Sleep is the Ultimate ROI with Dr. Elie Gottlieb

with Dr. Elie Gottlieb

Nov 8, 2024 · 00:41:36

Welcome to The Total Entrepreneur Mind, Body, Spirit, where we turn cutting-edge science into practical strategies for entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Dr. John Torrance, entrepreneur, Inc. 5000 honoree, and professor of entrepreneurial practice at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management. Each episode, we dive into mental, physical, and spiritual health with expert guests offering actionable insights to help you thrive and perform at your highest level. Let's get started. Today, I am really excited for our conversation with Dr. Eli Gottlieb. He is a sleep neuroscientist with over 10 years of sleep, circadian rhythm, and neuroscience research experience across academia, clinical neuroscience, and industry, Fortune 100 and startup companies. He is currently the head of applied sleep science at SleepScore Labs, a business-to-business consumer sleep tech company offering evidence-based sleep APIs and R&D services to characterize and improve population sleep health. Prior to joining SleepScore, Dr. Gottlieb led a team of researchers at Johnson Johnson working on the Lake Nona Life Project, which was a multigenerational study aimed at identifying behavioral health factors that contribute to long-term health and wellness. He remains a visiting researcher at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and University of Melbourne in Australia, where he investigates associations between cerebrovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, and sleep-wake dysfunction. He publishes what he preaches, leveraging user-generated big health data. He has over 50 peer-reviewed publications, conference abstracts, and book chapters. His areas of interest are in sleep neuroscience, consumer sleep, and health technology, big data, behavior change science, UI/UX, and science communication. What I love about Dr. Gottlieb is that not only is he an accomplished sleep scientist and academic, but he is actually in the trenches with a company. So I'm really excited to talk about sleep and entrepreneurship. So first question for you, you know, before we get into the rest of it, I just, I'm dying to know how you get into sleep science as a profession.

Yeah. So I would say I got lucky and it was all sort of serendipitous. In undergrad, I was a psychology and neuroscience major and I was looking to potentially go to grad school. And as part of the grad school process, of course you have to do some research. And the only professor that was taking research students at the time was someone who was teaching a course called Sleep, Dreams, and Behavior. And that sort of just like, it fanned the flame, right? Like I just got hooked immediately just because sleep is this thing that we all do every single day. We spend a third of our lives doing it, but it's pretty mysterious and it's pretty sort of ridiculous from the outside looking in, right? Like even from an evolutionary perspective, it makes no sense, right? Like we spend a third of our lives doing it when we're asleep. We're not foraging for food. We're not mating. There were all these like things that just didn't make any sense about it. And yet You know, here we are ideally sleeping 7 to 9 hours a night. So undergrad research, and then I had a stint at Johnson Johnson leading some of their sleep research. And now I'm at SleepScore Labs. I'm the head of applied sleep science at SleepScore, working on a lot of our B2B offerings. So our APIs, our SaaS offerings, we do a lot of R&D for some of the top brands in the space, the Therabodies of the world, the mattress firms. So I've been really lucky to get, you know, the best of both worlds when it comes to academia and now working in industry.

Yeah. You know, I love that. And I think we've got that connection too, right? Because, you know, I, I run a healthcare company and I also am a professor of entrepreneurial practice. So yeah, I love the ability to, you know, take the academic and clinical side and just kind of match 'em up. That's really cool. Before we move on, tell us a little bit more about SleepScore and, you know, what, what types of things you do to help improve the population's sleep health.

