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ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
Sleep Masterclass | Dr. Bobby Dubois | Ep 546
00:57:50
Dr. Bobby DuBois returns to discuss the essential role of sleep in achieving financial independence and enhancing overall health. He addresses the worrying trend of sleep deprivation among Americans and its significant consequences on heart health,...
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- [00:00]
Jonathan
Hello and welcome to Choose a Phi. Today on the show we have a really interesting episode. So we had Dr. Bobby Dubois on the show in episode 498 where we talked about his six pillars of health. And this was a really exceedingly well received episode. I thought it was fantastic. And you obviously know that I think FI and the financial aspects of fi. It's just an umbrella to give you space to think about life, to focus on what really matters. And, and I think your health is really one of those lead pillars. And that's why having somebody like Dr. Bobby, who is a Harvard grad with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, a PhD in health policy, 180 + academic peer reviewed publications, and he's a physician scientist who focuses on what actually works for his patients. He called in our first episode sleep the unsung hero of health. And that just popped off the page to me and I said, we have to follow up with an episode on sleep. And that's what this episode is today. This is really a masterclass on why sleep is important, but more importantly, what you can do in your own life to make your sleep better. I think this is a really essential episode and I'm so glad that we recorded this one. I think you're really going to enjoy this. And with that, welcome to choose a.
- [01:20]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Fine.
- [01:28]
Jonathan
Dr. Bobby, it is so good to have you back. Thanks for being here.
- [01:31]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Oh, wonderful to be back. Thanks so much.
- [01:34]
Jonathan
So it's been about a year and the cool thing about the podcasting world is I listen to your podcast every single week. Podcast is Live Long and well with Dr. Bobby. And this is the single podcast that I tell people if they're interested in health, this is the one you need to download. And Bobby, you know this. I've told you this offline and online now twice. I love your show. I genuinely love it. I think you're doing a great service to the world and I just want to scream from the rooftops, everyone download this podcast. Live Long and well with Dr. Bobby. It's genuinely great. Obviously I'm a layperson. I'm just an idiot off the street, but I've been studying health, you know, in my own way for the last decade or more. And this is the most succinct way I've seen someone who actually knows what they're talking about summarize and curate information. And I just, again, Bobby, I think it's a wonderful service. So thank you.
- [02:26]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Oh, it's my pleasure. And I like the word curate because unlike a lot of people who talk, they Kind of have a dog in this race, you know, I don't. I'm not like an anti sugar person or a pro sugar person or an anti this or a pro this. I'm an evidence based medicine physician scientist. And so for me, I'm just fascinated to say, well, people say you should drink eight glasses of water a day. Where's the science on this? Where's the evidence? Do people do better or worse if they drink that much water? And that's my excitement. And then of course I have to boil it down to 30 minutes or less and not overwhelm people because I am a nerd. But it's been a lot of fun and thank you so much for sharing that with folks.
- [03:07]
Jonathan
Yeah, you bet. And you were last on, like I said, about a year ago in episode 498 and we went through your six pillars and we spent a significant amount of time on the pillar we're going to talk about today, but we really want to dive into it. So this is sleep, which to me is really the lead domino for health. It's the way that I look at the world. Like, I was actually just having a chat with my friend Aaron yesterday and both of us kind of have an issue issues off and on with sleep, even though we've both tried to really hone in on maybe a lot of the things we're talking about today. Sleep in a cold room, sleep in a dark room. A lot of the don't eat before bed. And Bobby, I don't want to steal your thunder, obviously, but we're trying. And yet even still again in this conversation, we were saying like, what dictates whether we have a good day a lot of times is did we get a good night of sleep the night before? And that to me just screams like, this is an absolutely fundamental pillar of health. And this is why I want wanted you back on to really dive into these 12 do's and don'ts and maybe then some some other things you picked up along the way. So again, I really appreciate you being here. Why don't we start, I guess, with the do's? Is that your better starting point or do you think there's something more holistic to start with?
- [04:28]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Well, I think there's two steps backwards. We can take one. Of course, we got to put sleep into perspective, why it matters and it isn't just, well, I feel better the next day. But I think even taking a further step back on the why do we care about health? This is a financial podcast. We're trying to get People as confidently as possible, the fiscal independence. Why are we talking about, you know, why are we talking about this? So for me, health is one of the three critical legs of a stool. If anyone's ever sat on a three legged stool, if you take one away, you fall. And the first two are obvious, which is we want to get to a point where financially we can handle retirement and not worry too much day to day, especially in today's environment, that's an important thing. Secondly, we got to have a reason to wake up in the morning, got to have a purpose, a reason, a set of activities. So that's also critical. Without that, you might have money, but you're not going to be happy. And the third is you may have the money, you may have the purpose, but you don't have the health or the energy to enjoy your retirement. Now you've done all this work, all this saving, all this focus and you feel miserable and you don't have your energy and maybe you die younger than you thought you would. So I think it's critically important. The other thing is that in the FI world, the sooner you start saving money, the better off you're going to be. And the sooner you start, the sooner you might be able to retire. And, and you want to get money in your investment accounts. I'm not going to talk about Roth versus taxable or this, that and the other. But you want to get money in your accounts. Health is the same way. You can't wake up at age 65, say, now I'm retired, now I'm going to work on my health. Because by then you've lost the investment, your muscles have deteriorated, you may be overweight, you may have put damage on your heart, all sorts of things. So you know, your audience tends to be folks in their 30s, 40s and 50s. You are the prime community to get started. Sleep is just one of the many things to focus on and it's a great place for us to begin today.
- [06:39]
Jonathan
Yeah, I love that. That is the perfect way to set the stage. And yeah, it's important to put this in perspective. Right. So it's compounding benefits is what you're talking about.
