The Diary of a CEOFat Loss Scientist: It’s Easy To Lose Weight, But Here’s Why You WON’T Do It! | Dr Andy Galpin
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
135 min read · 27,163 words- 0:00 – 3:58
Why do you do what you do
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Everything you see in this table has strong scientific evidence that it will help with sleep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So we're gonna dig into all of those in great detail.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So the first one is a really good one, kiwis.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Kiwis?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. So there's been good studies on them. So if you have two to three kiwis before bed, you'll see people sleeping better. Next on our list is sleep divorce. People generally don't sleep as well when you're in the same bed as others.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Next. What about this?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
This has more evidence than the rest of these things combined, and it is effective. Another one to think about is sound.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it really matters, sound, when you sleep?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, as much if not more of any other factor. There's also screen usage, light, your pillow, and wearables. But the other thing is we're spending more on sleep and sleep is getting worse. And for this last 20 years, I've been doing science, coaching, and education that enhances human performance, and I've been fortunate to work with the world's most elite athletes, entrepreneurs, leaders, and even 50% of athletes have a clinical sleep disorder. It gets worse. Seventy to 80% of people who have clinical sleep apnea will go undiagnosed. And for women, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 to 95%, and it is deleterious to your health because it's highly associated with long-term death risk, cognitive function, mood regulation, performance, recovery, metabolic health, and it happens for a bunch of different reasons. And we can go through them, but we look at the eight billion person population. We need more people to pay attention to their health, and so I just wanna get the best possible out of people. So this could be energy, it could be metabolic, it could be cognitive function, could be muscle growth or fat loss. And so I wanna give every person listening to this the opportunity to reach their goals and dreams.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'd love to go through all of those. And you have a 54321 method. What is that?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. It's just a little thing I came up with that says, "All right, can we help people with fat loss?" So the first thing to think about is...
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button, if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of a CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [upbeat music] Dr Andy Galpin. Before we started recording, you said you wanna do scientific research, coaching for your clients, and you said education. You also kind of alluded to the fact that you were less interested in money and these kinds of things. So the question is, why, why do you do what you do, and what is it you're doing and, and who are you doing it for?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The most concise way I can say it is I wanna give every person listening to this the opportunity to reach their goals and dreams. You wanna look this way or not look this way, and you wanna perform this way. How can we get you there? I wanna remove those barriers, and if you get there or don't get there, it was because of you. It was not because something was holding you back that was in your way.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And so that's why I get equally excited to work with the best linebacker in the NFL and some person who just wants to wake up and not be in back pain tomorrow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So tell me who you've worked with then, who ha- has been a client of yours.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, I've been fortunate to work with the world's most elite athletes for 20 years at this point. So this is your number one draft picks in every major sport, Hall of Famers, Cy Young winners, MVPs, Olympic gold medallists in many sports, world champion fighters. We've worked with hemiplegics and paraplegics individuals. We've worked with, you know, the cliché executives, the mom and pops, the person dealing and struggling with perimenopause. Like, we've really s- done most
- 3:58 – 7:50
What goals bring people to you?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
of it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what kinds of symptoms or goals do they come to you with?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So I'll give you broad categories and then specifics below that. Broad categories, we tend to say it's either rebuild or upgrade.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Rebuild is there's something wrong, hurt, broken, damaged. I'm overweight, I can't fix it. I'm dying from sleep restriction. I have a clinical sleep disorder. I have some injury. I have some huge clear limitation that needs to be resolved. The second half is what we call upgrade. I don't have any of that. I feel pretty good, feel okay. Now I just wanna get the best possible out of my life. So this could be energy, it could be metabolic, it could be cognitive function. Why I can accomplish that, and our, our folks I work with can, is because I'm after the physiology.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's, what do you mean by that, physiology?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's your biomolecular signature. Do you have a muscle imbalance that's creating neck pain, that's making it hard to sleep, and that's giving you a hard time re-regulating your emotions? It could be classic things like inflammation, everything that is inside of your body in both the way that it is running and expressing itself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what are your credentials?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
My, so my PhD is in what's called human bioenergetics. I started my lab in 2011.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Your lab?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm-hmm. So I'm an active scientist. I'm a professor. That's my real job for the most part. Uh, so we conduct and disseminate research there that enhances human performance. And then I've started a number of companies and privately coach people. Uh, that's what I've been doing for over 20 years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We talked about the different personas and the types of problems they come to you with. If you had to, and this might be quite difficult, order them in terms of the frequency in which people come to you with these issues, what would that sort of top five be?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I'll break them from our professional athletes, and I'll probably spend more time on non-professional athletes, assuming, uh, most of your audience is probably not a professional athlete.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I wouldn't take that.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Eh, pretty close.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I wouldn't take that, guys. [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Fifty-fifty?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
We'll also say, we'll assume fifty-fifty.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Fifty-fifty. [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, yeah. Right. The athletes typically come to us under two circ- circumstances, um, frequent injuries I'm getting or tanked energy, bad sleep. They, they deal with the same human problems we deal with, right? The other one is what we'll just say is the upgrade, the optimizer. Feel great, feel young. I just want to get ahead of things and I want to catch things before they start. The general public is a similar breakdown because we have a lot of people who are like, I do feel pretty good. I'm great, but I don't want to play the game backwards. I don't want problems to come up and then I got to go scrambling and figure it out. So let's collect baseline data now. Let's get ahead of things. Let's predict problems before they arise. But I've only got a few minutes a day, right? I'm not trying to like take over my whole life with all this stuff. Like probably the most common ones are things like sleep and energy. Performance goals can't seem to get stronger. Can't seem to lose that little bit of weight. Maybe a touch of brain fog. I don't feel as sharp.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, I'd love to go through all of those sleep, energy, performance, strength, struggles, weight, but also I've got my blood test results here, which, um, Andy has taken a look at for me. It's not all good, okay? So that's a pre-warning. It's not all good, but he's going to run me through my blood test results in this episode, tell me how I improve things. And there was a couple of deficiencies that I had that I had no idea that I had because I thought I was doing everything right, which have completely changed my supplement, um, but also my behavior generally. Uh, and also you've got this here, which is a, a gentleman, I believe, whose blood test results you did, similar age to me, and you took him from not so good to great. And we'll talk about that as well. So hold on for a second while we, we touch first on the subject of, um, sleep and energy, which is one of the first thing you talked about. A lot of people listening struggle with sleep and they also in their waking life feel variances in their energy. Um, if we start then with sleep, what are the like most people problems of sleep?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
This is a great
- 7:50 – 8:53
Health anxiety and over-optimising
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
question. We'll start off, and in fact, I think this is a nice framing of everything we're going to talk about. We want to be weary of what we call health anxiety.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
This is over-fixation, over-concern, worrying too much about little things with your blood work, with your sleep, everything. You're in a really great spot. So we can look for some upgrade, but we want to be careful of pushing that line. Why that also matters is if we look at the eight billion or so person population, we probably need more people to pay attention to their health than to not pay attention to their health, right? We're not in an abundance of people caring too much. But if you're listening to this show, you are probably not representative of the general population. And so I want to be really careful of everything I'm about to say for the next couple of hours. I don't want to create health anxiety. I don't want you to be so terrified to touch a receipt that it sends you into a three-day tailspin.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Anytime we're talking about a health or performance, we want to run the spectrum of disease to optimization. We should not be playing around with optimization and performance if we're in the presence of a medical disease. And why I say
- 8:53 – 10:49
Sleep disorders are a health crisis
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
that is sleep is probably the biggest place of clinical disease that exists that no one knows about. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% to 80% of people who have clinical sleep apnea will go undiagnosed.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If that existed for a broken bone-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... right? If that existed for diabetes, you'd be like insane. It gets worse. 50%, depending on which study you look at, of athletes have a clinical sleep disorder. For women, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% to 95% of women that have clinical sleep apnea will go undiagnosed.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If you were to look at me and you would say, if I said, "Steven, you think I have apnea?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
No.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You'd say no, right? If I were to bring in a whole table of 10 people and I said, "Pick the person in here least likely to have sleep apnea," you'd find the smallest girl.
