kids at the same time. And, but for me, I just went for it, started off a little bit older, had kids during my graduate, graduate work during my master's PhD and postdoc. And I didn't let age kind of prevent me from starting something new.

That's awesome. I think that's fantastic advice. And again, guys, Amy is one of, if not the top sleep scientist out there. And if you want to find more of her content, you can find it. Where at, Amy? So I'm on Twitter. I'm on instagram at sleep for sport and then i'm also developing a website sleepwelltowin.com um i'm still working on that uh could take a little while but uh hoping for that to be up for people to look for some good content there.

That's awesome. Amy, thank you so much for your time. I'll be sure for everybody listening to link both social media handles Amy mentioned in the comments below or in the podcast notes. So you guys will have plenty of stuff to explore and dive into as well as probably some of the other podcasts you've been on. Amy, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. All right, guys.

So that wraps things up for the episode today with Dr. Amy Bender. And remember, you can find her on Instagram and Twitter at sleep4sport. And again, I want to thank Amy so much for coming on. And again, encourage you guys to take advantage of that eight to seven to nine hours a day that you're sleeping. Think about that as an opportunity to become a better athlete, to become better at what you're focusing on in every avenue of your life. Sleep really is an incredible performance enhancing thing. We all have access to do me a favor,

leave me a five-star rating and written review on iTunes or whatever the heck you listen to on makes a big difference. Thanks so much for tuning in guys. Remember it's always a good day to be a good person. Peace.