Dr. Gina Poe: How to Get Better Sleep and Boost Your Learning, Memory and Energy

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Speaker 1 Today, you and I are going to learn all about the science of sleep from one of the world's leading neuroscientists and researchers. I'm talking about UCLA's Dr.
Gina Poe.

Speaker 1 And before I jump into her credentials and everything that we're going to cover, I just want to thank you. Thank you for being here.
Because when you're here with me, I know it's not about me.

Speaker 1 It's about you.

Speaker 1 You listen because you want to learn. You want to feel inspired and you're investing time in yourself right now.

Speaker 1 And I don't take that lightly because I love you for being interested in improving your life. I mean, that's why I'm here too.
So I'm proud of both of us. And today,

Speaker 1 We have a private class with one of the most renowned experts and researchers in the science of sleep. Dr.
Gina Poe is here. Now, Dr.
Poe is a neuroscientist at UCLA.

Speaker 1 She's been studying the science of sleep for 30 years. Her lab has done pioneering research.
Right now, she's looking into the connection of sleep and healing mental illness. Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe is going to cover the fundamentals today and questions like, why do you sleep? What is your brain doing as you sleep? What is REM sleep? What are sleep cycles and how many do you need?

Speaker 1 If you've been hearing about circadian rhythms, rhythms, she is going to break it down and explain what they are and why they matter. And you're going to leave with five recommendations from Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe's extraordinary research. Recommendations on how anyone, including you, can improve your sleep.
And if you're sitting there thinking, ugh, Mal, sleep, this sounds like a snooze fest.

Speaker 1 I think I'm going to skip this one. Don't you dare.

Speaker 1 Because I thought I knew what I needed to know about sleep too. And then I started preparing for this episode.
I learned so many things that I didn't know, but you and I need to know, we should know.

Speaker 1 I'm talking profound,

Speaker 1 profound information about how sleep is critical for your memory, for neuroplasticity, for locking in new habits, for creativity, for healing, for so much more.

Speaker 1 This is one of the fundamental pillars for better health and for a better life. And so that's why I'm excited.
That's why I'm glad that you're here. Class is in session.
Sleep is on the docket.

Speaker 1 And guess what? The amazing Dr. Gina Poe, she's not only smart, she's super in demand.

Speaker 1 This woman is hot off a plane because she's been lecturing at conferences all over Europe, but she is here right now for you and for me. So, Dr.
Gina Poe, I am so excited to be here with you.

Speaker 2 Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 I am so thrilled that you're here. And I want to start off with what might sound like a really stupid question.

Speaker 2 I'm sure not.

Speaker 1 Can you explain why we sleep and why it's so important?

Speaker 2 It's a great question, actually. Not stupid at all.
It's something that we've been looking for an answer to for the last probably 70 years and

Speaker 2 actually longer than that. Wow.
There's so many things happening during sleep that can't happen at any other time. Sleep is great for the immune system.
It's great for cognition.

Speaker 2 It's great for the emotional system. It's great for growth and repair.

Speaker 1 What is the difference between being awake and being asleep? Like, is there like a physiological or neurological difference between the two? Yeah, it's huge, actually.

Speaker 2 So when we fall unconscious and into sleep, neurotransmitters, chemicals in our brain completely change the...

Speaker 2 their composition.

Speaker 2 So there's a set of neurotransmitters that are associated with wakefulness and being able to attend to the environment, have conversations, think thoughts, and they just completely switch when we fall asleep.

Speaker 2 So that one main one, which is called acetylcholine, which is really important for attention to the environment, switches off.

Speaker 2 And that's very characteristic of non-REM sleep, which is the first states we normally go into when we fall asleep. So acetylcholine turns off in animals that sleep unihemispherically.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's a big word.

Speaker 1 What is unihemispherically?

Speaker 1 I can't even see the thing. Oh my god, these seriously.

Speaker 2 Yes, unihemispherically means one hemisphere at a time. We have two hemispheres in our brain and each hemisphere controls half of our body.
And

Speaker 2 so the right hemisphere controls the left half of our body. And so one hemisphere of the brain is asleep and the other hemisphere is awake.

Speaker 2 And the hemisphere that's asleep switches off the attention acetylcholine

Speaker 2 neurotransmitter, the chemical. Your brain is doing all kinds of essential things that can't be done during wakefulness.
It's another quote-unquote work time.

Speaker 2 It feels quite different than waking work.

Speaker 2 Then you can justify, hey, I need this. I'm going to feel better.
I'm going to be able to tackle my next day better.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't think I've ever thought about

Speaker 1 that it goes way beyond rest because what we're about to learn today is there's all these really critical health and mind health like functions that can only happen when part of the brain is in sleep mode.