- SBSteven Bartlett
True.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You don't think about apnea as something that can happen unless you're big and fat. Women also are less likely than men to complain. They're less likely to think about it as an anatomical issue. They're going to charge it to hormones, to their menstrual cycle, to their cognitive load, to what it's, the demands that it is to be mom. All these are true, by the way. It is also in the same point true, you could have apnea that has nothing to do with body composition.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And let's define apnea for a second.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You stop breathing at night.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that wakes you up?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Sometimes it doesn't.
- SBSteven Bartlett
No.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's the, that's the problem, is it won't necessarily wake you up, but it is deleterious to your health. It's highly associated with consequences from long-term death risk to short-term cognitive function, emotion, mood regulation, performance, recovery, metabolic health. It's really, really nasty. It's in fact one of the larger things, uh, that can go wrong in your health is, is not breathing
- 10:49 – 14:40
Does sleep apnea disrupt sleep?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
at night.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This might be a silly question, but does sleep apnea disrupt your sleep?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It, it can.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So it doesn't always?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Doesn't always.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And this is why do you think it's so poorly diagnosed. So the classic giveaways, if you were that person who wakes up four counties because you snore so loud, snoring doesn't necessarily mean you have sleep apnea, but it's a really strong indicator. That's one form of it. So apnea happens for a bunch of different reasons. Uh, more evidence recently has suggested like neck size was this kind of original thing that we say like a big neck is just a problem. Doesn't look like that's as true, but certainly it is true as you increase obesity rates, you'll see an increase in apnea as well. So what's happening here is now you're talking about, I'll call it anatomical or physical, like something physically is landing on your neck and your tongue and your throat, your larynx and esophagus, and that's stopping your breathing. And why this matters is when you're standing here or sitting here in this chair, you're in this vertical position, and as you go and lay down, anatomy shifts. You also have a lot of research showing that the larger the human being, the more fluid they have, which is pretty normal, right? So a person who's twice your size will have twice the amount of water in their body as you do. Imagine if you had, uh, I mean, we'll take this beverage right here. Why do you have red wine? Well, anyways, we'll come back.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
In case you get thirsty.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So you see the water is sitting vertically, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If I were to shift this cup horizontally, the water would shift, and it would, it would balance horizontally to where the gap in the air would be on the top, right? That happens in your body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So imagine this top piece starting up here, that's your neck. Now, when you lay down, your neck is over here, and I would tip this over, but it would spill everywhere. That fluid then shifts up into your neck. So it's not even necessarily a physical size thing, but it's the fluid associated with being a larger human being that the fluid shift can happen.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
What we're now finding is a whole series of other types of apnea. Now, there are neural causes to it, there are environmental causes, um, there are positional causes, and so as a classic example to round the story out, traditionally, if you're told you have apnea, you're gonna be given one of about three choices: medication, what's called a CPAP device.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Right? So that's the big, like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Darth Vader
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... Darth Vader breathing machine. Or potentially what's called an oral appliance. It's a mouthpiece that kind of repositions your jaw and neck. I'm for all of those treatments. Why they all have such low success rates is because they're given out generically. You come in, you have apnea, you get the same stuff. Now, what the field is moving towards is precision and saying, "You have this specific type of apnea. An oral appliance won't help here. You actually need this surgical intervention."
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was looking at some of the data here, and it says that sleep apnea is very common globally, much more common than I expected. It says men who are middle-aged have a 24 to 34% prevalence of apnea. Women, 9 to 17%. Uh, seniors-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep
- SBSteven Bartlett
... 30 to 60%.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Post-menopausal women, 25%. So yeah, rough numbers. That means that listening now, if you're a, a middle-aged man listening, if there's three of you listening right now, one of you statistically might have apnea.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Now, that's clinical sleep apnea. That doesn't even count subclinical.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And if you're a senior listening now, which is 65 years older, there's a 30 to 60% chance. Wow.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Depending on some numbers you see, Steven, you'll see a billion people across the globe.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, that's what it says. It says a billion-
- 14:40 – 15:37
Why is sleep apnea so common?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
of it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why is this happening? Because, again, from an evolutionary perspective, sleep apnea couldn't have been great for survival.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Three primary reasons why this is happening. The first is the fact that our, our environment is physically changing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Our ancestors never had to deal with this. Two, our current solutions for testing are either insanely outdated or incredibly difficult to get to. The third major one is our solutions that we provide people in public communication are wildly generic, thus not helpful. In fact, if you were to poll everyone listening right now, sleep comes up, and you go, "Oh, great. They're gonna tell me to sleep in a quiet room that's cold and dark," and they're like, "I've heard it all." And you have. Where we need to get to next is how do we help people find these precision solutions based on their type of sleep issues? But that's, that's the three-part reason, uh, why this stuff is happening.