So SleepScore is a B2B company that spun out of ResMed. So ResMed, for those that don't know, is the largest medical device company when it comes to sleep devices. So any kind of CPAP machine, you know, obstructive sleep apnea, they've kind of monopolized the space. And we spun out because we wanted to focus not on those who are sick, but those who have what we call subclinical or nonclinical sleep issues that still warrant attention, right? Like that's closer to 50 to 75% of the population. We initially created a piece of technology that measures sleep without touching the body. That was our sort of breakthrough hardware. And then we realized, you know, like, you know, measuring is great and all, but what we really need is improvement, right? Like just because I'm sleeping 6 hours, if you tell me that, excuse me, without any information about what to do about it, I'm sort of helpless there. Right. And that can add to my stress and anxiety. So we developed a software called the Sleep Score app and embedded it into our hardware as well that takes all of that objective data and essentially phenotypes you into a certain kind of sleeper and personalizes a sleep improvement program based on your sleep, based on your goals, based on your chronotype to, you know, support sleep permissive behaviors. And then provide really engaging tools to not just improve your sleep, but keep you on the platform as well. So we've been doing this now for quite a bit. We have a randomized controlled trial showing the efficacy of our product. We're on 2 paths right now. We have research as a service offering where some of the largest, as I mentioned, retailers come in to have their products validated. We support the innovation process as well. We do all sort of in-house R&D on projects and on products. And then the other side of the business is a SaaS model. So we essentially inject all of our sleep and circadian technologies into other technologies and products that are trying to get into the sleep space.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to diving into all that in a minute. But before we get into sleep among entrepreneurs specifically, tell me more about the prevalence of sleep disorders and subclinical sleep issues in the general population first.

Yeah, it's really about 15 to 25% of the population that has a sleep disorder, right? The truth is that a lot of them go undiagnosed. 90% of obstructive sleep apnea cases go undiagnosed. You know, these patients require, and they already generally have a pretty clear, I would say, clinical pathway, right? Despite up to 90% of sleep apnea patients going undiagnosed, it's clear that if you have obstructive sleep apnea, You need CPAP. But for the rest of the population that doesn't have a sleep disorder, but still struggles with falling asleep, you know, staying asleep, going to sleep, poor quality sleep, we call this subclinical threshold sleep issues. And this is what really makes up 50 to 75% of the global population. The problem with this is that they're not really seen as sick people. And when they go to the doctors, they're sort of left to their own devices. Most physicians in the United States have about 1 to 2 hours of total sleep training throughout their entire residency. So these individuals, if they don't have a sleep disorder, they don't know where to go. So, you know, there's no like, if this, then that, like we have a clear clinical pipeline and for obstructive sleep apnea and insomnia and restless leg syndrome. And the truth is that their symptoms are so varied that they really do require a personalized approach and there's no silver bullet. So that's, you know, SleepScore's focus and has been my focus over the past, you know, 5 to 10 years is really focusing on not those with sleep disorders. They absolutely require help. You can't just tell someone to stop drinking coffee if they have a formal sleep disorder and they're not breathing 30 minutes out of every hour, right? Like that's not going to do anything. So the subclinical threshold space is a really interesting space. Instead of subclinical, we just call it sleepers. That makes up the majority of the population. 50 to 75% have poor sleep. 15 or so percent have a sleep disorder, that many of which go undiagnosed.

Yeah. And I think a lot of us, whether we're entrepreneurs or not, can relate to that. And I think especially as you get older and there's behaviors too that I've noticed. So, you know, I wore a Whoop band for a few years. Now I wear an Oura Ring just because I like the form factor a little bit better, right? Yeah, I see yours. And it's really been very instructive for me on my sleep. So, you know, I learned about how alcohol affects my sleep architecture, how late in the day I eat, how that affects me. I haven't really been able to see any like hard effects, like with cannabis use or anything. What, like, what's your experience or what do you know about how cannabis use affects sleep architecture and sleep quality?

Yeah. So it depends. Some of the psychoactive properties of cannabis are potent REM sleep suppressors. So although there is some literature suggesting that it helps with sleep onset, right, it can reduce the amount of time it takes to fall asleep depending on the person for 10 to 15 minutes, which could be about 20 to 40%. What's really happening is in the second half of the night where we would typically experience our REM sleep cycles, those are abolished for some people who are chronic cannabis users. So it's a double-edged sword. On one hand, you know, people like the effects because they are sedative in many ways. It helps people feel sleepy. You can help them fall asleep. But when we look at the actual architecture of someone's sleep, and really the gold standard way to do that is through EEG, when we put them through a formal sleep study, we see that there's a significant reduction in REM sleep in the second half of the night. And as we'll talk about later, REM sleep is critical for Many, many things, especially creativity. So I think ideally people would find support for their sleep issues with behavioral approaches first, right? Like the typical but boring sleep hygiene and circadian hygiene and light hygiene. And again, it's the great thing about these technologies is you can kind of experiment yourself to see, you know, what might be working for you. But I think it's really important that you rule out a sleep disorder before you do that.

