Josh (01:26.732) Some of my favorite guests are the ones who have lived real world experience on top of having technical expertise, and of course who also walk the walk. And today's guest knows insomnia more than most, but luckily she does have a background in behavioral change from the nonverbal group, and a healthy obsession with chronobiology. It's a practical applica- Oop.
I'll re-record these anyway, I'm just getting us kicked off anyway, Molly. So between chronobiology, it's practical application to sleep and how it impacts our daily lives. She's the founder of the company Sleep Is A Skill and the creator of the top sleep podcast, Sleep Is A Skill, who's even partnered with luxury hotels and lifestyle brands all over the country. Molly Eastman, welcome to Reversible.
Mollie Eastman (01:47.895) Perfect.
Mollie Eastman (02:05.79) Well, thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate it. And for the forum that you're creating for people really makes a big difference.
Josh (02:13.252) Well, that's why we podcasters do what we do. And just even joining other podcasts to talk about these things, just spread the word. These are passion projects. So we just love doing it and love having people like yourself on.
Mollie Eastman (02:25.374) Well, thank you so much. This is gonna be a pleasure.
Josh (02:28.592) Molly, so for those who are listening to this right now, I really think there's so many who are going to resonate with your story and just dealing with that insomnia just so much. So before we get really deep into the episode and the technical stuff about sleep and fixing things, can you share a bit about your battle with insomnia and really how you got started in the sleep as a skill?
Mollie Eastman (02:49.362) Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is hopefully really relevant and helpful as an example for the listener is at least my aim because I now really think of my life in a three-part series related around sleep as its kind of epicenter. And so what this looks like is how I think of my life before I went through that sleep breakdown during that period and thereafter. And the before
looked like a series of labels and narratives. So I would say things like, I'm a short sleeper, I'm a night owl, it's in my jeans, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead, what's the problem here? And so that was kind of my reality around sleep. And it was one of, well, it's a fixed state, there's not much to do about it, it's kind of the cards you're dealt and just play that hand. And what that looked like was,
even as a child relating to having difficulties with sleep, teenage years, college, 20s and beyond. And so what things really, how this all shook out was I didn't notice some of the deleterious effects with my health and certainly didn't correlate them with my sleep. And so this looked like
I'm getting more and more anxious, getting the beginnings of an ulcer, getting shingles in my 20s, some signs that things are probably not all well as far as how I'm managing my health and certainly not the connection with sleep was not there quite yet. And it wasn't until I went through a period of insomnia that completely changed the course of my life. And what it looked like was just night after night of a sense of...
Josh (04:13.591) Hmm.
Mollie Eastman (04:36.09) fear and to the point where the sun would set and I would, my heart would start racing with fear and anxiety around another night without sleeping. And so finally I went to the doctors left with sleeping pills, which as it turns out, that's actually not supposed to be the first line treatment. And yet sadly it still seems to occur every so often. And so in that moment realizing that I really
you know, there's a couple paths for me and not and being concerned about going down a path of long term pharmaceutical use for something so, you know, innate or, you know, given you would think as to be able to sleep. And so that really lit a fire to figure out this thing called sleep, not just for the fun of it, but because I really was hurting and
And truly it felt like at its lowest points after night after night, it started to feel like I'm losing my mind. Like this is very scary and concerning that I could say it like that now, but at the time it was like panic. And so began down this kind of rabbit hole to figure this out. And what I discovered, you know, I'd spent a lot of time, energy, effort, money, and...
did things that worked, did things that didn't work, and eventually actually did begin to not only restore my sleep back to where it was before, which as I shared, that old reality wasn't that great. It was just sort of surviving my sleep. And instead got to, as I started navigating it more and more, realizing that wait, I can actually thrive with my sleep and I can actually optimize my sleep and have sleep that I didn't even think was available to me at all.
And so that just completely shifted my whole experience of life and I could not stop talking about it. So what ended up kind of evolving was these small groups. And actually that was something that I really wanted when I was dealing with this period of time. I vividly remember like searching trying to find are there almost like AA support groups, but for sleep, you know, because it was very shameful and embarrassing and felt like.
Josh (06:46.224) Hehehehe
Mollie Eastman (06:51.134) you know, very lonely, like as if I'm the only person in the world that's dealing with this is how, you know, in those lonely nights staring at the ceiling, it can feel like that. And so by creating these groups and then by what got created was sleep is a skill and what emerged were these online courses and then weekly newsletters, we've been doing those for over five years, are...
Josh (06:58.108) Sure.
Mollie Eastman (07:18.478) podcast where we have top experts coming on to speak about some of the latest in ways that we can improve and optimize our sleep. And we've now amassed one of the larger databases of Oura Ring users from a sleep optimization perspective outside of research, but so really getting on the ground to see some of the things that we can measurably do to improve sleep results across larger groups of people and a unique group that we work with.
Josh (07:32.432) Hmm.
Mollie Eastman (07:47.182) quite frequently is actually high stakes poker players, which is a interesting niche to speak to because they are in an environment, casinos that are designed on purpose to confuse the circadian rhythm. And that might feel like a foreign group, but it turns out that most of us are on average are spending over 90% of our days indoors. And so that was part of what the discovery was for me. And what I really work with people on today is that
Josh (08:08.557) Wow.
