My Evidence Based Sleep Routine

I've been getting 100% sleep scores on my sleep tracker for the last few months. In this video, I'm going to outline my full evidence-based sleep routine that talks about how to improve the quality of your sleep. I'm also going to talk with Greg Potter who has a PhD on sleep, circadian rhythms, nutrition and metabolism from the University of Leeds. A simple way to think about sleep is that since it's during wakefulness that we do things that help us pass on our genes like finding food and having sex, sleep has surely evolved to optimize our bodies for wakefulness. And as far as we can tell, it's really important to the restoration of all bodily systems and for updating our models of how the world works. First, we have to talk about the importance of sleep. Practically all animal species have sleep-like behavior and there's little evidence of animals forgoing sleep without paying some health consequences. We spend nearly one third of our lives being asleep and if we sleep less than that, we're probably going to live shorter. Here are some of the major side effects of not sleeping enough. Sleep loss and sleep disturbances shorten telomeres, which suggests accelerated aging. Short sleep and insomnia have been found to be linked to accelerated epigenetic aging. Sleep deprivation accelerates skin aging and makes it more vulnerable to UV damage. People also report their own and other people's facial skin appearance looking worse after bad sleep. Poor sleep is linked with neurodegeneration and other ailments. During sleep, deep sleep especially, the brain's waste disposal system clears toxic substances from the brain. Therefore, a lack of deep sleep could predispose people to Alzheimer's. Short and bad sleep increases the risk of diabetes. People who sleep less than 5 hours have a 160% higher odds of pre-diabetes compared to those who sleep 7 hours. Just a single night of sleeping 5 hours reduces incident sensitivity in healthy people. Short and bad sleep also increases the risk of heart disease. Sleeping less than 7 hours is associated with increased risk of heart disease. Sleep deprivation makes your body more suspectable to gaining weight. Due to increased calorie intake and reduced energy expenditure. A study a few years ago in which the researchers took all of these studies that had been done and what they found was that short sleep was associated with a 12% increased risk of death, a 37% increase in the risk of developing diabetes, 17% increase in risk of developing high blood pressure, 26% increase in risk of developing coronary heart disease and a 37% increased risk of developing obesity. Next, we have to talk about how much sleep is actually needed. The recommended amount of sleep is 7-9 hours for most adults. Sleeping 7-9 hours per night is associated with a reduced risk of coronary artery disease, stroke and all-cause mortality. It's been found that people who sleep less than 6 hours have increased risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality. However, multiple studies have also found that sleeping over 9 hours is linked with increased mortality, diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Often when people have found that long sleep is associated with worse health, that's because people who have worse health need more sleep to try and recover from whatever they're facing. We see this, for example, acutely in the case of infection. On average, I sleep about 7-8 hours per night, but sometimes 9 hours. I use the 8Sleep mattress and Whoop to track my sleep duration, sleep quality, resting heart rate and heart rate variability. My resting heart rate is consistently 35-38 beats per minute and my heart rate variability ranges from 100-130, which is excellent and much higher than the average person. This all indicates that I'm getting sufficient amounts of quality sleep and I'm not lacking any recovery. Here are some of the main things I do to improve my sleep and get those scores. Number one, consistent bedtime and wake-up time. Going to bed in the evening and waking up around the same time helps anchor your circadian rhythms. It improves sleep onset, overall sleep quality and recovery. Irregular sleeping patterns are associated with metabolic syndrome. Irregular sleep-weekly cycles will keep the body's circadian rhythms misaligned. Circadian rhythm misalignment is linked to various chronic diseases, including obesity. A 2021 UK Biobank study on over 100,000 people found that sleep onset between 10-11pm was associated with the lowest incidence of cardiovascular disease. Sleep onset between 11pm to midnight was linked to 12% higher incidence of heart disease. Sleep onset after midnight with 25% higher incidence. I usually go to bed at 9.30pm and I'm asleep by 10pm and in the morning I wake up around 6-7am. Number two, avoid bright lights in the evening. Short wavelength light, which often looks blue but is also present in white light and other cold colors, suppresses melatonin and can disrupt the circadian rhythms. Melatonin is not only important for sleep but also for antioxidant defense, anti-aging and managing inflammation. Exposure to light at night is linked with obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, depression and cancer. Regarding light exposure and melatonin production, both the wavelength of the light and the intensity of the light are important. Short wavelength light, which is light that has a wavelength of roughly 480 nanometers, most potently activates the cells in the eye that trigger events leading to the suppression of melatonin synthesis and to many other so-called non-visual functions. Then the degree to which melatonin is suppressed depends on the intensity of light. Dimming the light and using indirect sources of light is ideal if you need to see during the biological nighttime. And I therefore typically recommend that people dim the lights beginning about three hours before they plan to go to bed. To minimize the bright light exposure in the evening, I wear blue blocking glasses about one hour before bed. A 2021 systematic review found that wearing blue blocking glasses before bed helped with sleep onset in patients with sleep disorders, jet lag or shift work. The brand of blue blockers I use, PONCHARGE, has lenses that specifically filter out the wavelengths of light that inhibit melatonin. They also have red light light bulbs that emit no blue or green light. Thus, you can use them as safe night lights. Head over to PONCHARGE.COM and use the code SEEM for a 15% discount. I also use blackout curtains in my bedroom to not let any light sneak in and I wear a sleep mask over my eyes. However, exposure to blue light in the morning is important for kickstarting your circadian rhythm. That is why going outside in the morning after waking up is one of the best things for starting the