The amount of people that have messaged asking about Doc Parsley’s Sleep Remedy, or sharing their improved Oura, Whoop, Biostrap (etc) stats, is wild. That’s why when I was connected with him to do this podcast recently, I was so excited to learn more about his story and his methods. Check out the episode to learn more about how the doctor to Navy SEALs (and a former SEAL himself) approaches the topic of sleep optimization. ___________ Dr. Kirk Parsley served as an Undersea Medical Officer at Naval Special Warfare Group One from June 2009 to January 2013. While there, he led the development and supervised the group’s first Sports Medicine Rehabilitation center. He is a former SEAL, and received his Medical Degree from Bethesda, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) in 2004. He interned in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Balboa Naval Hospital San Diego in 2005 and subsequently completed a Navy residency in Hyperbarics and Diving Medicine in 2006. Doctor Parsley has been a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine since 2006 and served as Naval Special Warfare’s expert on Sleep Medicine. In addition he is certified in hormonal modulation (Age-Management Medicine). After leaving the Navy he went into concierge medicine and consulting. He continues to consult for multiple corporations, and professional athletes/teams. Doctor Parsley lectures worldwide on sleep, wellness, and hormonaloptimization.andiscurrentlycompletingabookonsleepand His philosophy for wellness is simple; in order to optimize our health and get the most out of our bodies and minds, we must live more closely to the way we evolved as a species. He believes that many diseases and disorders that we accept as “inevitable” in modern society are unnecessary complications of poor sleeping habits, living in a toxic environment, eating foods we were not designed to digest, and allowing stress to overwhelm us. His passion is to help his patients and clients achieve the highest quality of life possible, and realize their health, performance, and longevity goals. Dr. Parsley spends as much of his spare time as possible with his three beautiful children (Hayden, Cole, and Harper). He has been a competitive athlete his entire life, and enjoys nearly all outdoor activities and sports. Bedtime Ritual Checklist and Sleep-Wake Diary for Kids https://www.docparsley.com/sleep-ritual-checklist-kids/ Adult Stress-Free Sleep Worksheet https://www.docparsley.com/stress-free-sleep-worksheet/
Symptoms of sleep deprivation and poor sleep quality.
The poor relationship to sleep that the majority of SEALs had before starting sleep therapy.
How Doc Parsley helped the SEALS to improve their health and hormones by focusing on sleep.
What sleep is and what goes on in the body during it?
How do the brain and senses work during sleep?
What are the cycles of sleep?
How do you fall asleep?
Pharmaceuticals and sleep. How do sleep drugs affect sleep?
Methods for getting yourself off of prescription sleep aids.
The importance of sleep on health. How to approach sleep optimization systematically.
Email: kirk@docparsley.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kirkparsley/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/docparsley
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Docparsley
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nordiclights-no/
Bedtime Ritual Checklist and Sleep-Wake Diary for Kids
https://www.docparsley.com/sleep-ritual-checklist-kids/
Adult Stress-Free Sleep Worksheet
https://www.docparsley.com/stress-free-sleep-worksheet/
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Unknown Speaker 0:04
Welcome to the sleep as a skilled podcast. My name is Mollie McGlocklin. And I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology accountability and behavioral change. Each week, I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from doctors, innovators and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training.
Unknown Speaker 0:35
Welcome to the sleep as a skilled podcast. My guest today is Dr. Kirk parsley, also known as doc parsley, also known as the sleep doctor to the Navy SEALs as a former Navy SEAL himself, he actually became really concerned about the fact that there were so many seals that he was working with that we're having real full on addictions with different types of sleeping aids, and then expected to be able to perform at very, very high and challenging levels under in stressful situations without that foundation of sleep. So he created something called the sleep remedy. And I had actually heard about him and his work through various clients and people on my weekly newsletter goes out every Monday, and people would actually respond with some before and afters from different sleep trackers of results that they had gained through using his sleep remedy. And I do really appreciate that we get into a conversation of very shared outlook around sleep and understanding that supplements play a role, but he's also very, has a strong stance that it's only one part of the conversation. So we really are in alignment on that topic. But I also appreciate that he created the sleep remedy because it was to give something to the seals when they were looking to get off of some of these really challenging drugs that are very difficult to get off of, and created it from really just the problem that it was difficult to have them taking so many different bottles of supplements, so they put it into one nice kind of package. So but a little bit about his background and his lots of his very researched approach around sleep is that Dr. Kirk parsley served as an underseas Medical Officer at Naval Special Warfare group from June 2009 to January 2013. While there he led the development and supervise the group's first sports medicine rehabilitation center. He's a former seal and received his medical degree in 2004. He as well as the fact that Dr. Parsley has been a member of the American Academy of sleep medicine since 2006, and served as Naval Special Warfare expert on sleep medicine. In addition, he is certified in hormonal modulation age management medicine. After leaving the Navy, he went into concierge medicine and consulting. He continues to consult for multiple corporations, and professional athletes and teams. Dr. Percy's lectures are worldwide on sleep, wellness, and hormonal optimization, and is currently completing a book on sleep. And his philosophy for wellness is simple. In order to optimize our health and get the most out of our bodies and minds, we must live more closely to the way we evolved as a species. He believes that many diseases and disorders that we accept as quote inevitable in modern society are unnecessary complications of poor sleeping habits. Living in a toxic environment eating foods, we were not designed to digest and allowing stress to overwhelm us. His passion is to help his patients and clients achieve the highest quality of life possible and realize their health performance and longevity goals. Dr. Parsley spends as much of his spare time as possible with his three beautiful children, Hayden Cole and Harper, he has been a competitive sleep athlete his entire life and enjoys nearly all outdoor activities and sports. And just as a quick aside, we will be putting this in the show notes. But he is actually offering a couple cool resources. So one being a bedtime ritual checklist and sleep wake diary for kids, and an adult stress free sleep worksheet that was also going to be available in the show notes too. Be sure to check those out and make sure you download those. And let's get in the podcast. And welcome to the sleep as a skill podcast. Kirk, I am so grateful that you took the time to be here today. We've already been speaking and I can tell that we're going to have a lot to discuss and to really go to town on in the world of sleep. So thank you so much for taking the time.
