Martin is a renowned authority in Breath Science, bringing together an impressive blend of expertise as a Respiratory and Sleep Scientist, Exercise Physiologist, and Behavioural Science Practitioner. With over 15 years of experience in research, clinical work, and training, Martin is not only a consultant, scientist and educator but also a passionate advocate for healthy, connected living. Martin is the founder of Performance Through Health and The School of Breath Science. Who is committed to his vision of creating a world where people can achieve optimal health and happiness his unique blend of academic rigor, clinical expertise, and personal passion positions him at the forefront of the Breath Science field, making him a trusted figure in helping others achieve their best health and raising the standard of scientific understanding in the breath and wellbeing space.
Martin is a renowned authority in Breath Science, bringing together an impressive blend of expertise as a Respiratory and Sleep Scientist, Exercise Physiologist, and Behavioural Science Practitioner. With over 15 years of experience in research, clinical work, and training, Martin is not only a consultant, scientist and educator but also a passionate advocate for healthy, connected living. Martin is the founder of Performance Through Health and The School of Breath Science. Who is committed to his vision of creating a world where people can achieve optimal health and happiness his unique blend of academic rigor, clinical expertise, and personal passion positions him at the forefront of the Breath Science field, making him a trusted figure in helping others achieve their best health and raising the standard of scientific understanding in the breath and wellbeing space.
SHOWNOTES:
😴 What if your breathing patterns are quietly sabotaging your deep sleep?
😴 How breathing reveals your nervous system state and why safety unlocks deep rest
😴 Why stressed brains struggle to let go at night and how to train calm
😴 Can you train sleep like a skill? Science-backed behavior rhythms that change rest
😴 Why consistent wake time may matter more than total sleep hours
😴 The underrated power of slow breathing before bed, how long is enough?
😴 Functional vs dysfunctional breathing and how it shows up in sleep
😴 CO₂ sensitivity and its link to light sleep & nighttime wake-ups
😴 What breath-work can and cannot, do for sleep apnea
😴 How leptin and metabolic stress affect nighttime breathing
😴 Should you ditch your sleep tracker? Ortho-insomnia explained
😴 What respiratory rate really reveals about stress load & sleep readiness
😴 How scent + stillness before bed can anchor the nervous system
😴 And many more
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GUEST LINKS:
Website: https://schoolofbreathscience.com
https://performancethroughhealth.com
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https://www.instagram.com/martinmcphilimey/
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. 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.
Welcome back to The Sleep Is a Skill podcast. If you've ever climbed into bed and thought, why can't I just switch off? Today's episode is for you. We're pulling back the curtain on the link between breathing and nervous system and truly restorative sleep and how creating a. Felt sense of safety is often the missing piece.
Our guest is Martin McPhilime, respiratory and Sleep Scientist, exercise physiologist, behavioral science practitioner, and the founder of Performance through Health and the School of Breath Science. With 15 plus years across research, clinical work, and educator training, he's one of those rare voices who blends rigor with real life tools.
Now, I followed his work for a while and what stands out is how he makes complex physiology actionable. In this conversation, we map a simple hierarchy that you can start using tonight. Beliefs. To behaviors, to circadian anchors, and those circadian anchors are light movement, temperature, meal, et cetera.
Then nervous system balance and lifestyle. We talk about why consistency, beats duration, what your respiratory rate may be. Whispering about stress when breath practices help and when it's time for a sleep study or A-C-P-A-P. We also get real about wearables, how to use the data without letting it run your nights.
CO2 tolerance and those 2:00 AM wake up plus overlooked environment fixes like. Air quality and dust. So settle on in. By the end, you'll have a calmer science-backed path to being off and stay to the finish where we ask Martin our four closing questions on how he personally protects his own sleep. So let's dive in.
But first, a few words from our sponsors. 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 BiOptimizers, 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 is. 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.
And welcome to the Sleep is a Skill podcast. We have our guest today who is going to just wow us. I already know he's gonna wow us in so many areas that can help support your sleep in maybe surprising ways. But Martin, thank you so much for taking the time to be here at a very early hour for you. You are welcome, Molly.
Thank you very much for, for the invite. It's a pleasure. Yes. Usually we leave to the end, you know, to say like, oh, make sure you follow this person or whatever. But definitely follow Martin on. All the socials. I've been following Martin for a while and just, you know, he put, it's clear in his content, his commitment to helping people and their wellbeing, but just with thoroughness too, and just really like an investigative journalist or something in a certain way of the things that, in the way in which you dive into the research, but make it understandable and practical.
Yeah, there's just a lot there. So definitely follow Martin, but I'll give you the opportunity to kind of share how did you become an expert in this area? How do you find yourself here? I mean, initially I, I studied exercise physiology. That was my first route into, I guess, formal education in science. Sure.
But my, my professors were respiratory professors, so this was back in 2008. I was very early in the breathing game you could say.
Yeah.
And obviously, I dunno, I think, I think it's pretty similar in America, but the. The clinical space here is like respiratory doctors often work very closely with sleep doctors and sometimes they even are respiratory and sleep doctors that combine together.
But I trained as a, a clinical professional in respiratory and sleep science. So that's how Then a few years later I started to move into, into sleep science and uh, I did that for 10 years, but just over the 10 year period that I was doing that. I transitioned from working in a public hospital with very sick people.
Yeah. To working in a private hospital, working with people who were very worried about their health. Yeah. And then a lot of the issues that I was actually facing was stress and anxiety. So I, I, I decided to move away from a clinical role in 2021. During COVID mm-hmm. When anxiety and breathing issues were at the peak, and obviously everybody was online and Yeah, I was like, let's go all in and see where I can build an online consulting agency.