- 15:37 – 18:47
Do I have a sleep issue?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, I'd like to go into all three of them. I also would like to just pause on the diagnosis part because there'll, there'll be people listening here that might have a suspicion that they need help. But again, they're going off their feelings.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How can they know for sure what help they need and what their problem is?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. I always start with subjective. How do you feel? If you feel good, let's now, like, immediately take a breath.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You have good energy. You wake up, you feel good. Like, everyone's gonna be a little bit tired. We also don't w- we've actually had a-- I've been working with for several years, a, a very close friend of you and I. We constantly have to battle 'cause he'll just get, like, really honestly terrified 'cause he gets sleepy at the end of the day, and I'm like, "Bro, [laughs] that's the point." [laughs] People that are hard chargers, high performers, are actually afraid of being tired. We have to recognize and realize that is natural and needed. You need to feel a little bit sleepy in the early afternoon, and you should feel tired, unmotivated, lack of focus at the end of the day.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What if I didn't used to? 'Cause that's what people will-- They, they compare it to an o- old version of themselves.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Sure. Again, we can say natural. When you are sub-25, like, you're, you're just a powerhouse, right? When you're past 25, we shouldn't just accept frailty. We shouldn't accept a permanent decline. But we do have to start to realize we're not going to have the energy of a 20-year-old. Like it's just, this is not typically super realistic, and if you do, you're probably getting there exogenously, right? Stimulants and other things, which have a place, but we just want to be a little bit careful of those things.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We'll talk about stimulants, melatonin-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and all these things. But going back to this point of diagnosis.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So Jenny, who doesn't have much money-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep
- SBSteven Bartlett
... how does she get-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Okay, great. So one thing we can do, and we can put these in your show notes for you for free, there are a ton of completely free short questionnaires that are scientifically validated.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You can do these for RLS. You can do them for insomnia. You can do them for apnea. You can do them for circadian disruptions and disorders. You can do them for chronotype. Are you a, a morning person or tons? And I'll put as many of these for free, so my answer there would be start with one of those.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If you flag that, and you want to move up to the next step, then you kind of have a couple of different ways, and your two options are what we'll call wearables, at-home tech. These are typically, we'll call them 100 to $600 range.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Then past that, you have a true medical option, which is a, a sleep hospital. This is when you would go into, you know, the hospital. You go into that weird room, and you sit there. You get all the wires. Someone looks at you through a window, and you sleep in for one night. You can see from the look on your face already, you're just like, "All right, who wants to do that?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If you have a true disease At this point, for the most part, the sleep hospital, depending on the disease, it is where you need to get to. Now, what our group is working on and others is, can we bring the sleep hospital into the home? It's not super affordable at this point. We're, we're gonna get it there, but that is the clear future. If you have insurance, take that validated questionnaire I just said, go to your doctor and say, "Here's what I scored on this thing. Will you order me that sleep study?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It is a giant pain, I know it, but it is, it is probably
- 18:47 – 21:40
Pros and cons of wearables
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
worth it. If you wanna use the wearable, you can do that. The problem with the wearables is numerous. They are awesome at things like awareness, at accountability, right? They're pretty good for things like total sleep time. They're really, really bad, and a major pitfall for wearables is predicting things like deep sleep and REM sleep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you know what I, do you know what I was, I was thinking about? I was thinking about certain times where, um, I've done certain things behaviorally, and then I got in bed, woke up feeling terrible, and my wearable said to me-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... you had a bad, really bad night's sleep. And I could kind of put two and two together and kind of establish cause and effect, and I could almost, I guess, test that then going forward and say, "Okay, don't do that," or maybe get in bed earlier, or the heat was, was way too high, whatever it might be, and I could sort of A/B test my way to a better outcome.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. So they can give you things like total sleep time, as I said. What you wanna be careful of are the aggregate sleep effectiveness score, sleep quality score. That's the stuff that directionally won't be there. But you actually said something interesting a second ago, which is you felt worse.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's the only directional thing we need to have to pay attention to. If you go, "Wow, I feel worse today."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And then you can go backwards and go, "Yeah, that's because I did A, B, and C yesterday," or, "I felt better today," that's not the only metric. And to be really clear, I'm not advocating to ditch all the wearables. We use them extensively. It's just really being careful about what data from those we pay attention to-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... and what we don't. So stuff that we do now is find big themes that they're oftentimes missing. Here's a good example. We had 1,200 days of data from, I think it was an Oura Ring, and we were actually able to find that in, in one of our clients, for every one drop in resting heart rate, so his resting heart rate, say, went from 65 beats per minute to 64, he got six more minutes of sleep. And so we were like, "Okay, great. You wanna add an hour to your sleep, let's continue to work on your cardiovascular fitness." Every time he got more fit, his resting heart rate dropped, he slept more. Additionally, every time you put and you invest in downregulation, you'll lower your resting heart rate going into bed, you will sleep longer. So he was a classic case of like, I try to go to bed, I do all the things, but I just can't stay in bed. So the key there to get him the more sleep is to put his physiology in a position that would allow him to have more sleep. And for him, like, that was the canary in the coal mine. So that's the type of stuff where wearables can be-- Like, you can't replace that, not only from a data, but from a coaching perspective. It was so easy for me to communicate to him, "Here's your data. This is our target." And he's an extraordinarily busine- busy person, and he's like, "Great, I got one thing to pay attention to. Do whatever it takes to keep that heart rate low going into bed. Copy that."
