In this episode, I’m joined by two of my favorite humans: blood sugar expert Danielle Hamilton (Light Up Your Metabolism) and wellness powerhouse Kristin Weitzel (WELLPOWER). Together, we dig into the interconnected web of circadian rhythm, glucose regulation, stress, light, and sleep—and how these systems are either working for you or against you every single day. We also share the tools we’re loving (shout out to UBLOCKOUT - code: sleepisaskill — my ride-or-die blackout shade!), the low-hanging fruit that can make a big difference in your sleep, and the mindset shifts that help you actually stick to these habits—even when your partner thinks your red lights are a little... intense. Danielle "Dani" Hamilton is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and leading blood sugar expert known for her circadian and quantum approach to metabolic health. After reversing her own struggles with PCOS, hypoglycemia, and weight loss resistance, she’s helped hundreds heal insulin resistance and blood sugar issues. When some clients weren’t getting results despite “doing everything right,” Dani dug deeper—discovering the powerful role of light, water, and magnetism in healing. She’s now on a mission to help people return to nature to optimize energy, metabolism, and overall health. Dani is the creator of the Blood Sugar Mastery program and host of the top 50 nutrition podcast Light Up Your Metabolism. Kristin Weitzel is a health and high-performance expert, breathwork and cold exposure leader, and founder of the SHERPA Breath & Cold Instructor Training program—certifying 175+ coaches across North America and the Caribbean. She’s also the host of the WELLPOWER Podcast, where she blends biohacking, wellness, and practical tools to help others unlock their full potential. Known for her wit, wisdom, and passion for women's health, Kristin empowers clients and audiences to push the limits of vitality and performance.
😴 Why light is medicine—and also a potential toxin
😴 The importance of “bookending” your day (Mollie’s signature phone shut-down ritual)
😴 Danielle’s take on blood sugar drops at 3AM and what to do about it
😴 The sneaky ways stress spikes glucose (even from doing laundry!)
😴 How modern lighting wrecks melatonin—and what to do about it
😴 Easy, low-cost upgrades to make your home circadian-friendly
😴 Why eating earlier = better blood sugar, better sleep, better YOU
😴 The mindset piece: why “I’m just a night owl” might be the most dangerous label of all
😴 Tools we love: UBLOCKOUT, BiOptimizers’ Sleep Breakthrough, red light discs & more
😴 How to lovingly navigate these lifestyle upgrades with your partner, kids, or skeptical roommate
😴 And many more!
SPONSORS:
🪟Ublockout— Can you still see your hand in front of your face when you are in bed? Well, you NEED to know about this company that will get on a Zoom call with you and help you measure your windows for a custom AND affordable blackout solution! Enjoy 10% OFF. Code: SLEEPISASKILL
🛌🏻 Transform your sleep with Eight Sleep’s cooling mattress—personalized temperature control for deep, restorative rest every night. Code: sleepisaskill
🧠 If you “Can’t Turn Your Brain Off” at night…https://magbreakthrough.com/sleepisaskill
😴 Struggling with STRESS and restless nights? The Align Mat uses PEMF therapy to calm your nervous system, lower cortisol, and set you up for deeper, more restorative sleep—all while you simply lie down. I literally use it every single night!
Code: sleepisaskill
GUEST LINKS:
Website: https://www.wellpower.life/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biohacking.breath.cold
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/warriorwomanmode
facebook.com/daniellehamiltonhealth
DISCLAIMER:
The information contained in this podcast, our website, newsletter, and the resources available for download are not intended to be medical or health advice and shall not be understood or construed as such. The information contained on these platforms is not a substitute for medical or health advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.
Welcome to the Sleep As a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman, and I am the founder of Sleep As A Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about sleep.
Each week I'll be interviewing world-class experts, ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness, and I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health, and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.
Well, welcome to the Sleep Is a Skill podcast. Today's episode is a treat. It is with two close friends of mine. We go deep. We are calling it a round table episode. We had a blast recording this and it was actually brought to you by our sponsor. You block out that we all use, all three of us use You Block Blockout because as one of my clients refers to it, it's like Prison Lockdowns.
That's how he refers to his you Blockout Shades, because when you pull them down it goes. Total blackness. It's so gratifying and satisfying. So absolutely. If you have still slivers of light coming into your space or your quote unquote blackout shades or not doing the trick, definitely check them out.
Use code, sleep as a skill. But our guest today are Kristen Wezel. Again, these are both friends of mine. She's a health and high performance expert specializing in nutrition, fitness, breath work, and cold exposure. She founded Sherpa Breath and Cold and host the Well Power Podcast, guiding women towards optimal health.
And Danny Hamilton is a holistic nutritionist specializing in blood sugar regulation and digestion. But she adds this very cool circadian and quantum biology approach to her work and her personal health journey led her to adopt a real food. Low carb, high fat diet and incorporate fasting resulting in weight management, improved skin health and hormonal balance.
Inspired by her transformation. Danny is dedicated to helping women identify and address blood sugar issues with a mission to raise awareness about undiagnosed prediabetes and diabetes in the United States. We go into many aspects of what it takes to get not only great health, but of course great sleep.
So I think you're gonna really enjoy today's episode. But first, a few words from our sponsors. Please check them out because again, just like I mentioned with you, blockout, which is a sponsor, all these sponsors keep this podcast alive, and I absolutely use and endorse every single one of them. We only go with sponsors that we truly believe in.
If you're listening to this podcast, you're likely looking to improve your sleep. And one of the first questions people ask me about sleep is what supplement they can take. One supplement I've consistently taken for ages is magnesium, specifically by optimizers Magnesium breakthrough. It's an all natural supplement that helps reduce fatigue, improve sleep quality, and promote peaceful rest.
It also strengthens muscles and improves heart and brain function. Most magnesium supplements aren't full spectrum, but magnesium breakthrough contains an optimal ratio of all seven essential types of magnesium. Now imagine having the strength and energy to get outta bed every morning, face the day boldly, and maintain that energy throughout the day and into the night.
If you wanna give it a try, go to buy optimizers.com/sleep as a skill and use the code, sleep as a skill to get gifts with your purchase. And this is a limited time offer, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
Right. All right. All right. The recording light is on. Woo-hoo. Recording.
What a fantastic Friday this gets to be. I'm here with Molly Eastman and Danny Hamilton. And I'm Kristen Wezel. If you don't know, and I. We're gonna talk about all things kind of sleep and health and glucose, and I'm really looking forward to diving into the conversation and I think it behooves us to do like a little snippet of where we live and what we, what we are playing in, in the realm of health.
So, Danny, why don't you just start us off and give a little snippet. Uh, I don't wanna, I mean, I do wanna gush a little. I wanna say that I've gotten a chance to get to know these women really, really so beautifully over the last few years, and I continue to see them shining on stages, which is amazing.
'cause the more we all get to speak and get around in the world, the more our voices get heard. But also the more people hopefully hear these educational tools and adjust their health state. And that's really exciting. Both these women have been on my podcast on, in a solo episode. And so if you wanna hear a whole story about Molly's origin story or Danny's origin story and all of those pieces, then you can always listen to that.
And they have many, many times been on. A guest on other episodes and have their own podcasts. So there's a, it's ripe with information out in the world. So, so stoked that we're together, and I could gush for an hour about both of you, but I thought maybe Danny would start and give a little snippet of, uh, past life and where you live in your body and your health now.
Oh, where I live in my body? Um,
well, I currently physically live in Austin, Texas. Uh, I was a Florida girl for 15 years prior, but just moved here over the summer and I am a blood sugar specialist. And if that sounds really boring to you, I would've agreed with that statement about 10 years ago because I didn't realize.
But blood sugar was completely disrupting my health in so many ways, and I didn't associate it. As associate with it, because I was like, I don't have diabetes. No one in my family has diabetes, so I don't need to pay attention to my blood sugar. But what I did have was polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS. I had a ravenous sweet tooth, which I thought was just.
You know, part of my personality, I used to say, you know, I'm the hangry friend. I don't have one sweet tooth. All my teeth are sweet. I was a quote breakfast person, and that's why I needed to eat breakfast immediately upon waking, but I'd wake up shaky. Like I didn't know that I was hypoglycemic and I didn't know that all these.
Blood sugar issues were driving me to be snacking all the time and eating before I went out to eat and impacting my hormones in a big way. So I didn't get my period for six months. And when I did get it, my PMS was like off the chain. And so it was really affecting me in a big way. Acne, weight gain, inability to lose weight, brain fog, I mean just you name it.
And I didn't realize that our blood sugar impacts every single aspect of our health. And so once I was able to dial in my blood sugar, stabilize it, all the things in my health just got so much better. And so that's why I have a platform where I teach people how to optimize their blood sugar. You don't have to have diabetes to take part in this.
Over 93% of the population is said to be metabolically unhealthy. So this is something that affects almost every single person and our blood sugar. Is something that really, really drastically impacts our sleep, and so it's really important to nail the day with the blood sugar so we can have a good night's sleep.
I love it. I mean, take it away. Take it away. I gotta say a couple things. One, well try to match your amazing radio voice, but I can't quite get there, so sorry if it's more, you know, not as lulling us into a sleep state. But I have to say, I feel like this is a perfect setting and duo and and trio because, but the duo of the conversations, because we're often discussing the fact that blood sugar and sleep are this beautiful bidirectional relationship and then the amazing work you do to get into this parasympathetic state to facilitate all of this, they all go so hand in hand.
But yes. So a little bit about me. I'm Molly Eastman. I'm founder of Sleep As a Skill, and as you pointed out, I can, you know, much longer story of the background of how in the world I became, found myself in this realm of sleep and it was really a circuitous route. So if you wanna hear that longer story, you can, but.
The main takeaway is essentially I am now a woman on a mission to really help people. Giving essentially agency around their sleep is my main mission. How to have agency, how to get into the driver's seat with your sleep, realize that there is a driver's seat in this area of sleep. You're not just at the effect of this, and specifically through circadian rhythm entrainment.
Now, this all came from a. History and a genesis of my own sleep breakdown, and it really looked like some of the lowest moments in my life. There was times when I just had the darkest of thoughts and I started to really question, can I go on if this continues? And some of the thoughts that I would have were very, very concerning.
And I share that because I know that some people, and many people when they do get into these periods of time when their sleep is not working, it can feel very disempowering. Now, whether you're at that level or just, you know, kind of struggling or have a speculation that you might be able to sleep better, I'm of the estimation that.
All of us can uplevel this area of life similar to what you were talking about on the percentages. We know that the majority of people, so we have numbers that the average person is spending well over 90% of their days inside, and we can talk about why that's a problem. But this indoor issue means that most of us are dealing with some form of circadian dysregulation.