Yeah, actually, you know, why don't we talk about some of those basic things first, like sleep architecture, what deep and the different cycles of REM are, what the implications are, and even just some sleep hygiene, right? Because I think those are super useful. I mean, I've learned a lot just by tracking my own biodata and sleep. Like I said, I know for me, if like my sweet spot to get a really great night of sleep, if I eat my last meal of the day no later than 3:30 in the afternoon, sleep is amazing. But that's hard to do in the real world, you know. So we'll talk about that, right? How to balance really good quality sleep with the demands of real life, especially among entrepreneurs. But could you just give us an overview of what a normal night's sleep architecture looks like? And then we can get maybe into some suggestions just for sleep hygiene.

Yeah. So within sleep, there are 4 main categories that sleep scientists and the sleep medicine community have Agreed upon. It could be measured in many different ways nowadays, but typically it was defined by our brain activity. And there's 2 main sort of categories. There's non-REM. REM is rapid eye movement. So non-rapid eye movement sleep, and then rapid eye movement sleep. Within non-rapid eye movement sleep, there's 3 stages. Non-REM 1, which is the lightest stage of sleep. You know, it's the first stage of sleep that you transition into when you're trying to fall asleep at night.

On your Oura, that might be what they call light sleep.

That's what they call light sleep. So typically the wearable devices will actually combine non-REM 1 and non-REM 2 into light sleep. Non-REM 2 is a deeper stage of sleep that is associated with what we call sleep spindles. And these, we think, are critical for memory consolidation. So what's interesting is that you have a lot of devices that are calling you know, non-REM 1 and non-REM 2 light sleep, but don't assume that light means not important, right? They're not synonymous. So light sleep is critical for overall sleep. In fact, light sleep takes up between 40 to 60% of your total sleep time for some people. So it's a good chunk. Then we get into deep sleep and that's non-REM 3. And this is characterized by these like high amplitude, low frequency waves in the brain. They're beautiful to look at. Where essentially your neurons are all firing in a sort of synchronized and harmonious way. And deep sleep is important for many, many things in the body. Growth hormone secretion, primarily it's secreted during deep sleep. We know that deep sleep is critical for mental fortitude and restoration. We know that the glymphatic system, which is this sort of newly discovered system in the brain, Which is responsible for flushing away toxins from the brain. Some of the toxins that are contributed to Alzheimer's disease, you know, as an example, that process is most efficiently driven during slow wave sleep or deep sleep. Then there's rapid eye movement sleep, which many call the deepest stage of sleep, but it's confusing with deep sleep. And rapid eye movement sleep is the stage of sleep where dreams are most likely to occur. REM sleep is incredible for many, many reasons. It's been a hot topic of study for decades now. If you're waking up consistently during REM sleep, and we'll talk about some of those findings earlier, you're less likely to be creative. Again, with memory consolidation, it's critical for memory. It's also involved in our executive functioning. And we think that REM sleep is critical. And as I mentioned, for memories, It essentially prunes some of the synapses in the brain during REM sleep, and it allows the most important memories to stay consolidated and those memories that are less important to essentially be washed or chipped away. So those are the 2 main categories of sleep. There's the non-REM and then there's the REM sleep.

I've heard the term non-sleep deep rest. How does that factor into this equation?

Yeah. So that was coined and I say popularized by obviously Andrew Huberman. I think when people think of sleep and restoration, it's typically binary, right? They think like the only way I can feel restored is if I sleep. There is some research to suggest that that's not the case, or at least the duration is also important. So naps, for example, which are obviously different than non-sleep deep rest, have been shown to improve some cognitive functioning. In fact, as low as a 10-minute nap has been shown to improve cognitive functioning without the effects of that grogginess. We call it sleep inertia.

Mm-hmm.