- 21:40 – 22:08
What causes a high resting heart rate?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What in his case was making his heart rate high?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
When it comes to something like sleep, anything that is in your physical environment, that's in your lifestyle, that's in your physiology, can impact it. I mentioned earlier one of the reasons why sleep is getting worse is because these physical changes in our environment. Annual spend on sleep is like 600 billion right now, but yet we have seen a 60-minute drop in total sleep time over the last 60 years. So you're seeing an inverse. We're spending more on sleep, and sleep
- 22:08 – 23:18
Why is sleep getting worse?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
is getting worse. I think your team printed out some cards here, and, and we can go through them. The first one is a really good one. The world is physically brighter. In fact, there's data from NASA, satellite data, that can look and say the world is physically brighter now. You're expected to be communicating with Singapore and Australia and the US, which means you're gonna be up later. Your business is going to be on. Your lights are going to be on. There's also a phenomenon called sky glow, where the light from Earth is going up, hitting the clouds, and being shot back down. And so it's keeping our world brighter. So when you hear people talk about things like you gotta have these blackout curtains and masks, and you're thinking like, "I never did that when I was a kid. Like, what's the big deal?" It's because of this.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, there's some graphs that I found here-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which kind of demonstrate this, which I'll put up on the screen.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. More people are moving into urban environments. And if you look at some of the studies, not to be dramatic, but some of the studies have found things as high as, like, anxiety and depression are up 20-plus percent when you move into the city. And that's largely attributed to things like light and sound. It's extremely bright and extremely loud in cities. It doesn't mean they're bad or you can't live in them. It just simply means that's why you have to take extra steps.
- 23:18 – 25:36
Morning light and light pollution
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think a lot of people listening to this will think, "Well, Andy, my, my bedroom's very dark."
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Great.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But that's actually not what you're saying, is it? 'Cause, uh, w- the way I was thinking about it is we are here in New York City now, and if I walked to the shop last night at 10:00 PM-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and walked back, I was exposed to so, so much light outside at a critical time when my body should be not exposed to light, so that it's gonna impact me even when I get into that dark room.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It goes even better than that. There's evidence now that the light exposure you have both in the morning and throughout the day dramatically counteracts what you just mentioned. So yes, you went for that walk, you went for that thing when light was still out, and you had a brighter light exposure in, we'll just call it the three or four hours before bed than you would have had ever in the past.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
But you can mitigate that damage by seeing light appropriately during the day and in the morning.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And th- and this is actually something my friend Andrew Huberman has talked about for years now, and I'm like, I've always joked and laughed at him, but then I'm like, damn, he nailed this. Like, he was way ahead in this one. Light exposure in the morning Will impact your sleep at night the next day. He always explains it as circ- setting your circadian rhythm, but it's more than that actually. It's f- like that's the part where I was like, "Yeah, whatever." Like, I'm in the same time zone. What do I care? But now I'm like, "Oh," because then if you were exposed to high amounts of light later in the day, that exposure to light earlier will help reduce that damage.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
There's this whole cascade of things that influence when it is time to be awake and when it is time to go to sleep, and this is both hormonal based as well as neurally based. So your brain will shut down or activate in response to light, in response to exercise, in response to arousal, in response to food, in response to stimulants, and a whole host of other things. That light earlier in the day sets that rhythm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, so it's like starting the-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It starts the clock.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It starts the sleep pressure. This is, uh... Oh, this is the graph of rural versus urban plot. And so yeah, I mean, you can see that pretty clearly. The red line here is the noise in, in a rural environment, and this is the noise here. The typical number you wanna see, um, for sound at night is like 35 decibels. Right? So if you see the rural environment, you're cruising at about that, and you see the urban environment, you're looking in the 60 to 7 as a baseline.
- 25:36 – 27:11
How much does sound matter?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it really matters, sound, when you sleep?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Tons.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, as much if not more of any other factor. The, the big thing with sound is inconsistency. A lot of people will do things like, uh, put a sound machine in the room.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Most people put them too loud because of that thing. So you put 'em, well, pretty common default is like 40 to 50 decibels for a sound machine. More of the data suggests sub-40, especially for kids. If you're using a sound machine for your children, most people put them too close and too loud.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's a sound machine?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Uh, just a little device that makes a white noise, and what that does is it cancels out a bunch of low-level inconsistent sounds.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So the dog getting up, the window creaking, the, you know, s- car driving by, and so it can kinda cancel that noise level out.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How come I can have like a great night's sleep listening to a podcast falling asleep, whereas my partner can't? She needs silence, and I, I, I almost feel like I need to listen to something to fall asleep.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Most likely you would do better if you didn't do that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You turn 'em off before you go to sleep, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
No.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[chuckles]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That will never lead to your best sleep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
What happens is you get to bed, and something is happening cognitively.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And you're like, "I need something to switch me off."
- SBSteven Bartlett
To distract me. [chuckles] Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Great. If we took that away from you, you might sleep worse because you're gonna sit there and struggle through that moment.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If you wanted to go from upgrade, we would say, "Okay, let's figure out what is actually a way for you to down-regulate cognitively, give you that same thing that won't then disrupt your sleep throughout the night."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Have you dealt with people in that situation before?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Super common. Podcasts are an incredibly common one with that. Uh, TV,
- 27:11 – 29:44
Best evidence-based sleep supplements
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
books. My philosophy is let's step back and solve causes. Let's solve constraints rather than mask them. Uh, you've got a host of different supplements over here. Everything you see on this table has moderate to strong scientific evidence that it will help with sleep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are those things?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So lovely, delicious looking tart cherry juice, and I'll go through why that is there. You've got some chamomile tea. You would see this in the supplement form of apigenin. It's a really common way of that as kinda like distilled chamomile. Um, look at these lovely kiwis.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[chuckles]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
What's funny here is this is actually what happens in, in research. They will give people two to three kiwis. They will eat them right before bed, and you will very routinely see people sleeping better after ingestion of kiwis. Um, other things that are high on the evidence-based list are, of course, magnesium in various forms. M- more of the research now on magnesium for sleep is turning to a particular form called magnesium bisglycinate, um, rather than threonate. That's up there as well. Uh, you will also see things like omega-3. This is your common fish oil. Ooh, this is actually interesting because this popped up on your labs as something we have to work on.