Speaker 1 Is that right?

Speaker 1 Am I explaining that? Absolutely true. Yep.
Holy cow. So why don't we start with, based on your 30 years of research,

Speaker 1 what does a perfect night's sleep look like? Just so that we have a benchmark for what would be ideal?

Speaker 2 I think if you just look at a 10-year-old, you'll get what the perfect night's sleep looks like. They sleep beautifully.

Speaker 2 They have a beautiful homeostatic, which means it responds to what you're doing during the day, response and how long you've been awake.

Speaker 2 They have a beautiful circadian, which means their body knows what time of day it is and what time they should go to sleep and what time they should wake up. And so the 10-year-old's sleep is perfect.

Speaker 2 Don't ever wake up a 10-year-old if you can possibly help it. They're doing a lot of really important things.
And

Speaker 2 after that, our sleep changes during our teenage years, and we need just as much sleep as a 10-year-old, which is about 10 hours or 8 to 10 hours for sure.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 teenagers' circadian rhythms change a little bit so that they fall asleep a little later and want to wake up a little later. So it's also a beautiful night's sleep if

Speaker 2 they are calm and not too engaged with social media at the wrong times.

Speaker 2 But anyway, that's a great night's sleep.

Speaker 2 Our sleep is actually pretty great until we're about 40 or 50 years old, and then varying depending on the individual, your sleep can start to become less efficient.

Speaker 1 What does a perfect night's sleep look like in terms of how long you sleep, the various phases of sleep? Right.

Speaker 2 Okay. So the perfect night's sleep for health as an adult is something around seven and a half, eight hours, plus or minus an hour.
Okay. You should be awakened by the sunlight, essentially.

Speaker 2 So that's something that resets our clock every day. So you kind of work back from there, the time you need to awaken to get at least seven and a half, eight hours of sleep a night.

Speaker 2 Different people need different amounts of sleep. Some people need more like nine.
Some people are fine with six for a while. How do you know?

Speaker 2 You just have to know from your own body. Some people, if they get six hours of sleep, they know immediately when they wake up and going throughout the day, it wasn't enough.

Speaker 2 And so your body will tell you. And other people,

Speaker 2 you know, wake up at six hours and they're fine.

Speaker 2 And one way to know is how sleepy you feel during the day. Okay.

Speaker 1 You already said one takeaway that I want to make sure that you listening got from us, which is you start with the time that you want to wake up. Mm-hmm.
And then you roll the clock backwards.

Speaker 1 And you're basically saying that it's seven to eight hours, give or take, an hour. So you roll the clock backwards, probably seven to nine hours.

Speaker 1 And that's when you need to fall asleep.

Speaker 1 That's right. And what happens when you fall asleep, the cycles that we go through and physiologically, neurologically, what's going on and why does this matter?

Speaker 2 The very first stage is, of course, dozing. And we

Speaker 2 don't really know when we're dozing, except that we sort of come conscious once in a while and say, oh, wow, okay, what happened in the last couple of minutes? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Because our memory starts not recording what we've been doing. For example, if you're reading a book and you fall asleep reading the book, you won't remember the last two minutes of reading.

Speaker 2 Or if you're listening to a podcast, you won't remember the last few minutes of the podcast before you actually fall asleep.

Speaker 1 Or if I was talking to my husband, and next thing you know, he's snoring. Right.
He doesn't remember the last minute and a half of what I said. That's exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 So there's that dozing period, which I rather like. I love that sort of thing, you kind of drift from your mind spinning to all of a sudden almost like you're floating in a pool.
Right.

Speaker 1 That only lasts two minutes.

Speaker 2 Stage one is variable. It's about two to five minutes, something like that.

Speaker 1 Okay, and you need that sort of stage one of dozing to get into stage two. What happens next?

Speaker 2 Then stage two is really an exciting stage. So between stage one and stage two, there's something called hypnagogic hallucinations, which I'm not even a truck.

Speaker 1 Hypnagogic hallucinations? Hallucinations. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 It's our brain losing hold of reality and all kinds of imaginary imagination things happen. For example, it can be as boring as feeling like you're falling off a step

Speaker 2 because not all of parts of your brain are asleep at the same time as you kind of drift into it. And so you feel the muscles relaxing and part of your brain says, I'm falling.

Speaker 2 And, you know, and the hallucination is incorporated into

Speaker 2 that feeling of falling. And so you think, you know, you're falling off a step.

Speaker 1 Wait, is that why they call it falling asleep?

Speaker 1 That makes so much sense. And I have had that experience before where I do that dozing, my favorite part, you know, kind of drift off into the pillow.
But then I

Speaker 1 every night have like a jerking sensation.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it is like falling. It's almost like you're moving into the phase where your body is clumsily trying to turn your muscles off so you can drift into the deeper one.
That's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 Now I know why I do that.