And, um, yeah. Now, now I work with people in the space of kind of breathing sleep and nervous system regulation and have, uh, my own training and educational school, the school of Science as well, which is a, uh, you know, a platform that is gonna be grown out there to, to serve the planet, but also to raise the standard of scientific understanding in breath work.
Wow. Well, so needed and so exciting. And for the listener that is saying, well, I, you know, I'm tuned in to sleep. And I know you mentioned sleep, but we're talking about breathing, like how? Mm-hmm. How do these things all come together? I wonder if you can help bridge why, if we're looking to improve our sleep and whether we're on either one of those buckets that you mentioned too, with the people that you'd seen like that maybe are really dealing with some acute health issues or.
Worried about their health or stressed about their health. And we seem to see both of those people, both of those groups listening and tuning in to sleep as a skill. So they might have acute issues with their sleep or they might be nervous about like, are they sleeping well or maybe hypervigilant. So if you can help share, how do we connect those two topics, sleep and breathing.
Yeah, sure. So at the end of the day, breathing is a, a direct reflection of how our nervous system state is. Yeah. And obviously to get into our deepest restorative stages of sleep, stage three, sleep, deep sleep, we really need to be able to come back to homeostasis with an iron nervous system.
Yeah. And to
be able to get into that deeper parasympathetic state.
So when people are stressed long term and they have that hypervigilance in their nervous system, it's. Often they might see an increase in, in light sleep, which is obviously the quality of sleep that then in bed. Um, that's, so that's where you start to see maybe acute problems related to brace in mind, anxiety, worry.
Yes. And then you start to create poor associations with the bed and you get up with in insomnia, or you just typically have really light sleep. I, I really think that the, the way that I like to approach. People that can get the best sleep, have a lot of safety of letting go of the day and letting go of like the, the conscious world really.
Yeah. We
think of the people who get terrible sleep is is typically those people who can't switch off.
Yeah.
Conscious and, I mean, what do I mean by can't switch off? Is like, they don't feel safe about letting the work finish today.
Yeah. And just
being okay, waking up tomorrow and getting on with it.
Mm.
They have
to think about it.
Yes.
Anxious people don't wanna let go of the day or don't wanna go to sleep. 'cause potential threats, metaphorical threats out inside the external world. Yeah. So safety is really needed for, to get into deeper sleeps and that is reflected in what our breathing's doing. So appreciate you breaking that down.
And we see that so commonly with the people that are coming our way. I mean, I know I certainly dealt with that. That was part of the genesis of the creation of this company for me. Mm-hmm. Definitely skew, overthinking, anxious, what have you. So I'm curious for the listener, if they can get this sense that it's possible to break through that kind of tendency and really train for making a difference with this.
And I'm assuming you can help provide that. Sense of hope for people. Yeah, of course. There is a lot of sleep as you know. You've got sleep as a skill. I like to think of skill being behaviors. Right, exactly. And becoming very good at getting those behaviors either correct or they just being a past or part parcel or natural response of your life.
So yeah, I, I, I look at sleep as having a hierarchy of things that you need to really work through. Yeah. One is beliefs. Mm. What, what are the beliefs that you're working with? You sleep. If you get an individual who is like, okay, I only need four L five hours sleep, I'm okay.
Yeah. That's
often for me, it's a maybe a dysfunctional or maladaptive belief that individual has that's probably not serving them too well.
Yeah.
And you have to kind of work with that.
Yeah.
Um, and then there's behaviors. Obviously those behaviors will then start to entrain the circadian rhythms and entrainments around that. We obviously have nervous system balance within there as well, and we've got lifestyle factors at the same time. So it's kind of working through those that that's the hierarchy for me.
Yeah. That I'll typically work through people, but it starts with people changing their behavior. Okay, and when you say it starts with behavior, maybe you can help break that down for us or for the listener, what that might look like. Yeah, of course. With, with behavioral stuff. We know that a circadian rhythm, there's four guy Zeit Geers.
Yes. Guide has been a German word for things that entrain rhythms. The, you know, getting up Light di dark cycle is typically the one that we mostly speak to.
Yeah.
But then there's movement, there's temperature, and there's meal timing, and. As sleep scientists, and you'll probably recognize this with the amount of people that you spoke to in the work that you do, is we really want people to be as consistent as un robotic in those as possible.
Yeah,
and that's because. Because our brain is actually a, A system that predicts. Yeah. Which is trying to make the next step of a prediction all the time.
Yeah.
And if we are consistent in our, in those four behaviors, but also in consistent potentially in the nighttime routine that we have as well.
Yeah.
We create anchors around sleep. We also have all the hormones that are aligned with our circadian rhythm, such as the melatonin, the cortisol, and we have, uh, our brain actually saying, well, when I finish this KA malt, for example, and I do some light breathing, the next step is sleep. So I can then just go through the process faster and I can get to sleep much quicker.
Totally. Okay. So kind of helping to educate for people on what this looks like, but then helping to provide a foundation or a lifestyle where we cultivate, maybe for some it might land as like boring or predictable or consistency, but that is. The key for us to having great sleep night after night over the long term.
Yeah. I mean, you, you have to start with the sleep hygiene, you know? Yeah. It's, it's a standard protocol that if you are going to see someone about sleep and they are not either getting need to record a diary or showing you some data where they can actually kind of look at, uh, what's going on, you can pull out information within their behaviors and then trying to correct this again.