Some studies suggest that it's actually preferred to take a 10 or a 20-minute nap over a 30-minute or hour-long nap. So you can still get that cognitive boost without suffering from that sleep inertia. Non-sleep deep rest is different in that you don't enter a typical state of sleep in that you're not entering non-REM 1, non-REM 2. Non-REM 3 or REM, you are essentially in a more relaxed state. And it's still a developing area. It's unclear if the effects on cognition are as potent as, for example, a nap. I would say they're probably not. And in fact, there is some literature to suggest that waking up during non-REM 1, which is that sweet spot when you're trying to take a nap, is actually associated with creativity and problem solving. So people that are waking up, you know, right after, or, you know, in the middle of a non-REM 1 sleep stage might experience not only the cognitive boost that you would get from a 20-minute nap, but also some creativity and other cascading effects that you might not get from non-sleep deep rest. So the jury's still out in terms of its efficacy, but there is a plethora of research when it comes to overall sleep and of course naps as well.

Yeah, no, thanks for that. So the studies I read in preparation for this interview basically concluded that quality sleep is crucial for enhancing entrepreneurial outcomes, right? So while sleep problems can negatively impact things like innovation, entrepreneurial intention, even broader things like cognitive performance, overall health, you know, good quality sleep is kind of important for entrepreneurs, right? And if you're listening right now and you're interested in any of these studies, I'll put all the citations in the show notes. rather than rattling them off here and boring everybody, right? There seems to be this sleep paradox among entrepreneurs, right? So that is that they often trade sleep to advance their companies. Yet despite this, they're still achieving great things. But you have to wonder if they were getting better sleep, could they do even better things, right? So tell me a little bit about that.

So the sleep paradox, it's an interesting one, right? As you briefly mentioned, it's the idea that, you know, we have a lot of evidence that irregular sleep patterns, and sleeplessness undermine success. And they do that through many different ways, but especially by impairing our cognitive functioning, our decision-making, our creativity, our emotional regulation. And then on the other hand, right, like the entrepreneurial journey, it typically demands irregular hours, intense workload, stress, and anxiety. And it makes Sleepless nights seem like, you know, an inevitable and even a necessary part of achieving success. So I think my question when I was reading some of the literature is like, well, how do we reconcile the paradox? And first, I think we need to address the fact that, you know, what I think is actually a misconception that sleeplessness is a necessary ingredient I would argue that chronic sleep deprivation is more likely to hinder long-term achievement, you know, beyond just the effects of cognitive impairment and decision-making and creativity. There was also a 2012 study in Stockholm where they found that the strongest predictor of burnout across about 500 working individuals, it wasn't work hours or demands. It wasn't thoughts of work, you know, on days off or leisure time. It was too little sleep, right? Sleeping less than 6 hours. People that were chronically sleeping less than 6 hours, those were the individuals that were most likely to experience burnout. So I think we need to do our best to do 3 things really. Number one, we need to prioritize sleep as a non-negotiable investment. And the ROI is there, right? We know that. in the United States, the cost of sleep loss is equivalent to about 2.5% of our GDP.

Wow.

$120 billion in 2020, and it's projected to be $450 billion over the next 4 years. We spend $3,500 to $5,000 more per year on health costs just as a result of sleep deprivation. And a lot of this is falling on the burden of companies, right? Companies are enduring over 110% more on their company costs. So it's a big problem. So I think prioritizing sleep as a non-negotiable investment, that's number one. If you can't get those 7 to 9 hours, embrace quality over quantity, right? We were talking earlier about some of the things that we know to impact sleep quality, things that suppress our REM. So embrace the quality over quantity. I would rather someone get You know, 6.5 hours or 6 hours of quality sleep over 7 hours of interrupted sleep throughout the night. And if you can, as we were mentioning earlier, you know, implement the strategic rest and napping periods during the day. That's an easy win for most people. If it's 10 minutes, that's what the studies show is most efficacious when it comes to napping. So that's generally my thought around the sleep paradox. It's like, although it exists, We can combat it in some clear ways.