And if that's the case, that means that your sleep is not only not functioning as well as it could, but all of these other things that get impacted by our circadian rhythms are also not functioning in an optimal level, including blood sugar and including some of our stress responses. To know that our thoughts exist on a diurnal pattern, a rhythm is also a fascinating area of, you know, conversation.
So it's just a big, big topic and I'm excited to get into it more today.
Yeah, so I think critically a lot of what we were speaking about this before we hit the record button, but just critically, a lot of what I think I continue to see in the health landscape is this, you mentioned the word agency. It's like how do we have autonomy to choose?
How do we have agency and feel empowered to shift these things in our lives? And maybe even just to, not to suggest too much to the people who might be listening, which is just to really take a moment right now, if you're like sitting in your car or in the office or wherever you're listening to this and thinking about are there places that you are selling yourself short or your long-term health short because you are.
Um, it's not about shame, it's about focus of the energy, right? Or the energy behind the action. It's like, how do we create a space and a plan, somebody who's excellent at systems, Molly Eastman, a lot of good systems, we create a system and a plan for ourselves when we're navigating these things, whether it be light or glucose or sleep or breathing.
For me that's like, is it stress? Because the thing that I learned from CG M specifically, I was like, oh, well, cassava's out, and yeah, a few like food items, but the thing for me with glucose was when I'm like running behind or having to get, you know, overbooking myself or running down the stairs, carrying my wet laundry, doing like that, those spikes were the biggest spikes, like.
As big, if not bigger than like gym spikes or sugar spikes would be from like eating that the food that had contained sugar. 'cause you always gotta test, you know, the ice cream test when you have a CGM in. Yes. But so stress, right? So whether it's it's stress, whether it's glucose, whether it's sleep, it's like where in the spaces in your life right now, where are you selling yourself short?
Not making the date and keeping it is, is what I wanna talk about a little in a way that feels like a beautiful, kind, loving, mindful smack that we all, including me. So I've been on the road for so many weeks, can make just small changes and like just put the phone down, right? And some things like that as we'll.
Talk about maybe the wise behind it. Then perhaps it'll give everyone a bit more opportunity to stand in and create some of that agency. I think, I don't know if you are feeling this always, but when I'm working with clients one-on-one, I see that they are quite often serving everyone around them so deeply and then just under serving themselves and then maybe doing it all indoors.
Right. Yeah,
exactly.
Let's start with a conversation about light. I know that you're a fan of Jack Cruz, and I think that there's so much there to chat about, but let's talk about light across the board. Just light, maybe the interplay of light and how we're nourishing ourselves, light and sleep, and yeah, let's dive into that.
Yes. Yeah, we do. Absolutely. Okay, so a couple things. One, this conversation around light. If anyone's hearing this and feels like, ugh, tune out. I mean, what is there to talk about? It's just turn on the light. Turns off the light. What's fascinating is that it becomes, there's an opportunity to get really curious about the impact of a light like a drug.
And we know that it has measurable impacts like a drug. Phototherapy is actually a protocol that we can bring into our lives and have measurable effects. So when we think about like, what is the problem, well, we know that. Estimations have it that the average person is in a light environment by day, that is run a hundred times too dim by day as compared to if they were outside and on average run a hundred times too bright as compared to the brightest moonlit evenings that we would've encountered in nature.
You know, with our ancestors being much more outdoor creatures. So what does that mean and why do we care? Well, it means that under that principle, since we're all living indoors, we are in this circadian mismatch or circadian dysregulation state, and this is not only causing problems with our sleep wake cycle, but it's causing issues with.
All the things that circadian regulation actually impacts. So what are some other things? Our hormonal regulation, our immunity, cancer rates, our emotionality, so our ability to be fully or cognition, the experience of life gets impacted when these things are turned upside down. Now, the practical application of shifting this can actually take something for the average individual, especially from our lifestyles in society of the work from Home Revolution, all these reasons that we might find ourselves indoors in inordinate amount.
So. The thing about it is that I think it takes some real conversations like we're doing, because you mentioned Jack Cruz really was eyeopening for me in my journey. I got my first pair of blue blockers, Uve, $10 in 2016, and I really
good ones
and yet totally affected by the way. I just wanna throw out, there are ways that you can make a difference with your light environment on the cheap, if you will.
There's things that you can do. Of course you can make it more trendy and beautiful and there's nuance there. But what I wanna say is that it takes something, and still, I've been in this conversation for years now and I'm still finding ways that I can uplevel this work with my clients on all the nuances and.
Certainly when you add life into the mix with travel and taking on things in your life, that there's often going to be situations that you find yourself in where this can be problematic. This is why I really wanna create more of this circadian revolution so that we can have more environments that understand and promote circadian aligned building biology.
And then when we have that, as a result, when our environment works, our health is more likely to work in a automatic way
for real.
Yeah. Yeah,
for real.
It's important. And I know, you know, I just said a lot of things and it can beg the question of is it really that big of a deal? Well, one thing that I'm citing quite a bit is that just last year, almost 250 circadian scientists staking their entire reputations referencing almost 2,700 peer reviewed publications are now calling for warning labels on light bulbs when used at night, not just because of the impacts on your sleep wake, but it also ripples into things like obesity.
So our waistline ripples into things like cancer, particularly things like breast cancer, pancreatic cancers, and other cancers, psychiatric disorders, fertility. So our mental health comes into play. So it's so far reaching, and if we just begin with this light dark piece, it can be such a great anchoring system.
So when I work with people on optimizing their sleep, there's two. Anchor places that I have people begin your light dark environment. Why? Because it's the top most impactful zeitgeber or time giver for your circadian health. Secondly, because sleep loves consistency, but also all anything that functions on these rhythms loves consistency, including glucose.
And so if we can begin with a consistent wake up time, seven days a week where we marry our consistent wake up time with that bright light exposure, it can give you the best shot at now, kind of winning the day on the rest of the things you're gonna bring in. Yeah.
Yeah. So just to kind of sum up what Molly said, and then add on light is a huge time giver.
It tells our body what to do when it's a very strong stimulus for our body to create hormones or to turn on and off genes. And so. I think that the essence is that we want to put our bodies in a light environment that most clearly mimics that of nature because nature's never wrong and nature, that light of the sun and then the absence of the sun.
So the darkness is how we as humans evolved and every single creature on this planet that has a 24 hour day, we don't have like a 2000 hour day like Venus or whatever. We don't have a 400 and Well, I
could use it to get some good stuff. Yeah,
yeah. Right, exactly. We don't have like a 450 day year, like our planet is very distinct.
We have like, and our circadian rhythms are this 24 hour cycle because we are on planet earth. We have seasons on this earth because our earth is at a tilt. So it's a really cool concept, but it allows life to exist and we evolved with those signals. So. The further we get from nature that 90% endure, the sicker we get.
Think about animals in the zoo, right? So we want to mimic most closely mimic their exact environment. Same thing with humans. Our environment isn't this, our environment is outside. So there's so much we can do to with modern technology to mimic that. So I think that one of the first, another important thing to realize is that blue.
Rays of light, so the visible spectrum and blues specifically, they're very high in sunlight during the day. So daylight has a lot of blue light in it, even though we can't really see that. We think it's like yellow or whatever, or white. And so light bulbs also, especially these LED bulbs, and Molly will tell you that the incandescent light bulbs, they've been now deemed illegal.
And so those lights, the incandescent ones, like the Edison ones, they had a lot more red hues, which are more calming. They don't raise cortisol. But these blue lights, the blue is good during the day. The sun is never wrong, like the earth is never wrong. So we want these hues in the day, as Molly talked about, because we want this signal of this brightness.
And we also, ironically, need cortisol during the day to solve problems, to think, to get things done. We need to have cortisol. If anyone has been flatlined in cortisol, they know how important it is, right? So we want those highs during the day at the right time. But then as the sun goes down, we don't wanna be popping on an A bright LED light bulb because now we are literally.
Raising our cortisol, which also raises glucose because cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone. The point of it is to make new glucose so we can fight or flight so we can run away from a threat. So our nighttime environment, if it contains a lot of these white light bulbs, screens, TVs, phones, and then even before the sun comes up, a lot of people wake up before the sun.
They just flip on lights without thinking about it because why would you, you know, this is all stuff that we had to learn too. Yeah. So we're unknowingly disrupting these rhythms. We're sending strong messages to our body to be creating cortisol at the wrong time, and it is causing us to be in a state of dis-ease.
So some simple takeaways is that we want to think about mimicking what's going on. In the outside, and this is going to be helpful for our sleep and also for our blood sugar because just like Kristen said, those spikes of stress on a continuous glucose monitor, those are some of the biggest spikes that we can see, whether it's an acute sort of situation.
But what I tend to find is that this chronic ness, because the lights go on every single night when the sun goes down, right? Mm-hmm. This chronic low level of stress, plus all our other stressors, 'cause there's a lot more stuff stressing us out other than the lights that can often drive these just chronically elevated levels of blood sugar.
And then if we are, you know, there's some people where their adrenals are just tanked, their minerals are tanked, and then they are people who are having these drops in blood sugar. They can't bring their blood sugar up no matter what. And so. Let's just make our environment set up to help us regulate our nervous system to help with the things that we can.
To me it feels like a no brainer. Like yeah, I just, I wanna set up my house, my environment to make sure my nervous system stays calm, set the mood. So maybe I'll talk about some daytime stuff, like sunrise and on, and then you can talk about Yes. Perfect. Evening types. Love it. So,
so how to navigate, like, let's figure out what, let's talk about the practical tools and ways that we can be smarter and give ourselves that mindful smack about what are the best ways for us to manage light.
Yeah, yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So when you wake up, ideally we're waking up. Around sunrise, and that changes depending on where you live. So there's lots of apps. You can just Google it, ask Alexa, when does the sunrise in your area? And so you want to sort of sink waking up with the sun if that is available to you.
If not, if you're like, I have to wake up at 5:00 AM every single day, and sometimes the sun isn't up. We went to. Block out these intense blue rays of light because we want our cortisol to start rising gradually, and that's what we would see with the sunrise where there's a lot of red rays, and then it starts to be blue, and then it gets more intense.
And so it's a gentle rise if we wake up. First thing, we have a bright phone in our eyes. Our body's like, oh my gosh, it's 10:00 AM And so you get this like big hit of cortisol and then maybe a big blood sugar hit, right? So we want to eliminate that. So putting on some blue blocker glasses, orange lens blue blocker glasses is a great way to do that.
And keeping your house dim and using some of the light bulbs that Molly will will talk about, but like an orange or a red hued light bulb and just keeping things pretty dim in the morning as much as possible. Of course, we want you to be able to see, because you know, people's spouses are like, not okay with this because they can't see.