Speaker 2 Or it can be as horrifying as feeling like there's a monster jumping on your chest. And it can be very, very disturbing as well if you wake up from it.

Speaker 2 So they're pretty vivid hallucinations, almost like the dreams we have in REM sleep, only

Speaker 2 you don't have the atonia, which is all your muscles being inhibited to prevent you from acting out the dreams.

Speaker 2 So oftentimes people, if they have a vivid hallucination that's scary, can wake up from that and then feel like, oh, what just happened? You know, was there a monster in my room? Really? Nightmares

Speaker 2 comes from that idea, just the hallucinations, the weird hallucinations.

Speaker 1 And this is as your brain is sort of trying to drop. itself into a deeper state of sleep.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, interesting. I didn't know that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And most people, in fact, don't wake up from that. N2, it's called N1 is dozing.

Speaker 2 N2 is that state of sleep which has pretty vivid dreams kind of, but they're not long story-like dreams like we have in REM sleep.

Speaker 1 But we'll get to that in a minute.

Speaker 2 So then from N2, which our brain is very active, we go into N3, which is also a time of activity, but it's really synchronous activity, like waves of activity going through our brain, and it's disconnected in time, one wave from another, so consciousness can't be maintained.

Speaker 2 And if you wake someone up out of N3 sleep, slow wave sleep, and ask them what they were dreaming, they will not report having dreamed anything. It'll be, you know, a blank slate.

Speaker 2 And it's actually pretty hard to wake someone up out of that state. It's called a deep sleep.

Speaker 1 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And what's the purpose? You use the word wave. Like, what is actually happening in your body when you're in that third phase and the wave is happening.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. So that's

Speaker 2 a time when we know that our brain is cleaning itself.

Speaker 1 Wait, what? Yes. It's cleaning itself.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's cleaning itself

Speaker 2 of all the junk that builds up during the daytime when we're awake and alert.

Speaker 1 What kind of junk builds up?

Speaker 2 Well, proteins get unfolded and things break down, energy is used, all of that gets restored in that deep state of sleep. So

Speaker 1 what would happen if you didn't get that deep stage of sleep and the wave, the cleaning wave, the cleaning like somebody coming in after a big party and cleaning up all of that?

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 1 It's like this wave comes through your brain.

Speaker 2 It's like a wave cleansing the brain. Yes, there's one per second, actually.

Speaker 2 And it sweeps from front to back

Speaker 2 and it just pushes all the junk into your cerebral spinal fluid and out into your.

Speaker 1 Is that why my back hurts?

Speaker 1 I don't think so, but yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a good question.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so if you don't get it, you actually don't get a chance to clean your brain like that. So you really need it.

Speaker 2 And that's the sleep you get mostly in the first half of the night after you fall asleep. So you go from N1 to N2 to N3.

Speaker 2 N3 lasts, you know, 20 to 30 minutes or so, and then you go back into N2 briefly and then into REM sleep.

Speaker 1 How is that different than the waves?

Speaker 2 It's very different. It's actually also called paradoxical sleep because if you look at brain activity, it looks just like someone's awake.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 Why? And thoughts are going through and

Speaker 2 dreams are happening. It's really strong imagery in your dreams.
And if you wake someone up out of

Speaker 2 that state of REM sleep, they will always report a dream, you know, 90% of the time.

Speaker 2 Even people who, if you ask, say, oh, I never dream or I never remember remember my dreams, if you wake them up out of that stage, they'll remember.

Speaker 2 I think the reason why people don't remember their dreams is because they are solidly asleep and don't wake up out of that state. So

Speaker 2 don't worry, you are dreaming.

Speaker 1 What is your brain doing? When you're dreaming? Yeah, in that REM stage.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you are, well, first of all, you're creating dreams. It's also important for the process of creativity and for changing your mind.
It's actually an extremely plastic state.

Speaker 2 So it's paradoxical because electrically it looks like wakefulness, but chemically it's very different.

Speaker 2 So two of the neurochemicals that are off during dream state are two neurochemicals that keep you attuned to things that are novel and they're coming in from the outside world and help you learn from things in the outside world.

Speaker 2 And those are neuropinephrine and serotonin. They are off during REM sleep, so instead you're

Speaker 2 attuned internally to internal thoughts and internal images and so you can actually

Speaker 2 build your own schema from the things that you learned during the day that are now registered in your brain. It's not a time for new learning.

Speaker 2 It's not a time for listening to new podcasts and getting that information in. It's a time to assimilate the things that you've already learned into coherent patterns that make sense.