- [06:48]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Absolutely. And we'll get to later. One of my key questions that comes to me, which is, okay, I got to bed late last night, I know I'm supposed to get to the gym the next morning. Should I cut my sleep short to get to the gym because exercise is important, or do I skip the gym and sleep longer? And this is a teaser for your audience. We'll Come back to this question later because I think there really is an important answer to it. So maybe I should just begin by sort of reminding people, why is sleep important? Because we can certainly talk and we'll talk about the ways to improve our sleep, but I think it isn't just a nice to have. About 40, 50 years ago, Americans got about eight hours of sleep a night. That was typical. I'm not quite sure what all aspects explain it, but now Americans, half of Americans get significantly less than seven hours of sleep. So it's a huge drop. And it turns out from kind of numerous studies, the cut point is seven. Seven to eight hours is really what we need to aim for. If you're less than seven hours, bad things happen. Everything from our risk of heart attack goes up by 20%, our risk of obesity goes up by 30%, and our risk of dementia goes up by 30%. And there's lots of references to this. If anyone wants to listen to my podcast on sleep, the show notes have all the references. You can take a look at that. So not only does sleep cause us to feel fairly miserable the next day and more emotional the next day, it also takes a toll and an important toll. So we really, really, really want to worry about our sleep and try to do something about it. So one of the other things that's very common in the United States is we're all tend to be somewhat overweight. You know, probably 30, 40% of us are obese. A similar number is overweight. And we're all struggling with how to lose some of those pounds. And they did. There was a really interesting study where they took overweight people who typically didn't get a lot of sleep. So they were kind of below six and a half hours a night. And they tried a variety of different ways to help people improve sleep. And we're going to talk about many of those later. And what they found was not only could they improve the amount of sleep they got by over an hour more, but those people ate less, about 270 calories fewer each day. As probably everyone knows, if you've been up all night, you're emotionally a little bit more unsteady. And we look for comfort foods and we tend to eat more. So that's been shown quite a bit. And so if that is one of your areas of focus to try to lose a few pounds and you're not quite getting the sleep you need, you might solve two problems at one time.
- [09:47]
Jonathan
Bobby, I'm curious just to take another big step back. You referenced in our last episode. Dr. Matthew Walker and his book why We Sleep. I'm curious if you could go into your understanding of literally why we sleep, because I think about from a real evolutionary and natural selection standpoint, the worst thing we could possibly do as animals is basically be comatose for eight hours a day where we're completely defenseless and we're just lying there. So clearly there has to be some massive significant benefits to sleep or we would have essentially evolved out of this to a large degree, because it's just, I mean, quite literally the worst thing you could do is lie there defenseless for a third of a day. So that's kind of how I look at the framework of this is clearly important or would have been gone many, many tens of thousands of years ago. What's actually happening when we sleep? What's going on in the brain and the body? What, like, what is the purpose of sleep?
- [10:49]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
It's a wonderful question. Thanks for asking it. And for folks who are truly interested, Matt Walker's book is excellent. He is someone who has spent his whole life focused on sleep. So if you want all the nuances, he's the one. Evolutionarily. Why did we end up sleeping all day long and a lot of other animals don't? Is an interesting question. It probably has something to do with our cultural advancements that we tended to live in tribes so we wouldn't all go to sleep at the same time and allow the, the alliance to come to the salad bar. So, you know, I think over the millennium, back way back when, there probably were people that were awake while others were, were asleep. So that's perhaps why we didn't give up on sleeping all day long because of the fear of it. But what happens? There's a zillion things that happen, but I'll, I'll cite two different things. We all want to make memories. That's what life is ultimately all about. And as we know, if you are around somebody with dementia, they have a very, very hard time learning new information. You give them a phone number to remember, they won't remember it. You ask them about what they did yesterday, they, well, may not remember it, but they will remember things that happened when they were much younger. So near term, memories are housed in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. It's a region of the brain, doesn't really matter where it is, but near term memories, that's where they reside. And then during sleep, you in essence reboot your computer. Your brain is a computer, and those memories get shifted from Short term to long term. Now obviously, you know, we don't dissect humans brains and see what's going on and put electrodes all the time. So we, a lot of this is somewhat conjecture and then there's a lot of experiments that have been done. Like they take people and they keep them awake and they teach them something and then the next morning they haven't slept, but do they remember anything? And as we all know, if you've done an all nighter, you might remember it the next morning, but you're likely not to remember any of what you quickly learned later. And that's in part because those short term memories don't become long term. So there is an absolute critical element that if you don't sleep you're going to have a hard time learning new things and getting them to stick. The other thing that's really important is the brain is unbelievably active as a metabolic thing. It uses lots of sugar, so your sugar goes to your brain before it goes anywhere else in your body. If you have a shortage of, of sugar or other nutrients. So your brain is very active. And as you know, when you exercise your muscles and it's like, God, I was sore the next day. And people say, well that's lactate and it builds up in your muscles and if you had massage them, maybe they would go away and you wouldn't feel bad. Well, imagine that lactate pain being stuck in your brain. Now it's not lactate, it's other kinds of things, but basically the brain during the day is accumulating stuff like the lactate in your muscles that it wants to get rid of. And when you get into deep sleep, not light sleep, not REM sleep, in deep sleep, that's when there is a massaging action in your brain which helps flush out some of those bad things. So again, if you don't get enough sleep, there's the belief that those toxic things build up in your brain. And, and that's why there's a relationship between not enough sleep and dementia, because you're really damaging the brain little by little by little. And I mentioned earlier the teaser question. We know exercise is important, we know sleep's important, but if you're given kind of the Hobson's choice, which do I do? To me the answer is clear. Now there hasn't been a randomized control trial, but if you understand what's going on, I think it makes sense. So when people say, Dr. Bobby, I got home late, I have a 6 o' clock gym appointment, what do I do? I'm only going to get five hours of sleep if I go to the gym. Should I reduce my sleep, get to the gym or should I sleep longer? Skip the gym. And my answer is sleep longer, skip the gym. And why do I say that? Because you can't make up lost sleep. So the belief that I'm working hard all week long, but on the weekend I sleep longer, doesn't solve the problem. And why? Because those things that happen in your brain at night that we want to happen, if you're not giving the brain enough time to do them, they won't happen. You cannot make them up. You can work out longer at the gym the next day, you can fit in an extra workout if you want. You can't make up on the sleep. And so given the choice, please sleep and figure out the working out schedule a little bit later.