Yeah, you know, it's hard to, you know, because I coach student entrepreneurs, a lot of them are Gen Z and they've kind of grown up with this hero worship of entrepreneurs who literally kill themselves for their companies. And a lot of that is, you know, pulling all-nighters and wearing it as a badge of honor, right? And it's hard to explain to them when all they see is the to-do list and the milestones and the things they have to do. it's hard to convince them that they need to prioritize sleep. But like you said, the ROI is clear. You're going to be more creative. You're going to be more innovative, among other things. It was interesting how you said it kind of falls to companies and, you know, the healthcare system. And it made me think of when you're getting poor sleep and you're making poor decisions. I went right away to medical residents and just the catastrophe that whole situation is, right? It's always been a problem for me. And I hate to say it, but I don't like getting treated by residents because I just wonder how much they've slept, you know?

True. And you're wondering who's operating on you. Like, I'd rather have the surgeon who slept 9 hours that maybe didn't go to the best medical school over the Harvard surgeon who is only working on 2 or 3 hours of sleep. That's how much I know about the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition, on performance. So yeah, absolutely. And the truth is like, there's very clear effects. At a higher level in terms of like social interactions and leadership. I was looking into some of this research and I've known about some of this for a while, but I'd love to dig into that if that's okay. On, for example, abusive relationships in the workplace and loneliness. Poor sleep really seems to affect our social interactions and obviously our leadership style in 2 distinct ways. The first is through impacting our self-control. You know, which influences our supervisory behavior. Ultimately, it really trickles down to work engagement of the workers we're managing. So a 2014 study by Chris Barnes, incredible study. It looked at this. They had essentially a 2-week field study in the wild. It was like 80 or 100 leaders. And also they looked at their, what they call subordinates, but it was the employees as well. And every morning the leaders reported their sleep and the employees or the direct reports reported their leader's behavior as well and their own engagement each evening. And sure enough, on the days where the leaders or managers reported poor sleep quality, they engaged in significantly more jerky, abusive behavior. with less self-control. And what's even more interesting, I think, is on the days that this happened, the employees were more likely to report disengaging from work rather than, you know, leaning into their work and being motivated. It has this trickling down effect in all aspects of a company from the top down. I think the second way it impacts things is even more sinister. And that's through the moderate effects of sleep quality on loneliness. And it's this like legendary study by Matthew Walker, his postdoc at the time, Eddie Ben-Simon from UC Berkeley. And it's one of my favorite studies of all time. They basically had a group of participants randomized to either a normal sleeping condition or sleep deprivation. And they looked at the participants. like social behaviors. So they basically measured how far apart they prefer to be in terms of like physical distance from one another. And then they did fMRI scans and, you know, looked at obviously neural activity. And then the coolest part was they also looked at ratings from independent observers who watched videos of the participants in the study, but they were blinded to the sleep condition. And they found that the sleep deprived individuals, again, this is no surprise given the topic, but they had increased social withdrawal. They reported higher feelings of loneliness. But what I thought was the most interesting part was that the independent observers, they perceived the sleep deprived individuals as lonelier. And they themselves felt less inclined to interact with them. Wow. And worse yet, the perception of this made the observers feel lonelier themselves. Right. Wow.

It's just, it's just a vicious loop. It's just ungiving, right? Crazy.

Like, so not only does it cause individuals to feel socially withdrawn, but it can also lead to this, as you mentioned, like a self you know, reinforcing cycle of social isolation that, you know, affects many different hierarchies of our social environment.

And, you know, and as a founder entrepreneur, your team is everything, right? And if you're showing up as not your best self and risking losing them or risking disengagement, that's going to have, you know, terrible ramifications. So the case for the ROI for prioritizing sleep is clear. It's kind of hard to do in real life when you're dealing with, you know, entrepreneurs that are in the trenches, right? So do you want to talk now about some sleep hygiene strategies that they could use, or do you have other things that you think are important for entrepreneurs to know about sleep?