Speaker 1 I want to see if I can give that back to you to make sure that you listening are tracking because I just had a big, like, whoa, aha, kind of moment here. So

Speaker 1 you said that the first four hours of sleep are critical for creativity. And I've also, I think, read in your research that it's also critical for the making of memories.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 For the

Speaker 2 assimilation of memories.

Speaker 1 What is the difference between

Speaker 1 making and assimilation of memories?

Speaker 2 So making memories requires us to pay attention to things in the outside world and put them together.

Speaker 2 And assimilating means you've taken those things from the outside world and now you're putting them together into packets we call schema, which are related pieces of information.

Speaker 2 And it's good for creativity because

Speaker 2 these new pieces of information get assimilated into different schema in ways that we can't do when we're awake.

Speaker 1 Okay, I think I'm actually getting this. Okay.

Speaker 1 You're basically saying that neuroplasticity

Speaker 1 isn't happening when we're learning. The neuroplasticity is happening when we're sleeping.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's that saying in the exercise world that your abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym, because of food being medicine.

Speaker 1 And what you're basically saying is habits are made in your bedroom while you're sleeping, not while you're out in your life living, because that's when your brain locks in all the learning that you did today.

Speaker 1 That's so freaking cool.

Speaker 1 The chemicals in your brain, which are serotonin and neuroeperephine, or however you say,

Speaker 2 neuroadrenaline, the future of the

Speaker 1 body, that's easier for me to do. Neuroadrenaline, they're not present.

Speaker 1 And because those two chemicals aren't present during this sleep cycle,

Speaker 1 your brain is locking in these new patterns and habits and skills and memories.

Speaker 1 You're calling them from an academic standpoint, like each one of these memories or this new skill or this new neurotransmitter that gets created is a schema.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it goes into a schema. See, schema are things like, you know, what is Christmas?

Speaker 1 There's a whole host of things that are associated with Christmas.

Speaker 2 Or, you know, what does summer mean?

Speaker 2 There's a whole host of things. And that's a schema into which a lot of things get built.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, I understand. So it's almost like our own internal search architecture.
Yeah. I think about it like Legos, you know? Summer Lego box.

Speaker 1 You have a whole lot of little Lego cubes in it of different colors and you can create different things. This is really cool.

Speaker 1 And so neuroplasticity and habit formation, one of the huge takeaways that you've already given us is that sleep

Speaker 1 is critical. for that to happen.
Like you have to have sleep in order to have that formation happening in your brain. That's right.

Speaker 2 Because during the day you can collect these Lego pieces, but you don't assemble them into a coherent schema.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think if you think of sleep as laziness or a time when you're not doing anything, then it's harder to justify in our workaholic world that, you know, that time we spend asleep.

Speaker 2 But instead, if you know that your brain is doing all kinds of essential things that can't be done during wakefulness, It's another quote-unquote work time,

Speaker 2 even though it's a pleasant work time and it feels quite different than waking work.

Speaker 2 Then you can justify, hey, I need this. I'm going to feel better.
I'm going to be able to tackle my next day better.

Speaker 2 And so you can schedule it in just like you schedule everything else into your life.

Speaker 1 That makes so much sense. Schedule it into your life because it matters.
I think this is so cool. And you know what else I think is cool, Dr.
Poe?

Speaker 1 You've done a really awesome job of explaining what's happening. I get a sense, don't you, as you're listening to Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe, that our brains are working so hard while we're sleeping and there's so many important things happening and that cleaning wave that comes through like a Zamboni, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 And I bet as you're listening to Dr. Poe explain all this to you, that you're starting to feel motivated and inspired to take your sleep more seriously.

Speaker 1 I know I am, but there's still so much to learn. So let's take take a quick pause for a word from our sponsors.
And when we come back, let's go even deeper. What is REM sleep? What are sleep cycles?

Speaker 1 And how many do you need in order to wake up and feel refreshed? Plus, we're going to cover exciting new developments in the connection between better sleep and healing.

Speaker 1 So don't go anywhere because Dr. Poe and I will be waiting for you after a short word from our sponsors.
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Speaker 1 Hey, welcome back. It's your friend Mel.
I'm so glad you're still here with me and Dr. Poe.
And learning about the science of sleep, it's not a snooze fest, is it? It's kind of cool. I think so too.

Speaker 1 It's also cool how it's helping your memory and neuroplasticity and your energy. And so now that you and I have the fundamentals and we kind of understand why this matters so much, Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe, how about we go deeper into the depths and mechanics of how sleep is happening in our brains and the function of it, like REM sleep, circadian rhythm? What do we need to know about sleep cycles?