I found, just in a practical sense, it's more so not trying to do everything at once and trying. Mm-hmm. If you've got, if you, if there's a lot of misbehaviors, you, it's hard to change 'em all.
Yeah.
So it's just like each habit you implement change for maybe four, four or five weeks and one or two habits, and then just gradually over the time that's your, you are improving, you know, in, in changing those habits, you start to improve.
Obviously you can track the data points on that as well.
Yeah.
Um. Some data points better than others. Yes. Typically, obviously you can look at sleep duration, sleep efficiency and, and sleep latency being the, the most accurate data that we can use to look at those sort of things. But yeah, it's, it's a, for most people, it's either a psychological shift they need to have in a belief.
Or it is literally need to start. Im improving a behavior now breathing, bringing that back in. Yes. Obviously we can increase rates of breathing or we can decrease rates of breathing, and typically that's gonna change where we are in our state of arousal. Yeah. Where our nervous system being more sympathetic or parasympathetic.
So a simple te 10 minute downregulation breath practice, or actually even five minutes slow breathing before bed, can really calm our nervous system to make us feel safe, to make us feel as we can reduce our arousal. And therefore help us potentially get to sleep a lot easier. Totally. Okay. And so for the listener, should they take away, oh, okay, so I just add in like five minutes at night and I'm good to go?
Or is it, that's a place to begin and then maybe it's something where we're beginning to know ourselves and bring that level of awareness throughout the course of the day. Like how do you have people think about this big topic of breathing and their ability to influence it? Yeah, it's, it's, it is a bit of a process really.
Obviously, most people will need a form of assessment. Yeah, with, with sleep itself, like you would do a sleep diary for example. You might, you'd have a physical assessment or there are breath assessments, or there are observations you can do with equipment to look at briefings to see whether it's functional or dysfunctional, and we can go into those terms, what those are.
Dysfunctional briefing typically meaning that someone. The efficiency of someone's breathing is not ideal for their, the level of gas exchange or what they want in their life. So the way that people breathe, people can breathe into their chest and be fast and shallow breathing, which can make people feeling more fre, more alert.
Yeah. That's the body that's sending signals to the brain to kind of keep you awake.
Yeah.
So it might be not just implementing five minutes of practice, but also. Improving the behavior of the breathing at the same time.
Yeah. As
an aspect of looking at can we create more diaphragmatic breathing, more expansion, more, uh, bringing the breath rate down, making it lighter, for example, um, as a, within that five minute practice.
Yeah. That is typically where I would then start. It's like you combining a few different behaviors. That's where I'd start, but then there's. Very interestingly, I, I often see, and this is also a bit of a hypothesis, that's in the literature, literature as well, this term carbon dioxide sensitivity. Mm. Which is like when our breathing slows down CO2 rises, how fast does our nervous system get triggered by that change in that CO2 Mm.
Yeah. That, that seems to have an impact on the quality of sleep that people get. Sure. Yeah. So. When people start to typically slow down at nighttime, they start to rest. They start to lie down. Respiratory rates slows down slightly. CO2 elevates. Now a slight elevation in CO2 long term is sedative.
Mm. In
fact, that's actually what switches on non REM sleep centers in our brain, slight elevations in CO2.
Mm-hmm.
However, there's some new literature to suggest that. If CO2 gets too high, then two things can happen. You either wake up and we call that an arousal.
Mm-hmm. And that
might be the person who has a light sleeper because they're sensitive to that change in CO2. Sure. Or the brain switch switches on the REM sleep centers.
And then during REM sleep, we start to dream and our breathing becomes erratic. We breathe faster and the CO2 blows off again.
Mm-hmm. And then we come back
into homeostasis and it looks as if that breathing. Sleep is a form of help and breathing to come back into homeostasis and pH in the body to come back into homeostasis.
Well, and there's a mechanism that looks as though is like a round A acid is actually helping assist in the sleep cycles from going to rem, non-REM to rem, non-REM to rem. And they're disturbed by people who have issues with this carbon dioxide tolerance. Yeah, like, so what about for the listener that's like, oh no, I've been dealing with insomnia or something for a whole stretch of time.
Can you provide that sense of we got this from, you're not stuck that way, even if your body has kind of been trained into that sort of maladaptive loop. Yeah, for sure. Of course, starting the, the, the breathing practice is, is one element, but then introducing things that are gonna make the body feel a lot more calm and safe as well.
So your typical NSDR practices that you can implement throughout the day. Yoga Nira. Hypnosis progressive muscle relaxation sort of thing. They can long term bring down the overall arousal state down, which is gonna help someone assist to improve their ability to get to sleep as well. As well as once they've got to a position where they feel safe in their body, like introducing light breath holds
hmm, throughout the
day.
Um, or even stronger breath holds as we advance into building more resilience. Just helps the brain manage and the nervous system manage better changes in these gases within the body, which then reduces the risk of that being disturbed at nighttime, which is gonna be more so an issue related to waking up more frequently.
Sure. Rather than being a issue with like sleep latency and not being able to get to sleep usually. Got
it. Yeah.
There is a very, um, clear observation that when you start to do just ev even that's typical start that, that work. People sleep quality improves just dramatically. That's amazing. Well, I so appreciate you sharing that For listeners that might feel like, oh, I lost cause or what, you know.
'cause sometimes when they're in these loops, some of the thinking of self-efficacy to be able to get out of this. Might not land as something as simple as how we're, it's not simple. It's uh, you know, simple idea and yet difficult to execute for many of us. But I love that takeaway that that can make such a difference.