- SBSteven Bartlett
On my test?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. We'll come back to that in a second.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And then, of course, you've got melatonin, right? The, the issue with all these is the same that you have with your podcast. These are doing the exact same thing. So one thing we could do is say ditch the podcast, and let's go with one or multiple of these options because they're doing the same thing. They're a cognitive turnoff. Apigenin or chamomile specifically will play that role. It is a reasonable switch that says, "Frontal cortex, turn off." And so you're getting there through the podcast, where you could get there, there's, through food or supplements if you'd like as well.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Kiwis.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Kiwis have scientific evidence-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that they improve sleep for some people.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's really common. You, there, there's like levels to this. You'd probably like level one, two, and three, level one being things like, actually surprising enough, uh, magnesium, chamomile, melatonin of course, lots of randomized control trials.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Level one being the-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Best
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the best of the best.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The best, highest quality.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you'd say what? Magnesium, kiwis?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Kiwis would probably be like a level two or level three.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So there've been good studies on them, enough to put them on this table, enough to say there's data there. So you're getting some product below it, in this case apigenin, in this case other phytochemicals that either reduce a little bit of cognitive function. They reduce arousal. They put you in some sort of
- 29:44 – 34:58
Do you recommend melatonin?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
checkout state.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then there's this one over here, melatonin-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that a lot of people are aware of.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Strong? What level is melatonin?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So melatonin probably has more evidence than the rest of these things combined because it's a medicine. It's a drug. There's a ton of research on it from children to aging to bone health and tons of other stuff, right? It's a hormone. You're gonna be able to, to move some units with this one. Um, nobody is gonna be super concerned about risk factor profiles with eating two kiwis.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
But you start getting to the level of something like a melatonin, and now you have to have real conversations about risk versus benefits. We typically don't use melatonin at the dosage that's normal. So a common dosage for melatonin is like five milligrams, sometimes even up to 10.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
We will typically use like .3 Maybe 0.5, so about a 10th that dose. A lot of times we're trying to find like one milligrams, cut them in half, kind of things like that. The only real reason we use melatonin, outside of some fringe cases, is when we actually legitimately need to reset circadian rhythm. Travel, jet lag, uh, s- things like that. Uh, and it, it is effective and it is useful there. It is safe in small doses. Where people mistake melatonin is, "I use it every night to go to sleep," and/or, "I wake up in the middle of the night, can't go back to sleep, I go grab a melatonin."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why is that bad?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It, it doesn't work.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It doesn't work?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No, because the thing that melatonin is supposed to do is realign circadian rhythm. If you're in the middle of the night, you're already in that rhythm. It's not going to do anything. You would, in fact, not to... I don't want people to do this, but you would actually be better reaching for something like a chamomile perhaps, because if you're having a hard time getting back to sleep cognitively, this is not gonna do it. The other issue is we've done a lot of morning urine testing. There's enough studies that look at the dosage that's actually in the pill versus on the label, and they can be up to 100 X higher.
- SBSteven Bartlett
100 X?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And we see this in morning urine. We have seen people who are consistently tired. Their sleep doesn't look horrible. They're doing all the right things. It's cold, it's dark, they're meditating, they're doing all this stuff. They're popping in even a moderate dosage of melatonin, and the amount of melatonin the next day in their urine is 100 X the upper end of the reference range. Which means they're spending the rest of their next day in a hyper-dosed melatonin state. So they have to live then on stimulants to get back to normal.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How would they feel? In a-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Horrible.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They would feel sluggish and-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You wake up the next day and you're like, "Man," it's what we call sleep inertia.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You're wildly groggy, you can't get out of bed, or you're just getting throughout the day, this is a, like, "Don't talk to me until I've had my coffee" kind of response, right? This is not a normal waking physiology that you should be going through.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Presumably, that's just melatonin from sort of cheap sources that haven't been tested.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's gonna knock off a huge part of your problem, right? Only, this is why we'll always say, you don't, no one needs supplements. Like, n- no essential person needs to have any supplement to live a great, happy, healthy life. If you choose to use supplements, though, just buy them from third-party tested, transparent companies that place their testing on their websites that give you open access to it for, for these exact reasons. Vitamin Ds has a similar profile of inaccuracy. The other issue with that then, simply, let's say you're buying it from a high quality source. You're dosing it too much and you're taking it too late. So take it earlier than you think before bed so that your body has a chance to break it down before the next morning.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What kind of time, and how quickly acting is it?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's person to person dependent, but l- a lot of times you'll see things like an hour before. Uh, some people will feel a response in 10 to 15 minutes. Some people will feel it closer to an hour, but that's a pretty good window.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hang on, if it's 2:00 AM in the morning and you're, and you're getting in bed, don't take it.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Don't take it at all.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- 34:58 – 37:06
Is there a downside to coffee?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. 'Cause I, one of the things you learn from doing a podcast like this is you just learn that everything has a trade-off.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Always.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I, and a- again, this might not be logically sound, but I assume that the bigger the upside, the bigger the tr- like the trade I'm making on the other side as a general rule. So do you know the only thing that I've still not been able to, I guess, understand the full trade-off of is coffee?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because the upside is so significant. No one can articulate to me the downside other than they say if you have it after midday, it's gonna-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... impact your sleep. But I'm like, "Come on, there's gotta be..." [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The phrase that I'll say in my class all the time is there's no free passes in physiology.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
With coffee specifically, that actually, we have a meta-analysis led by my colleague, Dr. Ben House, puts this together. But if you look at the research on caffeine and sleep, it's very interesting because if you go through sleep deprivation, your physical and cognitive performance goes down. No surprise there. Coffee can offset that. Caffeine specifically is, is the thing. But what it doesn't do, at least the data and the meta-analysis suggests, is it doesn't actually put you back into the augmented spot. Meaning if you... Did you sleep l- great last night?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think so, yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Full night of... Okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Let's just say you're there. Uh, if we took you out and we had you throw that medicine ball and we did a grip strength tester and we did, whatever, some sprints up and down or whatever you wanna do, you would perform well. And then if we gave you caffeine, you'd perform better. It's why we call it ergogenic aid. It's a performance enhancer. Caffeine is really effective primarily at endurance based events, but it is a stimulatory thing that people will use. So let's just say you have normal baseline performance, then caffeine augments that performance. If you go into sleep debt, the sleep itself will reduce your performance. And the coffee can bring you back to normal, but it won't bring you back to that augmented state that you had when you were rested and caffeinated. This is important because a lot of people will be like, "Ah, I'll throw away the sleep, or I won't worry about it as much 'cause I'll just take more stimulants tomorrow, and I feel great." You will feel as good, but you will not perform as well. So what you need to perform at your best, if you're a caffeine user, is to be both well-rested
- 37:06 – 38:09
What mattress should I sleep on?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
and then caffeinated. Another thing you wanna pay attention to in your sleep environment, um, labeled er- ergonomics here is your pillow, your bed, your mattress. This is mostly based on feel.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there any no-gos in this regard?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Not really.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Not really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No. Unless, let's say you have a sleeping partner and you're sleeping in a bed that is too small, and that results in you hitting each other or touching each other-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... at times when you don't like that. So other than those, uh, the framework themselves, there's, there's really no- nothing to be concerned with.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about these, like, Eight Sleep beds?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Eight Sleep is fantastic. So Eight Sleep is not a bed, it's a cover-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... which regulates temperature. If you are in a bedding situation where you're getting hot, then that's a problem. So if then an Eight Sleep will help you regulate that temperature, it's a great solution. If you're not in that situation, then you're gonna be just fine. So temperature regulation is a really big deal.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And, and you'll quite often see people that do that, whether that's getting a product like that, or it's getting a sheet that's cooler or a mattress that is better with ventilation, then you'll oftentimes see them sleep a little bit better.
