Sleep Your Way to Better Performance
Lesson 14 from: FAST CLASS: Achieve Ultimate Human PerformanceBen Greenfield
Sleep Your Way to Better Performance
Lesson 14 from: FAST CLASS: Achieve Ultimate Human PerformanceBen Greenfield
Lessons
Class Introduction
00:57 2Seven Big Issues in Training
11:58 3The Right Way vs. The Wrong Way to Train
11:15 4Mobility
10:27 5Balance
06:30 6Fueling for Performance
06:47 7Fermented Foods & Sweeteners
07:13 8Ultimate Human Performance Juice & Smoothie
03:23Lesson Info
Sleep Your Way to Better Performance
But first let's go into a review of the circadian rhythm itself which is what we're looking at right now. What I'd like to do is start the circadian rhythm. In our discussion of the circadian rhythm at about six a.m. And it's at about six a.m. When your body starts to experience that peak or that surge in cortisol. Now do you guys remember how on day one, I explained how one of the best ways to test for stress was called an adrenal stress index. And the reason for that is it's not just a morning blood cortisol measurement. If you always measure your morning blood cortisol or if that's a marker that you test on yourself, it's always going to be kind of high because it's supposed to it's a wakefulness hormone that's supposed to be churned out when you wake up in the morning and that's why that adrenal stress index has four different cortisol measurements spread throughout the day. Now of course it should concern you if you were to do something like test your blood cortisol in the morning...
and it were low that can be a sign of adrenal fatigue or some kind of a disruption in your circadian rhythm. So when we get that surge of cortisol that happens at about six a.m. It's accompanied by a surgeon. Something else called VIP or viso, active intestinal polyp peptide. Now that sounds like a big word. But all VIP does is it basically starts your body into the process of doing things like churning out gastric hormones to prepare for your first meal of the day. It prepares your bowels to basically begin that parasol tick movement that results in you needing to go to the bathroom at some point in the morning and as we produce that morning cortisol, the other cool thing that happens is the body starts to wake up, it starts to produce some important hormones that begin to allow you to be more wakeful throughout the day. One of those is vitamin D. And this is why it can be very, very useful to get out at some point within the first hour after you wake and get morning light exposure, morning sunlight exposure. Um if the sun is shining where you live and you're not kind of, let's say you're just tooling around the house and you don't step outside or you don't go perhaps open up your front door and just stand there for a little bit, just soaking up the sunshine and freaking out your neighbors as you stand there in your underwear, soaking up the sunshine, basically, what happens is you miss out on some of that vitamin D. Production I got in the back yard in my underwear in the morning and soak up the sunshine when it's nice out and it's just a really good thing to do in the first hour that you get up because of that rise in cortisol and the subsequent rise and vitamin D. Now it's at about 7 30 that melatonin secretion stops and your body naturally decreases its production of melatonin melatonin is something that is very important for you to produce later on as the sun sets in the evening as well learn, but you actually want to make sure that you are helping your body shuts down melatonin production if you're trying to optimize your circadian rhythm and one of the ways you can help your body to shut down. Melatonin production is not only by going out and getting that sunlight exposure or like you'll learn about later on if you're not able to getting what's called blue light exposure, but also by being really careful with, for example, some of the bio hacks that I talked about earlier, like the blue light blocking glasses, you actually wouldn't want to wear those in the morning. Technically if you're trying to optimize your circadian rhythm, that's why you also need to be careful using things like say blackout curtains that keep your entire bedroom dark. Yes, those help you get to sleep better at night, but technically they can also be kind of a catch if they're allowing that melatonin production to continue far into the morning because your room is entirely blacked out. You gotta be careful with stuff like that because of that production of V. I. P. It's around 8 30 or so, that a bowel movement is likely if you're not having a bowel movement prior to that point, then you may want to consider kind of just giving yourself some toilet time to train your body how to have, like I mentioned yesterday, like that morning bowel movement and that can be actually really useful in training your body how to get into its normal circadian rhythm. It's actually normal for you to not try and hold onto that until lunchtime. Like if you can get yourself to go sometime between like eight and 9:00 AM or slightly earlier, it kind of naturally coincides with that production of those polyp peptides that are helping with peristalsis in your digestive tract nine a.m. He's the point of highest testosterone secretion in males. It's a point where progesterone secretion really goes up in females. Um This is actually one of the reasons why it can actually be um uh not useful but it can be uh can be beneficial to have sex in the morning. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that I recommend workouts at nine a.m. In the morning. Um there's a different time of day that you'll learn about in a little bit that I recommend workouts but know that testosterone secretion surges at about nine a.m. You experience your highest level of alertness at about 10 am. Now I've personally found because I've really worked very very hard to get myself into this optimum circadian rhythm. I've personally found that I need to do most of my mentally demanding tasks prior to 11 am. And I think that it's partly because of this natural creativity that for most people occurs right around 10 a.m. So I try and get more of the creative tasks, More of the tasks that are mentally demanding done earlier in the day and I save more of the physically demanding tasks for later in the day. And the reason for that is because you get coordination and a peak in reaction time At about between 1: and 3:30 PM. And then after that you get a peek in cardiovascular efficiency and muscle strength at about five p.m. At about 6:30 we see another rise in blood pressure and at 7:00 you see a rise in body temperature. Now this is one of the reasons that using cold thermogenesis or a cold shower post workout is not only good for shutting down inflammation and helping you to recover more quickly and move blood around after that workout, but it can also help you to get to sleep later on because it pre initiates the cooling of the body at about the time when the body reaches its highest temperature. So doing something like a, like a cold shower or a cold soak or cold exposure or used to that cool fat burner vest that I talked about around seven PM can set you up for sleeping better a little bit later on at night, Melatonin secretion is going to begin at right around kind of that 10 p.m. To 11 p.m. S. Time range. The interesting thing is that your body is not going to start to secrete melatonin which is going to help you get into your deep sleep cycles and help you to get sleepy unless it's actually been exposed to darkness or specifically not exposed to bright lights and blue lights for several hours prior to that natural peak and secretion, which means that the use of ipads, computers, iphones, televisions, things of that nature after the sun sets in whatever area of the world that you're in can actually be really really delirious from melatonin production. Bowel movements are typically suppressed sometime before midnight, usually around 10:30 or 11. Um if you're finding that you need to get up and go to the bathroom a lot during the night, especially if it's number two. Usually that indicates kind of a like a deeper issue going on a lot of times it can indicates parasites, which we'll talk about later on. Sometimes it can indicate a toxic liver. It's if it's happening sometime around one or two a.m. There's some interesting chinese medicine that has looked into wakefulness at different times of night and some of the organs that are affected but technically um while it's okay to get up during the night. Occasionally to p. You should definitely not be getting up and having bowel movements during the night. And if you are, there's something kind of going on from a gut standpoint um around two a.m. We reach our deepest sleep phase and it's between two and six a.m. That we reach our lowest body temperature. Your body has to be at a low temperature in order for your nervous system to repair and recover if you struggle with brain fog, brain inflammation, if you have trouble with memory with learning a lot of times, it's because you're doing something in your circadian rhythm that's keeping that core temperature from dipping while you sleep, which is when that nervous system repair takes place. So that might mean that you're eating a higher carbohydrate meal before you go to bed at night, which might be interfering with leptin production. That might mean you are spending too much time staring at a screen emitting blue light, like an ipad and you're not reaching your low body temperature because of that. Um That's another reason why I kind of like the cold thermo genesis and kind of getting the body temperature down at that point in the circadian rhythm where you start to get into your highest body temperature to kind of pre initiate that cooling phase. It's also why a temperature about 68 to 70 degrees is really, really nice to keep your bedroom at keeping your bedroom at a really high temperature, can also inhibit some of that nervous system repair as well. There's a lot of little ways that you can kind of hack the circadian rhythm
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