Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Bite: Tips for BETTER Sleep ft. Chris Winter

Starting point is 00:00:00 Cold temperature is really better for our sleep. So people who work out and do ice baths or even a warm bath or shower at night. So when you get out of it, as you cool down, that really sort of sets the stage for some great sleep. Power Project family, this is a power bite and a power bite is a highlight from a full length episode that we do not want you to miss. Links to the full episode are on the podcast show notes, along with special perks for all of our beautiful listeners. Enjoy. You know, I'm also curious about this because when we were talking earlier, when you were talking about kids and how doctors will sometimes say, hey, take some melatonin, here you go. A lot of people still supplement melatonin on rough nights. And I've heard that melatonin might not be the ideal supplement to try to take for sleep. So can you talk to us a little bit about that? But then also along with melatonin, what would you say are some like practices or good supplementation to take before bed? Because

Starting point is 00:00:59 like personally, I'll sometimes eat like if I'm fairly low carbohydrate as far as my diet, because they all tend to make me a little bit tired when I have them. So I'm kind of thanksgiving. Yeah, I kind of use that before bed. So like when I if I usually have carbs, if I do, it'll be in the meal that I have before I go to bed because I'm already going to start feeling tired and then I have better, more restful sleep. going to start feeling tired and then I have better, more restful sleep. So what are some practices that we can do to help us get better sleep and supplements that we should maybe try or avoid? I don't think I've ever had anybody figure that out on their own, but I'm a big believer that your meal first thing in the morning should be more focused on protein because protein tends to create more chemicals in our brain that facilitate wakefulness.

Starting point is 00:01:46 And like I said, you know, you have Thanksgiving, apple pie, stuffing, you know, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, all the stuff your grandmas and aunts make. And then you sit down and watch the lions play the cowboys and immediately fall asleep in the first quarter right on the couch, which is great because you don't have to do the dishes. So that massive carbohydrate load is very sleep-promoting based upon the way it interacts with insulin in our body, and you all probably know this better than I do. It's not necessarily the tryptophan in the turkey. If you want tryptophan in your diet,

Starting point is 00:02:16 you're going to get a lot more out of it. Chickpeas, hummus, game meats, turkey, particularly domestic turkeys that we raise, really don't have that much tryptophan in them. So that myth of, oh, it's the tryptophan that made you feel sleepy. It's not at all. It's that massive carbohydrate load that you just exploded in your gut at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Starting point is 00:02:35 And now your brain is feeling kind of tired dealing with it. So carbs at night are great. I agree with you. I don't think melatonin is a fantastic supplement. I think it does a lot of negative things. One being it's kind of convincing somebody, you, a child, that you need something to fall asleep at night, which you don't. If you want to exercise your melatonin muscle, one of my favorite things when I go work with professional sports teams is their training center will often have a deck outside. So if you want to go to your medicine ball or do your whatever, you can walk outside and do it. So to me, if you really want a lot of melatonin in your life, work out outside or in a gym that's got tons of ambient light and do it

Starting point is 00:03:18 first thing in the morning. What that does is tell your brain to stop making melatonin. Melatonin is not a sleep aid. It's a sleep timing aid. It's trying to align all of our sleep needs with day and night. So if you need seven hours, you need eight and you need nine and I need seven and a half. It's trying to create a situation where we're always getting that at night and awake during the day. That's what melatonin is doing. So then if you're getting lots of light exposure during the day, bright gym, getting outside to do some runs or some jumps or whatever you like to do, then after dinner, that's when you really want to start dimming the light. So turning off this bright overhead light and this little backlight right here, we could dim it. Lots of windows.