- [16:01]
Jonathan
I like that. My follow up to that is, okay, you can't make up for lost sleep. But I imagine all is not doomed for someone who's had even a month or two months of bad sleep. Because at some point there has to be, I would assume, some type of reset. Is there a way to X number of days of good sleep, of getting that eight hours of sleep of night? Like I'm, I'm thinking about that person who's hearing it and saying, oh damn, I'm screwed. I assume that's not your message. I'd love to hear like, is there a reset? Is there some time period? How do you think through getting back on a normal schedule?
- [16:37]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
It's a really great question. People say that if you were a smoker and you can stop smoking 10 years later, your risk of lung cancer goes back to baseline. So even though you did that to your lungs, your lungs repair and you, you know, you'll be okay. I don't know that we know that about sleep. Look, the past is the past. If you didn't get a lot of sleep, great, start today and work on your sleep and prioritize your sleep. I can't say my entire life is focused on sleep, but I pay very close attention to it. I go to bed every night at about 9:15 or 9:30. I plan our evenings around that. Now, does it mean I'm never out at 11 or 12 at night? Yeah, I do sometimes, but it's very rare. And if we have people come to the house, I have no problem saying, you guys can stay as long as you want. But I am going to sleep because I'm miserable the next day and I know the health harms that it does. It's a matter of just putting it front and center. And you know, I invite people to think about that and perhaps try it.
- [17:51]
Catherine
Thanks for listening to Choose a five and for all your support of our mission here.
- [17:54]
Jonathan
The absolute best way to support Choose a Pie is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to.
- [17:59]
Catherine
Use our cards page at choose a buy.com cards.
- [18:02]
Jonathan
I keep this page constantly updated so it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. All right, Bobby, I think this has been a really great setup and gives people a sense of okay, look, sleep is really important. It just is. And okay, that's all well and good, but Choose a Fire is about taking action. What are some of the things that we can do positively to impact our sleep?
- [18:30]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Well, the beauty of sleep is that although many of us have challenges with it, and even though I try to follow all of these, I will have nights where I don't sleep well and I go back and say, well, why is that? Or what do I do about it? But they're very tangible things. And so I'm going to walk through six things you can add to your sleep approach and then we'll talk about six things to avoid doing that might also help your sleep. Now, each of these has evidence to support them where they actually did studies or they took people who didn't do this and did took people who did do this and asked the question scientifically who did better. They all have evidence to support them. But before I go into any of these, you have to understand what clinical studies do. They take a bunch of people. They get, you know, an approach a why don't you get exercise and we'll see if it improves your sleep. And then they'll have a group B that doesn't do the exercise and you see whose sleep gets better. Now, what you get in your published paper is the average. On average, we know that people who exercise get more sleep and do better sleep better have better quality of sleep. But that doesn't mean you are going to get the average. It might be more impactful for you or it might be irrelevant for you. And the only way to put the evidence to a test is what I talk about, which is n of 1 studies where each of these things we're going to talk about. You can test them. You can do a baseline assessment of your sleep with your Oura Ring Fitbit Apple watch, or just write down how many hours of sleep you've had and whether you felt rested in the next morning, whether you woke up a bunch at night. Try one of these 12 things, see if it makes it better. The beauty about sleep is you don't have to do it for a year. You should know within a week or so whether each of these things helps or not. And then you remeasure. So you are going to test for yourself because at some level, it doesn't really matter what the studies show. It's what matters and helps you.
- [20:42]
Jonathan
Yeah, and I love that. I'd love for you to talk about n of 1 just really quickly. For people who aren't altogether familiar with sample size and statistics and whatnot, this is really. You have to test for yourself. That's what you mean when you say N of one, Right? Would you like to expand on that?
- [20:58]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
That's exactly right. Every study, you know, this drug was tested for weight loss, Mounjaro. And we had a thousand people. And that's an N equals a thousand. And people are like, okay, that's good. That makes sense. But how can you do it for one person? Well, you are the most important person. And so ideally what you do is you don't just say, let's try exercise. See if my sleep improves you, then stop that thing. Okay, I'm going to go back and not exercise. Ooh, my sleep got bad again. Oh, I restarted my exercise. My sleep got good again. So it's that repeated on, off, which really reaffirms what works for you or what doesn't, is there?
- [21:42]
Jonathan
Because again, choose the values of taking action. I assume people want to document this in some way. Right. If we're going to. If we're going to do n of 1, it's easy to think in your head that you're going to remember, oh, I remember my sleep six nights ago. You're really not. I promise. I assume you have to document this in some way. How do you think about this? Let's say even with these 12 do's and don'ts.
- [22:03]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Well, it's really important to document it because our recall is not ideal. So, yes, you're going to need to figure it out night by night, how things went. Now, if you have an OURA ring, which is what I have, or. Or you have a Fitbit or even an Apple watch or one of the other smartwatches, it will tell you in its interpretation how many hours of sleep you got, how much restful sleep you got, how much deep sleep, how much REM sleep, how many times you woke up at night. And although they're not perfect measurement devices. They're pretty darn good as a comparison. So maybe if you were in a sleep lab, you actually got seven hours and it says you got 7.5 hours. But if you do something and now it goes up or it goes down, it really is a reasonable way to do it. Okay, so you don't have one of these things? Well, you could buy one if you want. I'm a nerd. I love them. But you can just do a simple questionnaire. There's something called the Pittsburgh Sleep Questionnaire, and it's a few questions. And it basically is, how hard was it to get to sleep? Did you wake up in the middle of the night? Was it difficult to fall back asleep? If you did wake up at night, how many hours of sleep did you get? How did you feel the next morning? Did you fall asleep the next afternoon? And you can just do it that way. And it takes, you know, three minutes to answer these questions. So something should be done to measure a baseline, try your new thing, and then measure again.