Mollie Eastman (08:16.874) we've now divorced ourselves from some of these rhythms of nature. And the more that we can begin to mimic what would have been happening outdoors, indoors can really transform our results with our sleep and bring some automaticities. You're not having to effort so much with your sleep. But I share all of that, not just to say all that, but because my narrative with my sleep was one that I'm a bad sleeper.
That's just how it is for me. And I think there's a lot of tendencies with sleep where we might start to create realities or identities around our sleep. And so for anyone listening, no matter what your identity is, or maybe you say, well, I fall asleep, and then my head hits the pillow, which, by the way, can be a red flag that something might be wrong with your sleep.
Josh (08:44.464) Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (09:06.178) There's these labels that might get created and I would offer in this conversation for us to set aside some of those labels and start from the skillset, this idea that sleep is a skill. So sleep 101 and let's just begin with setting those things aside for this conversation.
Josh (09:23.952) Hmm.
So I guess that brings the next natural question as to why we don't sleep. And I mean, I look at this and I often say, you give me a hammer for long enough, eventually everything looks like a nail. And so if I'm a gut specialist working in gut health, I look at people go, well, yeah, you're not producing neurotransmitters and your GABA's off, your dopamine's off, all these things are off, blah, blah. And this is why you can't sleep. But there's so much more to it, obviously so far out of my realm of expertise. So can you walk us through? I mean, obviously there are people dealing with circadian rhythm issues
talked about poker players, so maybe it's sleep hygiene and lights and EMFs or God knows what. Can you walk us through the most common reasons that people are not sleeping well? Either getting to sleep well, staying asleep, or not waking up well rested.
Mollie Eastman (10:09.214) Yeah, absolutely. OK, so I alluded to a bit of the problem that we're dealing with, which is that element of how we have all gone indoors. And this is a big problem as it relates to this conversation of a strong, robust circadian rhythm. And our circadian rhythm is this rhythm around 24 hours.
in alignment with the Earth's rotation. We used to be really synced up with this because we lived outdoors. But what we've gone into the direction today is an indoor lifestyle that's kind of created this comfort crisis because what we find, there was a study out of the EPA in 2001 that found that the average American was actually spending closer to
93% of their time indoors that broke down to a little bit of being in automobiles, which also still disrupts your environment and your light environment. And so 93% of those in 2001 before a pandemic, before Netflix, before smartphones. So if you're a betting person, it's probably much more. It's probably more at this point, we'd imagine.
Josh (11:11.056) Hmm.
Josh (11:16.708) Yeah, the only outside we're getting now is a distance from the house to the car.
Mollie Eastman (11:20.066) Right, exactly for the average person, totally. And so we might think, oh, well, that's a novel, you know, piece of information, but what is that going to do for us? Well, it turns out this is a big deal because for in training and strengthening our circadian rhythm, the most important zeitgeiber, which is just another term for time giver is light, dark cycles. So our exposure to light, dark now.
The problem arises in the fact that since we are spending our days and nights inside, we're finding that the average person is exposed to light that is around 100 times too dim by day and around 100 times too bright, even as compared to the brightest moonlight in the evenings. So think about that 100 times, and how would that shake out? Well, the average indoor environment is
often sub about a thousand lux. So, right, you know, you go into your Starbucks to work for the day or whatever, and you might take it, you can actually measure this with online apps so you can get download apps like Lux or Lightmeter, and you can test this. And you might see that you're in a 500, 800 lux environment. Might not seem like that big of a deal, but it turns out that as compared to, you know, a bright summer day, it can get up to 100.
thousand lux. So this is a big difference in the kind of signaling cues of what time it is and what to be doing when. So too dim by day and then massively too bright by night. And so it's turning us upside down right off the bat. Not to mention that
Then temperature timing is another zeitgeiber. So we're in indoor environments that are set to whatever, 70, 72 degrees all season, all the time for many of us have that luxury. And so we're not then being exposed to seasonal shifts, to daily shifts in temperature that actually signal to us what time it is and what to be doing. So to bring about sleep onset, temperature signaling is a big, big component of this.
Mollie Eastman (13:32.618) kind of nestled underneath temperature, timing are other things that can influence the timing of our body. And a really common one that I see for a lot of people is meal timing and yet another circadian cue or zeitgeiber. And that could heat up the body when we eat and at the wrong times, but also it can turn on all of these clocks that are in every cell and organ in our body, these peripheral clocks.
that are communicating with our master clock, our super chiasmatic nucleus that's connected directly to our eyes. And so that is looking to be the choreographer to communicate with all those peripheral clocks. But how that shakes out is if we're giving the wrong signals at the wrong times, so for example, we're in too bright of a environment, it's
at say 8 p.m. at night, we're eating. That's another kind of confusing cue, because in nature, it's likely that we wouldn't have been able to even do that remotely post sunset. No refrigerators, pantries, that sort of thing.