So from that place then, what type of kind of like protocol or timeline might people look at for how to bring this into their lifestyle more routinely? Or how do you think about this for having people like start to make this more of a habit or a way of life? It's, for me, it's step by step. Yeah. I always like to.
Excuse things very slowly.
Yeah.
And choose either a one practice to implement and a ref or a reflection to implement or both. Yeah, and it's kind of like week by week. Can we just start to shift these little things? So I would say beyond breathing, if it's, if it's like a sleep hygiene thing, the most important thing is like consistency in in sleep time and wake up time.
Yeah. In fact, there's actually new literature suggest that that is more important than duration. Yes. So important. And that can be so empowering for people because that it can, you know, kinda maybe take the pressures off in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm. Which often we see pressure and sleep not do so well together.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, a lot of people who don't have. Consistently consistency in sleep and wait time is is 'cause life's chaotic.
Yeah. Yeah. And when
life's chaotic again, the brain can't predict when sleep's gonna come. So yes, creating some order and some structure in the chaos is kind of what usually helps people get outside of that.
So that order is wake up at the same time and try to go to bed at the same time.
Yeah. You've
created a discipline then, and that's then starting the learning point where your body can. Through, it would probably take like 2, 3, 4 weeks until you start. The body would start to pick up that rhythm of the new alignment if you're shifting those behaviors, but eventually, then your hormones are gonna be.
Secreted and produced at the right time, and your body and brain will learn that that's, this is the rhythm that you need to be in. Wow. So good. So then when you're working with people to make a difference with their sleep, we're thinking of this holistic approach. You also mentioned, you know, getting, uh, kind of an analysis of them or getting a read on where they're at.
Are there certain things that you do that are. Different than how other people work, or a particular way that you like to get a readout or understanding of where that person's at right now. It really depends on the individual. I think when you are working with someone, the first thing that I will, I'll be assessing is the way they speak about their sleep.
Mm. Yeah. And I ask them how, if I say, if I ask 'em and I say, how do you sleep? And they start reading me their AING data or their ING data, and I haven't asked them about data. I've asked them how they sleep and how they feel.
Yes. Then
instantly I start thinking, okay, is this an individual who's actually got addicted to the data?
Yes.
And then created that. I think it's, is it orthorexia the, the, the one way to Yeah. Ortho Somnia maybe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The ortho somnia. Yeah. So then I might actually pull that information from and say, I wanna see it, but I want you to take, I actually want you to take it off for a little while.
Yes.
Because I feel some people, yeah, some people obviously. Can wake up in the morning, look at their data and go, oh, I didn't get as deep a sleep as I needed to. Yes. They set themselves up psychologically for a terrible day, and they get in the sleep and habit of doing that. Yes. So if you pull that away and just say, I, I want you to start to be more in touch with what you're feeling, again, it's building that body awareness that, you know, interceptive awareness of, of your own state again.
Yeah, and I think that's really. It's really crucial when we're in such a time when there's, there is so much technology.
Yes.
But if someone, if someone comes to me and they generally are like, oh yeah, look, I, I sleep pretty good. My, my data's like this, and they're not, they're not attached to it. Attached.
Yeah. Then I'll be using, I'll be using data points.
Hmm.
If I feel there is a clinical issue, then obviously I'll send them for a sleep study and I'll actually get a full polysomnograph for that. Yeah, absolutely. And to that point, we do have a lot of listeners that either suspect they have sleep apnea or certainly do have sleep apnea, and whether it's treated or untreated or different buckets, but so sleep apnea is a big one for this conversation.
Do you have a particular way that you like to work with people from a breath work perspective to support their apnea? Yeah, so the, I would say there is a category that breath people in, the breath space can work and there's a category of people. Can't, it really needs medical support.
Yeah. And that's
gonna come around the, you know, around the severity.
Um. We talked to severity of having an apnea hypopnea index of how many apnea are people having per hour.
Yeah,
and I would usually say anything that's more than say, 17, 18 apnea per hour, which is more into moderate severity.
Yeah.
Then there's a high likes, especially if someone is senior overweight has comorbidities such as diabetes, but they're gonna need CPA therapy.
Yeah.
So then it's like, okay. Look, you've gotta go down that route. 'cause if you, if you don't, you just don't have the energy to have any motivation to try and change your behaviors and you habits anyways. Yeah, let's get that sorted. But if they aren't as sleepy and they are. The, the, the mild condition.
Sure. Then it might be looking at, okay, is it dysfunctional breathing? Is it circadian rhythm issues? Yes. Is it dietary issues? Is it stress issues? Yeah. A lot of people don't realize that chronic stress plays a big impact on hormones such as leptin, which is Yeah. Often considerably sat hormone. Yeah. But leptin's a respiratory stimulant at nighttime.
I wonder if you can share more about that for people to kind of understand that Yeah. This was a. I guess a, a hypothesis of theory that I came across when I was actually started studying, uh, sleep science. So I did a, a little bit of a, a research project on people with type one diabetes. Okay. And looking at how, how much risk do people with type one diabetes, diabetes have to have in sleep disorder breathing.
Mm. And it was just a very simple screening protocol.
Yeah.
But there was this one gentleman who was an. A professional cyclist, cyclist, very lean. Mm-hmm. Very, very, very lean. He was a type one diabetic, and what I did was I took his, uh, SPO two overnight time Okay. And his continuous blood glucose overnight time, basically put him on top of each other.
Sure.