- 38:09 – 47:28
The real issue with screen time
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Next on our list is screen usage. Everyone has been told, and you know perhaps nothing's more destructive to your sleep than your screen. What's more interesting here is the stuff that people generally don't talk about. It's not the fact that necessarily screen usage is shooting your face with a bunch of blue light. What's more dangerous about your screen is the arousal associated with the search for novelty.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The search for novelty. What does that mean?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You're engaging in a podcast, social media, a game. It is puzzle driven. It is solution. It is interest. It is engagement. It is search for the next. That's the stuff that more likely than not cause sleep disrubance- disturbances. In the studies that have looked at things like TV time versus tablet versus phone versus reading, those all can be equally dangerous to sleep. Here is the example. I am a TV before bed guy, a giant TV with a blast of blue light. I sleep great with that. My wife is-- really struggles with light before bed. She will read, and yet she chooses to read things that I don't think she should be reading before night, and then she'll wake up because of the topics that she's reading. Where I'm watching things on TV that are, you know, documentaries on Ulysses Grant or something, and you're just like, "That is the least engaging thing ever." So it's not the fact that the light is there. Um, I use that stuff much like you use your podcast, which is my entire day is so driven by somebody wanting my attention and time, I have to have something that gives me a cognitive switch that says, "You get to turn off."
- SBSteven Bartlett
I wanted to add something to this, which I've been thinking about this week. So in Meta, Meta own Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp, et cetera. In Meta's earnings call this week, Mark Zuckerberg talked about how they'd changed the recommendation algorithm on social media apps using AI. And this was something that we've always forecasted would happen-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and we've been thinking about the creator economy and how it impacted. But specifically for people listening, what essentially he said is every time you post something on Instagram, whether it's a reel or f- or a normal post, they now feed it to a large language model, an AI, and the AI effectively, and again, I'm summarizing here, watches it, and it can now understand the full context of what it's watching. So if it's watching a clip of you and me right now, it'll understand that that is Andy Galpin. He is holding a card. He's wearing a black T-shirt. He's-- It'll look at the transcript. It'll know what you said. And this is all pertinent because it then can, without in the past needing to look at the caption and the hashtags, it can then decide with way more context than ever before who exactly would want to see that. And the net impact of that for, for the user of Instagram or these other social media apps or TikTok, whatever it is, is you're gonna be more retained now than ever before. And as you were talking about that, I thought, "Oh, I wonder if they think about timing of day." Like, I wonder if they think at 11:00 PM there's a certain thing that's gonna keep Andy scrolling versus something at 9:00 AM when you're off to work. And of course they do, because the-- And you know, they were talking about on the earnings call, Mark was saying how it's in- increased retention by, I think, 15 basis points. And there's this quote where he said th- there are already two large sets of content to draw from. First, from your friends and people you follow, and second from creators that you don't follow. But now there's going to be a whole new and nearly infinite universe of personalized content, which from the eye and feel what they're saying is, uh, with their new, uh, large language model called Muse, is we're actually gonna make new content-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... to show Andy Galpin-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that no one made, no humans made. We're gonna make stuff that we know Andy will like. And so I say all this to say that in this sleep conversation, we've, we've been talking about it as creators. We've been saying basically it's gonna get really difficult-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... if you're a creator because now if you have a million followers, it doesn't matter.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If Jenny has zero followers, but she makes something that is contextually more interesting than the million follower guy, Jenny's thing's gonna seen-- be seen to every woman. But actually now you're gonna be competing with an AI-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that's gonna be churning out p- super personalized Andy Galpin content. Like, that just Andy would just love at 11:00 PM.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I said to my team this week, I was like, "Just take care of yourself." [chuckles] Do you know what I mean? Like, just be aware, you know, when you open your phone that the AI is doing everything it can to retain you.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. I mean, just don't be on your phone. We've been making this argument for years, but jeez, um, you got every disadvantage possible coming in your way. And, and look, we're all human. Uh, I, I think I remember Last time I was here, you were talking about how, like, you wake up and your phone's right there, but your, your fiancée, like, doesn't touch her phone for the first hour of the day or something. It's just, like, on the charger until noon or something. You're just like, "What?" I'm more like you, right? Where I'm like, my phone is in my room. It's not three rooms-- Like, I'm just not doing a desktop, right? And we started this entire piece by saying the environment you're in is just different than it's ever been before, and it's not getting any better. And at some point, you have to make that decision of do you care about your own health? Do you care about the thing the next day that you didn't do well? And do you care more about that than you cared about that next reel?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is it that's causing us to understand everything you just said, but to ignore it and to pick up our phone anyway?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You are hard driven through the entire biology of our species to search for novelty. In fact, I, I look at this from the lens of sports. Why do you care about high achievement? Why do I care about performance? There has direct translation. When someone breaks a barrier, we all benefit from that, and I could give you direct examples of this. But we have every story-- You wanna go to Joseph Campbell Hero's journey, right? You wanna go back to Hercules, the story of the marathon. Like, you pull any story from history out, and what are you actually looking at? You're looking at somebody did something that no one has ever done before. You care more about records than you do regular wins and losses. Why? Because they're novel. Why are you more interested in watching Messi break that record than you are the other team winning in the exact same shot? It's because you saw something. You got to be there when someone did something for the first time in human history.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I get more of a dopamine hit from the novelty, from the new thing.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's more than the dopamine hit, though. It's a sense of purpose. Your life mattered because you got to be involved in something no one else has ever seen. And even as that bystander on TV 30,000 kilometers away, you got to be a part of that. And that all comes down to we are so wired to reward novelty. So then now that comes back to your life, and you have to be thinking, how do you walk away from that core drive?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking about a study I read about in psychology class in school with pigeons getting variable rewards.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm gonna butcher this, but bear with me. They took a pigeon, and they got a little lever for it to press, and every time it would press the lever, and sometimes it would get a reward. And they found from the study that if they made the rewards variable, i.e., it couldn't predict when it was coming, the pigeon was more likely to keep pressing the lever, i.e., it was more addicted to the behavior if it didn't know when the dopamine hit was coming or the, the treat in that case. Scrolling on social media is kinda like the slot machine of variable rewards. I just don't know what I'm gonna get. But every fourth, you know, scroll, I get something that-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Or every fortieth.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, or fortieth. Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's even better, right? Because the more unpredictable it is, the more likely you are to be like, "One more, one more, one more, one more," right? Like, if it actually comes too quickly, you care less.