And so you're doing these things, and then you're heating up the body. You're also turning on all those kind of clocks, which make it more difficult when the pancreas is kind of turned on, if you will, to then create sufficient melatonin in the evening to cool down that body temperature and to bring about sleep onset. And so we're dealing with these counter cues that are leaving us not sleepy at the right times. It's if we're lucky enough to fall asleep at the...
the times we're shooting for than having too many wake ups or early morning awakenings. And then there are additional zeitgebers that are certainly impactful as well that look like things like exercise timing, thought timing, an interesting one, drug timing, and more that can really tell the body something about what time it is and what to be doing
Josh (15:29.412) That is an overwhelming amount of information. I don't think it's ever been a better fit to use the term drinking from a fire hose than it has right this second. It feels more like Niagara Falls just dumping. So really what I've gathered is if we went back to sort of living off the land with the natural incestual timing, like 28 days in a month, 13 months in a year, we'd probably be a lot better off. Okay.
Mollie Eastman (15:32.414) Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (15:37.633) Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (15:53.686) total aligning with the rhythms of nature, which we did for thousands of years, because we are dealing with kind of a recency effect problem where it's only been 144 years since Edison created the light bulb. And yet we have it that this is kind of always how life has been. We've always been able to have 24 hour, you know, abilities to set up our days and nights whenever.
Um, we've always been able to kind of temperature control our space and indoor plumbing and all these things. And of course our brains know that that's not true, but somehow our reality has it that well, but of course this is how we live. Uh, and yet it turns out that for thousands and thousands of years, we did the exact opposite and yet, so that would allow us to be naturally entrained. An example of this is that there are some well-cited studies, um, two out of the, both out of the university of Colorado.
Josh (16:29.636) Okay.
Mollie Eastman (16:46.842) Um, just for different lengths of time, or what they did was they took, um, kind of self-proclaimed night owls, if you will, they took them camping and all they did was take them outside and for one stretch of time for about a week and for another, um, study was for kind of a long weekend. And in both cases, they found that simply the presence of being camping outdoors and being exposed to that bright light by day and unadulterated darkness by night that
the melatonin signaling cues of those participants started to move earlier, which kind of throws a monkey wrench in the kind of traditional chronotypes argument, because we might say, well, like I used to say, I'm a night owl, and that's just how it is. But we might, and there certainly can be some genetic drift and tendencies to be a little bit later, a little bit earlier. But the.
Josh (17:38.332) sure.
Mollie Eastman (17:40.846) conversations that many of us have that, well, I'm a night owl, so it's totally normal for me to be watching Netflix, having popcorn and wine at one in the morning might not actually be that true. And the things that we might be doing might be unbeknownst to us, pushing us later and later or you can push yourself earlier and earlier. It's all about the entrainment of the environment and behaviors you're engaging in.
Josh (18:05.252) So I always go back to ancestral always. I mean, the food we ate, the diseases we have, the things that we have now in modern life are a result of modern life and modern food. You know, we look at the diseases we have now that never existed 100 years ago. Yeah, there was the odd case of Crohn's or colitis or something else from somebody who got food poisoning or, you know, ate some rotted meat, things like that. But people weren't obese. People weren't diabetics. People weren't insomniacs, at least quite to the same degree. So these are all very, very new things. So obviously we can go back.
We got a hundred times less light during the day, a hundred times too much at nighttime. And it's probably a silly question. It's not as simple as just wearing blue light blocking glasses during the day, is it?
Mollie Eastman (18:45.002) Right, yeah, really good question. So what do we do about that? Well, one, there was a kind of scientific consensus that was just released this year that cited almost 250 circadian scientists referencing almost 2,700 peer-reviewed publications calling for warning labels on light bulbs when used at night. So an entire group of people risking their whole reputations.
on what they're calling of enough of a reason to support the use of warning labels on just plain old light bulbs when used at night. So why would that be? Well, one, the current types of light bulbs that most of us are under in the evening, what we're finding is that they are blue rich, LEDs often, and what we're seeing is that it's linking up with things like, to your point, obesity, diabetes, psychiatric disorders.
and more, there's more cancers is another big one that is correlated with this out of the mountain of research that they're citing, as well as sleep-wake disorders. So we're finding that simply what seems like such a banal use of light bulbs around us in the evening, why would that be a problem?
is so fundamentally confusing our biology that it's resulting in some of these problems. It's also relate of course to the gut and the health of the gut and the circadian pulse of the gut.
Josh (20:15.004) I have so many questions and obviously I'm now a subscriber to your podcast and I'll be figuring these things out as my time goes on but there's so many things to sort of figure out here. So obviously kind of more of a natural ancestral in tune with nature in tune with the sun these types of things are going to be better for us getting outside exposing the sun getting the temperature so what do we do as a quick off cup and I do have many more
Mollie Eastman (20:20.299) Yeah.
Josh (20:38.892) questions that make a lot more sense. But I live in Calgary, Alberta. In the wintertime, it's minus 45 degrees. The surface of the moon is minus 47. So if I'm talking like exposure, that's the cold side of the moon. And so if we're dealing with cold exposure and temperature exposure, is there too much of a good thing? Like what do you think people in colder climates or northern climates, even, you know, south enough, could be doing for temperature exposure during the day?