- [23:34]
Jonathan
Great. That's a good launching point. And it doesn't have to be high tech. Like you said, it can be at Pittsburgh. Yeah. Could be super easy. So open up a Google sheet and have a row for each day and just jot down a note. Right. I slept for X number of hours. This is how I felt when I woke up. This is how difficult or easy it was for me to go to sleep. Just whatever works for you, but just get it down on paper. You need to have some sense of this. So, okay, Bobby, with that all as the preamble, let's. Let's get into, finally, this is my fault.
- [24:05]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Get into real stuff. Okay, so there are six things you can do to improve your sleep. First, and I'll try to do this as the day progresses. In the morning, when you get up, if you can expose your eyes to sunlight, that will help many people sleep. You have a circadian rhythm. You know, in the morning, your body's ready to do certain things. At night, your body's ready to do other things. You want your body to know what time of day it is. That's why people who travel to Europe and have time zone changes, they have jet lag because their brain and their eyes are confused by what's going on. So if you can get out in the morning, get sunlight, not wear sunglasses. So more sunlight comes in your eyes. Again, it's an eye thing. I don't think it matters. Sunlight on your arms, it's really in your eyes. Studies have shown it helps. And again, you'll do your N of one trial, you'll see.
- [25:08]
Jonathan
So, Bobby, I have some questions about this. So you talk about you being a nerd. One of my secret nerd things is every city I go to, I track the sunrise and sunset. Okay? This is like some weird quirk in my brain. There's a website called timeanddate.com, so you just Google sunrise, sunset, London. And that's what I, I was just in London recently. And every, I always look for timeanddate.com and it shows you for that day. It literally counts off like the altitude of the sun at that exact moment. And when it gets to about negative 7.0, that's when you see the first glimmer of light in the morning. Okay, so it's about between 30 and 35 minutes before technical sunrise. Then there is technical sunrise when the sun is at a sun altitude of zero. And then obviously it gets to its high point that day, which it also tells you. And then there's sunset. And again you have to about negative, negative 7 degrees after sunset where you get another about 35 to 40 minutes of like dregs of light. So for the real geeks like me out there, when we're talking morning sunlight. So is there, okay, that first 35 minutes, does that still count? Does it have to be above the horizon? Can it be within two hours of sunrise? Because my concern sometimes is I lay in bed, I'm reading, or I'm listening to podcasts like, did I miss it? Do it? Does it have to be within X degrees of the horizon? I know this is really in depth, Bobby, and you might like, this might not be info you have off the top of your head, but I guess the heart of the question is, is it just like whenever you get up, go spend 5, 10, 15 minutes outside, or is it really make a concerted effort to get low angle sunlight?
- [26:57]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
I don't know if it's known, but I think what most people would say is, let's say you typically wake up at 7, you typically go to bed at 10 at night. And so that's 15 hours. You're awake for 15 hours. What we want is our brain to know the clock has started, you know, 15 hours from now I'm going to sleep. So I don't know that it has anything to do with how low the sun is in the horizon. It just means that you having the sunlight whenever it is that you get out of bed is saying to your brain, morning has happened 15 hours from now. I'm going to bed. So you, my brain, need to be ready for that. Now, I would say you do not want to lounge around in bed for three hours and, and then at 11, go out, get your son. I'm not sure it'll have the same benefit.
- [27:51]
Jonathan
Gotcha. Okay, so this is truly to set your circadian clock. That's what I'm. Okay, perfect. That is wonderful. So that's number one. Let's move on to two.
- [28:01]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Number two, I already alluded to it, it's exercise. So exercise during the course of the day has been shown to improve sleep in people who have difficulties with sleep. Now you might ask me, well, what type of exercise? Weightlifting exercise, running exercise. Oh, maybe it has to be swimming, has to be 30 minutes. No, it has to be 40 minutes. I don't think anybody knows. All they've done are studies where they gave people an exercise regimen and then they asked the question, did the insomnia get better? So exercise whenever during the day you're able to do it, appears to be beneficial.
- [28:40]
Jonathan
Right. So now a lot of people try directionally to exercise as often as they can. But also many of us are hard on ourselves. And like you're saying, oh, does it have to be swimming? Does it have to be strength training? Okay, we don't know that as you just alluded to. But what about can someone to let themselves off the hook mentally? Can it, can it be a walk? Can it be, hey, take a 15 minute walk? What? Or is it again, is it ultimately Bobby, you don't know? I don't know. Nobody knows. It's the N of 1.
- [29:09]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
I think that's right for me. I want to do a twofer. I'm exercising cause it'll help my sleep and I'm exercising because it's going to help my heart. That kind of exercise can't be just a simple stroll in the park. You need to get your heart rate enough so it's a little bit challenging to talk. If it's easy, easy, easy to talk, or it's awful, awful, can't get a word out. Then you're either going too slow or too fast. So for me, I don't know what the evidence ultimately says about sleep. I'm going to try to do the exercise that's going to help my whole body. So that's what I would do. And the only caveat I would put here is for some people, exercise right before bed is too energizing and they'll have a hard time falling asleep. Now, not that many people Exercise at nine at night. But just keep that in mind if it seems to be worse for you.