Unknown Speaker 4:43
Yeah, it's my pleasure. I as you can already tell it's one of my favorite things in the world to talk about. So I always look forward to the opportunity to find somebody who actually cares.
Unknown Speaker 4:53
Yes. Oh my god. Well, you found the place and anyone listening knows that, you know, this is just certain Part of my story is around a passion project because I had done all the things not to do in the world of sleep for so many years, and then went through my own period of insomnia for a bunch of months. But it while it seemed like one of the worst periods of my life at the time, it ended up being one of the best things that happened to me and changed my whole life and my health. So I so
Unknown Speaker 5:19
often,
Unknown Speaker 5:20
right, yes, exactly our own problems, because we're doing it all wrong. So
Unknown Speaker 5:25
I thought that growth comes from the friction and not from the easy bits.
Unknown Speaker 5:29
zactly. Exactly. So I got to hear a little bit about your story. And I'm already so fascinated. So I'd love to be able to give you an opportunity to share a bit more about how it is that you got into kind of, you know, just being known a bit as the the sleep doctor, the you know, just as Yeah, how how did that happen? Tell us and why you're so passionate about this topic.
Unknown Speaker 5:50
Okay. Like I said, this is a this is a shorter podcast format that I'm used to. So I'm going to really try to summarize, I don't take up the whole show, telling one story. So I think it's fair to warn your listeners. First off, I grew up completely indigene, white trash, small town, Texas, I'm a high school dropout. I dropped out of high school and joined the Navy wanted to be a navy seal. This is well before anybody knew what navy seals were, I found this out through my own research that this was supposed to be the toughest training in the world. And I'd always been athletic and strong and physical. And it was just, I wanted to try my hand at that. And I made it through SEAL training, and I was a seal. And then when I was in while I was in the seal teams, I started dating the woman who would become my wife. And she was in graduate school for physical therapy. And when I was a seal, it was this was pre 911. So we didn't have war, we had limited police action on the world. We had a lot of downtime when we deployed and we deployed for six months. So I would take her textbooks with me overseas, and read her, you know, Kinesiology and physiology anatomy textbooks, like just because I thought they're fascinating. And so when I decided to get out of the teams and go to college, I thought I was going to be a physical therapist. So I started volunteering at a physical therapy clinic, San Diego Sports Medicine Center, that quickly turned into a job and then that's the job I did all through college. At some point during that decided I didn't want to be a physical therapists. The doctors there were trying to talk me into becoming a doctor, I was I was laughing at them. I'm like, I'm a high school dropout dude, like, yo, like, I'm a high school dropout. I'm in junior college, like, you know, pump the brakes, you know, I was like, I'm not I'm not gonna be a doctor. So eventually decided to take that on, found out that the military had their own medical school, when I was applying for medical school. And my mind that chapter of my life was over the military was over. But I was already married, I already had kids. And the military would pay me to go to medical school instead of the other way around. So my wife wouldn't have to work while I was in medical school. So it was kind of a non No, no brainer, like we've been really selfish to do anything else. So I went to the military, medical school. And then the military is willing to train you for stuff. But then you have to do that stuff for them for a while. So it's eight years afterwards. And I knew I would get back to the seal teams as the doctor and I got back to the seal teams as their doctor got there at a time to build the first sports medicine facility we had ever had and hire first PTs and athletic trainers and nutritionists and strength and conditioning coaches and all the stuff we'd never had. And this is 2009. The community had never had any of this stuff. And I felt really well suited to be there for this sports medicine world. But then once I hired all these experts, I was then like the dumbest guy around because I'd hired people who had been working with professional sports teams for years and the Olympic Training Center and like, you know, these are criminal, Crim. So then in military to military fashion, they put me in charge of just managing it. So I was I was managing this facility. My office was in the facility. So I'd been a seal recently enough to where all the seals there are plenty of seals there who I'd been a seal with. So people knew me. I had a good reputation. So they trusted me they usually don't trust health care professionals because you can put them on the bench, right? You can tell them they're not qualified. They come in my office they close the door, say hey man, let me tell you what's really going on with me. And it's like this same story came out over and over and over again. They were saying things like my motivation the other motivated guys they're hard working guys they still get out of bed they still get after like they're going to crank through but they're like when motivation sucks like I'm just grinding through every day my concentrations terrible my attentions, terrible. My moods like super all over the place. I get really angry. I get really sad. I can't control my emotions around my kids. I can't control my emotions at work. I'm feel like I'm getting fatter and slower and weaker and my muscles are shrinking and I'm working out perfectly. I'm eating perfectly. You know, just this whole litany of symptoms that you would expect to hear from a 55 year old, obese pre diabetic man. And the guy sitting in front of me is 28 years old and shredded and muscular. So I have no idea. Like, I will great medical school didn't, nothing I've done is prepared me for this. I know nothing about this. And so I just started testing everything. I did these enormous lab panels with, like, 17 vials of blood with 100 different lab markers. I'm just like a shotgun. It's like, let's see. And I just started looking at alternative integrative functional kind of medicine, non traditional stuff, because what I've been trained in is diagnosing and treating disease. And none of these guys had a disease, right? They weren't performing where they thought they should perform, but there was nothing disease like Right, right, yeah, their testosterone was really low, their growth hormone was really low, their oxidation was really high, their inflammation was really high. They're fasting insulin and fasting blood glucose was way higher than they should be for guys this fit, but nobody had any disease. And so I was thinking of things like adrenal fatigue and vitamin deficiencies and maybe toxicity from the from the battlefields, you know, heavy metal toxins. And I'm just looking. And so the fortunate most fortunate part for me is that I had had this clout of being this, the doctor for the West Coast seals. And so I could call anybody and I could say, Hey, I watched your TED talk, I read your book, I saw a lecture, whatever. And I'm the doctor for the West Coast seal teams and I could really use your help, can I come train with you could I can consult on my patients with you really, whatever kind of proctoring you whatever you can do. Every single every single person I called said yes, like, every one of them. So I get this amazingly steep learning curve. And probably somewhere, like 100 patients, like I said, I'm a high school dropout. I've never, I've never claimed to be smart about about the hundred guy who told me the exact same story. I remember making a note at the top of his chart about Ambien. He was taking Ambien every night. And I was like, seems like a lot of guys have said that. And I just made a note. Then after he left, I went through all my charts and every single guy, literally every single guy who would come in and told me that sorry, was taking Ambien every night. Then I started checking with the medical providers and rescue the command and found out that about 85% of my command was taking Ambien every night. Now most of them were taking it with alcohol. Yeah, so I thought and if you know this seal community, it's like ones good twos better threes. Great, you know, so like they're taking three times the recommended dosage. They're drinking three or four cocktails, the falling asleep for four hours, it's not really sleep, they're just not conscious for four hours. And then they think I'm just going to get up and go to work, work out and work all day, not take any naps. And then we're going to come home and sleep well the night and they've been doing this for years. And it's still their plan. It hasn't worked yet.