Mollie Eastman (20:48.946) Fun facts.
Mollie Eastman (21:06.442) Yeah, such a good question. So one, this relates to kind of health geography and how where we choose to live does have very real effects on our biology. And Northern Latitude locations really wanna be quite mindful of this or have the opportunity to get curious about some of these things because we do see that there are certain differences in results with health.
depending on where you are in the globe. For instance, MS is a good example where we find that when you're in some northern latitude locations and MS kind of being from this mitochondrial dysfunction, if you will, so we're finding that there's greater instances of rates of MS in northern latitude locations versus southern latitude locations. Why might that be? Well,
One, we've spoken to the importance of light just as a light cue. So both from excitatory perspective, light is very much a drug and has drug-like effects very clearly and measurably, phototherapy being an example of that. So if you are, one, just getting yourself connected to the sunlight and wherever you might be on the globe, you do want to know where you are on the globe at different seasons, there's going to be different impacts from that light. So, and
promises gets to the temperature piece. So if you're in a northern latitude location, say in the winter, then what you're dealing with is a much less powerful sun because it's having to stretch across the horizon much further and the strength and power of that sun is impacted so your ability to make sufficient vitamin D calls into question during stretches of time.
And what you're dealing with that is if you're having insufficient vitamin D, then you're setting yourself up for difficulty with sufficient serotonin, which is difficulties with creating sufficient melatonin. So you're having this problem with creating sufficient melatonin in those northern latitude locations. But one thing you can leverage is cold therapy in a smart and thoughtful way. Now, to your point, obviously, there's...
Josh (23:11.422) Hmm.
Mollie Eastman (23:18.854) a dose dependent kind of results, depending on how much time you're spending. Obviously, you want to be smart about all these things. Not too much sun, not too little, not too much cold, not too little. But cold, the reason we speak about this and as it relates to melatonin, is it turns out that mitochondria produces melatonin, which many people didn't realize until more recently, and still many people don't know this. And so if mitochondria also produces melatonin,
then we want to do things that can support mitochondrial functioning. And cold therapy is one very clear way that we can facilitate that with, you know, producing more brown fat. So the exposure to cold therapy can kind of be, I don't know, for less, for less, better words, a band-aid for the lack of sunlight that you're getting in throughout those seasons.
But the problem is that many of us are not getting that exposure because then we just, you know, cocoon and stay inside even more Totally exactly and so this is becoming a huge problem and listen, you know I was doing all the things not to do when I went through my whole sleep breakdown and what that looked like was You know living in New York City Burning the candle at both ends Had no clue when sunrise sunset was what?
Josh (24:18.34) Yeah, it's uncomfortable and uncomfortable sucks. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (24:41.542) wasn't getting outdoors, wasn't thinking about any of this. And it can land for people like, jeez, we got to have all of these things to be able to sleep. And it can land like that initially. But if we actually simplify and step back, all we're looking to do is how can we kind of have our cake and eat it too? Because I'm assuming most people aren't going to go move outdoors. So if you, how can you?
both live in the comfort of your own home, but somewhat mimic what would have been happening outdoors. So the practical application of all this is that one, sleep loves consistency, and what is more consistent than the rising and the setting of the sun, and that's just always pretty reliably gonna happen. So what you're aiming to do is have your consistent wake up time, and this might fluctuate a bit throughout the seasons, of course, in alignment with sunrise and sunset, different changes there.
but you're waking up at around the same time and you're aiming to get up and out and so that you're physically getting out and getting that sunlight exposure. And in the process of that, if it is cold, you're getting some of that cold exposure as well. So, you know, even just these light walks that we can take outside can really just really support us in sampling that environment for enough to tell the body something about
the resetting of that master clock each day. And then ideally, you're sampling that throughout the rest of your day as much as you can. And then you're aiming to also hopefully be present for sunset, because that's another important signaling cue, because the presence of the infrared light, that pinky color in the sunset is also telling the body something about, OK, so now we're going to prepare for sleep thereafter. And
All of these elements, the more you can just get outside for even short periods of time to really align and know what time it is and what to be doing when, that really takes care of a lot of this entrainment that you need to do. Now you would align though, things like your meal timings, ideally to sync up with these rhythms so that.
Mollie Eastman (26:47.058) You're aiming to do something known as circadian rhythm, intermittent fasting. And this is simply fasting. It sounds like a, you know, strong word, but simply like a digestive break in a bit more of the darkness time throughout the night. Um, so that most of your meal intake or your calorie intake is happening closer to when the sun is present, which is what we likely ancestrally would have done in the past anyway.
Josh (26:58.108) Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (27:12.062) And then when the sun sets, you're aiming to not have too much food intake into the dark hours. You're aligning with your environment to kind of help inform you of what decisions to make.
Josh (27:23.232) Now would that apply seasonally, summer and winter like winter you're eating less hours?
Mollie Eastman (27:27.69) Yes, and I know this one is like, wait, what? But some places it's, you know, the sun's setting at like 430. How do we do this? So one, we would think about how life would have likely looked different previously in the winter. And in the past, the winter would have been a bit of a season of melatonin and a season of more sleep.