- [30:02]
Jonathan
Okay, that's great. And that is all part of taking these quick notes. Just have a sense you need to track this. Right. So, Bobby, total aside, and let's also give a caveat that you are a medical doctor, but none of this is medical advice to anyone, to any specific person, by any means. None of this episode. This is. It's. It's very important. But this is great info. You and I are just having a conversation about this and people are listening in. Yeah. Now, I'm curious, just in your own life, how many days a week, roughly, do you shoot for to get your heart rate above that? Hey, it's a little, little hard to talk level just anywhere above that, regardless of how far above that you go.
- [30:42]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
I get exercise almost every day of the week. I might take a day off just because it happens that way, not because of a purposeful choice. But I'm taking care of an exotic animal ranch. That's where we live. And so I'm always out and about doing stuff. I don't have my heart rate monitor on, but I'm sure even on days when I'm not working out, my heart rate may get up at some points during the day.
- [31:08]
Jonathan
Okay, very cool. And that is the Madrone Springs Ranch for anybody who wants to check it out. It's a really cool website.
- [31:15]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
It's cool. We have a bed and breakfast, a wellness retreat. It's a lovely place. Take a look if you're interested.
- [31:22]
Jonathan
Yeah. All right. Number three, this one, I've actually gained.
- [31:27]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
A deeper understanding recently. So from the literature, meditation has been shown to improve insomnia. And you might say, well, okay, you know, your brain is moving a mile a minute, and meditation will calm the brain. And that if you meditated, perhaps even close to bedtime, it might help you fall asleep. And for some folks, it really makes a difference. I do try to meditate most mornings, but I recently was hearing someone chat about sleep. And they made the really important point that what happens for many individuals is they fall asleep, okay? But then a few hours later, they wake up. And once they're awake now, we don't know what woke them up. Maybe they had to pee, maybe they had some. A bad dream, who knows? But once they wake up, their brain goes into overdrive and they can't go back to sleep. And so when your brain goes into overdrive, you start worrying about things. You know, the stock market's going down. I don't know what I'm doing. And I can't really save this much because we got all these new expenses for my children. Whatever it is, it keeps you awake at night. And this person made the really important observation. Set aside a time during the day where, in essence, you journal all of the fears that you would otherwise think about in the middle of the night. Just get them out on paper. Use this as your time to worry. Now, is this related to meditation? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But for people who wake up and they do have this problem of rumination, perhaps take time during the day to try to get that out of you so that maybe you will sleep more comfortably and not tend to wake up and stay awake. So that's number three.
- [33:17]
Jonathan
I like that. I heard something similar to that. There was a cognitive behavioral therapist for insomnia on Dr. Peter Tia's podcast recently, and she mentioned something very similar to that. So it's interesting to have two different people mention that. And I guess my curiosity, because this is something that does afflict me to a large degree. So my sleep generally looks like Bobby. I fall asleep really quite easily. I have no issue falling asleep. I'll stay asleep for what feels like a. Or what I've been led to believe is a full sleep cycle of three and a half, plus or minus, you know, roughly three and a half hours. And then almost invariably every night, I'm waking up at that point. And sometimes I'll fall asleep instantly, but sometimes I'll just be up for a few hours. Now, one of the nice parts about FI is not having to set an alarm clock for the next morning. I know I'm in a very fortunate position, but I don't stress out in the middle of the night like I used to. I. Because normally when you have that impending deadline of that alarm clock, every minute you're awake is lost sleep. Right? Is literally, like you said, that sleep's not coming back. But for me, I can sleep essentially as long as I want to. So I don't stress about it. I just let sleep overtake me, and then I fall back asleep again, usually for somewhere also in that three and a half hour range. I guess my actual question to you is, we're talking about getting seven to eight hours of sleep. Does it have to be straight? Or in my case, if I'm getting two again, I'm a layperson, but I'm saying full sleep cycle, so let's not even adjudicate that. But if I get my seven or eight hours in those two different segments, Is that okay?
- [34:52]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
I think if it's in chunks of multiple hours at a time, you should be fine. And one way to tell is to if you did have an OURA ring or one of those others, and it would tell you how many REM hours you had, how many deep sleep hours, what happens is if you take just little cat naps, you won't get into that deep sleep. So if you said, oh, and this is pretty rare, I get seven one hour blocks of sleep probably was not going to help you. But if you get a couple of large blocks, I think you're just fine. And many, many people have exactly the experience that you do.
- [35:30]
Jonathan
Okay, that's good to know. Yeah, I'm just my role in this episode. I'm just trying to think of the questions that I know people like myself would be dying to ask you. Because a lot of us do struggle with sleep and a lot of us stress because we know how important it is. And I think if we can lower that ambient stress, like in my case, I know there are many millions of people who are in that exact same situation.
- [35:53]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
All right.
- [35:53]
Jonathan
If you don't stress about it, maybe it makes it easier the next night to fall back asleep. You never know.
- [35:57]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Exactly.
- [35:58]
Jonathan
So thank you for answering that. I really appreciate that. So, okay, we're up to number four.
- [36:02]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
This is a really important one and I suspect many people violate this one, and that is go to bed at the same time every night. Now there's some argument about is it more important to go to bed at the same time or wake up at the same time. Everybody's different. I know for me I'm going to wake up at five in the morning no matter what I do. Maybe it's 5:15, maybe it's 5:20, very rarely is at 6:00 clock. So for me, if I don't go to bed by nine, I'm not going to get the right amount of sleep. If I go to bed at 10, I'm going to lose an hour. If I go to bed at 11, I'll probably lose two hours of sleep. This is for me the most important thing. If I can get to bed at 9, 9:15, 9:30, it's the latest, I will generally get all the sleep that I need. This is very powerful for me. N of 1, I've done this a zillion times, reproducibly. It works for me. It may not for others, but do give it a try.