No, I think it's a great time to talk about sleep hygiene. Like sleep affects every physiological function in the body, our psychological function. What the heck can we do about it? And most people, I would say first and foremost, get screened. If you suspect that you or your loved one Has a sleep disorder. There's a lot of research on the effects of a partner with obstructive sleep apnea on your subsequent sleep, right? Like not everyone who snores has sleep apnea, but it's very common. So if you're choking or you're snoring significantly throughout the night, it's going to affect you and of course your partner. And insomnia is a widespread issue. It affects, you know, 10 to 20% of the population. And the good news is nowadays the gold standard treatment is not a drug. It's something called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, CBT-I. And there's now, you know, providers online. So if you can't meet with someone, you know, there's digital resources to support you. But for the rest of the population, as we mentioned earlier, that doesn't have a sleep disorder, there are a few things that you can do. First and foremost, I like to think of the pre-sleep wind-down routine as a critical component to overall sleep health. And a lot of people think of sleep as like a light switch, right? Like you finish work, you shut off your laptop, you get into bed and you try to fall asleep. What happens? You're in bed for an hour and a half trying to fall asleep because the truth is sleep is not a light switch. It's like landing a plane. You gotta take at least 2 to 3 hours before You actually get into bed to wind down. It takes time to build the pressure. We call it sleep pressure, where the longer you stay awake, the higher the sleep pressure. And it takes time to build this progressive relaxed state. So whatever puts you into a relaxed mood, do that. For me, that looks like a warm bath. Why do I do a warm bath? Because it's obviously like relaxing, a hot bath or any sort of heat actually cools your core body temperature, right? So we, our core body temperature needs to drop by about 1 to 2 degrees in order to initiate sleep. So that's one example, obviously mindfulness meditation for some people, deep breathing. And then of course, light.

I mean, the big one for entrepreneurs looking at screens all day, right?

Huge one. Now, with that said, I don't want to demonize blue light. I think we've done this enough. It's about the timing. Right. Blue light in the morning and early afternoon is critical. It's critical to support our overall cognition. It signals to our brain that it's time to be awake and active, not relaxed and sleepy. A lot of people that have these 2:00 PM grogginess periods, I recommend light hygiene and light therapy glasses where it essentially emits short wavelength blue light to support wakefulness. But there is the other side of the coin where excessively bright light before bedtime has been shown to impact melatonin. It suppresses our ability to release melatonin, which is responsible for setting our circadian rhythm.

Is it signaling to the brain that it's actually like noon outside and it tells you, hey, it's not time to sleep yet. Right. Is that the idea?

Yeah. Melatonin is also called the hormone of darkness. Just be in a dark place and your brain will naturally secrete melatonin if there's not an underlying condition.

Yeah. My, my wife, I drive her nuts, but I always tell her I like a low light environment at night. She doesn't necessarily like it, but that's what we do now.

Absolutely. So light is the key one. So for me, 2 hours before bedtime, I dim all of the lights in my house because that's really when the release of melatonin is supposed to start. An hour before bedtime, I take a warm bath or a hot shower, right? That cools my core body temperature. About 30 minutes before bed, I sometimes gratitude journal. There's a lot of research suggesting that your pre-sleep affect, how you feel before bed, greatly influences your actual sleep onset latency, the amount of time it takes to fall asleep. So things that can put me into a better psychological mood and state, I try to do. 15 minutes before bed, I turn down my AC to 65 degrees. Some people think I'm crazy.

I love that too. Colder the better at night. Right.

For most people, comfortably cool is the recommendation. 10 minutes before bed, sometimes I'll have like a sleepy time tea, just a relaxing ritual. And then if I'm still stressed, you know, I'll do some box breathing. It's 4 seconds in, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, hold again, and then repeat. That is my like wind-down routine. And it doesn't have to be that, right? That's the great thing about sleep is that everyone is different when it comes to their sleep habits and their sleep hygiene. There are some essentials, but make something that works for you. The other thing that I highly recommend is to take your mind off of yourself. It's one of the biggest problems in patients who have insomnia is that they are so hyper-aware of how they're feeling. And so hyper-aware of the potential effects of sleep deprivation that all they can focus on is their own state of mind. So I always recommend to take yourself on a mental walk, right? When you're in bed, the lights are out, you're ready to fall asleep, and you're only in bed once you're sleepy. That's the other thing. People get into bed, you know, because they want to extend their— they say, oh well, In order for me to get 8 hours of sleep, I have to be in bed for 12 hours.

Right.

So now you're training your bed as a place to be awake for 4 hours instead of asleep for 8 hours. Right.

Right. Yeah.