Josh (27:33.933) Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (27:49.51) And kind of rest, fasting would have likely been more present, because you might not have had as much access to food. But so the feast and famine element of summer versus winter, we believe to have been kind of clearly established. In alignment with that, that you would have been having more rest times. You would have had more hours of darkness no matter what. No matter daylight saving time or not daylight savings time, there always is going to be more darkness in those winter periods, you know, if we're talking about.
Josh (28:11.12) Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (28:19.939) what we're dealing with here in the United States. So from that place, what you wanna do is then remember that there will be a seasonal kind of shift that is present and that you can align with that seasonal shift.
Josh (28:34.392) This is really interesting timing because I've got a client of mine and he's a chronic insomniac, just has trouble sleeping, gets to sleep usually okay, doesn't stay asleep, finds himself waking up all the time and again through my scope of practice I've gone through all the basics. Let's look at adrenal functions, look at sleep hygiene, all the basics and there's so much more, there's so many more layers to peel back just in the modern life and even this confirms me so much. I talk so much about modern food, modern nutrition, modern life, modern stress, chronic stressors,
these things as a gut specialist that I know impact our guts and I look at our gut as a gateway to every disease ever. I mean that's been shown in science and studies all over the world and so we know the guts are a gateway and so again I go right back to all the things I know but this is opening up so many doors and they make so much sense it's just as professionals right we need somebody to go did you look at this doc like oh shit right I forgot this whole textbook existed and so we're diving into that and I mean if I go back to my personal health my early 20s
Mollie Eastman (29:30.669) Sure.
Josh (29:34.866) I worked in a basement, I worked at a gym, I worked in a basement, fluorescent light bulbs all over and I was there, I remember I get in, girlfriend I was with at the time, she worked at the front desk, we'd show up at 4.30 in the morning, it was dark both summer or winter, she'd open the gym, I'd go and crash for an hour and a half under the mats in the back and take a nap, I'd get up and I'd work, get out seven, eight, nine o'clock, I'd have a little bit of sun and back in bed and it's dark for a year, I saw the sun maybe once a week, it was horrific.
Mollie Eastman (30:02.217) Yeah.
Josh (30:02.868) and I've never been in worse shape in my life than not just seeing the sun, though I'd say I probably slept okay. So I wanna dive into something a little bit different here for you with you, Molly. Obviously we know how much it sucks to not sleep, right? We can really feel what it's like. So maybe diving into all the sleep issues or the issues we start to develop in our health with not sleeping might be a bit of a redundancy. But as a quick skim over this one, I think it's really worth hitting for those who might not understand fully the complexity
Mollie Eastman (30:05.888) Mmm.
Josh (30:32.722) or the depth that a lack of sleep can have. So I'd love to ask number one, what happens to our bodies when we don't sleep? Number two, what does happen to the body when we do sleep?
Mollie Eastman (30:44.958) Yeah, really good question. So one, I think it's important to note that we struggle to find a single domain of life that's not negatively impacted when our sleep is not working. And so that can look like quite frequently things like cardiovascular health, but it can extend to our immunity, our cognitive and brain health. It can extend to our emotional and mental health. I shared when I was dealing with.
my sleep breakdown, I was more anxious than I'd ever been in my whole life. I was dealing with just these irrational, kind of catastrophic thinking. And so our emotional health is very clearly linked. We don't have a single kind of DSM, you know, set of criteria that doesn't include sleep for mental health disorders across the board. Now, we don't know if that's chicken or the egg or what have you, but...
Mental health is very much impacted, as well as our metabolic health, quite certainly. And so that's one of the elements that we see go out of whack with, as I shared with you, the immense amount of information and data supporting just getting rid, really, of light bulbs at night, traditional light bulbs at night, because of the impact on diabetes, cancers, psychiatric disorders, and more. But
Aside from that, our growth and development, so for children, we're seeing more and more children dealing with sleep disorders than certainly even just within this previous decade, it's been a whole epidemic of kids with things like sleep apnea and poor switching for the depth of their sleep.
Also reproductive health is another one that is impacted and we're seeing fertility rates having more challenges in recent years than we'd seen in the past. Of course, many, many correlated or many elements to this, but that is one element. Pain perception, so people that are dealing with chronic pain again and again, we might see that really flares up. And then just, you know, this kind of buzzword of longevity.
Mollie Eastman (33:01.294) and wanting to extend our years while aging really ticks up when we're not sleeping and are sleeping well. Now those are some things, just some of, and that's just some, because we could get totally, like my husband has a company that looks at non-verbal communication, and so with that, it's about reading people from a psychology and forensics perspective.
Josh (33:13.204) It's just some it's just the longest list of things. Yeah, it's every symptom.
Mollie Eastman (33:29.63) And even our ability to read faces is impacted with poor sleep. I mean, so just the list goes on and on and the nuance and emotional regulation and just interpersonal issues and of course even accidents. We see that all the time with car accidents, you know, accidents on the job, et cetera. Now those are all just some of the areas that are impacted negatively. But to your point then on the flip side, when we...
actually impact our sleep and get sleep function in a way that really works, then we get the opposite of all those things, including some of the other, you know, areas that are really in vogue for people and important for people like our hormonal health, often for men, just even sharing how
massively they can hit at their testosterone levels by not sleeping. But on the plus side, by restoring sleep, being able to both restore some of the workability of their testosterone and for women, for their sex hormones and more. And of course, sleep, it's two important hormones for sleep are cortisol and melatonin, kind of the bookends of our days. And those can really be all out of whack if our sleep is all out of whack.