Speaker 1 So, Dr. Poe, let's start with sleep cycles because I read that sleep cycles last, I think, about 90 minutes.
Yeah. What does that even mean? What is a sleep cycle and why do they matter?

Speaker 2 Yeah, on average, it's 90 minutes. And that's when you go from N1 to N2 to N3 to N2 to REM.
And that whole process takes, on average, in us, about 90 minutes. In other animals, it's shorter or longer.

Speaker 2 We don't know why it takes the amount of time it does, but it seems to be important that it happens in the order that it happens. Because if you disturb that order, if you

Speaker 2 get rid of one element of it, the whole process does not work nearly as efficiently or at all.

Speaker 2 So, for example, if you just eliminate the REM sleep part, you can't consolidate your memories and put them together. If you eliminate the deep slow-wave sleep part, the N3 sleep part,

Speaker 2 the cleaning part, you will wake up with a junky brain and not be as efficient and able to handle the day.

Speaker 1 Well, that kind of makes sense because if you haven't brought the Zamboni into your brain to clean out all the junk,

Speaker 1 then you're not working with a clear palate when it comes to locking in the things that are new. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 Okay, that is so helpful to understand that your brain is working while you're sleeping. And here's what I want to do now.
I want to clarify something.

Speaker 1 A few minutes ago, when you were talking about like N1 and N2, you casually mentioned that the N1, the N2, all this stuff, that that's the sleep that you get in the first half of the night.

Speaker 1 And I was taking notes. And I know as you were listening to Dr.
Poe, you caught on to that too, didn't you? You've been waiting for, okay, well, if that's the first half, what's the second half?

Speaker 1 And so. If I'm locking in memories and cleaning out all the junk in my brain with that Zamboni during the first half of the night, Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe, what the heck is happening in the second half of the the night as we're sleeping?

Speaker 2 Yeah, in the first half of the night after you fall asleep. Thoughts are going through and dreams are happening.

Speaker 2 It's really strong imagery in your dreams for kind of locking in and sealing the things that you learn during the day.

Speaker 2 But the second half of the night, or REM sleep, more like every REM cycle is more for

Speaker 2 building new schema and

Speaker 2 making new connections and changing changing your mind and resolving the emotional

Speaker 2 aspects of your memory.

Speaker 1 So how many sleep cycles do we do in a night? About five.

Speaker 2 Five is would be ideal. Okay.
The first sleep cycle is a little longer than 90 minutes,

Speaker 2 probably because that N3 state is a little longer and you don't have as much of it in the later part, the last half of the night. You don't have nearly as much N3 sleep.

Speaker 2 So if you miss the first half of the night, you'll miss most of that N3 sleep, which is the cleaning stage. So you don't want to miss that first half.

Speaker 1 No, I definitely don't want to miss that first half. And did you hear that from Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe, that you can't cheat your sleep, that your body knows when you go to bed late and when you do, you miss out on all the cleaning and the memory assimilation that your brain needs to wake up refreshed and be able to do its best to help you through your day?

Speaker 1 So I just want to make sure you got that because I think that's important. And Dr.
Poe, now that you covered the first half of sleep, tell us, what is the purpose of the second half of sleep?

Speaker 2 The second half is for,

Speaker 2 I like to think of it as more creative. It's creative part.
It's emotional resolution and creative building of new

Speaker 2 schema.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so the first half of the night is, let's do a little correction.

Speaker 2 It's more for kind of locking in and sealing the things that you learn during the day, but the second half of the night, or REM sleep more like every REM cycle, is more for

Speaker 2 building new schema and

Speaker 2 making new connections and changing your mind and resolving the emotional

Speaker 2 aspects of your memory. So, for example, if you remember a painful event, whether it's emotionally painful or physically painful, that happened a year ago or 10 years ago.

Speaker 2 You will want to remember that because it's adaptive and it's good to have those memories, but you won't want to recall when you're remembering the event the actual pain.

Speaker 2 You don't want to feel the pain again, either emotional pain or physical pain. That's not adaptive.
You don't need that part of it. And so

Speaker 2 in our research right now that we're doing in collaboration with a few other laboratories, we're discovering that it is that REM sleep period,

Speaker 2 specifically the REM sleep period, and you get much more of it in the second half of the night, that helps to separate out the

Speaker 2 novelty and the immediacy and the physical reality of the emotions of those memories from the facts that you can recall for the rest of your life. And that's what happens normally.

Speaker 2 But people who have insomnia and they don't have good quality of REM sleep, their norepinephrine norepinephrine or noradrenaline is too active because they're too anxious while they sleep, then they don't have that distancing from the immediacy and the saliency and the sense that it just happened today.

Speaker 2 So that's what we're looking into.