Unknown Speaker 13:06
My one more night, like one more night is gonna be the magic thing. So so I just I really started with Ambien. I thought, you know, I'd been through pharmacology classes, I knew what class of drug it was, I knew, you know, its mechanism of action, like basically how it worked. But I didn't know anything about sleep. I've never had a single class on sleep. I don't know what happens when you sleep. I don't even know how to define sleep. And so I went to like college level textbooks on sleep. And it just worked my way up. And at one point, at some point, it kind of hit me I'm like, well, this is quite possibly and even somewhat likely this is this is outcomes razor like this one thing could literally describe every single finding and every single symptom they're complaining about. That wasn't naive enough to think that it would for 100% of them. But I thought this is a big player. Yeah. And so I started learning about that. And then I started getting people off of sleep drugs. And that's the only reason I have a sleep supplement is because I couldn't just take their sleep drug away and say, suck it up like nothing. Yeah, had to give them an alternative. And so like we came up while I go through my own research and working with the seals, they would, they're great patients, they would take notes, they journal everything and come in and give me their reports. And together, we figured out this combination of over the counter nutritional supplements help people sleep really well. And this was like the 85% solution for 85% of the guys. And so that's what we went with. And then they just it was total peer pressure that made me turn it into a product because they hated having to go buy all the things individually It was hard to travel with and all this stuff. So that led to me eventually being able to once I got it once I got some command buy in which was hard. And to be honest, brutally honest, I literally got laughed out of the room for probably a year every time I tried to approach every anyone was Hey, I think this is really affecting our community. Because if you know anything about SEAL training, we go weak and SEAL training without any sleep, right? This is not a community that values like, most of the time you go out on a on a mission or knob, you haven't slept in two days before you go on there. And then you're probably you know, you can be gone two or three days on the app, and you're not really going to get any true sleep during that period either. So this is a community that associated sleepiness with were sleeping with weak weakness. So they weren't, they weren't really hip about learning. And after I convinced enough people, then I, you know, we had these symposiums every time a seal team was deploying. And every time they came back, and we would sort of, we would give them information and counseling coaching, to you know, both for the families and for the seals. This is what you're going into, these are going to be the struggles these are how you handle them, these your resources. And we brought in lots of lectures, and we brought in a lot of these health and wellness experts. So we brought in guys like Rob Wolf and Brian guys at Chris kresser. And john welborne, is teaching a lot about fitness and weight training, specific weight training. Dave Grossman, like you know, psychologies, like we brought in all these people to come and sort of prepare them and their family. And then when we came back, we did this we did same thing like a reintegration to get guys ready to turn the volume down, turn the intensity down in their life, like, hey, you're not in combat anymore, you got to live with the rest of us, you know, let's turn this down, let's reintegrate with your family. And that led to me sharing the stage with these guys. And then those stages led me to being on other stages with them that led to podcasts and media, attention and Ted Talks, and the Dr. Oz thing, like all that stuff came from that. So I never really set out to be the sleep guy, it was something that sort of forced is thrust upon me, it was like I had to figure it out, I was gonna fail the guy. So it was like, I'm gonna figure it out. And then they made a bunch of interventions, we got guys off sleep, drugs, everything reversed. I mean, on almost all of the So first of all, I got 100% of the guys 100% of the guys who wanted to get off of sleep drugs, who believed me and said, Okay, I'm gonna do it. 100% of them got off. And every single one of them had amazing turnarounds in their lives, they went from the lowest 10% of testosterone level to the highest 10% the bell curve in every marker was like that. All the anabolic markers went from low to high. All the catabolic markers went from high to low. And they felt better, they're performing better, their cognitive ability, problem solving attention, memory, all of that stuff started from proving there's a lot of traumatic brain injury in the team. So it wasn't 100% solution. But that's the short version. I know how long that was. And that was the short version,
Unknown Speaker 17:55
though, that was fascinating. So first of all, I'm just so grateful that you have been a bit of a, you know, a real change maker in this area, particularly for such an area that you know, I know back when I was having all my maladaptive habits with sleep and I would look to examples of people that Okay, yeah, just you know, go to bed late wake up early. That's the definition of mental you know, abilities and be able to kind of pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And often many of us not knowing any better will look to examples like Navy SEALs Oh, they can go for a week. Okay, so can we whatever
Unknown Speaker 18:29
your go getter?
Unknown Speaker 18:30
Yes. You
Unknown Speaker 18:31
just if you destroy yourself, you're a go getter. And if they're willing to destroy yourself for success then then your week exactly shows probably the two worst professions for sleep. I mean, yes, right. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 18:45
Doctor said doctors horrible about
Unknown Speaker 18:47
it, too. I mean, I did. Yeah, I did residency with call every third day. So I was I was awake for at least 36 hours in a row every third day.
Unknown Speaker 18:56
Absolutely. I know. Of course. Matthew Walker's book has been great for kind of shedding light on just how maladaptive that area can be.
Unknown Speaker 19:07
Yeah, he's a really good guy. I really like his work.
Unknown Speaker 19:10
Fantastic. So okay, so you've been able I love your humility too and sharing your story it's a similar story of coming from you know, no money and Middle of Nowhere Maine and just learning just from a place of really curiosity and obsession with Okay, let's let's figure this out. And so I love you sharing like that because I haven't had a guest share in quite that way. So really cool.