Starting point is 00:03:59 You want your brain to see that slow loss of light that comes as the evening comes. So you want to try to create an environment that does that. So if you're somebody who does some sort of exercise or stretching or yoga in the evening, that's fine. Just do it in a place that's not super bright lit. And it looks like one of you might be wearing some blue blocker glasses. You got to be on there and edit your podcast and get everything ready for your next guest or whatever. I'd rather you not be on your computer late into the night but if you have to wearing something that keeps that blue green light out of your eyes will keep the melatonin coming even though it's light even you got this kind of light in your face so to me you know supplements with like zma a lot of

Starting point is 00:04:41 athletes like to use that i'm a neurologist by training. Brains, bodies, bodies and brains love magnesium. So I don't think there's really a problem with that. But the word supplement means you're already in a good place. You're just trying to make it even better. So that's where I like the way you use that word, because that's where I just distinguish a supplement versus something you're dependent upon. Hey, you just traveled to L.A. and you forgot your ZMA. How do you feel? I don't care. I'm fine.

Starting point is 00:05:09 I just like to use that to take my sleep to a little bit of a better level. Oh, God, I forgot the ZMA. Turn the plane around. I got to go back home and get my ZMA because I won't be able to sleep without it. That's horseshit. Don't be that. So, you know, it's fine to look at things you know, things like ZMA, tart cherry juice. I think there's pretty decent studies about not only with sleep, but also inflammation. You know, you really rip your body up in the gym today. I think that's a wonderful thing to be consuming in the evening to help you sleep and recover better and maybe tamp down a little bit

Starting point is 00:05:42 of inflammation that you've got. I'm also a big believer in temperature. You know, a really cold temperature is really better for our sleep. So people who work out and do ice baths or even a warm bath or shower at night. So when you get out of it, as you cool down, that really sort of sets the stage for great sleep. There's some little devices that even cool your beds. I think they're awesome because guys like you marry people who don't like it cold. And all these athletes are like, oh, God, when I'm with my girlfriend, she likes it 74 degrees and I'm like sweating so badly at night.

Starting point is 00:06:19 I got to take my shirt off and lay a towel down on the bed. And they're so excited when they go on the road because they get complete control of the Four Seasons thermostat. And they're like opening it up, trying to rig it to go even lower than what the hotel will allow. So cold temperatures, I'm a huge fan of for about 20 different reasons. Quick question about temperatures, because there are devices that actually cool down your mattress. Love it. There's a company called Eight Sleep that has that.

Starting point is 00:06:50 How do you feel about that? I love it. Eight Sleep, you're right, has an actual mattress that when you purchase comes with this equipment that you pour water in it, and it'll cool your mattress quite cold. I will tell you, if you said, and I have no financial relationship with any of the products I'm talking about outside of my book, so I'm not trying to sell you or your listeners, viewers, anything.

Starting point is 00:07:12 But if you said, Chris, what is the one product that you would recommend that seems to really impact people's sleep the most? It's products in that line. Power Project family, you know how much we talk about sleep on this podcast. A lot. Because sleep is one of the biggest things that you need for muscle gain, fat loss. I can't believe your cravings. You need good quality sleep. And that's why we are super pumped to be partnering with an amazing sponsor, Eight Sleep. Now, Eight Sleep is a

Starting point is 00:07:39 mattress company that has something called the Pod Pro and the Pod Pro Cover. This is a cover that regulates the temperature of the mattress. So you can actually sleep cool. And they've done a lot of research showing that people that sleep on the eight sleep mattresses actually fall asleep 32% faster. But the great thing too, people, we over here at The Power Project are hot sleepers. And what I mean is that we sweat. We have many times in our old mattresses woken up in a puddle of our own liquids being sweat.