- 47:28 – 49:08
Sleeping when you share a bed
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
anymore."
- SBSteven Bartlett
So that's screens.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's screens, my friend. Another one to think about, which we've sort of touched on, is called the presence of other beings. This is our classic sleep divorce. I assume you, uh, as I do, share your sleeping environment with your partner.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Tough to make the argument of, like, get a sleep divorce, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, I'm not telling her.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
You can tell her. [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's funny. If it was up to my wife, we would have a sleep divorce.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You're joking?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
She's like, "Get away from me. Don't touch me." She wants to... Like, if we could have separate beds in separate rooms, she'd-- I don't snore or anything, but she just like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
My fiancée is the opposite.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's not super realistic, but it is true. There are data behind it. People generally don't sleep as well when you're in the same bed as others. The realistic solution, try to get sheets or a sleeping situation in which when one partner moves, it doesn't roll the other person.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, like separate sheets. Ah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Separate sheets or simply the type of sheets. Um, my wife loves to be really constricted, so she likes the sheets tucked in tight. She likes the bed. And I hate it. Like, I feel like I'm in Shawshank. I'm like, "Break me out," like, rip it all out of there. So there's little things like that that don't require you to buy anything, where you can just change kind of the, the setup and the scenario to where their movement doesn't impact you as much. Um, noise would be the same one. If, if you are sleeping with somebody who makes a lot of noise, tosses and turns a bunch Um, you could put a pillow in between so when they roll over and move, they don't hit you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Earplugs, things like that. So that one's a pretty straightforward one. But that said, it's pretty impactful. It, it can really make a big difference. And if you're really struggling, maybe do a partial sleep divorce.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- 49:08 – 49:54
Sleeping in new environments
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Next, sleeping in new environment. Uh, this would oftentimes be called first night effect. So your first night, whether it's back home, whether it's in a hotel or somewhere else, you don't feel as comfortable and as safe, and your circadian rhythms, the things that set your timing, aren't there. This is sound, this is light, this is feel, this is temperature, this is smell. What you can do, if you travel a lot, our athletes travel every three to five days, right? This is what they do. You can try to mimic your sleep environment at home on the road. Some people will take their pillows.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Other things that are on this similar list are smells like lavender. Lavender is moderately associated with helping people fall asleep. None of those is gonna, like, knock you out.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
What you're looking to do is stack wins.
- 49:54 – 55:54
Optimal temperature for sleep
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Next is temperature. You wanna be cool. Generally, you're looking at 64 to 68 degrees. This is personally dependent. Um, some people actually like to be a little bit colder so that they can have a heavier blanket, 'cause they like that feeling. When this idea got popular a bun- a few years ago, people just started raking the ACs, right? And you're just like, get this room as cold as you possibly can. That can become a problem because we're seeing this somewhat consistency where when people's air conditioners kick on, it actually wakes them up. And as we talked about earlier, with noise, it's not necessarily always about the volume, but it's the change-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... in sound. And so you have something kicking on, kicking off, kicking on, kicking off. Another thing we see is because of air quality situations, uh, we've seen quite often when we have environmental sensors and stuff, that if your air conditioner's not clean and the fan is on in there, you can actually kick a bunch of dander and particulates and other things into the air, and then you start breathing those things in at overnight, and your nose starts to get a little bit stuffed up. You can't breathe through your nose, and then boom, you have this hypopneic or apneic event. The last component that comes up, you know, pretty often, uh, at Absolute Rest is fans. This can make your mouth dry. So if you're waking up with that and you're like, "Ugh, I gotta get a drink of water or something," um, then maybe consider not having the fan blow directly at your face.