For the first half of the night, his oxygen levels were dropping massively. And the second half of the night, they were perfect.
Mm. Didn't
have any history of cardiac issues or anything like that, so it was clearly, it. It was the oxygen levels were due to breathing.
Mm. And
the first half of his night is glucose was massively dropping, and then for the second half the night, it was perfectly straight.
I was like, there, there has to be something going on here. Yeah. And so I thought, well. I asked him, what do you do at nighttime to make your glucose come down? And he took, he takes his insulin before he goes to bed. Oh. So I thought, oh, I wonder whether when people inject insulin, it has an impact on their breath and then it causes sleep disorder breathing at nighttime.
And I couldn't find anything in of literature.
Mm. But then that
came across the hormone leptin.
Yeah.
Which is the hormone that when we consume food, insulin rises, but so does leptin at the same time to make us feel full. So we don't eat food.
Yeah.
Eat more food. We feel satiated. But leptin, actually, when you look into literature it, the main role it plays is, is produced by body fat.
And when it's released by the body fat, it's trying to stimulate the nervous system, and it's trying to help us breathe to the amount of metabolic needs that we have based off our body mass. Hmm. When we're chronically stressed, long term tends to happen is the receptors that get picked up in our brain, leptin receptors, they start to get impaired by inflammation.
Especially when we have elevated cortisol for long term. Yes. So then the signaling that leptin has between the body and the brain gets impaired. So we start to see people have instability and breathing at nighttime. We also start to see people have airway collapse because it modulates the, the nerves that actually help keep the airway open.
Leptin has a role with that as well, and leptin also has a role in modulating how much we breathe the carbon dioxide. So there are, there's, there's literature out there that shows that people with OSA tend to either have increased. Leptin, which then cause causes a resistance in leptin. Yeah. Which then causes open breathing at nighttime and therefore an apnea occur can occur.
Or in excessively overweight people, they get what's called obesity hypoventilation. Mm. Where you're really, really severely obese that you're under breathe so much. Actually, people end up in a coma because of excessive CO2 for too long. Wow. So when people are tracking with their different wearables, could this be demonstrated on certain things that they're looking at?
So like their respiratory rates and, or is that too basic? Um, you, yeah. I mean, you might be able to, if you, if, if, if, if the tracker is picking up SP O2. Yeah. So oxygen saturations, you might be able to get a, win a window into this sort of stuff if people have it severe enough.
Mm-hmm.
So. That can be an indicator really.
Uh, you might see an elevated respiratory rate at nighttime just because of the, the, the excessive sympathetic tones. Stress that's in the body. Yeah. When people have apnea. Um, but typically it's more gonna be, people notice that they're snoring. They notice that, you know, bed partners said, Hey, that. You stop breathing.
I have to nudge you during the night, waking up with feeling fatigued. Uh, mental health issues, obviously there's a big correlation between poor sleep and mental health. So if you've got those issues as well as mental health, dry throat in the morning, yeah, it's more so those things that are gonna be indicators.
And then you would need a, um, you know, at least a, a stage, a stage, a type three or type two poly sub graft just to see what's going on with within someone braven at nighttime. Totally. Yeah, 'cause I appreciate that breakdown because we'll have often people send us, or they'll just preemptively, they'll start sending like screenshots of, you know, different track of wearable data and they'll point to changes in respiratory rate as it relates to their breath work.
And is it too simple to say that we often wanna see things going down, per se, or like lowering over time of the work that they're doing with their breath work? Or is that too simplified? No, not really. I think respiratory rate is actually in, in the literature at the moment. It's really being studied a lot.
Yes. To say actually we, we think there is a lot we can get from respiratory rate in that. Right. It, it, it's a good window into looking at what is someone's nervous system doing and what state of arousal this morning.
Okay.
So. Part of our brain that actually creates our breathing is a, is a part of the brain in the brain in the brainstem called the pre boxing complex.
I dunno if you ever come across that before.
That
is what's called a central pattern generator. Okay. So it just unconsciously is just creating this pattern of breathing over and over again. It's actually directly projects to a part of the brain called the locus ulu, which is what releases neuro adrenaline.
Yeah. Okay. So the faster the breathing rate, the more neuro adrenaline's being released. Hmm. So then typically if you are getting someone who has a rest and bereavement rate more so the, you know, 16, 17, 18, up to 20 press per minute. Yeah. You, uh, you could make a, a guess that that individual's probably more so on the higher side of having neurore in their body.
Mm. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that the person's anxious.
Yeah.
Because you might have just a type A person who enjoys thriving, get that. That level.
Yeah. And
they might enjoy it, so they might feel okay, but it's not ideal long term to be at that high level of chronic stress state and obviously not ideal for sleep quality as well.
So it does give us a window into is, are the practices that we're doing helping to bring our. Overall arousal and sympathetic tone down. So, yeah, I, I think respiratory rate is as, as we get better with technology, actually measuring the accuracy of it. Soon we'll probably see earphones and earplugs that people will wear and it'll be picking up breath sounds and that's probably gonna be the new technology.
That'll be the most accurate technology to pick it up of it and wearing something on the, on the chest.
Yeah.
But at the moment, things like, you know, the, um. The, the, the common technologies that are out there, they just don't take the sampling rates fast enough to be able to detect variation in the respiratory rate.
As accurate as I would like. Okay. Yeah. There's been call of different thought leaders in these areas. Andy Galpin will talk to his certain call outs of if respiratory rate is above 15 breaths per minute, then it gives him. Concern or pause, do you think in ways like that of kind of these certain milestones?