Unknown Speaker 19:33
Necessity is the mother of invention. I like to say when you have to figure it out, you will come up later when you ask me what my number one sleep advice is for people that that will come up again.
Unknown Speaker 19:44
Oh, very cool. Okay, well, we'll we'll put that on shelves. I'm excited for that one then. So one of the things that I thought was so cool about what you just shared was I have a lot of clients will come through sleep as a skill and they are looking to make a difference with their sleep but they are also Feeling like there's a lack of possibility or hope because they've been taking Xanax, Ambien different types of sleeping pills for so long. And I know this is a big topic. And there's a lot that goes into that, and they need to work with their doctor and what have you. But I do think providing examples of what is possible. And even if you have been on some of those for so many years, and also just the how much it can trickle into every area of your life, if you are taking some of these, if they're not being, you know, for extended period time, what that can look like. So I was wondering if you could share just a bit more of your philosophy on that, or what what you've seen as a possibility for people, if they're taking some of those?
Unknown Speaker 20:39
Yeah, so we can cover prescription sleep drugs first, just because it that's kind of, I think, the question you asked, I think it's, it's, it's bigger than that. And I don't want to go on a tirade, yet about sleep about all sleep architecture and sleep stages and different drugs in different stages. That's, that's what I would ordinarily do. But I'm saying, I'm dating myself here, I'm using my prefrontal cortex to shut my impulse control down to use, I'm using my impulse control,
Unknown Speaker 21:09
and we can extend time a little bit too if we need. Okay, I can feel the passion. So I love it.
Unknown Speaker 21:16
In order to understand the consequences of the sleep drugs, you have to know a little bit about what sleep is. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 21:22
Okay, and what causes sleep. Now, the interesting thing is, when I give lectures all over the world, I asked the audience, and it doesn't matter if it's an audience full of physicians, or law enforcement, or like, it doesn't matter who it is, is the is the audience. Maybe if I'm in a room with sleep specialists, this wouldn't happen. But like, I've lectured medical staff in ers, because I've helped them with their, with their sleep rotation, do their schedule, rotation and stuff like this. And I asked the audience, I say, Can somebody give me a definition of sleep? crickets? Nobody knows. Nobody knows what sleep is. And then I say, okay, maybe I got ahead of myself. Has anybody here slept before? Of course, everybody laughs And I'm like, Alright, so don't you think it's curious that there's something you do every day? And you can define it? Like, how many things are there? Like, if I asked you, what's the definition of eating? you would you would have an answer. But if I said sleep, you don't know, like, and why would you know? So? Really, sleep science has agreed on it. But it's really kind of a dumb definition. But it's important to understand how the drugs work. So what sleep really is, and this is William demand, you know, the grandfather of sleep medicine, William demist. Definition was there's a barrier between you and your environment. And you can be awakened past that environment. I would add to it that there's predictable neuronal and physiologic measures, right. So because I don't think it sleep, if you have 100% stage to sleep, I like it on your if you don't polysomnographic, it's 100% stage just leave. That's not sleep, like that's your unconscious, you're not aware. But what he means by the barrier is that if you think about it, your eyes still work. When you're asleep, your ears are still working your nose just so working your tongue like you can still taste you can still smell you can still feel you can feel hot, you can feel cold, you can feel sharp, you can feel everything you can hear, that's why noises can wake you up. That's why you can turn lights on. That's why you can hover over somebody who's sleeping and they'll go Oh, I felt you know, woke up. So you know, your senses were working, you just weren't paying attention to them, right. So that's really what's happening when you what's what that barrier means. It means that your your brain is no longer processing your senses, it's no longer paying attention to them. And then neurophysiologic trick that does that is gabbo, which your audience have probably heard of gamma amino butyric acid, g a BA, it's a neuropeptide, that the secretion of it starts increasing after melatonin starts being secreted and changes 500,000 things in your brain. GABA is one of the big things that ramps up. And what GABA does is it goes to your neocortex different from like your lizard brain, it's controlling all the autonomic stuff. But the neocortex the part of our brains that we think of when we think of a human brain, all of those neurons have what's called a resting potential. And the lower the resting potential, the harder it is to fire that neuron. All right, so if my neurons like right on the threshold of being able to pop up and think like a little jack in a box thing away ever, like that's the firing of the neuron, if it's right at the edge, then it's easy to pop open but if I push it way down here then you like you got to put a lot of energy in there for my brain to pay attention to what I'm hearing or what I'm seeing. So it Gabba does is it lowers that resting potential. And we have receptors in the neurons and neurons are just another name for cells in our brain, right like every, we're just a bunch of cells and that's the brain cells, right? Essentially, those are neurons and they have receptors for GABA. So when gabbeh starts increasing in your brain, they bind to these receptors and then their arms and they make their neurons to what I just said. So with the pharmaceutical industry has always done. One of the reasons I disliked the term biohacking, but I've just I've just accepted it because I can't win the battle. I've been fighting the battle for 10 years, no one will listen to me. The original biohackers were for pharma. Because what biohacking to me means at least the definition of that word to me to hacking means that you're you're getting a result without doing the work or you're found a shortcut? Well, there are no shortcuts but pharmaceutical industry says they are. So they say, well, instead of putting GABA and GABA receptor, what if we made a molecule that bound to that gamma receptor but had 10,000 times the effect of a gabin molecule, then it'd be really easy to go to sleep, I say you're just saying so much more power. And that's what they did. That's what benzodiazepines are things like valiant and Xanax. Those are Gabba analogs. And then the Z drugs or gab analogs as well, they just find different receptor sites on like different points on the receptor. And so when you saturate any kind of receptor, especially when you have something that's so much more powerful to get the effect like these drugs, what ends up happening is you get a down regulation of receptors, your bodies are really smart machine, your body doesn't make anything that it doesn't have to make. That's why if you give yourself hormone your body quits making that hormone, why waste the energy. So if I have so much powerful Gabba, like stuff in my brain, I only need one 10th of the receptors. Well, now if I quit taking the gabbeh, drug, regular gab is not going to be able to do it because I only have a 10th of the receptors. Right. That's why it's so hard to come off of them. So that's why you that's why you have to work with your physician to taper off of them. So what I did with with my guys is I had I had compounding pharmacy make up a serum to where they would take 10 drops, and that was their normal, that's was the dose they were on. And then the next week, they took nine drops. And the next week, they took eight drops in the next week. And they did this while taking supplements to make sure that they had all the nutritional building blocks to do the work to get themselves to sleep. And that's how I got people off of the sleep like prescription sleep drug. With that said, sleep interfere like when you do take z drugs. If you look at the sleep architecture, the histogram that comes out of a sleep study that says you're in stage this that that the a lot of the wearable devices produce things that look like histograms, the Z drugs wipe out about 80% of REM sleep and about 20 to 40% of deep sleep. Alcohol does the opposite. So if you take the if you take both of them, you end up with what I saw with every seal, I tested 99% stage two sleeves. So like if you guys haven't covered that already. That's a whole topic. That's a whole different topic. But yeah, deep sleep and REM sleep are very different. But they both they're very, they're both very important. You can't get and you can't get away without either one of them. Yeah, like neither one of them is a luxury.