And yet on the flip side, everything just has that other side of the coin that we can really restore those things when we do begin with our sleep.
Josh (34:52.152) It's so interesting looking at sleep in the gut. You know, of course, for those who aren't sleeping as a gut expert, I'm looking at that and going, okay, well, your cortisol is elevated during the day. You're on adrenal function. You're in constant fight or flight. You're gonna have low stomach acid production, low digestive function, poor digestive motility. It's gonna create bacterial dysbiosis. And again, leaky gut. Now we're opening the gateway to every disease. And then we start this negative feedback loop where now your gut bacteria is disrupted. So all of your neurotransmitters and these chemicals
relationship gets disturbed and now everything's a train wreck and now we have issues. And so that's my connection here.
And so it's so important. This is why I brought this in guys. And I wanted to bring Molly in. She is just so incredible with what you're doing and what like the knowledge that you have is so far outside of my realm of expertise. And even again, I can address gut and the sleep, but the stuff you're talking about are things that just in my regular day to day, having sleep conversations with my clients, I would just never even consider because it's not my world. So I'm blown away by this so far. And so I got to ask, obviously sleep hygiene.
protocols we can implement to sort of summarize the day. But as a quick glimpse, is there a difference in sleep you find that men and women need as a difference in hours, and if so what are those hours?
Mollie Eastman (36:11.466) Yeah, really good question. Well, one, I'll say that it does appear that women need more sleep, but it goes all over the place as far as specifics. Now, it can probably help this conversation to speak in as far as generalities for all of us. For healthy adults, the recommendation is seven to nine hours. For healthy adults, now, of course, it's a lot of work.
Like all things, there can be kind of some movement on either side of that equation, but it does seem to be kind of coupled with seven to nine hours being at its kind of core. And when you start going below six hours, we do see that a whole slew of things, uptick, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cognitive decline, death from all causes, also known as all cause mortality. That was out of a big meta-analysis in 2010.
And so we find that there, when we start going a bit too low on sleep duration across for all genders, then sub six seems to be a clear kind of red flag, but then also too high. So if we start going above, certainly going above like 10 hours, so going into kind of hypersomnia realm.
could start to have some red flags and then sometimes even above those nine. But what we see too is that it requires sleep regularity to even find out what your recommended amount of sleep is because many of us might be pretty good and regular, you know, say from the work week, but then on the weekends or times off that we start to sleep in and so skews all of our averages and so it can be unclear what our real requirement for sleep actually is.
So it does take first beginning with some kind of cleaning up of our sleep consistency to start understanding what is our personal sleep need. But then to your point around the genders, this seems to ebb and flow. So for women especially, we see lots of changes happening. It can even happen as early as around 35 and later. So as we're starting to go through.
Mollie Eastman (38:20.45) the beginnings of perimenopause and into menopause and then post-menopause. There's going to be all kinds of differences in the requirements that you have for sleep and then flare-ups when if you're dealing with, you know, some lack of workability with your hormone kind of mapping and we want to get some understanding of what's going on there so then we can help support that challenge.
But then there's that chicken or the egg element, because if so many of us are not sleeping, that's one of the best ways to throw off your hormones in general, in and of itself. So at the bare minimum, at least starting with that, what I would argue is beginning with sleep to support all of our elements of wellbeing. So what would that look like? Well, if we begin with the prioritization of our sleep, it helps support all of these other health goals.
like making healthy food choices in the kitchen, because we know that if even one poor night of sleep can set your resting glucose levels at higher levels just as default, like almost like a temperature gauge, now it's just higher and now you're making poorer choices after one night, let alone multiple nights, like most people are running around with. And so you're making those poorer choices, you're more likely to now be tired and maybe you wanna skip the gym or not bring your full steam ahead efforts.
And all of these things can of course impact then our results, even so to your point with the gut and the massive importance that the gut has in our whole experience of life. We know that is linked up with circadian clocks. We're discovering how important that kind of digestive system and timing is. So if we have this blueprint of workability, then it just kind of sets us up for success with these other ventures.
Josh (40:08.804) Hmm. So I've got one more question for you. And I want to dive into some sleep hygiene to give the listeners here some really tangible takeaways on how to fix. Cause this is, this is a shit show. Like our lives are a disaster, you know, sleep is a joke. Lighting is a joke. Everything's a mess. Our entire world is just built to make us sick. And we will obviously want to reverse that. So a curve ball question for you, what is your experience like and what steps can people, and maybe it's just, you know, extra sleep hygiene,
PTSD where they have nightmares, they have trouble sleeping, they have heightened hormones and cortisol levels and other things. What's your experience like with people in those situations?