It's like, well, let's set up so we can make sure we can see, you know, that's an important thing. I'm not suggesting everybody like walk around, you know, in the dark. That's not it. So we're not, we don't need to live like the pioneers men. So. Blue blocking glasses before sunrise, if applicable. And then the first light we ideally wanna get is that light from sunrise.
We wanna get it with the naked eyes. That's gonna tell our circadian rhythm when to start producing melatonin later on that night. It's gonna give us that gradual rise of cortisol, and it's also importantly gonna trigger us to feel hungry. And so this is a really cool thing that can happen once you do this on a consistent basis, because I think blood SugarWise, we really wanna be eating within an hour of sunrise to give our body some energy, some nutrients so it can run on that instead of running on cortisol.
So then throughout the day, it's important to get these light breaks to tell our body. Just pop your head outside, open a window. If you can't get outside for sunrise, just open the window. No glasses, no contacts, just the naked eyes. And do your best to just have these little light breaks. Don't take a cigarette break.
Take a light break so you can keep telling your body. This is what time it is. This is what time it is, this is what time it is. You can use some yellow daytime lenses to sort of get rid of some of those harsh hues from, let's say, artificial type lights and some of the screens. You can use some iris software on your computer to take down some of those intense tones, but we want that brightness by day.
So. As much as I can personally, I will work outside. I'll open a window so I'm sitting in front of the window getting the natural rays of light, even if it's cloudy, even if it's raining, even if it's snowing, it's always the right stimulus from outside. So that's how we would want to set up the daytime to be this gen.
Gradual exposure during the morning, brightness during the day. And then as the sun goes down, take it away as the sun goes down. Just wanna, I wanna
interject one thing which I think is super beautiful to focus on, which is that many, many people, I continue to see this, yes, a lot of females, 'cause I do work with females, but generally speaking are like, well I didn't really like my mom's here with me right now.
And she's like, well, I'm not really like hungry till like 11 or 12 anyway every day. And it's just, there is such an important component for a number of reasons, but also for the sleep wake cycle for glucose management as we're aging, to actually get some food in us in the morning instead of this thing where it's like, run it, gun it, black cup of coffee going till noon.
There's just so. So many negative effects I think that come with that. That's not to say that people shouldn't ever fast or whatever protocols you're doing out there, but it's, there's a really distinct time fast in the evening to be eating. Yeah, exactly. Just eating in the morning is not widespread. We need to be eating in the morning more often to really, the other thing for me, I always try to build it back, like, what's your nervous system staying and how safe do you feel?
And if your body has a little food in it, has a little energy, then it's like, okay, I may not need to spike cortisol as much. I'm gonna be able to feel safe enough that I can continue to function for the day. There's no starvation issues. I'm regulating so much of what's going on in the body so that like I can feel safe from eating food.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So good. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, we wanna think about a couple things because your mom's not wrong. That she's not hungry in the morning. And, but that's like patterned, that's like, that's pattern. So that's what we wanna, 'cause so many people say that I was one of those people too. I was very proud of myself.
I would say, well I don't eat until I'd push it 12 one, whatever, and I'd be applauding. And the truth is we can train. This is all under the umbrella of circadian rhythm entrainment. We can entrain these signals so the metabolic processes can be trained. And if we've set up an environment where if consistent cues, the body says this is, I guess what we do here.
So we get hungry at around 11:00 AM in that case and we prepare and the body loves to have the knowing of what's coming because it can put in the preparatory agents that it needs to have to deal with digestion, which is a taxing process. And so the more you can let your body know, what time do we do things here?
It's important and it can take some time to kind of adjust that process. But what a lot of people I see are dealing with, because the people that I work with are all wearing ora rings at least, or some sort of, yeah, sleep track. We all got the ora ring. Such an ad for Aura and you know, and I also see Whoop and Biot Strapp and different ways that people are tracking.
But with that, one of the things we see is social jet lag. And there's such a thing as metabolic jet lag. And so how do we see that when people are sleeping in on the weekends and often what happens then? Well, you wake up and you're not hungry at the same time, so now you're pushing it to like a late brunch and we don't think much of it.
But anytime we're giving that. Cue to the body of eating. It's telling it something about what time it is, and the same method of what you're sharing too, of the sampling of our environment through the light piece, the sampling of our environment through our activities like meal timing, which is just another zeitgeber time giver to tell the body what to be doing when then that is a really important factor so you can start to move it back.
Often you can kind of comfortably move it back by about 45 minutes to an hour each time. You know that you're starting to shift that. And I see that also very importantly for so getting
earlier
and so you're getting earlier and earlier because a lot of people say, I'm not even hungry. This doesn't work for me.
But I, I'm assure you, you can start to move that the same way we can jump time zones. I'm gonna be traveling to Singapore in a couple months and so I know that. Thankfully thanks to entrainment, I will be able to entrain to that routine and schedule shortly. We can do that too, so we can start to move things to front load it more in alignment with the circadian aligned piece.
So what would that look like from a way of thinking about it? It's known as circadian rhythm, intermittent fasting, but I think it's kind of a. The charge title, and it can feel like anytime you hear fasting that can feel more dramatic, but it's really not that dramatic. It's actually a very soft and gentle and natural a way of thinking.
And all it is is just that you're eating largely when the sun is out and not so much when the sun has. Set. Now, I know there's the realistic piece in society and many dinners starting at whatever, 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM, all the things. And it's actually one of the harder things that I see for people in practical application to bring into their lives.
But once they start doing it, one of the things that I also see is that they love the experience, they love the feeling, and that they can actually point to the changes on their trackers. So some of the changes that I see when people move back their meal timing is a drop in heart rate, often an improvement in HRV heart rate variability.
Many times we'll see improvements in deep sleep. Now, this is a more loaded topic, but less sleep fragmentation for many people. And certainly, ugh. Danny can talk to that topic around if you're waking up at three, four in the morning, how very often that can be aligned with the what you're doing by day as far as your food piece.
But the timing is everything. So looking at that
is key. So if we're sticking with the meal, daytime stuff, the idea that eating earlier in the day is gonna be better for our sleep. Yeah. For most people. And it's also really important because our insulin is also circadian driven. Yes. So we have better insulin sensitivity, which allows for better blood sugar regulation during the daytime, and it actually reduces as the day goes on.
Yeah. So if your circadian rhythm is very aligned and entrained, you'll probably notice if you wear a continuous glucose monitor, a meal that you eat for breakfast, and you get, let's say, almost no spike from it, if you have that same meal for lunch, you might get a little bit more of a spike as a snack in the afternoon, a little bit more of a spike.
And then for dinner, a much bigger spike. And so what I say is that when the sun goes down, insulin clocks out. It's almost like. Our body is just not set up to digest and metabolize when the sun goes down. And that makes sense because our ancestors, they were probably eating during the day and then resting, relaxing by the fire in the evening time and going to sleep because how could you, it would be total darkness.
You can't go hunting you, there's no pantry, there's, you gotta be up early camp. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So the idea that when we eat is so important and it is this time giver just like light. So during the day, if we eat within an hour of sunrise, that sets us up to be able to eat much further out from bed.
Like and ideally, and I know the science is not fully settled on this, but you know, at least three to four hours before bed. Yeah. I think we like to say, and I usually find I have my best sleep if I do Yeah. A dinner like. Three or four in the afternoon. Totally. So if I'm doing like a fasting type, time restricted eating, I find that my HRV goes up.
Just like you said, my heart rate drops and it's, I think because my body's not focusing on digesting, and this is really important because when we sleep, we're doing all these detoxification processes that I'm sure Molly could speak to much more. And we're not supposed to be digesting. We're supposed to be detoxing.
We're supposed to be restoring. So there's gonna be people out there saying, well, Danny, I need to have a snack before bed because I wake up. And so if this is you, there's just a couple of tips I might give. Maybe try some exogenous ketones, see if that might help instead. So you can just have these ketones as a backup fuel source.
Because in the middle of the night after we've. Sort of exhausted our fuel. Maybe we don't have, if our insulin levels are elevated, we will not really have access to any stored body fuels anymore. So we lose the ability to access storage sugar in the liver, which is called glycogen, and or if we run out of the glycogen, the body will have to tap into fat burning.
It uses a lot of fat burning in overnight when we're fasting. And the high insulin levels tell our body store fat. So you can't burn fat and store fat at the same time. So this. Chronic, either sleep dysregulation or blood sugar issues. Standard American diet stress. Our insulin levels are just so high that that 93% of the population that we can't tap into fat burning in the evening where we should be able to just use that fat.
It'll stabilize our blood sugar. We could sleep through the night. So instead, what happens is that our blood sugar starts dropping. We can't access fat burning, we can't access the sugar in the liver, and so our adrenals have to come in and pump us with a boatload of hormones like epinephrine adrenaline.
So we wake up in the middle of the night with a pounding heart and we're wide awake, or we think we're having an anxiety attack. And so that's often due to this lack of metabolic flexibility. So this is why it's so important to optimize our blood sugar, be able to burn fat for fuel as our bodies are intended to be able to, so we can.
Have this healthy metabolism, blood sugar state overnight. And so if you can't, you could try the ketones. You can try maybe just some fat, so I might recommend, let's say like MCT oil blended and some herbal tea before bed. So try to use like the least harmful substance at in the evening, and at the same time be working on your metabolic health during the day.
And we can definitely talk about that if you'd like. But we have to work on the, the root causes. And so the idea that. If you feel better eating before bed, that again, we're talking about a lot of things that are like these labels I put on myself and you used to put on yourself. Mm-hmm. I'll sleep when I'm dead and at night Owl.
Night Owl. Yeah. Bad
sleeper.
Yeah. Yeah. Like so we, we all, I feel like we all have these beliefs about ourselves, but they're just things that we keep thinking over and over these labels and these things are not permanent. Like, I'm not hungry in the morning. Okay, well we can, that's fixable. Just same thing.
Like, I need to eat before bed. These things are changeable and I think that's exciting news and I think it's news to a lot of people, right? Yeah. Like I, I wouldn't have known that. I was like, I'm a breakfast person, I have to eat breakfast. 'cause I wake up shaking. You know? Like, I would almost pass out getting fasting blood work.
These things can change, our bodies can adapt to this. It's like, would hunter gatherers like. Would they find themselves saying like, well, I just need a little bit of chocolate after every meal. No, they wouldn't, you know, so the hunter gatherer wouldn't have this belief about themselves. I believe it's something that we might be able to change.
Maybe that's a gross overstatement, but maybe it's not. No, I agree. Yes.
Changing piece too. I think it's important to say that this isn't about, like there's nothing wrong with anyone who's doing these things in many ways. It's not about fixing something that's broken in you. It's about taking education points like this, or a better understanding, like the science is always changing, and so how do we continue to adopt the knowledge that exists in the world from researchers and people like you that are bringing it to the forefront and then apply it to our lives.