Unknown Speaker 27:54
Wow. Okay, so that was so well said and said in different ways and some of the other guests that we've had on so I appreciate that. Because I think that it's been so normalized or accepted or just sort of, Okay, I have a sleep problem. So I take these pills. And then often I, when people come to me, it's they've gotten they've been doing that for so many years. And now it's not working in the same way that maybe it did initially. And they are adding in the alcohol and all this. I mean, it's just a real mess when you really uncover what their days look like. You know, the
Unknown Speaker 28:28
other thing is that after the pharmaceutical industry started getting successfully sued for the Z drugs, then they had to release more of their research. So when a pharmaceutical industry applies to the FDA, they produce all their own research and they get to cherry pick their research and give it to the FDA. And if there's unflattering research, they don't necessarily have to divulge it. I don't know exactly how the rules are. But once they started getting in trouble than other research came out, then it turns out that they're admitting Okay, well, yeah, it's not really sleep. It's like dissociated. Like Yes, brains dissociated. And I want to say what turned out if you looked at their research as a whole is that people fell asleep 12 minutes faster, yes, and slept for 38 minutes longer, but the quality of their sleep was so ridiculously low that they would have been better not taking a drug. So once that came out, that's really crashed the Z drugs and that's why there's you know, Tramadol and like all these other things, now that they're trying to push for sleep, but there's a difference between so that word just associated that with that barrier means right so when I'm asleep, my brain is dissociated from my environment. You can appear wide awake on Ambien or volume but yeah, much more powerful with the Z drugs because there's so much stronger, they bias receptor so much more and have such a high impact that people will do lizard brain stuff because their neocortex has shut off. Yes, completely. dissociated and lizard brain is survival stuff. Its reproduction. Its food, its stimulation, excitement. So people take this drug they feel they think they went to sleep, they might get in our car and drive down the street, eat a dozen donuts, go gamble, pick up a prostitute, come back and get back in bed. Wake up an hour later go, Oh, looks like I slept eight hours and have absolutely no memory whatsoever of all of that stuff. And that's what that's what they got successfully sued for. Like that dissociation. My point with that is like that dissociation is not sleep. They're saying I'm not even comparable.
Unknown Speaker 30:38
Yeah. And, you know, we laugh about it can be funny stories and people Oh, I made you know, pancakes. I did all this stuff on Ambien. And it can be comical, because you know, it can be light. But then there's also some really serious cases that are just I mean,
Unknown Speaker 30:53
it can be really dangerous like it. It's comical, because it is that's completely surreal. It does not seem it doesn't seem as possible. But I can tell you like I had, I had conversations with my ex wife while we were married. And she took me in when I when I first met her she was taking me and I had our long conversations with her. And then the next day, I would say something about it. And she had no idea what I was talking about. I'm the guy right? I'm the guy out remember the conversation are like young, right? Like this guy's job to go. I don't remember that conversation. She's like, What are you talking about? Like, we talked about this for an hour? Just right before we went to bed.
Unknown Speaker 31:35
so crazy. Yeah, no, I absolutely hear you and I so one, I appreciate that. Now you were able to see these through lines that this was one of the clear factors that was present with all of these seals that you're working with. So then help us understand when people are coming to you now with these sleep disturbances sleep? What is kind of your framework? Or how do you approach this that's kind of unique, and that has given you this really to be known as this, you know, doctor for sleep? What does this look like?
Unknown Speaker 32:06
I do a lot of lecturing, I consult for organizations like professional sports teams, or law enforcement or God or DOJ or like shipping companies, long haul trucker, like I'll I'll do consulting work for them. And that's very specific mechanic stuff. I'll lecture the audience. I try not to lecture I try to talk to the audience and motivate them about sleep, give them tell them the perils of sleep, you know, sort of motivate them to be interested in sleep. When I work with private clients, which would that's my real business, I won't do less than a year because it's lifestyle. Yeah, often it's a it's a year to change. And we work with, even though on the sleep guy, and my application is like 12 pages long. And on every single page, there's something about how you have to sleep eight hours every night, be willing to sleep eight hours every night to be my patient. And it's still the hardest thing I coach people on sleep nutrition, exercise, stress mitigation, the one I still get the most resistance on asleep. And I start with sleep. One because I'm reinforcing the importance of it to them. But also because I don't feel like I can be successful with any of the other stuff. If I can't get this part done. I honestly I used to call it four pillars of health, the sleep nutrition, exercise, and stress mitigation were like four pillars holding over, I've changed it to where now sleep is the foundation that the other three pillars are sitting on top of. And if you don't get to sleep, the others really don't matter that much. I mean, you can get some, you can mitigate some of the damage. But if you're not getting good sleep, you simply can't be healthy, you certainly can't be optimal or anything close to optimal. And so what I teach people is this. And of course, I get really detailed for the people who want to be detailed and a lot of my clients are very successful, really detailed, educated people, they want to know this. But I always start with this. Like, the whole purpose of sleep like sleep has a sleep has one purpose, no matter how you define it, whatever, like it has one purpose. The purpose of me sleeping tonight is to get me ready for tomorrow, I'm going to be awake for approximately 16 hours during those 16 hours, I'm going to use a lot of resources in my body, I'm going to build up a lot of waste products, I'm going to possibly damage my body, if I exercise intensely or whatever, get an injury, like I'm getting an infection, like I'm gonna possibly do some damage to my body. And that has to be repaired. And so what's happening when I'm asleep, as I'm repairing from today, and I'm using today as the blueprint for what I think I need to be able to do tomorrow and my brain and body are using Today's the template to replenish, restore, regenerate and reinforce, make anything that can possibly make better so that when I get up tomorrow and I do exactly what I did today, I'm at least as good if not better at it. I've learned I've gotten slightly stronger. So like more during whatever. That's the whole purpose. And this is a contract. You're born. You don't have an