day right. Number three, sleeping in a cool room. Sleeping at high temperatures decreases REM and deep sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the best temperature for sleep is approximately 59 to 66.2 degrees Fahrenheit or 15 to 19 degrees Celsius. Both high as well as low temperatures can be detrimental and at the end of the day, you have to find out what temperature works best for you. Number four, poor indoor air quality can also be bad for your sleep quality. That's why it's important to keep your house ventilated and open the windows as frequently as you can. A NASA study also found that different houseplants promote photosynthesis and turn CO2 into oxygen. Good ones would be devil's ivy, ferns, rubber plants, cactuses, snake plants and weeping figs. I keep some houseplants in all rooms of my house and use an air filter in my bedroom before bed. And lastly, number five, I use a small piece of tape over my mouth. This may sound a little bit crazy and odd but I've actually found that it does help me to breathe through the nose when I'm sleeping. A 2022 study found that mouth taping during sleep improved snoring and the severity of sleep apnea in mouth breathers with mild obstructive sleep apnea. Snoring might sound annoying and it can definitely disrupt the sleep of your partner but it can actually have some bad health effects. Sleep disordered breathing is associated with earlier age of cognitive decline, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease and increased risk of all-cause mortality. A few weeks ago, I took a sleep apnea test to see if I do have sleep apnea. Usually, the biggest risk factor for sleep apnea is obesity but men who have a larger and thicker neck because of strength training also often get sleep apnea. Fortunately, my results came back negative. However, it did say I had five apneas per night which I would like to minimize. That's why I'm using the mouth tape. With age, you see a decrease in sleep quality and quantity characterized by reduced sleep efficiency, increased fragmentation, more awakenings and increased time it takes to fall asleep. As people get older, they tend to take longer to fall asleep so their sleep latency increases. They also have more time awake after sleep onset. Finally, if you look at sleep architecture, the different stages of sleep, then probably the most prominent change is that people generate less slow-wave sleep or deep sleep, especially early in the sleep period. So what causes this gradual decline in sleep quality with age? These changes in sleep duration and quality with advancing age probably in part relate to people's bodies functioning worse in general. We know, for example, that there are changes in the brain and loss of some of the neurons in some parts of the brain, in particular in the front of the hypothalamus that are involved in initiating and maintaining sleep. But when you think about people getting older, there are lots of factors that could contribute to changing sleep. For example, in general, people take more and more medications as they get older. They tend to wake more frequently during the night to go to the toilet. They might have more pain. They might have some hormonal changes that can contribute to sleep disturbances. There are all sorts of things at play. Older people tend to produce less melatonin than children and younger adults. Melatonin production peaks before adulthood and then slowly begins to decline. This may be implicated in the development of neurodegeneration and other ailments. So this age-related decline in melatonin is not a good thing as it will definitely reduce your sleep quality and it does contribute to accelerated aging. One of my additional longevity strategies is taking a low dose of melatonin just to fill the gap between how much my body makes and what might be optimal. There is evidence showing that melatonin supplementation before bed can help you to fall asleep faster and get slightly more total sleep. However, personally, I'm not taking melatonin for the sleep benefits. I sleep very good. I'm more interested in the longevity and health benefits of melatonin supplementation. Melatonin supplementation has been seen to improve risk factors of cardiometabolic health, such as lipids, blood sugar, blood pressure, and endothelial function. A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis of 13 clinical trials found that melatonin supplementation also significantly decreased markers of inflammation albeit at a dose of over 10 mg per day and for over 12 weeks. I think melatonin supplementation is most helpful clinically for shifting the timing of someone's body's clock. So for that reason, it's often used in the case of circadian rhythm sleep weight disorders, whether that's jet lag or delayed sleep phase syndrome. But lots of people are now looking at using melatonin to improve things like metabolism, cardiovascular health, to ward off chronic inflammation. And that initial research is really interesting and quite promising. I think provided that you can find a pure source of melatonin, it's got a really good safety profile for most people and certainly for adults. The issue is that many products on the shelves don't contain the quantities of melatonin they say they do, and some of them are contaminated with other substances, including things like serotonin. There's also no fear that melatonin supplementation is going to suppress natural melatonin production, because even 50 mg of melatonin hasn't been shown to suppress natural melatonin production. However, melatonin at very large doses at 75 mg can be a contraceptive. That's why I take it as a microdose and only doses of around 0.3 mg or 1 mg. The brand of melatonin I take is Symphony Natural and they have the world's first plant melatonin called Herbatonin, made of phytoplankton. Herbatonin has been shown to have a 470% stronger antioxidant properties and 640% greater anti-inflammatory effect than synthetic melatonin. To try out Herbatonin, head over to symphonynaturalhealth.com and use the code SEEM10 for a 10% discount. So here's an overview of my evidence-based sleep routine that enables me to get quality sleep every night. Sleep is truly one of those things you never know how good it could be once you get good quality sleep. If you know someone who struggles with their sleep or who doesn't take their sleep that seriously, then show them this video. Thanks SEEM. Yeah, do check out my YouTube channel, which is at gregpotterphd. I'm the host of the Reason and Wellbeing podcast, which is available on all podcasting platforms. And you can message me on Instagram at gregpotterphd if you're interested in consultations or coaching. Other than that, thanks for watching this video. Make sure you click the like, subscribe, notification bell as well. My name is SEEM. Stay optimized, stay empowered.