Like this is the growth mindset piece that I think we can get really stuck in our story. We can get really stuck in our patterns and we're meaning making machines, right? We're gonna always say, well, this is just how I am, and I think. Especially as we're getting older. Like I just, I feel that, I see that like in talking to my mom where I think she might have been in the past, like more open to suggestion, she's kind of like, no, no, no.
And yesterday I said, you keep saying this is a thing you want, and I love you, mom, but like, do you really want it? 'cause you know it, we talk about it. And you know, she may not listen to me, but another functional medicine doctor will say something that I've said and she'll be like, oh, but like then how do you adhere?
Right? How do you adhere? And there's, there's things that, this isn't to talk about my mom per se, but there's like, well, I'm an overeater and that's like an alcoholic, and then how do I make the, and it's like label after label after label. And I, I just, I think the pausing in and with ourselves with a little bit of self-reflection to be like, are there labels I'm giving myself that are, are making me be this person?
That I'm not actually like just having some openness to the possibility that you're not a night owl or what would it be like to do this adventure and experiment and explore changing your eating for a little while and by the way, one day won't work. So we all gotta kind of pick like the 14 or the 21 and how could you feel at the end?
It's like sort of how I got into the whole landscape of nutritional, shifting my nutrition landscape becoming nutrition specialist. But biohacker was like, oh, I read a book called Clean and I was like, at the end of the book, the guy said, you can take me out for lunch and tell me this whole thing is bs, but you can't do that till you've tried this for 30 days.
And at the end of 30 days of doing that, I was like, oh my God, he's right. But it took that, it took that like leap and that gift of like saying, okay, well what. Could I explore this as something like fun to do, even though, and you, we all have experienced this and maybe many people are listening, you are the weird one.
If you're going into an office, I was the weird one in the office where people are like, you're gonna die from the butter in your coffee. Why are you skipping a meal? Like, you know, whatever. We're wearing our blue blockers around town and people are like, okay, what are the red glasses for weirdo? But there's so many, like, you end up being the cool kid.
I think that's the message I wanna say. Like, you'd be the weird nerd that everybody makes fun of, but if you can be resilient through it, you'll be the cool kid. You're just the early adopters. Okay. Um, but, and I wanna go back just briefly a bit to talk about as we continue to like work into the food piece, which I think is important and maybe some of the tools are like A CGM for, for navigating food, but I wanna talk about.
I always, I kind of learn a lot from both of you about the sleep realm and the, like, the little like trinkets and fun things and, and like the clock changes color six time and the little red, I just got them, I haven't opened them yet. The red light discs that you have, that you have Yeah, totally on the thing, but it's just like, and I'm like, what is this?
Like, and they're inexpensive. So inexpensive tools and ways that we can, I wanna talk about managing light and then I think we can get and dive a bit more into sort of like what else we're putting into our bodies. And that can be of course food and stress and activities that are, that are gonna shift and play with the sleep piece.
But let's talk a little bit about like light tools and ways, you know, just like the practical things, right? Everybody who's gonna have a, whatever budget they have. So some things I'm always gonna say it's free to do breath work. Just settle yourself in. I'll send you my, my yes. Seven minute track. Mostly you're gonna like breathe in for some count that you make up three counts and you're gonna exhale for six counts.
And as long as you continue to push a longer nasal exhale and settle into your system and think about relaxing your body, I'm also a big nidra fan, but basic breath work is free. It's not hard. And when you don't, when you're like, I just, it doesn't work for me, it's because you're in bed going three inhale.
This is not working. Is I just Kristen's wrong? I'm proving her wrong. It's not, it's like it five minutes I'm out, I'm out. Every time I'm in my head. It's like I can get myself there. I just have to understand the process and believe belief is so important strongly that I can downregulate my system into sleep.
I think belief is so, so big, but you guys have all like the fun tools and the fancy ones and Yeah. I wanna talk about how we navigate light in our Okay. Houses and rooms post
Sunset. Yes, exactly. If you've tuned into the show or followed any of our content here at Sleep as a skill, you may have heard that everyone that we work with wears the OAR ring, and as a result, we have amassed a very large database of OAR ring users and get to see what really moves a needle for people when it comes to their sleep measurably.
Now, because we have so much data around sleep optimization, many ask what they can do to improve their sleep quality. And for years, my answer has been that one of the few things I've seen make such an. Overnight difference is the use of a quality cooling mattress topper, not just any ordinary topper that claims to be cooling with like gels or what have you, but an actual cooling topper that uses water and can be dynamically adjusted to suit your unique needs and preferences.
Now, this is why I am so excited to announce that eight Sleep is now an official sponsor of the podcast. I have tested various cooling mattress toppers and fan systems over the years, and none of them have come close to the innovative and customizable seamless nature of the eight sleep system. Not only does it have an autopilot feature to intelligently adjust the temperature of the topper to work in alignment with your body's needs, but it also has additional features that truly set it apart.
So with eight sleep, you can enjoy advanced sleep tracking, allowing you to monitor key metrics like heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep stages all integrated. Seamlessly into the app. It also has a dual zone temperature control, which means that you and your partner can each set your own ideal sleep temperature, plus the gentle rise wake up Technology uses temperature and vibration to wake you up gently and naturally avoiding the jarring sound of an alarm.
But it doesn't stop there. There's more, more, more so. The system even includes a smart alarm feature that wakes you up during your lightest. Sleep phase. I know a lot of people have asked me about this, and this is included in here within a customizable time window, ensuring you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to start your day.
And for those of you who struggle with snoring eight, sleep has an anti snore feature that adjusts your sleep environment in real time to help reduce snoring and improve overall sleep quality. So this is truly a game changer for anyone serious about optimizing their sleep. So if you're ready to take your sleep to the next level, head on over to eight, sleep and use the code.
Sleep is a skill, all one word at checkout for a discount. Important question. Can you see the hand in front of your face, in your bedroom? If so, you need to hear about our sponsor who is revolutionizing the blackout shade space, and finally making it easy and affordable to get a truly blacked out bedroom.
So challenging in the past. Right? So introducing you Blockout, the ultimate solution for creating the perfect sleep environment, ensuring total darkness, comfort, and control. So why you block out in particular? Well, a hundred percent blackout guarantee comes with this product provides temperature, comfort all year round.
So keep your room warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer you block out helps and enhancing your sleep quality by maintaining a comfortable temperature regardless of the season. Acoustic noise reduction. Enjoy a quieter sleeping environment with you. Block out shades designed to minimize external sounds that can disrupt your piece.
Ideal for urban dwellers or anyone looking to reduce noise pollution. Customizable and easy to install, tailored to fit your space with a simple 30 minute installation process, you blockout makes it hassle-free to achieve the perfect sleep setting. Ensuring your bedroom is a sanctuary for sleep and for listeners of the Sleep is a Skill podcast.
Use the code. Sleep is a skill for exclusive 10% off and embark on the journey to unparalleled sleep quality. Remember, light is the number one external factor affecting our sleep. With U Blockout, you are not just investing in a blackout shade, you're investing in your health, wellbeing, and quality of life.
So again, go to U Blockout, spelled the letter U Blockout, and use code sleep as a skill for a discount. So I love that you said that too, because the truth is so much of this is free is behavioral, is environmental. It might take a little bit on the front end to get it set up, but once you do that, then a lot of these things will fall into place, including your ability to properly do the breath work that Kristen gives you and feel the effects.
Because if our environment is guiding us into these physiological states, then it just makes all of this work. So what do we do about it? So first off, the company that I created this. Called sleep is a skill for a reason, because to your point around the labels and the mindset, if we can step into all of this as being a skill, then it's just a matter of information gathering, testing, bringing it into our own lives and different iterations to find the ways to make it work for us from a skill-based perspective.
So if we're doing that, what are the things that we can bring in that are quite affordable or easy to implement and can guide us? So one. There's apps that can be really useful to bring in this information, but bring it into your life where you are, certain considerations you have. One I really like is called Circadian.
It does a great job of letting us know first where you are on the planet, when sunrise is for you, when sunset is for you, what time you're eating. It will give you lots of kind of cues and triggers, because in the beginning, this is kind of a lot for the other, I want it to be
like Kristen. Kristen put down the phone kind
of.
I don't say those blue blockers on do that exactly what's down the phone.
You better, the sun is set. Kristen, does it do that than it like
It kind of does because, and then there'll be like, you know, and it can feel aggressively early for the average person where suddenly, especially in the middle of the winter in New York City or something, it's like, oh, okay, the sun is.
Setting at 4 45 or whatever the heck it is, and it's like, so we're gonna start wrapping up our meal timing if we're doing it truly circadian aligned. Now I wanna give a call out from, to your point around what we've been discussing of the current science. I mean, this goes into a bigger topic where you might hear conflicting things.
So some of the most established research will say things like, have your last bit of food more around the realm of three to two hours before bed that has the most dearth of research and yet, so I think absolutely bare minimum if you wanna begin there. If you're not doing that, totally start there. But then if we're leaning into the circadian aligned lifestyle, we see potential benefits in a lot of anecdotal and wearable data that seems to point to benefits from much further before that, and certainly more aligning with these rhythms of nature.
So when the sun is. Setting then could there be counter cues that we're giving to our body if we're turning on the digestive process, the pancreas, and then at odds with our ability to properly create melatonin in the evenings and a whole slew of effects. So. What does this look like in practicality?
Well, one, you can get that circadian app and that can help guide you and yell at you and say, Hey, it's the sun is setting. You might wanna kind of wrap up your eating in the near future or what have you. Two, you can make sure you're getting enough sunlight. Things like D Minder can help us. It's a whole other conversation because if you're a Vitamin D status is low, which most people's vitamin D levels are, that's gonna be a big problem for you getting proper sleep.
Why? Because that's part of that precursor to be able to create serotonin. And serotonin is a precursor to melatonin. And so this kind of beautiful concoction, it's not able to function in the same way that we'd like to support if your vitamin D is not functioning well and it is a hormone. So this is a big, big deal and it impacts way more than just that sequence.
It's impacting as well as the quality of your sleep, your ability to properly paralyze throughout your sleep in the ways that we wanna be able to recover and. Have that regeneration during our sleep. So how do you get proper Vitamin D? Well, that involves getting outside more frequently. It does adjust and change throughout the course of the year and where you are on the globe and the, it's cloudy or not cloudy outside.
So D Minder can help you do that. It's an app that will kind of geotag you where you are and guide you on the times to get outside. Additionally, for the food piece, there's other apps that can help on Time is out of Dr. Sachin Panda's lab. And so it can just kind of help guide you in bringing this conversation of what time do I eat things?