option, right? Like every animal has their kind of contract. And this isn't luxury, this isn't this isn't optional, you can choose to not do it. But you're just choosing not to get that benefit. And eight hours is rough, right? That's the adult. That's the rough guidelines, plus or minus half an hour. For most people. If you're like training for triathlons, you probably need more, right? If you like, we understand that the harder you push yourself, the more sleep you may need. When you're younger, when your child when you're growing, you think about it, they're actually going to sleep. And they're waking up tomorrow, not only recovered, but better. They're waking up stronger and faster and smarter and larger, taller and heavier. Like they're actually growing at some point we quit growing. And then that's kind of when we say we're an adult. And then the adult years kind of start now it's roughly about eight hours a night on average that people need, you can't get out of this contract. So till tomorrow, tell two things really quickly. I know I'm going to prolong this. But now it's great. The first sleep cycle you go into, it's going to be primarily deep sleep, slow wave sleep, non REM sleep like tons of words for let's just call it deep sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep. So deep sleep is really anabolic is the most anabolic time in your life, meaning you're taking small things, you're building more complex things out of them, you're like your body is building up complexity. It's storing things, reserving things repairing things like it's improving, and you have the lowest stress hormones you will ever have. At any point in your day, while you're in deep sleep. It's the exact opposite of fight or flight. And if you think about what fight or flight is fight or flight is the maximum amount of stress hormone your body could possibly secrete happening all at once, leading you to focus on one single threat, that if you don't get away from that threat, nothing else matters. So 100% of your resources go to getting away from that threat. So you get stronger, you get faster your reflexes get faster, your pain threshold goes up, your lungs dilate, you take in more air, your pupils dilate, you take in more light and broader field of vision, your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up, you become superhuman, but everything else gets cut off. Right? Nothing else matters. Like you know, you aren't digesting food, your kidneys aren't producing urine, your immune systems not fighting anything off, you're not producing, you know, any kind of sex hormones reproduction, like all that stuff's gone. Because if you don't get away from threat, you're going to die. Nothing else matters. So that's maximum stress. That's a maximally catabolic state, right? Everything has become so important that you have committed 100% of your resources to fueling your body, your physical musculoskeletal system, right now to get away from the threat. Deep Sleep exactly the opposite anabolic. Now, if you put somebody asleep in a cave, and you don't give them any light, there's plenty of research around this, they'll still wake up around the same time there's a there's a little bit of drift because the circadian rhythm without White is a little bit longer for men a little bit shorter for women than 24 hours. And so they'll get off over time. But they're still gonna wake up well, if life's not waking them up, and an alarm clocks not waking them up, what's waking them up? Well, it stress hormones will use cortisol as a simple example. So when you go to sleep, you have to have low enough cortisol levels to be able to sleep. And then they're going to dip down super low and you go into deep sleep. And then as you come up through the night, they're going to gradually come up. And at some point, your cortisol level is going to be high enough to wake you up. Without alarm clock without noise without anything, you're just going to wake up because all cortisol does is keep you alert in proportion to your environment. If you're in a stressful environment, you have a lot of stress hormones, if you're in a no stress environment, like deep sleep, you have very low stress hormones. So if you understand that, that's the whole point of sleep, and that you can't get out of the contract. Then the question is this if it takes eight hours to get ready for tomorrow, and at my age, like I'm 50 years old, at my age, the odds that I'm waking up better tomorrow, almost none, right? Like, I'm gonna try to wake up tomorrow as good as I am today as close to today as I could possibly be like, every time I don't do that I'm aging a little bit right. That's kind of what aging as I'm, I'm a little more catabolic, but let's say I'm intentionally sleep depriving myself early in life for any point in my life. And I know I need eight hours to even be holding steady and only sleep six hours. Well, tomorrow still comes. Right? I still have to do tomorrow, right? What do I do? How can I get through tomorrow? If I didn't repair if I didn't regenerate? If I didn't restore if I didn't put the fuel if I didn't do everything? If it didn't set my body up? How am I gonna do it? I have to do it through stress hormones. Hmm. So now my stress hormones are going to increase to get me through the day. And that's going to make me feel amped because stress hormones make you feel lamps, like right, getting in a car crash makes you feel amped, right? That's a lot of stress hormones, like it's the same thing. So now I'm stressing myself out so that I can get through my day but I'm also going to bed with higher stress hormones, which means it's gonna be harder for me to go to sleep and my stress hormones aren't going to get as low and I'm not going to be as anabolic in the night, and they're going to come up earlier, and it's gonna be harder for me to stay asleep.
Unknown Speaker 40:06
That's really all there is to sleep. That's all you need to know. So once I've motivate people to do that, and I say, obviously, tomorrow, you're waking up so optimal, but if you want to motivate yourself, go to Google Scholar, go to PubMed, put in sleep, and yes, whatever, I don't care, whatever you want to be good at being a mom being a violin player, like, I don't care, whatever it is, you want to do, like, What do you care about sleep fan that and just read, read and read? Yes. And you realize that you're going to be worse at everything you value. So why would you do that to yourself. And then if I can motivate people with that, then it's just simply a matter of working through the behavior, because it's really, it's really simple, like, obviously, hygiene, all the ritualization. It's like, it's all one thing at all this, like, it's just behaving like you evolved, essentially, like trying to approximate how you evolved. And then there's, there's a reality of what you can do. There's limitations, you have a job, you have kids, you have responsibilities, you can't you can't spend three hours getting ready for bed, like so there's the ideal, and then there's the reality. And then in between is where we supplement. And that's where we use techniques of journaling, or we use nutritional supplements where we were we were gadgets, we listen to dye or beads, like whatever it is, like we do things to help us sort of compensate for that area that we supplement in between the reality and the ideal.