Starting point is 00:08:05 And let me tell you, that has not once happened in this eight sleep mattress because it keeps you cool while you sleep, which helps you get better restful quality sleep. Andrew, tell them more about it. Absolutely. Yeah. So and then another thing also is if you sleep with a partner and they maybe don't run as hot as you, you actually have dual temperature zones. So I can set mine extremely cold. My wife can set hers not as cold, but still cool. And that really is like that in and of itself is like, it's so helpful. And especially again, like I said, when you sleep with partner, they're happy, you're happy. You both wake up extremely happy. Everyone's happy. You got to

Starting point is 00:08:39 head over to eight sleep.com slash power project. That's eight spelled out. So E I G H T sleep.com slash power project. And you guys will receive $150 off your pod pro mattresses. Again, eight sleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes head over there right now. Pour water into this device. It circulates it through these little silicone, tiny little tubes in the mattress pad.

Starting point is 00:09:04 I mean, you can cool your bed down to like 57 degrees or something. And what's great about it is, is the mattress pad is split. So we've got one. So I keep mine as cold as it will go year round, 365 days a year. I mean, it's tough in the winter. You've got to kind of like, it's like getting into a cold pool. You kind of ease into your bed, but I love it.

Starting point is 00:09:23 My wife hates that she thinks i'm great she put her foot over on my side of the bed like oh my god i can't believe you're sleeping on that and so her zone is totally different so you do whatever you want in your zone we call our bed this is terrible north and south korea so i'm in like cold north korea she's in happy warm south korea so i Mike, you do whatever you want to on your side of the demilitarized zone. And even the bedroom temperature, you don't have to heat or cool your entire house or that entire floor to get your bed super cold. And it's cold all night long. So like I said, they have a very liberal return policy, all these companies. So if you get it

Starting point is 00:10:03 and hate it, they'll take it back. I don't think I've ever had anybody tell me that they didn't love it. Why is the temperature important? Does our body temperature need to be regulated somehow when we're going to sleep? Yeah, when you look at a brain, so there's the little wrinkly part of the brain where we think it has all our personality and whatnot. And then the brain stem that connects our brain to our spine is the part of the brain we share with earthworms and all kinds of animals, the more primitive part. When you actually look at temperature regulation in a human, in a lizard, in a snake or whatever, all those things tend to happen in the brainstem.

Starting point is 00:10:38 And that's also the part of our brain that interacts with our immune system and sleep, all in that same little tiny area. So when you look at the outward expression of our circadian rhythm, and our circadian rhythm is not just sleep, it's everything. Like when are we at our intellectual peak? When do we work out? When is our workout at its best? My guess is if you woke up a bunch of guys and said, okay, it's three o'clock in the morning, let's go hit the gym. That workout might not be quite as good as the 3 p.m. workout that you're used to every day because your body's kind of timing all these things out. So when you actually look at like body temperature, and if you've got one of those thermometers, you can stick on your

Starting point is 00:11:18 head because everybody's got one now with COVID, you know, you check everybody before they walk into your house. It's fun to like set it next to you and every 15 minutes or 20 minutes, take your temperature and do it throughout the day. You'll see this perfect little curve that it kind of emerges peaks around four o'clock tross about two hours before you wake up. So immune system temperature and sleep all get regulated in this one area in our hypothalamus. So when our temperature is not right,

Starting point is 00:11:42 we tend to sleep more poorly. And when we sleep poorly, we don't regulate temperature that well. And then we all know that when you're not sleeping poorly, when you're sleeping poorly, you're more likely to get sick and things like that or takes you longer to get better. So all those things kind of happen in the same part of our brain. So we can use that to our advantage if you've got kids or yourself. So tonight, before you go to bed, drop the thermostat a few degrees you know after dinner if you have a smart thermostat you can actually program it to start lowering the temperature in your house leading up to bed and if you've got that coupled with light dimming it's really powerful you know way to sort of help get your brain primed to sleep

Starting point is 00:12:21 and it's totally passive like we do it all the time and our kids have no idea're just kind of walking around like is it like date night why are the lights turned on so low around here like what's going on down here what are the adults doing down here listening to barry white and having romantic lighting everywhere like no no we're just getting ready for sleep you know that's all you need to concern yourself with

Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Bite: Tips for BETTER Sleep ft. Chris Winter

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