When zero app we'll also do, that's outta Peter Atia and Thomas DeLauer and a few others. So that has circadian rhythm, intermittent fasting, and you can just set the little timer and kind of gamify it and say, oh shoot, I'm starting to fall into the nighttime eating too much this week. What can I do to kind of scoot things back?
Do I need to plan a little bit more? Et cetera, et cetera. 'cause a lot of this becomes almost a conversation of managing our time. So that we can get all these things done like the Amish or something during the daylight hours when we have this kind of clock ticking of the sun setting and how can we get a lot of these things done on the front end and then be able to use our evenings to more down regulate, to calm the nervous system, to have relaxation, give ourselves permission to be off.
And what would that look like for the average person
if you show up at Molly's house at night? It's like, where are you? Are you in here somewhere? No.
What's happening? No, not at all. That's why. Talk about all the lights after sunset. Yeah, so the thing is, so Kristen came over and she was alarmed, I think a little bit.
But yeah, I loved it.
Just, it's like no one welcomes you like that normally.
I know she came out and everything was red and candles, and
I was like, oh my God, she's into me.
I know.
No, I was beautiful. I always wonder what my neighbors think that like they see my house and all the windows are just red. Red.
Yeah. And so I'm like, is it a brothel or is it a brothel is very concerned about their circadian rhythm. And that's the kind of cool
thing about Austin is that you will see like walk around downtown and you look at some of these high rises or red have you, and you'll see these red glowing spots. Mm-hmm.
Because more and more people are beginning to be on this conversation. So. Bare minimum in our evenings if we have said and established that there should be warning labels on light bulbs when used at night, and these are just any old light bulbs. These are not fancy anything. These are like, you know, the 60 watt LED, everyone's got 'em light bulbs.
They're huge, huge problem. Unfortunately, and I know it would, people want to be able to, oh well, can I just turn it down? Can I just, you know, this, that and the other. Unfortunately, for real optimal results, what we really need to have is ideally more of kind of fire hued colors. So reds, the oranges and what would those light bulbs look like Now if you won't do that, then another one could be Himalayan salt lamps and you can kind of make 'em nice and mood vibes, you can put 'em on the ground so they can mimic more of the fire element, 'cause angle, intensity, color, there's a lot of components of light that impact our physiology.
So the takeaway is. In the evenings, can you establish your nighttime lights and what would those look like? So they shouldn't be the type of lights that you're still using by day. So they should be their own separate. Now there is the option of the automatic ones like Philip Hughes and different things.
Just know that that does introduce another set of EMFs into your space. It's kinda as a hub and it's communicating to all the other lights. Now I will say for some people, they're just not willing to be in this conversation and that could still, we could argue that the cost benefit analysis would still be beneficial if it's just gonna automatically bring about that circadian aligned lighting.
Phillips he aboves are like, they're quite, just to be frank, it's Yeah, they're, they're lovely. I have them in my old condo in la. They're expensive. Yeah. And I finally was like, I need to find a less expensive way to sort of navigate this. It just made more sense. And also the way that apartments are set up, sometimes you're like, this bulb doesn't come out of this thing.
Do I have to gel it like I'm in a movie on a movie set or Totally. The van, the van was like. They were like $11 and it was party strip lights. And I was like, okay, I am gonna put little, you can do so affordably
And it's work. So I like when the sun goes down. I don't like to switch to red right away. Yeah.
And I think that this is a big game changer for a lot of people whose family's like against it. Yeah. 'cause in the, in the winter it's like five 30, it's red and dark. Like honestly that's not really what would be happening. We'd be looking at firelight, which is a little brighter and it's more orange.
Well, fire
was the first biohack Exactly. Fire was the first way to extend our days artificially. So that's still an artificial introduction. Yeah. Right, right. And
so I like that idea of mimicking. Yeah. The fire the first, yeah. Biohack. And so I have an orange light bulb, $7 on Amazon people. Yeah, exactly like $7.
So an orange light bulb. And then I have another lamp in my living room, so that one lives in one lamp. And then I have another lamp in my living room that has two light bulbs. One of them is white for daytime and the other one is red. So think about getting creative with the space you have. Or can I introduce another lamp?
Get one that has two light bulbs on in my bedroom, I have two lamps on the night tables. One of them has a white light bulb for day, and one of 'em has a red light bulb for night. So just thinking about how to. Like make this happen in your space. The bedroom only has the red light bulb because I'm really only up there about an hour before bed, so, but I'm down in the living room doing things like in my kitchen a little bit.
So that's where the orange light bulb is. So we can see our space and we can navigate a little bit and not bump into things. And also not literally fall asleep at like six o'clock. Yeah, because that'll happen because the absence of that blue light will trigger your body to make melatonin, so you fall asleep really well.
So I do the orange light, the candles, all the things, and then I go red, more like an hour before bed. So, and has
the darkest bedroom in Austin. Yes.
Lock out all about the
darkest, right?
Yes. No. So my favorite, like my absolute favorite sleep tech is my U Blockout shades. They. 100% block the light. So you pull them down, super easy to pull down.
And they also have, I believe, like a remote one. I didn't get that one, but you just pull 'em down, like you could pull it with a pinky finger. So it's nice and easy and it blocks out 100% of the light, so not coming through the cracks or anything. So even daytime you can get this full blockout effect. I personally get my, my neighborhood is dark enough that I have another space where light can come in, but it doesn't come in at night, so it's a, I cannot see my hand in front of my face.
That's goal. Yes. My H RV went up once I got these blinds because I'm not like the dark nights, like totally the concept you were just talking about. So my HRV went up at night when I used this, and then I still get the signal for me of the sun waking me up. And so when it gets a little bit light, that's how I know it's time to wake up.
I open my blinds, good to go. So that's my personal favorite. Yeah. Oh,
it's cool. It's so, I mean, the hotels of the world needs to find.
Oh
yes. Yes.
It's
so frustrating. The electric tape. I love traveling with her. I know We're the best roommates. It's like a amazing, it's between both of us. It's like all the things.
First sleep. Here's the
secret. Everybody wants to room with like one or both of you so they could get sleep tools and then you guys are always rooming together and I'm like, okay. I love Natalie. Natalie Nm and I love to room together. She's amazing. She's always got the good like pills and catsuit bands and all the things.
Yeah. Or most of the biohackers, but like we all have roommate Envy because you guys are always together and we're like, yes. People, they're gonna go to bed at noon, they're gonna have every blackout, tape, lights, smokes, and mirror. It's like they're shooting a porn in there. The nighttime
eat. Exactly. We go to Whole Foods at like 3:00 PM We're done eating.
Everyone buys things after they room us. Yes. Every single person and we freak out when they turn on a normal light. Oh yeah. We're like, yeah, our friend turned on a light. Our friend turned on like a white light and both of us screamed at the, it was insane. We're like, ah. And she was like, what's happening?
We're like the light. I know. I've trained my husband Blake to, so whenever it will come in, toxic, toxic light. That's what he said. Oh God. Yeah. So then he'll mimic me and then he'll, then he'll call me Darth Vader. It's like a whole thing, but even eventually you get people to come along. 'cause at first they think you're weirdo, but eventually they love the experience and then they too will do the whole toxic life like your in-laws.
Yes, exactly. Share that story. So here's one of the things I'm starting to discover is I'm trying to find different ways to talk about this that will impact people wherever they might be at, where they're not like,
who is that crazy? Go with all those devices in first. Exactly.
Because if I start coming at it from like, oh, well, you know, your glucose is gonna raise by this amount, or if I start doing my thing, often it doesn't seem to meet people at where they might be at.
So. I've tried different things because we know that light dark has that drug-like effect and it hits on just about every component of our experience of life. So what's important to this person, I gotta find that out and then say how that lighting choice is affecting those results. So for my in-laws, they had come over, so it's my husband's mom and sister come over, right?
And so I start sharing about how this is one of the easiest ways to get fat, literally to say it, put it bluntly, is to douse yourself in blue light in the evenings repeatedly. Not to mention the fact that my husband's. Mom had gotten breast cancer along the way. That's one of, we have very clear research that points to circadian disruption and particularly breast cancer, among other breast cancers.
So you can start to rattle off things that will affect just about every person's, uh, what's important to them. So we just gotta figure out what those things are. But it's a big, big deal. And so we laugh about it and we say all these different things about how you can set your home up and how it looks really funny and weird.
It can make such a difference. And I promise you, if you start existing like this for a while, I had a sleep anthropologist that came on the podcast and he offered for people to take what he calls the candlelight challenge. And he does this every single year with his students. And so what he'll say is take the candlelight challenge.
Most people will not do it. The candlelight challenge is after sunset, you shift over to candlelight like we likely would've done in the past. Only that's your only source of lighting. Most people won't do it. The people that do, they come back within a few weeks and they say, I can't believe I'm getting tired so much earlier.
It's wild. What's really fascinating to me is when we think of certain things, um, which is a good
thing, I think we need to say that that's a good thing. It's okay to be as sleepy at nine 30. It doesn't mean you're a grandma. It doesn't mean that things aren't working. It's like it means you can get up earlier, that your body's gonna thrive.
You're gonna get that. Yes. Like for me it's like if I don't get a good night's sleep and I don't get up early, I don't get a meditation and that sets my whole day for probably not being as as fabulous as it could be. Totally. So that morning piece. Is so related to that nighttime piece. Well, I'm
gonna say something kind of controversial, and it's still very much at odds, but I want people to start to question chronotypes.
So chronotypes, when people say, and most people maybe don't say chronotypes, they say, oh, I'm an early bird. They say, I'm a night owl. They say whatever they say, and yet we are starting to have research that. Is starting to question how tightly wound or knit or in static is that state of being a night owl or what have you.
And it's starting to actually unravel a bit. So some of the research that we point to, to illustrate this is out of the University of Colorado where Kenneth Wright's team took different students camping. And what they did was a lot of them different bedtimes and many would say, oh, I'm a night owl. Well, I can't fall asleep till past whatever, late time.
But then when they take them camping, they're only exposed to what you'd be exposed to when camping, bright days, dark nights. They'd measure melatonin. They would see the results, and these people would very quickly be beginning to align more with their falling asleep. Their sleep onset is faster and falling asleep in alignment with the rhythms of nature.
So they're starting to no longer act like those chronotypes that they thought were so hardwired. Now they're more aligned with these rhythms. So this is a big, big deal because. If we are saying all those things we say we eat at certain times, we fall asleep at certain times, we get stressed in the evenings or whatever we say, it actually has us question how much of a difference is or impact is our environment having on our physiology and our results.
The other thing that's really important to me is the mental health state about it because one of the things that we see too is that things like bipolar, so people dealing with bipolar, we know that have heightened sensitivities to things like these circadian dysregulation components. So we know that some people are more sensitive to the change in their environments than others.