Unknown Speaker 41:33
Hmm, wow, that was so well kind of articulated, of helping guide us through the importance of being tuned into those hormones throughout the day, and how we really do have a say about them. And it also just struck me as like that snowball effect of if we are running on cortisol and just on fumes to get through the day, and how much that could impact our sleep that night. And it can be this vicious cycle that people find themselves in, have difficulty getting themselves out. So if people are in that cycle, and now you know, their glucose levels are high, because they're not sleeping, their cortisol levels are high and maybe at the wrong times. And they just have the sense that things are not really working. How you know, because I loved what you said too about because there's so much we can learn and read and get grounded in. But are there certain kind of protocols that you suggest you suggest people go into the gadgets and the strategy? Or what is your approach or your advice for people?
Unknown Speaker 42:28
So this is where the one bit came back?
Unknown Speaker 42:31
to ask you about that. Great. So thank you. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 42:33
this is where this comes back. So we had this thing when I was in the seal teams, and I was I was a seal in the late 80s and early 90s. So money was different. We said a million. So I say 10 million now. But if I said, Molly, I'm gonna give you $10 million. If you can sleep eight hours a night for 30 consecutive days, and you believe me and we signed a contract. The money was in escrow. You knew it was real? What do you think the odds are? If I gave you a year, what do you think the odds are? You'd be able to sleep? One month, eight hours a night? Probably 100%. Right? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 43:06
exactly. Yeah. I mean, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 43:08
you would figure it out. Mm hmm. So that's what I was saying that the necessity is the mother all in all invention. If your why is big enough, you'll do it. So that's the number one thing. And that's why I say search what you value, like, take your top five priorities in life, search that and sleep. And then I would also recommend if you don't think of this, like sleep, and death, and sleep and disease, because lack of sleep increases your risk of all like you die younger, you have higher risk of every disease on the planet. And so that should be enough motivation. Now, once you get the motivation, it's really quite simple, right? You can go online, you can research, there's tons of tips and tricks and books and gadgets, and you can track your sleep. And if you're really into gadgets, and you want to track your sleep, go ahead. However, don't use that. Don't use that gadget as the gold standard as to whether or not you've got a good night's sleep, yeah, use that gadget is a metric for you. So what you still need to do is figure out the nights that you're sleeping really well and the nights that you aren't sleeping as well. And desk can This can be done by lots of metrics, depending on what you measured, it's b can be done by your performance at your work your performance in your morning workouts, your overall energy to the day like all sorts of subjective things that you can find an objective measures you could find about yourself, like did I sleep really well, I feel like I slept well. And was my performance good today. And then you make the association over time. It's like, Well, my sleep looks like this on my tracking device. And different tracking devices. It's gonna look different, but it's just your baseline. Like, this is what my good night's sleep looks like. And now that's what I'm aiming for. If you have an aura ring and these and that says, Well, that's 70% ideal sleep, but that's when you feel the best and when it says 100% you don't feel as good, you know performance. Well guess what the perfect night for you is that 70 way right? That's for you. That's That's it. You don't need devices I have older patients that aren't techie, have no interest in stuff. They have a journal, they write down what time they went to bed, they wake up the morning, they write down how long they think it took them to fall asleep, how they fell, if they have if you know, how they feel they sleep, how they feel right now. And then maybe some notes throughout the day, if anything pops up. And like that's their sleep tracking, just as good. Yeah, like, because by definition, we don't have any awareness of our sleep, right? Like I just told you like, that's the definition of it, we don't have awareness over sleep. So the only thing that we can really judge it off of is if we feel good when we wake up, and if we perform well the next day, and that it's going to be something close to eight hours. Once you get that idea, then it's like okay, well what leads to sleep. And I'm sure lots of your guests who said this, they'll say it's super quick and simply ancestrally. Like every, like every mammal on the planet, even some non mammals on the land, they use the sun as their guide for when they're gonna be awake when they're going to be asleep. For us, turns out we don't we're very visual animals we don't see well at night makes a lot of sense for us to sleep at night, be awake during the day. So that's how we evolved. The blue light goes out of the sky, it hits some ganglia, some nerve cells in the back of our eyes, it leads to this pathway to melatonin getting secreted that starts a whole cascade of offense. One of the things as I said, it's gabbeh slows down our brain, we aren't stimulated, if you think about your ancestors, there was no electricity, there was nothing to do it was dark, they would huddle around, maybe hover around a fire, they'd get in a corner, they find out like a safe place, you're going to be very vulnerable when you're sleeping. You know, like there's predators around there's, there's snakes, there's ants like whatever. Like there's, there's things that you need to be careful of. And so they would get in their safe space. And they would they fall asleep about three hours after the sun goes down. And one of the things that after the sun goes down, one of the things that happens is the air temperature cools. And if you don't have a climate controlled house, your body temperature cools. And so really all that's happening is that you're decreasing the light in your eyes, that's leading to melatonin, which starts the whole cascade of events. One of those big things is gabbeh. that slows down your neocortex makes you pay attention to your environment less, your body temperature drops slightly and you fall asleep. good sleep happens cortisol creeps up. You wake up in the morning, like it's that simple. So all of the sleep hygiene stuff is around that. Like, why is your bedroom dark? Well, you don't want to stimulate your brain. Why is your bedroom quiet? You don't want to stimulate your ears. You don't want to stimulate that. Why don't you have electronics in your room? You don't want to stimulate yourself like Why? Why don't you have a television? You don't want stimulation in your eyes? Why do you want your bedroom cool, you want to lower your body temperature? Like it all makes sense. Just from those three things. It's like, decrease the blue light my eyes, slow down my interaction with the environment don't get in a fistfight. Don't get in an argument with my wife, don't watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, like slow down Don't try to work on a work project from 959 and get in bed at 10. And go. Why am I not asleep at 1015 and low your lower your body temperature? And that's it. Like that's all the sleep hygiene.