Speaker 1 That's really profound and exciting because if you think about it, I would imagine it's also

Speaker 1 applicable to somebody that has a lot of trauma. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Somebody that

Speaker 1 has a lot of chronic pain,

Speaker 1 that all of that is a very real, lived, stored experience in your body.

Speaker 1 And if your brain is not able

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 get that

Speaker 1 seven to nine hours of sleep where it can do all of this functioning for a health and a mindset and neuroplastic, I mean, I think the implications of that, because what you're basically saying is

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 having

Speaker 1 good sleep habits and consistent sleep habits actually can help you heal.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 It not only can help you, but it's necessary.

Speaker 2 It's necessary to heal. It's necessary to heal.

Speaker 1 Dr. Poe, thank you for pouring so much into us already.
And I bet as you were listening to Dr. Poe, you're probably saying the same thing that I'm saying to myself.
I never knew that.

Speaker 1 And it's certainly making me feel more motivated to prioritize this. And that brings us to what we're going to cover next.
Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe has five recommendations based on her 30 years of research that will help you get better sleep. It'll help you wake up refreshed.
It'll help all that amazing stuff that needs to happen happen.

Speaker 1 And one of those recommendations that she's going to talk about is getting light into your eyes first thing in the morning. So when we return, we are jumping right into the topic of circadian rhythms.

Speaker 1 What are they? And how can you use them to get a great night's sleep? And I bet you're also still curious about Dr. Poe's sleep routine.

Speaker 1 I mean, what does the world's leading researcher on sleep do every night before bed? The answer may surprise you. It certainly surprised me.
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Speaker 1 Hey, thank you for still being here with me and Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe and investing the time in yourself as you listen to this episode today, because as you're learning how you can use the science of sleep to sleep better and feel better, you're getting smarter because of it.

Speaker 1 And Dr. Poe has five recommendations on how anyone, including you, can improve your sleep.
And one of them is understanding your circadian rhythm. So Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe, can you explain what the circadian rhythm is?

Speaker 2 So every cell in our body has a clock in it. And these clocks are aligned by a master clock in our brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, S-C-N for short.
And that nucleus is

Speaker 2 reset every day by light coming in through our eyes.

Speaker 1 And is our clock running on a 24-hour cycle?

Speaker 2 Roughly, roughly. And that's why it needs to be reset every day because everybody's clock is a little different.
Okay. Bright light in the morning tells you time zero.

Speaker 1 Oh, so when you wake up in the morning, whether it's raining or it's cloudy or it's a bright, sunny day,

Speaker 1 that is the clock hits zero in terms of your brain going, okay, the day has started.

Speaker 2 Right. So you really do need to control your light exposure to make sure your timekeeper sets it to the world that you need it to be.

Speaker 1 So if you were to use this research around circadian rhythms to improve your sleep, how would I go about figuring out what's the first thing I need to do in the morning to reset my clock to start training myself to get a better night's sleep.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you want to reset your clock so that you're up, say, at six in the morning or whenever the sun comes up, get outside and expose yourself to that sun.

Speaker 2 Eat your breakfast, and then do the same with lunch and do the same with dinner.

Speaker 2 Don't expose yourself to bright light at night, especially blue light.

Speaker 2 If you expose yourself to a lot of the strong blue light at night, then your circadian system will say, wait a minute, is it morning time? I guess it's morning time and we'll shift you forward.

Speaker 1 Did everybody hear that? So there are some very free and specific steps there, which is get some bright light exposure. And I take it even a cloudy or rainy day is going to suffice.

Speaker 2 So much brighter than indoor light. Okay.

Speaker 1 And how long?

Speaker 2 It doesn't even take that long. You know, 20 minutes is.
plenty of time. And if you can be exercising during that time, all the better.

Speaker 1 So get out and walk. If I can only get out for two minutes, would it make a difference?

Speaker 2 Two minutes make a difference. Yeah, it makes a difference.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And then you also heard everybody that based on the exact same research and principles, staring at your phone, your computer screen, your television for like in the in the evening is a big no-no unless you've got the blue light blockers, right?

Speaker 1 Yep. Because it is signaling to your brain that it's like not time to go to bed.
Right. That's right.
Which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it says it's morning.
You should be awake.

Speaker 1 Which is why you're screwing yourself up with this. Yeah.
And why you're getting a bad night's sleep. Who knew sleeping was so complicated?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I love that you're elevating the fact that this isn't about

Speaker 1 getting rest. This is about your brain health and your overall health and your body functioning and you

Speaker 1 being able to

Speaker 1 live a better life.

Speaker 1 We have a circadian rhythm for a reason. Yeah.
Because our body functions better when you track to morning light. And you start like getting yourself ready to go to sleep again when the sun sets.