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I say typically if they've got someone, one, yeah. Above 15, 16 is like my cutoff point. It, it's, it's. It's an identification to to, to observe and to, to question. Yeah. Obviously data about context is, is, is useless. Totally. Yeah. So it's just like, okay, well your respir threes at this point now, and now we need to investigate.
Why was that what happened on that day or, and what's been going on recently? Just to inquire a lot more. Yeah. And of, that's, that's what data's great for. Yeah, it's great for understanding patterns and to inquire. Totally. Yeah. And for the listener, that's more in the bucket of optimizing, would you say that something that you commonly see for people, so if they're the person that's tuning in, they're like, I just wanna improve all my data and whatever.
Can you make the argument that, okay, well then working on your breath work, kind of having this breath work practice as a way of life can support lowering those respiratory rate numbers and presumably over time lowering heart rate, improving HRV, or is that. Too loaded of a statement. No, it's, I mean it's, it's certainly a tool that we can add into the whole variety of behaviors that we have throughout the day.
Totally. Okay. The interesting thing is that if you were to get someone who is very, very stressed and their re respiratory, it was like 18 and you just said, just start to do breath work and slow your breathing down every night, it probably wouldn't be. Enough,
yes.
To bring down the respiratory rate alone.
If they're only, say sleeping four hours, five hours, and the rest of the day is they're jacked upon caffeine and yes, you know, they're working all the time. They're not resting. It's just, it's just that that small practice just isn't, you need to look at all the behaviors. So I will typically look at sleep, arousal management, breathing, what I call like rest effort ratio, which is just looking at basically how much effort people put in, how much time they're taking off, and then even things like self-esteem Yeah.
As well. And, and looking deeply into where people have, might have, um, just issues with kind of facing cognitive dissonance in their life, which can obviously cause more stress as well. So,
yes.
Quite holistic now. If you look at an overview of all those things, then implement ways to improve each step.
That's really the best way to kind of, to bring down, obviously, someone's respiratory rate and get 'em back into more of a state of calming balance, you could say.
Yeah, I,
I think, I think one approach to try to change a significant problem in someone's life because of behaviors, it's just isn't usually enough, which is so true.
What then becomes hard, right? When you're working with someone who. Has so many habits that are ingrained into their lifestyle that you have to say, look, you only need to change a fair bit, but we're gonna do it slowly. Yes, you gotta be patient. You'll get the results. So true. How about from an anatomical perspective?
Have you seen like it's just top of mind. We're talking about respiratory rate. I have to do more content on this, but I recently got a tongue tie release and this viver procedure, if you've seen that, use radiofrequency to reshape your nasal passageway. I'm mean, it corrected a slight deviated septum. So for me, my respiratory rate dropped by about 1.3 breaths per minute.
Overnight, which is pretty crazy. And now it's hard 'cause I did both of them at the same time, so it's like wasn't mm-hmm The tongue to eye. Was it the nose? Was it both? I dunno. But it was really interesting to see that anatomical aspect of things. Do you see that commonly or is it more beginning with behaviors or both?
I think obviously there's anatomical issues and people are really struggling to breathe through their nose. Yeah. Then, then that's gonna have an impact on respiratory rate just because there's more resistance. So if the body is struggling with, uh, you know, to pull air in because of resistance there and they can't get a deep enough breath with just like your natural breath and obviously the compensation has to increase respiratory.
Yeah.
And that's, then that's when we could going into that, the dis the dysfunctional breathing category and starting to consider, are we gonna label it that term? But it is sometimes anatomical. Some people can wear nasal strips and just go straight away. Wow. Like this is a big change for me. Right. And that's enough.
Other people need corrective surgeries. I, I haven't heard of this, uh, this new, new technology that you're talking about before, but yes, I wanna, I'll, I'll have to send you, if you go to viver.com, and I'm not connected with the company or anything but medical company here in, I think just based in the United States, but I could be wrong.
Maybe it sense and really interesting, I mean, literally in about like a 25 minute or so thing. Now granted you have to be all numbed up and what have you, and so they're really. Using radiofrequency to reshape the inside of your nasal passageway. And yet it was wild, the difference that it made. Like I felt like I could just breathe newly in a way that I'd never been able to do.
And it's one of those like fish to water thing. 'cause I didn't realize what that would feel like. 'cause it's just, its always been that way. So it is so interesting. And then of course, to pair that. With more of the work that you're doing. I wanna continue to delve into more of the the things that you speak to.
'cause it's just obviously lifelong learning and that's why I think this whole idea of sleep being a skill is so interesting. 'cause it can pull from these many different areas of life that can. Bleed into our results in the bedroom, if you will, and really make such a difference. So, okay. I know we've just said a lot and I'm really excited to hear when we ask every person that comes on the podcast, we ask them four questions around how they're managing their sleep.
But before we get there, I know this is a huge topic and I know. My takeaway, what my understanding of your work to date is that it is incredibly thorough. It feels like you put your heart and soul into the information that you get out to people. And so, I know this is a huge topic, but is there anything you wanna kind of put a bow on on this big topic of sleep breathing and beyond?
I don't know whether anyone, and you, you could answer this question. We can if, if, if you say yes, someone's already spoke about it. Yeah. But the new literature around Blue light and melatonin. Oh, has anyone spoken recently with Michael Grad G Work? Oh yes. The university. Yes, he, we've had him on the podcast.