- [36:58]
Jonathan
All right, Bobby, so that, that makes sense. Go to bed roughly the same time. And now just like Anything. You don't have to be a zealot. It doesn't have to be 9:15. There's a plus or minus here, but I think essentially what Bobby's trying to say is, perfect world, you're not going to sleep at 9 one night, then midnight the next, and then 2am and back to 9. But again, life intervenes sometimes. So don't beat yourself up. That's another overriding theme from this, is don't beat yourself up. But just try to be directionally accurate and try within a window of going to sleep at roughly the same time, you're training your body and your brain to think, all right, this is my time to sleep. That, to me is a big takeaway.
- [37:36]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
And if you know you're going to do your N of 1 testing, and maybe for you, plus or minus an hour doesn't make a difference. If you go to bed an hour later, you sleep an hour later. That just doesn't work for me. But it may work for you. And that's the beauty of this. I can quote studies all day long, but it's whether it matters to you. So you'll test, you'll find out. Yep. Love it.
- [37:58]
Jonathan
All right, the fifth thing to do.
- [37:59]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
About me, okay, so five is expose yourself to heat before you go to bed.
- [38:04]
Jonathan
Okay.
- [38:05]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Sauna has been shown to do all sorts of wonderful benefits for your heart for dementia, but it also has been shown to help sleep. This goes hand in hand with the sixth thing to do. Also, one of the critical things that Gail and I have been experimenting with made a huge difference for us. Again, the literature supports this. A cool bedroom. What's the definition of cool? 70 or below, probably. Let me point out, having a 65 degree bedroom and seven blankets on your bed is not going to be the same as having just a thin blanket and 65 or 70 degrees. So you do want to feel chilly and that promotes sleep. So how does sauna and a chilly bedroom go hand in hand? Surprisingly, if you've taken saunas or you take a hot shower, your whole body when you come out is radiating heat. You're just like a giant barbecue briquette when you get out. But very quickly you will dissipate heat and you'll start to feel chilly. What it does is dilates your blood vessels and it ultimately causes you to have a lower body temperature. So the sauna is actually doing what the cool bedroom does, which is to get your body in a cooler place. Now, people say to me, oh my God, but I'm freezing to death. My Feet are cold, my hands are cold. So there are studies that show if you wear socks to bed at night, it improves your sleep. So Gail and I have a cold bedroom and we wear socks to bed. Sometimes she wears gloves to bed, but we both often wear socks to bed. Again, you can test this. Socks on, I do better. Socks off, I don't do so well or it doesn't matter for you. So those two go hand in hand, but make a huge difference for some people, us included. So for us, the two critical of the do's is to go to bed at the same time and to have a cool bedroom.
- [40:10]
Jonathan
Okay, now 70 degrees or below is when you said it's just a rough back of the envelope. Naturally there's, especially in Texas, I imagine there's some pretty wildly variable temperatures between December and, let's say August. Right. How do you think about. Do you try whether it's air conditioning or heat on in the house, do you try to keep it roughly the same temperature? So for instance, in the winter I usually set my heat to come back on at 61 degrees. So I let it get pretty darn cold. But then in the summer here in Richmond, Virginia, it gets really warm. So I mean, the house during the day might be 78 degrees. I'm not going to cool it all the way down to 61, so I'll often cool it to, let's say 68 or 69, something like that. Is that okay if you will, or should I be trying to get it roughly close now?
- [41:04]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
I think that's great. So that's about what we do where ours is 70 during the summer months and we'll have the heat kick on in the winter to get it up to maybe 67. So yeah, I don't. Look, if you're comfortable at 61, more power to you. For us, that's a bit too much.
- [41:21]
Jonathan
Okay, fair enough. But yeah, so the big takeaway for everybody, just you want to be cool. You want to be cool. So as counterintuitive as it might be, the hot shower will actually cool you down once you get out. And like you said, keep a cool bedroom. So. All right, that's great. So now those are the six dos. Now I'm curious about the don'ts. That seems like the logical place to move on to here.
- [41:46]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Yes. So there's six things to stop doing which may help your sleep a lot. Again, you're going to test each one of these. First, caffeine. Some people like myself are extraordinarily sensitive to caffeine. If I were to have a regular cup of coffee at 7 in the morning, it will affect my sleep 14 hours later. Now that's just because I'm very sensitive to caffeine. But for some people, they have a Diet Coke at three in the afternoon and they wonder why they're not falling asleep. So I would welcome you to try to limit your caffeine to the morning hours and see if it makes a difference. Again, if it makes no difference for you, enjoy your diet soda or your regular soda at three in the afternoon. But for me, very, very important.
- [42:34]
Jonathan
Okay, so simple n of 1, just move around your caffeine intake and. Or reduce your caffeine intake and just play around, see what happens. Okay, Number two.
- [42:44]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Okay, the number two one is the one everybody hates. Alcohol. Alcohol. I love alcohol. I enjoy whiskey, I enjoy wine. I enjoy beer. But it affects my sleep. It affects almost everyone's sleep. It might allow you to fall asleep quickly, but you often wake up a couple of hours later and you can't go back to sleep. So alcohol not only affects. And we haven't really talked about this so much, we've been mostly talking about hours of sleep. But you want high quality sleep. You know, you don't want to just be unconscious for eight hours. You want your brain to go through the REM phases and the deep sleep phases. And alcohol messes that up. There's an interesting study where they had people drink earlier in the day and did a breathalyzer test like you do, you know, before you get in a car. And these folks breathalyzers were zero, so no apparent alcohol in their blood, but yet it affected their sleep. So it's just something to be aware of. I often say to people, if you want to enjoy something, maybe do it at lunchtime instead of dinner. Then you'll have more time to have it burn off and not affect your sleep. But again, you can test and figure out how sensitive you are.