Speaker 1 One of the things that I found really interesting in your research is the importance of a consistent bedtime

Speaker 1 and a growth hormone that gets released. And

Speaker 1 why is that connected to a consistent bedtime?

Speaker 2 Right. Well, growth hormone is the thing that helps you repair your muscles, build proteins

Speaker 2 involved in consolidating your memories and just rebuilding damaged parts of your body. That

Speaker 2 gets released in little spurts, if anything, all day long and while you're awake.

Speaker 2 But when you go to sleep and your circadian system is aligned, in other words, you're going to sleep at the right time relative to your clock, which means that melatonin is being released.

Speaker 2 Melatonin and growth hormone together gets the release of growth hormone to be 10 times higher than it is when you're awake.

Speaker 2 So So it's a big spurt of growth hormone that can do things that little spurts can't do.

Speaker 1 What does a growth hormone do?

Speaker 2 Growth hormone helps you build proteins. All those amino acids that you eat during the day need to be built into proteins.
And proteins that get broken down during the day can get built back up

Speaker 2 during sleep. And it's really only sleep.
If you delay sleep so that it's past the time when your melatonin surge going, then the growth hormone surge can't be nearly as big.

Speaker 1 You know what question I'm about to ask next, right?

Speaker 1 Does a melatonin supplement help spike that? Like is that a way or not really?

Speaker 2 We don't know actually. We don't know, but

Speaker 2 I doubt it

Speaker 2 because it's not just melatonin. There's a lot of other things that are happening simultaneously with that melatonin and it signals other parts of your body.

Speaker 2 The other thing about melatonin supplements is that they're not regulated by the FDA. So in any one melatonin supplement, there may be zero melatonin or there might be 10 times what you need.

Speaker 2 Anyway, those can actually help all of the processes that happen normally in the first few hours of sleep.

Speaker 1 I start to see how now the importance of a consistent bedtime.

Speaker 1 And that's even more important, it seems, than the quality or the length of the sleep.

Speaker 1 When our three kids were little, they had a bednight routine.

Speaker 1 Same bedtime, the same routine. We're winding down.
We're picking up the toys. We're saying goodnight.
We're going up for the bath. We're reading the bedtime story.
You're in your pajamas.

Speaker 1 You have the little song or prayer or whatever, the kiss on the forehead. You turn off the light.
And it was this

Speaker 1 intentional pattern that was training our kids. It's time to wind down and sleep.
That's right. And it sounds like that's exactly what we need as adults.
Yes. We need the same thing as adults.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 You've put it really well. And in fact, you mentioned a bath.

Speaker 1 Yes. I take one every night.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it really helps you sleep better.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 It's thought to be because you are warming your periphery and vasodilating your hands and feet because they're nice and warm.

Speaker 1 Vasodilating. That's what I'm going to say to Chris.
Chris, I'm going to go vasodilate

Speaker 1 my hands and feet in a hot bath, honey. Right, yes.

Speaker 2 And vasodilation is good because what that does is it then helps cool your core, which is something that happens as you fall asleep. The core of your body cools by half a degree, something like that.

Speaker 2 And people get the best night's sleep if they can have warm hands and feet out there exposed to the air, helping to cool your core.

Speaker 2 So that's great. Also, to have a great night's sleep, exercise during the day.
Our bodies are made to exercise, they are made to move.

Speaker 2 And if we get a good time of exercise where our blood is racing and our hearts are pounding and our

Speaker 2 breathing is deep, then for some reason, and we don't know exactly why, it might be due to adenosine buildup or needing growth hormone and the signals your body gives you, says we need to repair ourselves, it gives you a really wonderful night's sleep.

Speaker 2 So those two things are beautiful.

Speaker 1 A bath and exercise

Speaker 1 here and bright light in the morning and a consistent bedtime. Those four things that you are giving everybody for free based on decades and decades of research.

Speaker 2 And not too much caffeine, too late. Oh yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 That's number five. Not too much caffeine, everybody.
Thank you for explaining that, Dr. Poe.
And one of the things that I love as I listen to you is I'm realizing you're designed to sleep well.

Speaker 1 Like this is part of your hardwiring, your natural intelligence, your DNA. You run on a circadian rhythm, and sleep is a critical function.
So this is something that we can all learn how to do better.

Speaker 1 Right. So you're one of the most renowned sleep researchers in the world.
What is your sleep routine?

Speaker 1 What time do you go to bed? Walk us through your evening. You had dinner.
Then what do you do for your optimal sleep?