Yeah. I connect with him routinely. Yes. Absolutely. And definitely it grows. It's been a bit of a breakthrough really. It is been a, you know. Change a lot of opinions around, okay, is it, is it as bad as we are thinking if it's before our bedtime? So that was something I kind of, I've been reading into listen, listen to recently, and I wondered whether you, you you'd heard of that
Yeah.
That concept before. So, um, that was front of mind. Totally. Other than that. I think, uh, there's been plenty to, plenty, plenty cover in that. Okay, great. Well then I'm excited to dive into how you're managing your own sleep because it's clear that you've thought deeply about these areas and have seen maybe what works, what doesn't work, and you know how to bring this into to your life.
So our first question is, how are you managing your, you know, nighttime routine or sleep routine right now? Well, we've got an eight month for baby, so it's been, that's a factor, the jour navigating that journey. Lucky, luckily a little one. Lany has been very, she's actually been a pretty good sleeper up until recently, and she now, she, she refuses to sleep in her own bed.
So, uh, just managing, to be honest with you, my, my routine is I really love doing a. A form of like a yin yoga. Mm-hmm. Like a very kind of deep slow, yeah. Long pose stretches where I'm really slowing my breathing down and going really internal and just observing what's going on in my body and what's going on in my mind.
Mm.
And
I'll typically, usually do that with either having a form of Kamal tea beforehand, or a bit of magnesium. Sure. Magnesium is just something I enjoy the taste of. My magnesium is, is in normal levels. I dunno whether I would be deficient in magnesium if I didn't take it. It's a part of that, that ritual or that process of just having a routine before bed.
Yeah,
and there's a big difference between the days that I do those practices and the days that I don't. So I try to do it every day. Sometimes obviously you just go, oh, I'm tired and I wanna go to bed. But that's sometimes the days where actually you end up going, oh, okay, I probably should just get out and go and do this.
So for me it's. It's getting into my body, stretching, feeling, and really slowing my breath down and getting as calm as possible. I love that. So good. And then our morning quote unquote sleep routine with the idea that how we start our day could impact our sleep. Mm-hmm. Of course. Mm-hmm. We all know. Yeah.
Famous words of Andrew Human get outside. Exactly. Exactly. And yet it's so wild because, you know, up until a couple years ago, so many people would be like, well, what is the morning have to do with the night? So, and it's amazing that now this is more part of the lexicon. So being in Australia, we're very fortunate here to pretty much get sun all, all year round.
It's very bright in Western Australia, so you can get outside for five minutes, even 10 minutes, even if it's in the garden. Just, just trying to do that. If I can't get an opportunity, I usually like to go for a walk in the morning or to get, to get to move. I train Brazilian juujitsu, so I'm often trying to get in the morning or I'm in the gym, so trying to get to the gym in the morning or train in my garden, which is usually outdoors.
Um. And that's, that's, that's what I'm happy to do. But some days it's, some days it's not. Some days I'm have early meetings. I, I have clients around the world and if I have someone who is in New York, for example, and it's 7:00 AM here and it's 7:00 PM there. Yes. We can't really move 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM or 9:00 AM So, so sometimes it is just straight into a work meeting.
Yeah. Totally got it. Okay. And yet it sounds like, as we spoke to throughout the podcast, that level of consistency is kind of ingrained for you from the sounds of it, where it's like you're getting up at around the same time. So even if you got that stuff, uh, you know, at play, your body knows when it goes to sleep and when it wakes up.
Oh, I never, I never use it. Alarm clock. Yeah. Amazing. I never, I never do. Yeah. I, and my body just knows when to wake up. It's usually around about 5:36 AM when the sun comes up and I'm like, we, we said before, I'm, I'm usually pretty alert when I get up in the morning.
Yeah.
I like to get into things straightaway, whether without being activity like, like exercise, or, I'm happy just to get into work because I'm feeling like I'm ready to.
Yeah. Great. So no sleep inertia for you, like no wild levels of sleep int No. Yeah. Great. I've always been pretty good. I've been a morning person for, for all my life, I reckon. Mm, amazing. And then what might we see on your nightstand or like in your environment as it relates to sleep? We actually have a air purifier on a, on my nights stubs, so, um, just.
Just, I noticed, I guess the, the, the last house I lived in, in this house, just the, obviously the amount of dust that accumulates in people's rooms. One thing that I noticed throughout my clinical career was. How have you asked a, a, a client, how often have, do they vacuum underneath their bed? Well, that dust that accumulates Yes.
Or in the room, in the bed. Like it causes stuffy nose and obviously, and causes people to, to have breathing issues at night. And so I, I, I, for me, one thing that I noticed just in this house that we moved into, that I was getting a pretty stuffy nose in the room that I was sleeping in. Yeah. So we got, we got an epi or a fire and it does seem to, to help really Well, so I didn't have.
Any technology. I don't have an alarm clock other than just a small app app on bedside, and that's, that's about it really. So. Great. Yes, and I love, it. Sounds like there's a lot of kind of checks and balances for you of checking in with your body, seeing when there's things that are deviating from some of your norms and then, you know, yeah, I'm listening to my breathing.
Yeah. It's my breathing, so if I get into bed and I can hear myself breathe, okay. Me and my wife have this kind of little contract where she'll ask if I'm okay and if I'm okay. It's like. Okay, well you haven't got any emotions running through your head, so why Can you hear, why? Why can I hear you breathing?
It means that you're too stressed. Go away and do some breathing and come back. Oh, wow. That's really cool. You guys have been doing that for a long time. Yeah. Uh, we've been together, we've been married for a year. We've been together for three, four years now. And I would say that yeah, probably at the very beginning of our relationships you probably learned that, that from, that's amazing.