Unknown Speaker 48:06
Yeah, is piled into those three things. Obviously, it can be a lot more complex, there's a lot of pieces, some parts are more important. Other than that, you know, so there's some variation as to what's ideal, but that's the basic concept. And then I just work with my clients and I say, what's your reality? How long can you spend getting ready for bed, what's the reality is are you never going to spend more than 30 minutes getting for bed getting ready for bed, just say that, and we'll build it around that if you're going to if you can give me an hour, that's ideal. But if you only give me 30 minutes, then we'll build it around that, again, obviously take a really long time to do like what I do. As we said before the show started on my on my website, they're downloadable PDFs for building bedtime routines and for how to deal with stress, how to de stress yourself how like the number one problem that I find with all of my clients, even if they don't consider it stress. They're there. I mean, most of them are really wealthy, really successful people and they're just go getters, they're Go, go, go, go, go go. They don't consider that stress. But that's counterproductive their brains going and their brain should be slowing down. And so the number one reason that I find people don't sleep well is because they have too high of stress hormones, the brains are too active. And so I have a whole protocol for how to how to get rid of that. And it goes with lists and alarm clocks and various behaviors, meditation, their breath worker, kind of whatever your thing is, but I have a whole list for that. And then I also have a sheet for helping your kids build a bedtime routine or helping you build a bedtime routine for your kids, whatever. And then obviously other other blogs and other articles and stuff but it again, it all functions around that. If you think about little kids, if you've ever had kids, or if you've ever been a kid, you might remember This whole protracted bedtime period.
Unknown Speaker 50:02
Right? Right. And you don't
Unknown Speaker 50:03
you don't take a three year old who's like banging his trucks together and throw him in his bed turn off, like walk out the door and think that he's gonna stay in the bed. Like there's not a single adult on the planet who thinks that would work. Right? Why wouldn't it work? We try to do it to ourselves, though, right? Like, I'm up, I'm going to work and I'm going to, I'm going to hop in bed, like, why am I not asleep? Same reason your kids not asleep, right, like just dimming the lights, there's Oh, no more roughhousing. It's quiet playtime, like it's clean up the toys. And now we're gonna do puzzles, or, you know, you can do some coloring or whatever, and then we're gonna put you in a bath, we're gonna lower your body temperature. And then we're gonna put you in like these really comfortable pajamas and powder you up so that your skin's not sensing much, there's nothing irritating your skin, there's less stimulation there, then we're going to put you in a comfortable bed so that there's nothing poking or prodding or whatever. And then we're going to dim the light something there, then we're going to read your story, preferably that you already know. And that you have memorized and has some sort of rhythmicity to it, where it's almost like meditating you into safety, and you're going to be there next to mom or dad and feel really comfortable and really safe. And your brain is going to slow down in your body temperatures down in the light spinning low. And now you fall asleep. Same thing for adults. You don't have to wear onesies. You can if you want. Like you I'm not against him. I'm just not saying everybody has to do it. I didn't you know, all the normal sleep hygiene stuff. People can learn about setting up their bedrooms and yeah, and all that stuff. But it's, it's all pretty consistent. It's variations of all of it's a variation in one of those three things.
Unknown Speaker 51:29
Wow. Okay, so number one, I really encourage people to check out your website. So at doc parsley, com, Doc's D OC, calm and because there are just so many resources to check out their videos, all kinds of things. And like you said, Those downloadable PDFs like, absolutely grab those right away. And I also just want to just acknowledge you for all the work that you're doing. It's like I said, clear, the passion just jumps out from you on this topic and the difference that you've made already, and certainly the seal community to start, but then this huge ripple effect and what you've created now, so I so appreciate it. And I appreciate your time, and sharing all your wise information with us. And you know, just, I think that it's so cool and refreshing to see that this narrative, even in something like the extreme world of Navy SEAL training, held weeks, all of this, that if it can shift there can shift anywhere. So really appreciate that.
Unknown Speaker 52:30
Yeah. And that that was sort of my stump, my stamp advice at the beginning. And we're like, like, Look, we're we're talking about robustly healthy, high performing super motivated, with a culture that just demands perfection. Yes. And these guys, the toughest men in the world, these guys are being crushed, these guys are throwing them by the time they're in their 30s. Just by having these chaotic sleep cycles and poor poor sleep and using sleep drugs. And if it's going to do it to them, it's definitely going to do it to the Joe blows, you know, do it to the average person, it's just going to be harder on you. And you know, to be honest, there are people I get pushback about the eight hours. What about genetics, super sleepers and all this stuff. So to be clear about that. The good thing about the sleep research is it's not like nutritional research and exercise research and all this where there's all this controversy as to what's the best thing? Yeah, sleep research isn't that way. It's like every, like all the sleep research shows the same thing. And what it does show is that there are people who've genetically metabolically hormonally for whatever reason, there are people who suffer less, they decay slower, right, but there's no evidence that anybody performs their best with less than approximately eight hours, like there's no evidence for that. So just because you're going to follow up, you're going to fall apart 25% or 75% slower than I will doesn't make it a good idea. I mean, when you when you rather still perform at your best for your whole life, and especially since you don't have any idea how long it's going to be anyway. Might as well get the best day you can have every day.
Unknown Speaker 54:12
Yes. Ah, yes, yeah, absolutely. preaching to the choir, I love this. And I love that you kind of shifted your framework or approached almost like that, you know, pyramid of sleeping, the most important on that foundation. So I know anyone most likely that's listening to this is in somewhat of agreement on that of just how important this is, or they're either looking to take it to the next level or just really struggling with that. So I think no matter where you're at in your sleep, I know your website and you know, your social media and what have you has lots to offer on helping people with that. And I do appreciate to the problems because sleep prescriptions are such a topic and having something that people could take versus just subtracting and having nothing in its place and just avoid that there's something that people could use Between that freedom, that psychological and physiological kind of transition. Wow. Well, thank you again so much for taking the time and grateful for what you're doing for the world with this topic.
Unknown Speaker 55:13
Well, you're welcome. And thanks for having me on and let me get on my soapbox.
Unknown Speaker 55:18
I love it. All right. Well keep on. Thank you so much. You've been listening to the sleep is a skill podcast, the number one podcast for people who want to take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday I send out something that I call Molly's Monday obsessions containing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep, head on over to sleep as a skill calm to sign up.