Mollie Eastman (40:39.831) Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (40:48.702) Yeah, really good point. So one, that can go in the domain where, and for anyone that's listening that feels like this, you're not alone. So one thing that can come up is when we're not sleeping well and we wanna sleep well, it's not as if there's a lack of efforting. There's actually sometimes too much efforting or really trying, and that can come up a lot with insomnia. So difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or early morning awakenings.
I mean, some of these people can be trying what feels like everything and then sleep is escaping them. And with PTSD, there can be phenomenons where maybe you fall asleep okay, but now you're having really vivid dreams and it's waking you up and now you're up for you're all, you know, filled with adrenaline and you're up for the rest of the night. Or you know, can look a whole slew of different ways that are resulting in poor sleep.
So one, this would go into the kind of bucket of what I call thought timing. So thought timing is the knowledge that as diurnal creatures were meant to be active by day and at rest at night. And it turns out that our thoughts seem to follow a diurnal pattern as well, which is really fascinating. So there is actually a study recently that they're coining the mind after midnight. And I think it's important to note for all of us that what they discovered was that
the mind after midnight, so whatever your wee hours of the morning are, that there is more flawed logic happening during those times. And so what that actually looked like, there's importance around that, that they found higher kind of suicidality rates going up during those times, along with things like depressive tendencies, anxiety, et cetera. And so that's important because if we know this to be the case for any of us,
One, you can almost make like a self contract with yourself that if you wake up in the middle of the night and you're thinking of all the awful things that are happening and just, you know, everything's wrong and wronger, then this could be an important time for us to enact this personal self contract to know that I'm gonna not entertain or believe some of these thoughts that are, you know, popping up in my mind during this time or really question them.
Josh (42:47.911) Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (43:04.314) because there's a known arc of a lack of kind of rational thoughts that are happening in those wee hours, which means that it's even more important for us if we are dealing with mental health issues to even be more cognizant and thoughtful about some of the timing of our habits and our lifestyle, etc. And so I think one, it is to be aware of that. Two, to know that the gold standard for if you're dealing with sleep
Josh (43:22.652) Hmm.
Mollie Eastman (43:33.374) Difficulties is supposed to be, and unlike when I went to the doctors and left with sleeping pills, it's actually supposed to be CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, and it does have really high efficacy. Now I was someone that it actually did not work well on, and there are some groups of people that tend to be a bit more anxious types of people that don't respond, seem to not respond as well.
but it does have a very high efficacy. So it's a great place to begin with a CBTI expert and to go through and kind of questioning some of those thoughts. There's another thing that you could look at too. One thing that was helpful for me was kind of ACT or ACTI and it's Acceptant Commitment Therapy for Insomnia. And so it has slightly kind of softer approach, a little less rule heavy, but still within the same domains of looking at our thoughts and giving us tools.
to help kind of retrain and reframe our response to the fact that we're not sleeping.
Josh (44:35.66) So I always think outside of the box with stuff and I'm very aware of our time here. I know you're very, very busy. You got to get rolling out here soon. So I said, what more question? Well, I want to talk about some sleep hygiene. My outside of the box brain has to ask, of course, we take certain supplements before bed. They might create more vivid dreams. Like I put together a really great sleep stack. There's Cava, melatonin, lavender, valerian, chamomile, like Apigenin, and I get the most vivid dreams and I do it sometimes. Just an experiment.
Mollie Eastman (45:04.31) Yeah.
Josh (45:04.834) make my dreams I'll take things before bed with the intention of having weird dreams and I almost always do and so is there something we could take for those dealing with like PTSD and vivid dreams that maybe does the opposite of that or it actually dulls that dream life
Mollie Eastman (45:20.33) Mm, yeah, that's such a good point. Well, one, I would say, because often, when people come my way, they'll wanna begin with the supplements that they can use to solve whatever problem they might be dealing with their sleep. And you can often use different supplements. And yet, if we're not tackling all those other lists of things, the light, the dark, the temperature, the meal timing, the thought timing, all that stuff.
Um, then often it's kind of like expensive add-ons for, for many people. Um, and I don't mean to make a blanket statement because of course there are situations where there's very clear, you know, nutrient deficiencies or certain things that can be game changing. So I always of course recommend, um, testing and finding the thing that would work for you. Um, but I would say run one, um, checking in on the types of the kind of a sleep audit of the types of.
drugs that you are taking, which are supplements. And so melatonin is one that is a hormone and it's important to note that can have the effects of vivid dreams to your point and that for some of us can be like a great happy results. And then for others, it might be a little less desirable. So starting to kind of go through because some people can have
Josh (46:31.754) It's a delight.
Mollie Eastman (46:39.35) wild stacks of kind of like a everything but the kitchen sink stacks of things that they're having for their sleep. So, you know, running a quick audit to see are there certain things that can be flaring up the results of these dreams. So then the flip side can often be things that can help with lowering of anxiety because it's kind of some of the approaches that we're doing for PTSD is so that the mix of both anxiety and depressive types of going looking back but also looking forward.
And so when we're dealing with those things, some things that can be helpful over the long-term, things like L-theanine, and that seems to have a pretty high safety profile to take routinely. Magnesium seems to have a decent safety profile, barring low blood pressure or certain things. But for many people, there's certain core stacks that we might be able to have. Some people do seem to gravitate and do well with things like CBD and CBNs. And so...