Straight off. Heavy breathing at nighttime just means that someone's either got something in their mind or they're just, uh, too stressed to go to sleep yet. So cool. And so it can kind of like help police each other and wellbeing. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a check-in, right? Check-in. Totally. Yeah. Sometimes I might not be the best communicator, but if she can recognize that there is something within my breathing behavior that might indicate I'm stressed and it's just a check in to say, Hey, unless you have breathing, have you, what?
What's, what's been going on? Wow, that's so great. What a cool, I, no one's said that in this part of the conversation to date, so that's amazing. Okay, and so the last question would be so far to date, what would you say has made the biggest change to the management of your sleep? I struck in 2017. I went through a year where I was really struggling with anxiety and depression, and I had insomnia for like a, about eight months and I tried everything, yes.
I tried everything. Yeah. And being the nerdy nuanced science I am, I then came up with this really rigid schedule of getting a a, a, a particular scent. I use scent as an anchor and doing your kind of downregulation, the stretching that I do that started during that period, it's like that actually helped me.
The yin yoga was actually the thing that helps me the most.
Ah, amazing. Doing
it whilst I had a calm incent on. That then became an anchor to help match like that state of calmness to that sense. Yes. I love that. So then I could actually use it as a, a tool. Say for example, if I was to travel or to go away for work or something like that, it's like I can bring that at that anchor with me where I don't.
Potentially have the opportunity to do my stretching. Right. But the, the sense, it's almost like the brings up that feeling. Yeah.
That's
great. Wow. Okay. So you started then. I so appreciate you sharing your experience with insomnia. 'cause it certainly, that was part of what happened for me with the creation of this company.
And how it's so fundamentally changed my life. I, you know, I really think of sleep as being personally for me, one of my greatest teachers of all time continues to be so acts as such a great barometer of like what's working, what's not working. And we see that for many individuals and yet maybe some people listening are still going through that teaching.
So I appreciate you sharing that. So would you say, so the yin yoga was a big part of that ability to kind of unravel the insomnia paired with the scent piece. Those were big aspects. The yin yoga with the breathing, um, the ka mal tea beforehand. Yes. You know, it's that stacks part of you, you, you, yeah. You cl check like you wanna try and do everything.
You click everything, really, don't you? Like there's the magnesium and it was like, yeah. The ash gander tablets, and it was like stacking everything together. And all of a sudden, after a period of time, which is probably just more so related to the routine that I realized, oh, like, yeah. Oh, I'm actually starting, like, it wasn't like a moment where I, all of a sudden I was like, oh, this is perfect now.
Yeah. Which is gradually gradual. I gradually actually, I'm, I'm just, I'm not worrying about sleep anymore. Yeah. 'cause it can be such a struggle for people like that loop, that vicious cycle of, you know, and then when you finally get to sleep, it's like you're immediately worried, well what about tonight, blah.
And so interesting. I love that yin piece. And so. For you is the breath element just always entrain there with the yin aspect of things? Like, so is that something that you Oh, for that particular habit? Yeah, so I, I'm always trying to make it, you know, when you do stretching and you're doing like a yin long four or five minute pose, it hurts.
But if
you come to your breathing, slow it down and start to lengthen the exhale, you really can tune into like your, when your, your muscles are starting to release, you can tune into your nervous system kind of switching off. You can really start to pay attention to every little detail in your body.
Yeah. And that for
me is like a real state of calmness. Sure. And I'll be there and be like three minutes into a pose and all of a sudden I can feel my hip starting to kind of loosen up and I take a deep breath in, then breathe out, and I feel it go a little bit further and it's like there's a satisfaction to that.
Yeah, because I'm like, I know that this is just me downregulating so much that it's gonna be really beneficial for the quality of sleep that I get. And then, oh, great. That I, I, I become addicted at trying to get to that state, like mm-hmm. You know, people get addicted to being like, high. I, I get addicted to times, get calm as I can at nighttime.
Wow. Oh, how can we make that like a billboard or something? Like amazing. Wow. So good. Now for the people listening, and again, I know we only scratch the surface of all your vast knowledge in these areas, how can people follow you, work with you? I know you've got some cool, exciting things kind of coming out and tell us all those steps and more.
Yeah, sure. So if people are looking for kind of consulting in an area where they want to improve their breathing, their sleep, and their kind of their stressed, then it's performance through health.com. Okay. They can find me on my Instagram, which is performance through health at the moment. But then if people are actually coaches or educators in this area and they want to learn more about how to actually apply this as a coach, then there is um, my certification training program, which is breath science.com au, or the school of breath science.com.
Okay, so good. Well just really appreciate you taking the time and my take of you is just someone that's really committed to getting out solid information, continuing to learn about the latest research like you were pointing to at the blue light and what have you. So we're continuing to make sure that we're on at the helm of what's available so that we can continue to improve the wellbeing for ourselves and others.
So really appreciate that commitment to mastery and for taking the time to be here. Thank you, Molly. I, I appreciate the work you do as well. I'm, I'm Mike. I'm always popping an eye on there 'cause obviously it's an area of interest and I can see how much effort you've put in over the years to Aw to grow and do this.
So I appreciate the work that you're doing as well. Aw, well thank you. I, that means a lot 'cause and it's nice to know of your background too, and having dealt with some of those things with sleep because I'm so empathetic for people when they're going through those periods of time. 'cause it just be so, like, ugh, a, a big, a big struggle.
And so I'm. Grateful to kind of be on that team with you to help support people.
Thank you.
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