So that also could be something to look at of those people like myself that would say, oh, I'm such a night owl. When I used to do everything not to do for sleep. That actually could have been a sign that I am quite sensitive to my environment and need to be even more mindful of this conversation.
Yeah, it's like we are what we repeatedly do.
Right. So perhaps it's not as like predetermined for us. These, these segments. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about the times that my dad's no longer around, but he would be like, oh, I'm such a night owl. And he said that so much in my childhood that I was like, there was sort of like a like, oh, I'm gonna be a night owl.
I'm a owl too. Yeah. And then also it's like if I go and I look back at my dad's behaviors, he'd be having like Milano chocolate cookies and a glass of milk and a big old TV screen and like a watching shows. And that's, of course you're a night owl, you're jacking yourself with sugar. You're spiking all hormones in the wrong direction.
You're watching this big screen of light and, and not that he knew and you know, no judgment, but just there are all these other structures of belief systems and upbringing and. The environments that we are in that really shift, that like that can create that pattern and lay that, lay that groundwork and
this has real world effects.
And then I'll stop talking, but this really gets me amped up is there is a recent study that came out called The Mind After Midnight. And so this has real world implications where this, this study found that diurnal pattern to thoughts like I was kind of alluding to earlier. And this is a big deal because what they found is that in whatever your wee hours in the morning are for your schedule, so mind after midnight, so going into, you know, 1, 2, 3 in the morning, what have you, many of us I'm sure have had the moment when we wake up in the middle of the night or we couldn't fall asleep and we're thinking of the worst possible things, like catastrophic thinking, oh my god, I'm gonna go bankrupt, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna whatever.
And so all of those. Thoughts come up at those times. And there is actual, we're discovering what could be real science to support the why that we're doing this. This kind of almost flawed logic or more anxiety prone thinking and the real world effects are suicidality rates going up in those early morning hours.
The flawed logic having a potential real negative impact on our lives, and it's something for us to start to have that reverence for or respect for. The other thing we see is with shift workers, and they're a great use case or group to look at because we see that they often have more of those psychiatric issues at play.
Hmm. So it just touches on every aspect of life, and I think it warrants us examining it further.
Yeah,
I just wanted to circle back to the tech piece, the tools I want you to get. Yes. Bring it back. I know exactly.
It's great. It's great. And it's like bring to suicide and all these
things. Okay, well bring it back to all.
It's no less important. Yes, totally. So a couple of things. You were talking about these little disc things. I got them. You said you got
from Herb, but like I feel like Matt was like Danny had these things like it's just sent share my story. I know.
Yes. I share them on my stories more often, but they are these little dis things that, again, I found Amazon on Amazon.
Yes. And they're motion red lights. You can keep them on, but they're phenomenal. For travel, you just charge 'em USB charger. But I have two of them. One sits underneath my bed sort of right at the foot of the bed. So then if I have to wake up in the middle of the night because my room is pitch black because the way you block out shades.
Yeah. They should come package together. By the way, that's
the conversation. I've been a duo, a bundle. It's like, Hey, what's a little bundle? Yeah, have little, should have blue blockers and a little red. Yeah, totally.
Yeah. So I walk by and it lights up, and then I have one in the bathroom just in case, because again, we're not asking people to stumble around.
We don't want anyone to get hurt. Like just be thoughtful about lighting up your environment. I also have a couple of lights that are just red light. They're plug in. You could set them to auto, but they're brighter. And Molly will talk about how the brightness of light also has an impact. So even though it's red, there's this one.
Like plugin light, that's way too bright if it goes off is motion sensor. Motion sensor. Mm-hmm. But you could turn it off, you could turn it static on. So I use that one more just to stay on as I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face in the nighttime. So we're taking a bath, it's a real nice vibe and it's very relaxing, but I turn that one off at night and just have my little disc that's very low light on the, just in case I have to use the bathroom or something.
And then there's some apps for the phone. If you wanna show your phone with the click. So you can set up your phone, you can just google this, but you can trip, you could set it up so you can triple click the side so the screen turns red. And so in the evening times, as the sun goes down, that's when you wanna think about turning off all those overhead lights.
Switch on the orange, the, the candles, the red lights. The screens put on blue blocking glasses. I like the orange ones so I can again see around my house. See? Yeah. Like so if you throw in the red ones, no, it's too dark. You're gonna stick with it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You're not gonna stick with it. The orange ones, you hardly notice.
And I will say, let's call out imperfections and how you don't have to be perfect about this. Yes. We're not expecting you to again, live like the Amish or pioneers or whatever. I still sometimes watch TV at night. I still use my phone sometimes at night. Totally. But I have my blue blocking glasses on.
Right. So yeah, we're doing things to mitigate some of these things and I sleep phenomenally well. Yes. And I feel like I'm really regulated. Like so the idea is that, but then you can also set yourself up powerfully, like you're doing, talk about your bookend technique.
Yes. Oh man. The bookend technique. So.
A couple things on the point of the perfection piece. This is a huge aspect. So even if you just begin with one light bulb in your space, just start small. Yes. And then you can start to build upon this. It's just can make such a difference. So you begin there, but then to your point around how do these things affect how you're behaving?
So you're still gonna watch your shows, you're still gonna go on your phone, you're gonna do all these things. But could we provide a little bit of a pocket of peace, if you will, in your evenings? And particularly with our smartphones, we find that for a lot of people, it can just be this rabbit hole to augmenting the amount of time that you're awake, pushing back your bedtime.
And if I'm saying for everyone to wake up at around the same time, and if you really mind that if you don't affect or set up powerfully your evenings, then you're just gonna keep shortening your sleep duration and not gonna be getting enough sleep over and over again. So what we wanna do is something I like to call the bookend technique.
And so that is simply where you're just putting your phone away, kinda almost tucking it into bed, if you will. Which sounds ridiculous, but you know, this is where we're at as humans. Uh, so, so you're tucking this phone, are you getting smarter or, well, yeah. A lot of questions with this. The phones are, but the fact that this requires a, you know, whole ceremony is.
You know, whatever. But so you tuck this thing away and you actually turn it off and you have that kind of moment where we're done here. So you're doing that ideally about an hour before bed and you can find what works for you. But even for the average person, like 30 minutes before bed would be a huge win.
But then your book ending that at the end of the day. But then you're also to Danny's point around the morning and not wanting to flood in a whole dopamine like effect of looking and staring at this blue light in the morning. You can still then take that extra 30 minutes, an hour in the morning where you're also not tapping into that phone.
So you're ensuring that your days are ending with this powerful ritual and your mornings are starting with that kind of peace as well, and you're not being flooded with those, you know, kind of deleterious effects of the bright light.
Yeah. I wanna say it's challenging, right? And for some people it's hard and for all of us, I.
The remembering that it is the light that is doing the dirty work. Yeah. It's the light that is like, but why do I feel the need and, and when I go to Burning Man for a year and for a year. For a year. A week. Well, that'd be a long time. At the burn, people would be like, she's dusty and I'm Burning Man for a week.
You just are on your phone. So minimally I have it with me Yeah. To take photos, but other than that, I'm not on it. Mm-hmm. And it's like revolutionary, the first 24 to 36 hours. I will have those moments where I'm like, you're I'm going from my phone.
Yeah. And
it's like, there's no need. You don't ha like you're in this beautiful other environment.
And so that year for me, like there's a very, that year, that week for me is very, I think I'm just gonna go to the burn right now and I'll for the next that, um, seriously, it'd so lonely out there that year waiting for those 70,000 friends to show up. But no, that moment that it's like, okay, I have no need to go for it.
The people I care about and love are here. The other people who are at home and I care about and love them too, they're at home. They know I'm away. It's all safe. And like 24, 30 hours in it's game changing how you can the other senses pay more attention how my sleep works that week. Although it's a very interesting week for sleep.
Yeah.
But also just. The things you wanna go and see and do and how your creativity shifts. Hmm. And of course there's lots of inspiration out there of art and music and like culturally cool things. And you know, naked people too. Yes. Naked people too. But all this stuff that's going on, this cacophony of information that we can take in and, and think different thoughts about and be more creative and like, I think that we more and more, and certainly this is like an end of one for me, but seeing it with some clients and seeing it with people and how they use their phones so much, we are stunting our vision, our creativity, all of those pieces of us in a way that's so profoundly negative.
Yes, AI is gonna come over and tell us all the things we have to do. And also we are these people who are in creation until we are stuck in the rabbit hole. That ends up really bringing about like shame. And, you know, it's all funny to put a meme out in the world about, oh, it's like 2:00 AM when I'm like, I'm gonna get better sleep today.
Yeah. You're just still scrolling on your phone. But it's just a, it's shape shifting when you put it down. And I def there's definite nights that I'm like, I pick my phone up 'cause I can't sleep. Yeah. And I know better. And then I'm like, oh my God, an hour went by. Totally. Yeah. In bed. And then there's nights that I like smartly, sweetly am saying to myself, you're fine.
And you can just rest. And it's either breath work or I put on a nidra or something. But there's that differential that we're just, I would like to say societally, I don't think that we are telling ourselves, Hey, you're cool. It's okay. You're connected. You're worthy of getting good sleep and like putting ourselves to bed like this, putting to ourselves to bed notion, mm-hmm.
Is the thing we do with children. And I think that there's something that dopamine is fighting against that all the time. It is a chemical response in the body. Right. So how do we shift that so that we're Yeah, the dopamine detox, right. Sapphire for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. And I just wanted to quickly say that one of the things that I found, because one of my things this.
You know, starting 2024, I'm like, I am not allowing myself to take my phone in bed. Yeah. Because I am huge. Always staying up to late with that. I know TV's in your bed. Oh yeah. I'm in your bedroom. In your sleeping and
sex people. Yeah.
Yeah. So, so, you know, no phone in bed, but then I'm, you know, I'm starting to put it away a little bit earlier.
Yeah. I am inspired by Molly's bookend technique and so. I realized, I'm like, I don't have anything else to do. Yeah. So it's like, you know, I had to start getting creative. Okay. Real books. Yeah. Or like a Kindle that doesn't have a bright screen and you get like a little red book light. They have them on Amazon.
Yeah. And different things. Journaling baths, guided meditations, breathwork sessions, puzzles, games, massaging your partner. There's so many things like get creative. Yeah. I bought a little paint set. I felt like it was covid again. Yeah. Just like, you know, but I realize it's too, I don't have enough light. So anyway, it's just, but just thinking of things.
We have a friend who does fiction after five, so, um, yeah. The idea that we don't wanna be having, not like listening to self-help podcasts and solving work problems and just stressing about taxes and all these things. Molly will call that thought timing. Yes. And how important it is to be, you know, doing lighter things, these winding down, like wind down our minds.
And a lot of what you, I'm sure you could speak to this more as well. So just have something set up. So you can put your phone down. Mm-hmm. Because I think that we so true are often just setting ourselves up for failure because we don't have anything else to do. We're like, well, this is boring. So
a hundred percent.