- [44:05]
Jonathan
Yeah, and this to me was one of the big takeaways from when I had that aura ring and that just for everybody out there, it's O U R A. That's when we're saying aura. That's O u r A. Yeah. Bobby. When I would have one, one drink, a glass of wine or a beer, a dinner, I would notice my resting heart rate was up roughly about 10% overnight just from one glass of alcohol. And that was shocking to me because like you said, I mean, this is hours later. There's no way on a breathalyzer I would be at essentially zero. But the Impact and n of one, of course, I'm not saying this is universal or is even a normal response, but I was shocked by this. Absolutely shocked. And it's just. Okay. That is having a significant impact on my body and brain that I could not have even foreseen. So it was just a wake up call, but no pun intended, but it was quite interesting to me.
- [44:59]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Yes, very important.
- [45:00]
Jonathan
All right, let's do number three.
- [45:02]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Number three, if you enjoy napping, don't do your naps later in the afternoon. If you're going to do a nap, do it at noon or 1 or 2. Try to have it a fairly brief Nap, maybe like 30 minutes. People who have difficulties with sleeping may find that if they're napping until 4, 4:30 maybe it's an hour, hour and a half nap that they've had can directly affect your desire to sleep. So the desire to sleep is complicated. There's a lot of different chemicals that cause it, but one of the main chemicals is called adenosine. And as it rises like you're in an all nighter situation, it builds up to such a high level that, that you're ready to collapse asleep. If you take a nap, some of that adenosine falls. So now the sleep pressure, what it's called, doesn't have a high enough level. So when it is time to go to sleep, you're not feeling particularly sleepy. So just beware, it might affect you. It does affect me. I try to do my napping earlier in the day. Nothing better for me than a long bike ride, run workout and coming back climbing into bed and taking a nap. But I try to get it all done by you know, two in the afternoon.
- [46:20]
Jonathan
Okay. Now would we talked about meditation earlier, Right? So as the third of the items to do, Dr. Andrew Huberman, who has a wildly popular podcast, the Huberman Lab, he talks about non sleep deep rest, which is how he's rebranded the long standing yoga nidra meditations. And he talks about this as a way, okay, if you're not napping, it can kind of take the place of a nap in some, I'm loosely and horribly paraphrasing, but again he calls it non sleep deep breaths. So it's a way of, of rejuvenating. I'm curious, Bobby, if you have any thoughts, and I don't imagine that you have any studies at hand on this, but any thoughts on should you not do a meditation late in the afternoon or yoga nidra because of that or is it really very dissimilar because of the Adenosine that you mentioned from actual napping.
- [47:12]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Dr. Huben has a lot of really important stuff and this is something he's been experimenting with in himself. I don't know how much there is in terms of real clinical trials. You're not falling deeply asleep in that. So I don't think it should affect in a negative way your ability to sleep later on. For me, I like to meditate, I like to sleep. I keep them separate. I don't do one to sort of kind of be like the other, but it probably won't cause any problems.
- [47:41]
Jonathan
Okay. And again, it's funny because the answer to my question is always, it's an N of one ultimately. Right. Which is the great part. So you test it out and if you do Yoga Nidra at 6pm and you find, oh wow, I can't fall asleep at 10 like I want to, maybe that did negatively impact me. Okay, well, you just do it at 3pm the next day. Do it at noon the next day. Just figure it out. That's a beautiful part. So, Bobby. Yeah, thanks for humoring me on all these questions. I think, you know, there's so much information on this and I, and I know people have these questions, so this is really exceedingly helpful. All right, let's move on to the next of the six items that you should stop doing.
- [48:19]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Don't eat late at night. So some people eat at 8 or 9 at night and then they go to sleep. Certainly if you live in Europe and perhaps Spain, you know, you're eating really late at night. Although their dinner is generally a light snack rather than the American dinner, which is the biggest part of our meals of the day. So ideally you should perhaps eat four hours before you go to bed. So for me, you know, I'm going to try to eat by 5, 30 or 6 and then my stomach, my body, my everything is ready to go to sleep later. Again, maybe important for you, maybe less important for you. Helpful for me. And the studies would suggest that's true.
- [49:00]
Jonathan
Okay. All right. Don't eat late at night. Try to have at least a couple hour buffer two to four hours from the last time you consume food. And probably not for nothing, but also we talk about multiple benefits. A lot of people do snack and they don't realize how many extra calories that's adding to their diet, how much extra weight over a long period of time. I suspect there are significant add on benefits of just instituting this as a rule.
- [49:23]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Absolutely.
- [49:25]
Jonathan
All right. Love it. So, all right, what's the fifth item to Stop doing.
- [49:28]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
And you asked this question earlier, what's my wind down routine? So there's been a lot of discussion about what should you do to get ready for bed. And for a period of time my wife was wearing these blue light blocking glasses because that was the evil stuff coming from our computers and laptops and phones. Turns out that it probably has nothing to do with the blue light per se, it's that it's coming from an agitating device. So reading a boring book will put you to sleep. Scrolling through social media or reading things on your iPad or your laptop is going to wake you up, especially if it's social media and things that bother you. So it appears from the data that it's really, you want to begin to minimize anything that agitates you. So put away your screens, put away your phone. Ideally put your phone in the other room. Some people, you know, put it on silent in case it's an emergency. For me, my wind down routine is I climb into bed, I pull out my Kindle and I read for 15, 20 minutes and then it's, I'm very ready to go to sleep. So don't agitate yourself too much, get rid of the screens and that will help for a lot of people.
- [50:48]
Jonathan
Okay, I like that. All right, what's the final item on your, your six items to stop doing?