So once you've done that, take yourself on a high fidelity, and Matthew Walker is the one that talked about this. I love this. Take yourself on a well-known mental walk or a relaxing scene, right? Don't count sheep. This is a study by Dr. Alison Harvey from UC Berkeley where she had a group that were counting sheep and she had a group that did nothing and had a group that were taking themselves on a high-fidelity mental walk. And those that were picturing and walking through a relaxing scene fell asleep over 20 minutes faster than the other group. Wow.

So counting sheep is terrible advice.

Terrible. And it makes sense, right? Like ideally you do nothing in a perfect world and it's easier said than done. You do nothing, right? Sleep doesn't become a chore. It just becomes a clear physiological process that you just do.

You're just ready and you do it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the model when you've had a bad night of sleep, when you've had a bad night of sleep, do nothing. Don't sleep in. later the next day, because then your circadian rhythm is altered. You get what we call social jet lag. Don't nap for most people, because if you nap too close to bedtime, at least you're reducing that sleep pressure that needs to build up in order for you to initiate sleep.

Right.

And then don't try to go to bed earlier the next evening because you're not going to be tired, right? If you go to bed too early, then your bedtime and your wake time are all shifted. And there's a big problem, especially in the United States of something called social jet lag, where people are, they have their typical bedtime and wake time during the weekdays. And then Friday night happens and they have the flexibility to go out. And instead of going to bed at the typical hours of let's say 10:00 PM, they're out until 1:00 in the morning. And then the next day they don't wake up until 10:00 AM. Their sleep schedule has now shifted 3 hours. like flying from Miami to California and you do it every single weekend.

Yeah. It almost feels like Europeans have it figured out a little better, right? They just go to bed later every night of the week, right? You mentioned jet lag and I know that's, that's a part of, you know, business and startup and entrepreneurial life as well. What are some best practices for dealing with jet lag?

Jet lag is such a tricky one because it all depends on if you're going east-west, right? And there's a great app I highly recommend called TimeShifter. And essentially you put in your destination, you put in where you're leaving from, you know, the amount of time that you have between those dates of travel, and it'll provide some recommendations.

That is very cool.

To kickstart your shifting, whether that means, you know, if you know you're going to be going somewhere that's later, you know, you could shift your sleep schedule the week before by about 5 to 10 hours. minutes each night. So that way you're closer to your destination time zone. So highly recommend that. And one thing melatonin is actually used for and is approved for is jet lag, where your circadian rhythm is not matching, you know, the light and the time zone of where you're at. So melatonin at the right time and at the right dose, most studies have shown that actually it's a low dose, 1.5 milligrams. You have now tablets out there that are 10 milligrams plus high dose melatonin, which I strongly don't advise people to take because it can affect our own natural secretion of melatonin. I think it's like use it or lose it, right? Like if you're getting your melatonin from an outside source, your brain has no reason to make it itself.

Right. Yeah.

So yeah, recommend that app. And then of course, melatonin timed at the right time. And then light. Light is the strongest environmental cue that influences our circadian rhythm. So timing your light exposure at the right time can help push forward or back your circadian rhythm in the ideal time that you're looking for. But to take the guessing work out, you know, try the TimeShifter app.

Yeah. So I like that, you know, try to get some natural light where you are. You know, a lot of people when they go on these long international trips, they take a little alcohol because they say it's going to help them fall asleep. And maybe it does that, but I've never had good experiences with alcohol helping my jet lag any. What's your experience with that?

I do not either. Look, I also know that we live in an imperfect world and things happen, right? It's not useful for me to say, don't do this. Don't do that. You know, the truth is, and I keep referencing Matthew Walker, cause I think he's a fantastic science communicator, but he said this in the past, like, yes, ideally in a perfect sleep world, any amount of alcohol, even one glass of alcohol Severely disturbs your sleep architecture. With that said, yes, the knowledge that alcohol is a sedative, it can help people fall asleep, but then it just absolutely ruins your sleep architecture. It increases the fragmentation. It increases wake after sleep onset. It increases the amount of time you spend in N1, the first stage of sleep, and then decreases the amount of time you spend in REM sleep. With all that said, people are going to do what they want, you know, but just make an informed decision, right?