Two things about that too, for the resources piece. One app that has been amazing has been changed my life is called the One SEC app. Mm-hmm. And it actually forces you to take a little breather before going into whatever, you know, things might be the rabbit hole for you. So for me, the Instagram, the whatever for me, and Gmail.
Oh my gosh. So it will have you pause beforehand and it's really, really powerful. It's made such a difference. It's. Literally cut my screen time well in half, if not more. So setting yourself up like that. Secondly, I would say kind of in alignment, but it's something a little new. Still needs more research, but I am really loving it.
Seeing benefits for myself and clients is called the somnia, and the somnia is transcranial electric stimulation, and you do that for 15 minutes before bed. It's another kind of wind down thing. Nice music comes on. So it's even another forcing function. So I have that as part of my evening, kind of wind down.
Stack. So I'll put that on. Then I'll read from the Kindle. And the Kindle has been such a nice thing for me to bring back into my rotation more because I was starting to get away from that and just cutting it too close. So now by bringing that back, it's really improved some of my sleep stats and just overall wellbeing.
So, you know, this is dynamic. You're gonna keep, just when you think you have everything handled, then things start slipping. So you wanna keep looking, you know, critically at what errors are you getting weak with what errors are working. And so the Somnia is really interesting because it's been shown, it was just, um, published in Frontiers earlier.
This, uh, past year has Dr. Matthew Walker on the science advisory Board at a uc, Berkeley, and it's smarty pants, smarty pants that it's showing, uh, at least so far. They had evidence that it was four times more effective than melatonin, two times more effective than CBTI 1.5 times more effective than Ambien in both sleep onset.
Duration and quality in certain parameters. So anyway, it needs more research,
but is it fancy tech? Is it like expensive and it's got, there is a, there's a cross analysis to be done for people.
Yeah, so it's about 300 bucks. So transcranial electro stimulation is things that has been used for many, many years in different iterations, in different ways of using this, but often for mental health components.
So, depression, anxiety, certain things, what's. Absolutely can bleed into our sleep results. But beyond that, one of the things that's new and noteworthy about their product is that it appears to be using more of this AI component so that you come in and you're all amped up from having been out with friends or whatever, right.
And so often I'll see that for people it's like, well, I even got into bed at around the same time, but I was so, uh, because I was out and about and that it took them longer to fall asleep. I think we probably have all had that moment. And yet when, so what it will happen is it has a baseline established of your particular brain activity, and then if it's seeing that it's kind of deviating from that state then applies a different set of this kind of protocol for the transcranial electric stimulation that's utilizing.
So the, is it adapting
over time? So adapting over time, course correcting and it's like, oh, I see there's a new baseline. And then it's continuing to work with that.
Apparently this is, and again, it still needs more research. I know, but still. It is at tri somnia.com/scale. But, but really what? It's interesting 'cause I got to tour their labs and we'll put all these
things in the show notes.
I mean, this is the thing we all get in. Yes. We all get involved with brands. Right. In such a way. Yeah. But I have no
sponsorship. I wanna say there's something real quick. I have no sponsorship, but the, it's more of. Anything that for me, that's gonna make a difference for people with moving the needle in what I deem to be one of the most important areas that you can influence, which I think is the foundation of your health and wellbeing.
Being sleep, I am interested now I do see a lot of things that are sparkly and interesting, but don't move the needle. Yeah. So when I rarely see things that could have that, you know, possibility, that's pretty exciting to me. Especially to the point when groups like the DOD are becoming involved to find, because they're DOD Department of Defense.
Exactly, yes. And when that's happening, because they have real situations where, you know, you gotta get this navy sealed to be able to sleep. And when they're in the middle of really intense moments, how can we do that? How can we support people? It's noteworthy to find what could some of those things be.
And often it's really the things that we've been talking about, so the behavioral components as much as possible, but it's not always possible for people. So what can you do in those situations? Yeah.
Yeah. And I, all I was gonna say is that I know, of course we are all involved with different brands, and I think with you guys, this is very, this very much rings true as well as I know the level of integrity you both live in and like the brands that work for us.
So it reaches a point where it's like we're we've, you know, suggested our 50th red click light, or we're beautifully, like I'm putting on my filter optics. I'm like, these things are so clear and so lightweight. Yes. It's so amazing for blue blockers. Like mm-hmm. I just, I'm like gonna contact the company and say, mm-hmm totally.
How can we work together to do more great stuff? Because your brand is something that's standing out to me. Right. And, and so it isn't, sometimes it's relationship, partnership, sponsorship, whatever. And thank you because we're getting free education out to people on podcasts this way. Um, yeah. Like when my neighbors, it costs a lot of money to do a podcast, so Yeah.
It's beautiful.
Yeah. But the brands are great and when my neighbors, uh, put up LED, blue and White Business Lights right across the street, I was like. Thank the Lord for my U blockouts because blue and white. What? God. Yes. I was like, oh my gosh. The two colors that are the the worst. And then all of ours were red.
It was like, oh my god, that red. But I was like, thank God I have these shades because it was right into my bedroom. Yeah. I felt bad for my little cat who's outside who didn't get the benefit of that. Oh, they're going into new locks.
They're going into my new windows. I'm so stoked about that. Just to be able to have the space where I can actually, because in hotels I'm doing things, things like clipping and this and that, and the curtains and the hangers and the shit that's hanging everywhere.
I know. And like covering every and unplugging the fridge and everything. Little bell and whistle I was a little used to put is beautiful.
VHS tape, like in front of my VCR to block the light. Yes. I had Lisa Frank stickers and I put them over the little light on my TV and Drew Sharpie. I would like tape my shades clothes.
I was like, where were these things when I was little? 'cause I was always so true about the light.
Always so crazy. I know. I'm so excited to be able to get the U Blockout. I'm also not only gonna be having that in my space, but also in our spare room, which we have people come over and we are in downtown Austin.
So the amount of light that's flooding into the room is like, it's such a beautiful, it's gonna be so cool.
It's be so beautiful to open window. Oh my God. Have the city views and then close it and be like, bye. And people are gonna go, oh my god, Molly, I'm in Molly's. Be careful people won't leave.
Yes, exactly.
Come on over.
Yeah. And then I like, of course, 'cause I'm like, we're on video. Like I brought some things in the tools area I think that are interesting for me. I do a lot with supplements, like in navigating them. Not always. Taking all the time. I've, I've scaled a bit down to probably like 40 things a day I take in the van.
But normally it's a bit more, but just, and a lot of it is rotation or where I am, like whether it's season or area or if I'm feeling a certain way or mm-hmm. If I'm like, oh, I haven't been getting to the gym as much, et cetera. And so there's a, a thing to navigate. But like I always use the, the bio optimizers, sleep breakthrough, not just because it's bio optimizers.
Bio optimizers, yes. Because it's blue raspberry, which is a nostalgic flavor for me. Not that it doesn't have like, you know,
sugar. And
Danny
has a
connection with it too. It smells like D Tap. Yep. Which I used to love like youth, it
smells like you child. I was like younger years when you could have a blue Italian ice and be like, screw it, this is fine for me.
And the other thing is like our dear friend Sarah, this is Oh yes. I just, I like, it's traveled everywhere now. It went to England with me. It went to, I mean all through my pneumonia, but also was with me in Puerto Rico. This is like, so this sort of doubles is when I don't have the red light disc that hadn't come in.
It doubles as the thing that keeps my room. At night, I turn off all the lights. Mm-hmm. And then you, I was staying at my friend Joe's Place and I was like, lights off Sarah on like, this is Sarah, but it's like Sarah is a thing. That's a, the, the gut-brain connection with red light. But that piece, I don't have that yet, but this is this beautiful, it's, I mean, it's just, I'm so stoked for having that in my suitcase.
It's like, it's so great too, so easy to travel, especially when it was like cold in England. It has a tiny bit of like, it produces some heat a little with the red, light red and it's like, put it on my belly or put it on my chest. And it's really soothing to sort of settle in like a, you know, I don't have the weighted blanket in the van and you can't travel with that.
But I love anything that, that. For me, these like little, these tools fi it's like pick your poison. Yeah. Pick what's gonna serve you. You know? And it's not really your poison. Sort of pick your longevity hack, pick your back. But the, there is something that I have created in my body that's very, like Pavlov's dogs.
If I'm not going to sleep without a few things, like yes, the light is managed in me, we get, that's super factual. But there's just things that build into, and I think this is what is cool about shifting these tactics or these tools or like starting to weave them in and bookend them into your life is that, that you get the tool and you try it out and then it becomes part of this routine and then you sort of, you've cultivated that routine.
And then I like put the Apollo on my ankle every night. And I will set it to sleep. And I'm telling you, like I can't always tell you if the exact prescription, I haven't sat with David Raven yet to talk about the Apollo and the science behind all of it. I know a little, but like it just, apart from the fact that I look like I'm wearing a prison bracelet or ankle, but it's just, I can't wear anything on my wrist that helps with sleep.
I just is why I own an aura. Yeah. Too close. Yeah. And the vibration and the, the way it makes me kind of settle in and feel, so it's like I know when my red lights are on and this is happening that like, and it's, I don't mean just, I know cerebrally, my body knows. Yeah. Oh, it's time to like get rest. Oh, it's time to unwind and put down the thoughts that are happening.
And that's I think where these tools all come in little by little by little. If they're physically blocking out the light and we're setting ourselves up for success, it's like that noise of putting the shade up or down, right? Mm-hmm. It's like, oh, it's nighttime. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. It's the milliseconds of all of our nervous system taking in the sounds and the movement and the things that we're doing that's setting us up for.
Sticking with something. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Which is the thing that's hard to do for many people. It can be hard to stick with something. Especially I think you mentioned earlier, if you have like a partner or a person Yeah. Or your family and they're all like, okay, we need to check her into the local hospital.
'cause all this stuff is happening and we don't, we haven't seen it yet. Like you're the weird one. Yeah. So I wanna, I wanna touch on that a little for both of you guys. If there's like, how you advise clients when it's like, oh honey, you're just overmanaging, that you have to really wear that, that you're not a diabetic.
Or like, you know, like navigating that or just navigating the sleep piece. Like why do we have to do this? I just wanna watch the game replay. You know? Yeah. Like what's the advice that you have or what's the unraveling there to sort of help support with, love your partner and say, I wanna collaborate in the way that we work together, but I wanna also get.
What's best for my body.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So as far as sleep's concerned, a couple things. One, to your point, it can land as a lot if we really start bringing in all of these things. Yeah. I mean, so it can take one, some of that kind of education piece, but I think two, getting to feel the experience or feel the impact.