Those can be approaches that you might be able to take routinely. Whereas when we start getting into, particularly, I see a lot of people taking things like GABAs and certain things that are some of the concerns that we have with benzodiazepines, Z drugs interacting in that area of the brain. And could there be problems where now if we are getting dependent on some of these things, and then when we try to get off of those, having some problems and flare ups. And that's also where more dreams can flare up.
Big important call out for dreams too, is that I do see often with PTSD that there might be use of THC to try to combat some of that stress response, which can have a certain application, but I would call out one of the kind of frustrating side effects of when we try to get off of those is a massive increase in vivid dreams is one of the things that really can flare up for people.
when they get off of THC and so much so that it can be actually really concerning for people of a fear that we're Kind of stuck like this or like is this my new reality? But it does turn out that while any Type of drug that you might have been taking that was suppressing rem like THC like certain Antidepressants so certain SS or eyes and certain medications can suppress from
Mollie Eastman (48:58.306) So it is important to note that when you stop taking something that might suppress, one of the side effects can be a wellspring or swelling of that type of REM that you had been denied from or the kind of that the brain is now looking to take on more of that. And that can be more concerning for some people that are dealing with stressful dreams.
Josh (49:21.604) Well, Molly, just being aware of our time here, I know we got a hard stop. Can you just sort of wrap this entire thing in a nice tidy bow for us and sort of just give us some quick tips on sleep hygiene that we can use to really implement all these things that we've talked about so far.
Mollie Eastman (49:35.418) Yes, great question. OK, so beginning with hopefully just trying on this concept that sleep is a skill. So if you've been frustrated and now you just have it that, well, I'm a bad sleeper. I was a good sleeper until menopause or until I lost my job or until whatever. So if you have certain identity that now you're just cursed and you can't get great sleep, setting that aside and really taking this on as a skill set, like any skill,
we can begin with 101 and then hopefully get interested and curious about next steps we could take. So what I would say as far as some of the most practical takeaways is that consistency component. So you're choosing mindfully, you're hopefully circadian aligned to wake up style as close to getting you as much daylight hours as you possibly can.
And then you have that consistent wake up time around seven days a week, plus or minus 30 minutes. Even if you did have kind of a rough night, you're aiming to largely still keep it at around the same time. Now, of course, it might swing out a little bit if you had a really, really rough night, but we're aiming to have it not go too much more than say around an hour max, hopefully. And so you're maintaining that consistency, then you're getting outside with no sunglasses.
No hats or anything that would obstruct the sun's ability to get into your eyes in the morning. And so that bright light exposure is going to be really important that you're doing first thing. And then I would also say about front loading your calories during daylight hours and seeing how you can set up your day in that way so that you have much more time to digest in the evening.
And then as far as exercise, we're looking to have that also happen throughout the daylight hours, ideally. And then with your thought timing piece, you're looking to take on the stressful things in your day on the first half of your day, and then reserving your evenings for kind of down regulation, relaxation, and having all of that align with that light component. So the big bow that I would put on this is that the whole goal here is to have.
Mollie Eastman (51:49.25) brighter days and darker nights than just about any other person you know, because most people are not doing this, and then align your behaviors with that to match. So day mode and night mode.
Josh (52:01.36) Love that. Well, thank you so much. This is Bruce. He comes to join me once in a while. Usually sitting behind me, which is why I sweat so profusely. It keeps me warm. So Molly, where can people find you if they want to learn more?
Mollie Eastman (52:04.743) I know. Love it.
Yeah, right.
Mollie Eastman (52:15.898) So they can find me and our services at sleepisaskill.com. There you can do a lot of things. You can take a sleep assessment and get kind of auto-triggered kind of feedback right away to help support you with whatever you might be dealing with individually. That can also sign you up for our weekly newsletter. That's every Monday called Sleep Obsessions. It's been going out every Monday for over five years.
We also have our weekly podcast with different sleep experts, so lots of free information, as well as you get a free downloadable PDF called Optimized Bedroom, so all kinds of tips and tricks to optimize your space. And then beyond that, then if you're really struggling, we also have online cohorts. We use OuraRing to track your performance so that we can really help.
demonstrate that we can improve our sleep by the end of our eight week long programs. And then we have one on ones if you're really struggling and want more individualized support. And lastly, we do sleep wearable audits. So we'll audit your wearable data in 60 minute sessions and then give you certain things to do over the next 90 days to kind of gamify those results.
Josh (53:30.396) That's fantastic. I'm gonna make sure I put all that in the show notes. Molly Eastman, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your expertise. It has blown my mind. And that doesn't happen as often. Our guests are amazing, but once in a while, we just get some stuff that really tickles my brain. So thank you very much for sharing all of this.
Mollie Eastman (53:45.778) Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. Well, it is my mission on the planet to help support people in their sleep and hopefully bring you some interest to this thing. We do a third of our lives on average 26 years are spent asleep. So I'm glad that hopefully it can be of interest for some of us. Thank you.
Josh (54:03.06) I'm sure it will be. Thank you so much.
All right, we're good.