Just understand that it isn't actually helping you as much as you might think it is.

Yeah, exactly right. And it's going to make you adjusting to the time zone where you're trying to adjust to far more difficult.

No, I think that's really good. And then, you know, you get into a new time zone and you walk right into a conference room and you don't see any sunlight. You may not even get a chance to exercise. Um, so it seems like exercising later in the day as you're about to fall asleep might be difficult in terms of sleep because it'll keep your body temperature up, right? It also seems like if you're doing something in a new time zone and you just arrived, maybe getting a little exercise and some daylight might be helpful, right? So it seems like it's about timing really.

Actually, there has been a shift recently in the past, I would say 5 years in terms of the literature showing the effects of exercise too close to bedtime on sleep. You know, it really depends on the type of exercise. We think if you're engaging in very, very, very high-intensity exercise or like HIIT training, you know, 30 minutes before bedtime, which most people are probably not going to do, that might have an effect on your overall sleep architecture or the amount of time it takes to fall asleep. But if you're a night owl like I am, I actually much prefer to gym or work out At 6:30 at night rather than 6:30 in the morning. Right. And there are plenty of studies showing that exercise is one of the most potent natural deep sleep enhancers. Everyone says, how can I increase the amount of deep sleep that I get throughout the night? There's really 2 main ways, 3, I should say, engage in healthy sleep hygiene, limit caffeine too close to bed. Limit alcohol and deep sleep suppressors too close to bed. And then the other 2 are exercise. Exercise earlier on into the day or even afternoon can really increase the amount of deep sleep that you get throughout the night. And we think that's because that's your body's response to essentially needing potentially more growth hormone secretion later on. And then we know that deep sleep is the time where the pulses of growth hormone are most likely to be secreted. You know, most people are okay with exercising in the evening hours. It's not going to have a very clear detrimental effect on your overall sleep. It's if it's like in the, you know, 30 minutes to an hour before bedtime. And as I mentioned earlier, you got to try to land the plane instead of turning off and on the light switch. So you're not going to do that anyway, but any amount of exercise is really beneficial for overall sleep. And it's bidirectional. Sufficient sleep allows you to feel restored in order to engage and the high-intensity interval training in order to get the hypertrophy response that you're looking for. There's a lot of research now on the effects of sleep deprivation on suppressing obviously growth hormone, but also just gains for those that are trying to bulk up. It's very difficult to do that when you're sleep deprived.

Yeah, really good points. I noticed it in my own biodata on my Oura Ring. Like, you know, if I'm cycling a lot or surfing or something, if I've exerted a lot earlier in the day, my sleep is much better, especially my deep sleep. Well, Dr. Gottlieb, thank you so much. This was Super informative and a lot of fun. It's the first pillar of health, and I think it's something that everybody should pay attention to, but especially entrepreneurs when they're in an environment of sleep deprivation and where it's almost idolized and glorified, right? So hopefully this is one step towards, you know, giving entrepreneurs permission to prioritize their sleep. And yeah, I hope we start to see that shift. So if anybody's interested in finding out more about you and your work, where could they go?

Yeah, absolutely. So if you're more interested in leveraging, you know, evidence-based sleep and circadian technology to power your business, you know, sleepscore.com, you can see some of our offerings there on the API SaaS side and also R&D side. We have an incredible team that is really responsible for end-to-end sleep improvement from ideation of projects to execution, you know, validation, post-study promotion. And then for my own personal work on my LinkedIn, so Ellie Gottlieb, My Instagram is dr.elli.gottlieb. And yeah, feel free to reach out to me and, you know, always happy to have this conversation. And thank you for, you know, shining a light on this really, I think, critical aspect of the entrepreneurial space and journey that, you know, oftentimes doesn't get the attention it deserves just because, you know, for a long time we thought sleep is for the weak when in fact it couldn't be further from the truth. You know, sleep is for winners.

Well said, Dr. Gottlieb. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to the Total Entrepreneur Mind Body Spirit podcast. If you liked what you heard or heard something interesting today, please give us a like, share a comment, or better yet, subscribe to the podcast. Thank you.