Speaker 2 Yeah, sometimes I have to work after dinner in the evening. But

Speaker 2 the best time for me to go to sleep is around 11 or 10:30 at night. So if I can put away my work by an hour before that, that's the best time for me.
Take a shower.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then in bed, what works great for me is either just prayer and relaxation, deep breathing, or

Speaker 2 I can distract my racing brain with a really dumb little game on my phone with my phone set to non-blue.

Speaker 1 Wait, I'm like the lights. Wait, did the sleep researcher just tell me she's playing a game on her phone?

Speaker 2 Right, but I turn off the blue light.

Speaker 1 I think I need to delete this.

Speaker 2 It's a dimmer screen.

Speaker 1 See, now you look embarrassed that you're actually saying, I'm proud of you for admitting it. Everybody was just like, she's normal.

Speaker 1 God, thank God.

Speaker 1 I play a game. How do you block the thing on the

Speaker 1 blue light?

Speaker 2 Oh, it's a setting on my phone.

Speaker 1 Just, you know, you can take away the blue light. Okay.
Yeah, and so the dumb game recommends by everybody.

Speaker 2 The dumb game is something that's not mentally challenging.

Speaker 1 And of course, if I lose, it's okay.

Speaker 2 So I just, you know, it's threes where you stick numbers together to form three. And then anyway.

Speaker 1 So, yeah.

Speaker 2 And within 10 minutes, I'm I'm usually out.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't even bother putting my phone all the way on my nightstand. I just

Speaker 1 don't drop it. Okay.

Speaker 1 I don't even like to have the phone in the bedroom. No, it's better to have it not in the bedroom.

Speaker 2 And of course, my phone is set to do not disturb mode so that it's not disturbing me.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't. Yeah.
All right.

Speaker 1 It's better to have it not in the room.

Speaker 2 And for some people, actually, what works great also is reading a book,

Speaker 2 whatever it is. It's just relaxing.
And within 10 minutes, 12 minutes, you should be asleep.

Speaker 1 Well, I could talk to you for hours, obviously, Dr. Poe.

Speaker 1 I just want to thank you so much on behalf of everybody listening for really breaking this down for us and sharing simple things that we can do.

Speaker 1 Because as I said from the very beginning, my mission in having this conversation with you is to help you get the best sleep of your life. And there were so many takeaways from Dr.

Speaker 1 Poe, and I want want you to try three of them. That's all that I'm asking.
And I'm going to share with you the three that make the biggest difference for me.

Speaker 1 Number one, bright light first thing in the morning. I get my self outside first thing in the morning to reset the circadian rhythm.
It's made a huge difference.

Speaker 1 Second, get serious about going to bed earlier. The happier I am, the more successful I am, I notice the earlier I am in bed at night and the more I prioritize my sleep.
And third,

Speaker 1 I'm hanging my hat on the bath. I'll tell you what, just like I would train my kids to go to sleep, I take a bath or a shower at night.
It is part of the routine.

Speaker 1 And so I want you to find three things that you're going to implement based on what you just learned from the renowned researcher, Dr. Gina Poe.
And of course, let me know.

Speaker 1 Let me know how it's working for you.

Speaker 1 And one more thing, in case no one else tells you, I want to be sure to tell you that I love you, I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to apply all this science to make your life a little better.

Speaker 1 And in the meantime, I'll talk to you in a few days.

Speaker 1 Here we go.

Speaker 1 First, wait a minute. Today, you and I are going to learn from, today, you know what? This is not centered.
I'm looking over here. Like, can we?

Speaker 1 The computer is one-third of the way over here. I'd even go even more.
There you go. Perfect.
Thank you. It's still way over here.
Something's way off. Oh, that is scary.

Speaker 1 All right, you want me to try that one more time? The computer is so crooked and it's flipping me out. Can we just get a different thing? Don't we have like a different thing somewhere? I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 It's just like, I know you hate that thing too. Launch it in the trash.
Let's see if that'll work.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's probably too tall.

Speaker 1 Perfect. Yeah, it's perfect.
We're Gucci.

Speaker 1 Okay, we ready, ladies? Sorry, here it comes.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 1 Does that help you sleep?

Speaker 1 There's another one. What is that? I don't even know what that is.
Sorry, everybody. I know I'm disgusting, but I'm also human.
We all burp.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 here we go.

Speaker 1 11:42.

Speaker 1 Oh, 11:42, everybody. All right, that's okay.

Speaker 1 All right, I think we got it. Okay, we went to new territory there.
Yes, we did.

Speaker 1 Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper.
This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you.

Speaker 1 This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend.

Speaker 1 I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.

Speaker 1 I'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 2 Stitcher.

Speaker 1 There are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one. Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

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Speaker 1 Hey, it's your friend Mel. If you love the Mel Robbins podcast, you're going to love this.

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