- [50:55]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Okay, so the sixth item may apply to many people or it may only apply to some of you. So there are many people and they notice this as they get a little bit older. They have to get up at night to pee. And once they do, the whole thing falls apart. The ruminations begin. They have a hard time going back to sleep. Now some people, doesn't bother them too much. They get up at 2 in the morning, they go and do their business, they go back to bed, they fall asleep, that's good. But if it starts a bad cycle for you, I think what folks should try to do is cut out fluids really early. I mean I say to people, don't really drink anything after 5 or 6pm I mean, I'm saying that based on going to bed at 9:30 or so. But give yourself hours of not drinking fluids. For anyone who is a swimmer, and I don't mean a major swimmer, when you are horizontal in the water, invariably you will come out of the pool and want to pee. It's inevitable. And it has to do with, you know, how your blood pressure reacts to not having being vertical. So when you go to sleep naturally your body is going to produce a bunch of urine and it's going to wake you up in many cases. So if you don't drink too much, you have a little bit less likely for that to occur. And for some people, it makes a huge difference. Now, the corollary there is my wife invented this technique of if you wake up in the middle of the night and your body says, oh, I got to go pee, tell your body it's wrong. You don't actually need to pee. And if you give yourself two or three minutes, you will fall back asleep in many cases. Look, if your body really, really needs to pee, you will wake back up again. You will not pee the bed in general. But that is another technique, because once you get out of bed and vertical and walking down the hall, you may find it very hard to go to sleep. So those are two kind of hacks, the telling yourself you don't need to pee. There's no scientific evidence on this one. It's just something my wife invented. I've tried it and many other people have tried it, and it really, really works.
- [53:08]
Jonathan
I love that. No reason not to test that out, that's for darn sure. Okay, that's great. And for somebody who's sitting there saying, oh, I'm going to be dehydrated overnight, this is going to be a concern of mine. Obviously, this is not something that's plagued you or your wife or anybody that you've talked to about this. Any thoughts on it?
- [53:27]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
If you're concerned, wake up in the morning and have a nice glass or two of water and the problem will be solved.
- [53:33]
Jonathan
Okay.
- [53:33]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
I don't think in the course of six or eight hours, you're going to get so overly dehydrated that it's a problem. There is one last technique I will throw out there. Again, not evidence based on. And I don't remember who taught me this, but it's a really cool technique. If you wake up at night and your mind starts to race and you're having a hard time going back to sleep, you know, people are like, oh, let's count sheep. Never quite understood the counting sheep thing that that's supposed to put you to sleep. But there's a variation on counting sleep, and it really, really works. So you think of a person's name. It could be any word, but let's say ta. And you allow yourself to think of all the words you can think of that start with the letter T. And when you exhaust all the T words, you go to the O words. And when you exhaust the O words, you get to the M. Words. And invariably what happens is by thinking about two twin Toledo, your mind is breaking that cycle of rumination about the stock market and about the argument you had with your spouse. And once your mind is sort of going off in this blissful direction of thinking of T words and you're thinking very gently, you're not trying to think hard because as soon as you're out of the T words, you're onto the O words. It's amazing how quickly you go to sleep. You've broken the rumination cycle, which is really the problem you're trying to avoid. And that's probably where counting sheep got its origin.
- [55:12]
Jonathan
Bobby, that is so interesting that you mentioned that. I mentioned my friend earlier who I was talking to you about sleep and I sent her this article not two days ago. And the technique is called cognitive shuffling and is literally exactly what you described. They call it a mental trick to help you quiet racing thoughts and fall asleep. So for anybody who's looking for a little more info on that, it's called cognitive shuffling.
- [55:34]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Yeah, I didn't invent this. I'm just testing it in my n of 1 and it really is powerful. And we know many things to help people fall asleep. I would say the thing that's the hardest is people fall asleep fine. They wake up and they can't go back to bed. And so this technique, not drinking fluids, those kinds of things, doing the anxiety work during the day, this really can help people who wake up at two in the morning and they can't get back to sleep for hours.
- [56:03]
Jonathan
Yeah, that is something that I am definitely personally going to put into my n of one experiment because like I said, this is something that plagues me. So yeah, I'm very excited to try.
- [56:13]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
That out, which is why listeners should give you feedback. Give me feedback. I would love to know what works for you and what doesn't. And if you have some other ideas, by all means, send them my way. Now, we haven't talked about melatonin. We haven't talked about magnesium. Maybe that's for another day. I like that.
- [56:31]
Jonathan
Now for people to reach out to you. So obviously we've mentioned the podcast Live Long and well with Dr. Bobby. It's fantastic. Where can people reach out to you personally? Do you have a website that has an email address or contact form?
- [56:45]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
I have a website called drbobbylivelongandwell.com I think if you just put in Dr. Bobby wellness longevity, you'll find the website. It has articles on a zillion different topics like this with references and you can leave a note for me. I do respond if it comes through that way. Sometimes with the podcast stuff it sends me the note but I can't respond so that doesn't really help. I also have a health quiz that you might enjoy taking which tells you what type health person you are that can be very insightful. Send you a bunch of emails about it once you've done that, and it will give you some inklings into how you might approach health and what happens when health goes wrong and how you you might likely respond. So that's fun for people too.
- [57:38]
Jonathan
I love that. And that's right Dr. Bobby livelong and well.com and just for everybody. I'm also a stickler about spelling these things. It's Dr. Dr. So you don't spell out the full word Dr. It's D R Bobby B O B B Y livelongandwell.com Beautiful Bobby. This has been absolutely fantastic. I really appreciate your time and thanks for coming back on Choose a Fire and I know we have a lot of segments planned in the future, so this is Touchpoint two of many, many to come. So thanks again for being a friend.
- [58:09]
Dr. Bobby Dubois
Oh my great pleasure. Thank you for having me.
- [58:12]
Catherine
Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Choosefy community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player. Just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to chooseify.com subscribe and it's really really easy to get on the the newsletter list right there and I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox.
- [58:48]
Jonathan
So that's the way that I keep.
- [58:49]
Catherine
A pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have choose a vi local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a vi.com local and you'll find a list of all of Those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with VI or you have a family member or friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways choose a VI episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community and even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up. And it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence. What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life and then choose a VI created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choose a vi.com investor fi101 and again, thanks for listening.