One of the things that if available, if people are open to it, all of us tracking in some way, shape or form, I find often helps support people coming over to the dark side, literally. In the nights because once they start getting in the game of it and seeing, oh I can influence my numbers, and then you can start kind of almost competing with each other or what have you.
Um, and even if it's kids, you know, getting to experience that this is just something we do here and you know, kind of leading by example and kinda sleep leadership if you will. So if they can feel that and see those results, I think that can be a great place to begin. Also, so much of this involves communication.
There's a great book called Sharing the Covers, and it's all about this topic of what often for some people needs to be a sleep divorce, and now it's being rebranded as Sleep Alliance, but different ways. Thank you. Which you can. Thank you. Right. So especially 'cause there's many reasons why it might not make sense for us to all be in the sleeping in the same bed, or that the other person, their behaviors might now be affecting our wellbeing.
'cause now they're not willing to be in this conversation. So sometimes lines have to be drawn if they're really not like, okay with doing some of the things we're talking about and it's impacting your sleep results. Or they're just on different schedules or they have CPAP and they, they're snoring or whatever.
So then it might make sense to sleep separately. But at its core, having the conversation at play so that we're all in kind of the same team versus just like at the effect of this other person's, you know, wants and whatever. But also this all takes education for all of us. You know, like I was certainly not doing any of this stuff when I had my sleep breakdown.
I had no idea that that was even on the table. So once we start educating about it, it starts to make a lot of common sense for people when they start to hear more and more about it and see the what it could look like when it's not even that big of a deal when we start bringing in the motion lights.
The nightlight piece, the handling some of these components that really don't make that much of an impact on their regular lives. So I think some of those things are the places to begin the, the communication aspect of it too.
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And then also like, feed into that, pun intended. Yeah. Food.
Because meal timing can really be, people can be really staunchly opposed to shifting their meal timing or perhaps work or things like that. And like, I still have moments, uh, where I'm like, I just, I think about both of you mostly, and I'm like, it's 10:00 PM I'm having a, a big bowl of popcorn. I'm fired.
I'm fired by Danny and Molly. I'm fired by Danny and Mom. Um, you know, like, or whatever the, the late night snack that happens, I'm not, listen, I'm, I never, I never said I was a perfect biohacker. Yeah. Like that perfection between totally couples times like the food and the shifting of the time. So like, is there how Yeah.
How best to navigate that? Well, if someone's listening, like, I'm never gonna talk my person into that.
Yeah. I mean, first I would say try to do as much. Yourself as you can. Yeah. Because I always like to have people lead by example. Mm-hmm. And it's like, oh, they're feeling so much better. They're sleeping so well, they have more energy.
There are all these things. So if you are able to lead by doing it yourself and then the other person might catch on. And then the other thing I just, that was just really coming into my head was like this idea sort of from James Clear Atomic Habits, that idea of making it just as easy as the other options.
So instead of like, that's where it's, if you have a lamp and it has two light bulbs and you're gonna turn on the light, 'cause the sun is setting, it is no harder to turn on the red one than it is the white one. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So this idea of making it just as easy, setting yourself up for success, where you're not asking anyone to bend over backwards or really change anything, it's just do something different in like white instead of red, orange instead of white, whatever it is.
And then the idea that. Your partner doesn't need to put on the blue blocker glasses, but the living room is gonna be lit by candles and an orange light. Like, and then they'll start noticing, oh, this actually is calming. Yeah. Just like your in-laws that Yeah. They were like, well actually this is pretty nice, you know?
And asking for the respect of if you're gonna turn on, if you need to turn on a light bulb, just let me know and I'm gonna just gonna move myself in a different room. Yeah. But you know, the stuff with the eating, it really depends on, I think it comes down to a lot of times having some honest conversations.
Mm-hmm. And leading with this is really important to me and this is something I am trying or I'm doing and I have heard the science behind it and I wanna try it for myself. And it would really mean a lot to me if you got on board and. Or it's, I can still give you your dinner at 7:00 PM but I'm going to eat at this time.
I'm still gonna sit down with you and we'll talk, and I'm just gonna have a cup of herbal tea. Mm-hmm. Or I'm gonna just drink some water. And so the idea that you can keep staying in your lane and let other people do what they want, because we're not trying, we can't change anybody unless they're like your kids.
You can't control your partners. Mm-hmm. And so it's this idea that. Hopefully your partner will be supportive of you, and hopefully you can communicate that in a really honest way, that it really means a lot to me to care about my health. And I've learned all this new evidence that this could be keeping my blood sugar elevated.
Like I see people who block blue light at night and they're fasting blood sugar is lowered in the morning. Like this is science, this is not, you know, out there. It's direct, it's a direct sleep.
There's a lot of evidence.
There's so much evidence and there's so much improvement with all these things and how our hormones shift over time and our sleep, our blood sugar and our hormones are hugely impacted by this and the risk mitigation of all these diseases as well.
And so it just feels like something that you can bridge a conversation with your loved one and if they're unwilling and unable to, then maybe is that pattern showing up other places? Like do we also have to have other hard conversations? Yeah, so true. Um, but hopefully you're in. A relationship with a person and other family members that will be understanding and you'll do your best that you can and have your own blue blocker glasses on and, and protect yourself.
That's what boundaries are to protect you. And so your blue blockers are your physical boundary, protecting your eyes from Yes, from the lights, you know? And so, yeah, I just think that it sometimes, a lot of this health stuff, there need to be some hard conversations and I have a lot of people who are. In my life at certain points who are very not open to a lot of things I was doing, like I had an ex throw bread at me when I went paleo and told me I was in a cult.
Uh, I had a very close family member also when I went paleo or keto. I can't remember when I was doing those dietary protocols that they. Were very upset and said we can't get ice cream anymore. So we have nothing in common anymore. So just keep in mind that what you are doing, it brings up stuff for other people.
It's like you're holding, it's not even your stuff. It's not your stuff. That's not your
stuff.
So this is also a piece to keep in mind that this isn't your stuff. You're just gonna trigger something in them. And maybe it's anxiety, like, oh my God, I've been doing this my whole life. What's gonna happen to me?
And that's not what we want to lead with. We're not trying to make anyone anxious about it. We're saying that, here's new information. Oh cool. Let me control what I can because. I'm gonna be driving. Sometimes I'm gonna be invited to a late dinner. I'm gonna be out sometimes. Do we wear blue blockers in public?
Yes. Yes we do. Yeah, she sent me a picture the other day and I was at an event and I'm like, she zoomed into the crab. Where's walls wears small dress. Like find me the only one wearing orange glasses. I'm like, I don't care. I don't want the bright lights in my eyes and I'll look like the nerd. And I don't, it's fine.
It's on brand, you know. It's on brand and other
people who, who are the nerd out there. If there's one other person in the crowd, you can friends my people, new friends.
Totally. Yeah. And on the flip side too, because then there's also the positive I've seen one of the things we do in our cohort programs is, we'll, oftentimes spouses can, you know, participate for free because it also helps set me up to get better results for the person.
Because the more, 'cause you bring up a huge point. If we don't feel like we have buy-in from our. Family members and people in our environment, it can make it much harder for to get those results that we're looking to get. So when those spouses come in and then participate, it's actually, I've been able to see some amazing kind of partnership and they have fun together and they're like figuring out how to make sure they get the dinner in earlier.
So it can go both ways. One thing just with my husband, he always makes fun of me with the Darth Vader thing, but over time he's totally gotten on board. We often are ending our dinners now at like, you know, two 3:00 PM and it's like his favorite thing to do. And so, oh, the best moment was when he just traveled recently and he finally brought those same like disc red lights that we've been talking about.
He brought them along with them. I dunno if I told you this. No. Which was such a great moment for me. It was like, yay, finally. You know? So he's like, it's, it becomes just the new norm. So it is possible, it might take a little bit of time, some of those hard conversations, but I think it can be so, so impactful.
And then the whole house is sleeping and feeling and eating and all the things better.
You know, everything. Yeah. Everyone's like, you know, there's like more time in the bedroom and more time of all of it. It's super, a hundred percent. Um, I love having all of us in a space to talk about these things and really dive into it and hopefully for all the listeners, we'll tag all the tools and all the tricks and all the things we've put in here, including the beautiful work that we're all doing in the landscape, just with the programs.
But I just wanna, um, I wanna thank you and I would love to just like, we'll start with Danny just to do a little bit of a touch point to where people can find you. Oh
yeah. '
cause they're gonna wanna
Oh, sure. I hang out a lot on Instagram. Uh, Danielle Hamilton Health is my handle. It's also my website and I have a program, blood Sugar Mastery.
I am incorporating all these circadian principles into my work because our sleep has such a huge impact on our blood sugar and of course vice versa, but it also sets us up for better blood sugar regulation, insulin sensitivity. And then my podcast is unlock the sugar shackles. I love that. Amazing. And I have a new YouTube channel, which I'm really proud of.
Oh yes, I like that. Beautiful. Also
Danielle Hamilton Health. So cool. Yeah, so good. Ah, well all my things are at sleep as a skill.com and there you can do a few things. So if you are dealing with anything with your sleep, we have a couple things that you can do in a sleep assessment. Get auto triggered back information right away that you can, you know, lots of resources and things that you can do to shift that.
And we have a weekly newsletter goes out every Monday for over five years. We've been doing that every
Monday for over five years. It's one of the only ones that I read.
Thank you. I love you right now. I love that thing. It has just been such a cool way to interact with people. So people you know, will respond and share what's going on for them with their sleep.
And I read every single email, get back to you on those. So I'd love to have more and more people talking about sleep. Then we have a weekly podcast as well, the Sleep As A Skill podcast. We also have cohorts and all of these are using different sleep trackers. We have sleep wearable audits that we now do too.
So we can audit your sleep information and kind of help support you right away. And different ways to ensure that if you're struggling with your sleep can definitely get you information free or dive into something else to get more committed. Whatever you need, it's there is the intention.
Yeah. Amazing.
And then everything I have is well Power Life and connects to Sherpa Breath and Cold, which is a very big piece of my heart right now around the breath work and cold exposure landscape. And uh, you can find me there on my podcast. Well, power just, I love that we get to continue to share. Lots of free resources and education and then, um, program with people who really need it.
So stoked that we could be there together. Aw, thank you so much for listening. I love you. We're power housing in Austin right now. I'm so headed.
Yes. Love us. Alright, we'll see you
on the other side. The other We'll see you in the morning. Exactly.
Well slept. Bye. Thank you. You've been listening to The Sleep As A Skill Podcast, the top podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level.
Every Monday, I send out the Sleep Obsessions newsletter, which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet. Fun Facts. I've never missed A Monday for over five years in counting and it contains everything that you need to know in the fascinating world of sleep. Head on over to sleep as a skill.com/newsletter to sign up.