Coming soon
My N of 1 trial(s): Improving sleep, reducing inflammation, lowering LDL, raising HDL, and lowering triglycerides.
Kirsten my wife is an Olympic sleeper. She goes to sleep, and wakes up the next morning, often knocking out at least 5 REM cycles. If she gets anything under 8 (sometimes 9) hours of sleep…well let’s just say she’s a bit cranky. Fortunately, this does not happen very often. Her sister Joan - who has been quoted as saying “every night is a vacation,” is also a world-class sleeper. I think they have learned to keep this to themselves, as most people in our circles are on the other side of the spectrum.
I used to sleep fairly well, but often went to bed late and woke up late. Since the house often woke up early, this meant my morning sleep was highly fragmented and I was cranky pretty much every morning for the last 20 years. While I would remember a dream on occasion, this was rare.
Now I have to go to bed fairly early, otherwise my sleep opportunity window is decimated because come sunrise, I wake up and have great difficulty forcing myself to sleep - even with 4-7-8 breathing, triggering procedural memory like a routine I do often, or image/cognitive shuffling. You name it, I’ve tried it. It seems my chronotype changed from night owl, to morning lark in the last couple years. Or maybe it was because of my 2020 COVID closures regimen changes which included morning light exposure w/calisthenics (what was I thinking?) Perhaps I was always a morning lark, but never really exposed my eyes to natural sunlight first thing in the morning until fairly recently which triggers that 16-18 hour cascade of endogenous (i.e. within the body) biochemical synthesis of melatonin. Or maybe those SmileDirect Club (now bankrupt) teeth aligners I wore over the closures changed my bite just enough to disrupt my sleep. Or maybe those microplastics in all the plastic bottled water I have been drinking for years have caught up to me (now I only drink Mountain Valley in glass bottles!). Or maybe I’m just getting older. Whatever the reason, the sleep I once took for granted is now something I prioritize and work daily to optimize.
Sleep is critical. It’s a journey, not a destination. If you sleep well now, fantastic! If you don’t, I am sure you’ll try anything. Much like diets, different things work for different people. For some, nothing ever works, for others what may work now, may not work in the future. Regardless, sleep quantity and quality will likely change for everyone over their lifetime. Matt Walker had a nice discussion with Andrew Huberman you may find interesting. This was one of a 6-part series they had together on sleep. Here, Walker emphasizes that timing and regularity are those dials we can control. Sleep timing is the placement of sleep within the 24-hour day, and the regularity of sleep is the consistency of sleep timing across multiple nights. Walker speaks of QQRT (sleep Quantity, Quality, Regularity, and Timing), but the first two Q’s aren’t something we can easily control. Or can we?
What about other dials throughout our waking hours? The moment you wake up and throughout the day will have a profound impact on how you sleep that night. From the time you expose your eyes to sunlight, to the foods you eat throughout the day, to the amount you move your body, to the amount you use your brain - you have so many dials you can control to optimize your sleep.
My journey continues, but I look forward to sharing with you some things I have been doing to improve my sleep. Some I have arrived at through finally listening to my Olympic sleeping partner (i.e. go to bed earlier!), others I have used my AI background to resolve for me after capturing a slew of data from my wearables. Again, better sleep is a journey and certainly not a one size fits all. But if just one of you gets one idea that works, I have achieved my goal of this newsletter. If you have a hack that works, please share.
So much to discuss around the overarching pillar called sleep to optimize our wellness. I’m already compiling a slew of items for this upcoming newsletter. I’ll target for the end of this month to formally release it. Meanwhile, I have been compiling a list of products with links that I have been using to dial-into improved sleep. Take a look!
Stay tuned….
Steve
P.S. Many of us have been or are traveling in June, so quorums for my weekly mixes may be a bit challenging. We still have several weeks this month, but here is a placeholder with a mix from a few weeks ago. As always, our mixes are composed of a group of musicians who haven’t played together before on a tune that many (including me!) haven’t played. My version of the popular “Live from Daryl’s House.” In our case, we jump into a song when a champion vocalist suggests one, or if a guitarist simply starts strumming. Since many of us haven’t played the song before, we sometimes sample a segment of the original on Spotify to help kick-start things. The below vid is a raw capture with cycling video shots leveraging the power of OBS. Anyway, I thought this crew’s stab at the “The Letter” was pretty good and might be appropriate for a newsletter. TimD channeled Joe Cocker well and JohnM's keys were on fire! As always, I truly enjoy it when GeoffS’ Bass can make a mix. TammyU and RickL are each great lead vocalists I look forward to mixing with, but graciously sat back on this one for TimD. Not surprisingly, I had a nice amount of REM and Deep sleep that night…