- SBSteven Bartlett
An interesting thing I was thinking about there, which is, there was the, uh, viral experiment done in 2009 by Mind Lab Sleep Study, where they conducted, um, the sleep experiment at the University of Sussex. Researchers hooked men and women up to an ECG machine to measure their brainwaves and played a variety of ambient sounds-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
While they slept to see which noises triggered an immediate wake response. And the top wake responses from men and women was completely different. Men's top trigger was a car alarm. Women's top trigger was a baby crying.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Men's top trigger was wind howling outside. Uh, women's second top trigger, I should say, is a dripping tap.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, water.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Men's third top is buzzing or flying of a mosquito. Uh, women's was, um, sh- shouting outside, and both of their fourth top trigger was snoring. But it was interesting that the thing that woke most men at their top trigger in that study was an alarm outside, but women's was a baby's crying.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Every mother out there is going, "Yep." It's in s- in fact, one of the largest causes of sleep disorders in women is having children. What happens after childbirth, and, and it's, it's a whole interesting field here of, uh, postpartum care, is really poor in women. Like, we just sort of, like, start paying attention to baby, stop paying attention to mom as soon as baby comes out. Well, I'm saying that because it is obvious and clear that, um, the last trimester can present a lot of sleep challenges for women. And then especially as soon as the baby's there, like, you're just gonna have some known period of sleep deprivation, whether it's delivery or having a, a newborn, all that stuff. And that can actually cause patterns. This can cause insomnia. This can cause irregular sleep schedules, circadian disorders, natural thing. Totally fine. In some percentage of women, those patterns will persist, and so you'll see women who have sleep disorders even with adult children that started because of the childbirth. We are advocating at all times, like, yeah, get through it. I got two kids. You know, I've been there. But then just make sure you're, you're providing care and going back to try to fix those things. And why that is difficult is because the study you just mentioned.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's worth saying, uh, there is an evolutionary theory behind this-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Of course
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that says, you know, men and women are, are attuned to different things, but there's also a counterargument that says the difference in who actually wakes up and who gets out of bed is often heavily driven by social roles, parenting expectations, and individual sleep depth rather than a biological inability for men to hear the baby. So how, how do we close off on the subject of sleep? Is there anything that we haven't touched on that we should have touched on as it pertains to how to have incredible sleep?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
One thing that I think will help everyone, whether you're at any of those stages, free, a little bit of money, or you gotta go the full end of the spectrum and use a hospital or a, a service like ours, is everyone has the ability to run self-experiments. We, we have a, a free guide that anyone can go use, and it's just a, a quick tutorial about how to run your own self-experiment for sleep specifically.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This one.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, there you go. Yeah. [clears throat] Um, so this is up and available for free on our website. Anyone can check it out. There's a lot of stuff in here we've covered. You can get more into it. But the short answer of it is we don't want to make people think sleep has to be the center of their life. I, oftentimes, when sleep comes up, people start thinking, "I'd love to sleep more, but I'm too busy." Hey, I'm, I'm [laughs] in the same boat. Like, I can't afford to have a 12-hour sleep routine. What we should be paying attention to is sleep resilience. Steven, I want you to be as resilient to bad sleep as possible. I don't want you optimizing your sleep, because optimization turns into that. Giant routine before bed. I gotta take 12 different supplements and four different cocktails, and I got... If I have to do that along the way- Great. The end game though should be resilient, meaning you had a bad night of sleep, cool, and you still performed. We had this challenge, flight got delayed. Great, we still executed. I want you to know how to go to get a good night of sleep so you can feel as refreshed as possible, execute the next day, and then get right back onto it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The way you get there is, and that's the way our company works, like we're just gonna run a series of experiments, and everyone can do that. Start by changing one thing. Your trackers, your data are gonna tell you how you're sleeping, but they're not telling you why you're sleeping that way. So that's your quest. Go figure out why you're sleeping that way. Is it your bedroom temperature? Is it your partner? Is it the fact that you're sensitive to light? Is it the fact you're exercising too late? Are you eating too late? Like, all these things are possible. One at
- 55:54 – 57:52
Ads
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
a time.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Just like Jon Jones, where marginal improvements in your cognitive performance can have a massive impact, sometimes I podcast for 10 hours a day. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been in filming for a TV show, and then I have like one or two days off to get all of my work done, which means there's lots of cognitive load. And so I turn to ketones because I find myself more articulate, able to think more clearly, able to work out better when I'm fueled by ketones. And so the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are a sponsor of this podcast is because I remember one of my team members called Christiana, she tried it once and came up to my desk and she goes, "This is the best product ever made." And I think in part that's because she really cares about those cognitive benefits as I do, as Jon Jones does, and as I think most of my listeners probably will. So if you haven't tried these yet, all you have to do is go to ketone.com/stephen and you'll also get 30% off your first subscription order. You'll get exclusive Ketone IQ merch and of course, cognitive benefits that might just change your life. If you're thinking about starting a business, one of the first decisions you'll have to make is actually one of the most important, which is where do you build that business? Our product team, who manages everything we do from our conversation cards to our diaries, has always used our sponsor, Shopify. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the big ones is that when you're running a business, you really need your own store and your own customer data, and Shopify gives you exactly that. You aren't renting space from someone else's platform hoping the rules don't suddenly change, and you avoid the classic founder challenges that inevitably come like sorting out payments and logistics and storefronts because it's already built into Shopify. Those early days are messy enough without the infrastructure challenge to create extra problems for you. And Shopify's distribution piece is underrated too, because your products automatically get in front of people on Google, TikTok, YouTube, ChatGPT, which again isn't something you have to figure out yourself. It's just already built into their platform. If you are serious about starting your own thing, start your free trial at shopify.com/bartlett.
- 57:52 – 1:02:55
Energy management for high performers
- SBSteven Bartlett
I guess one could argue that the antithesis of sleep is being awake and when we're awake the thing we care about is energy. Now, I had a really great conversation on this podcast with, um, several people that talk about mitochondria and energy and those kinds of things. Uh, some, some of those conversations have really, really changed me. If you hadn't, haven't listened to the more recent conversation we had on, um, mitochondria in the channel, please do go listen to it.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Martin Picard?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Martin Picard. [chuckles] It was a re-- honestly, it's one of my favorite conversations I've had this year just because I've lo- I knew about the mitochondria, like I, I conceptually knew what it was, but I hadn't thought about it as being so central to everything in my life because energy is essential to everything in my life, like my relationships, my ability to do this, my, my joy, my everything. If someone is trying to improve their energy levels and that's what they come to you with in terms of a symptom that they self-describe, where do you aim? Okay, so we've talked about sleep.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But where else do you aim?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Energy is probably the number one thing on our list of reasons people come to us.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do they say?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
"I'm tired all day, can't figure it out," or, "I don't have the energy I used to have," or, "I can't sustain output like I used to," whether this is physical, um, "My recovery is longer than it used to be," or, "I just can't hang working as many hours as I used to do. Uh, I get fatigued at the end of the day cognitively." I'm not of the camp that this is entirely mitochondria, but I certainly will agree that energy would be the number one. In fact, probably the most common question I've ever gotten in my career is what separates these world performers from the rest of us? And people want me to say things like they work harder. Th- they, they don't. They are categorically though better at energy management. That is the one thing that seems to be most consistent again with the world's highest performers, athletes, entrepreneurs, leaders, executives, you name it. However you're defining success, when you get better at managing energy you're more effective. This is everything from cellular energy to understanding things like your own interpersonal communication. What type of relationships gives you energy? What type of relationships g- take energy from you? What type of activities give you energy? What types give you back? When can you be more efficient? When are you running for the sake of running and not actually running in a direction? And I mean this figuratively not literally. This is all energy management and what you'll see is these people are world-class performers get incredibly good at going, "80% of my energy suck comes out of here for 20% ROI. I'm gonna switch that out." They're better at choosing what matters and what doesn't matter.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And this is everything from what supplement is working to what type of person that they work with. Where people struggle is in the like what if I could also be doing this? What if I could also be doing this? What if I add this on top? What if I add this on top?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, so I thought you were talking about, um, I guess if I try and put this into some sort of analogy or metaphor, the high performers wake up with 100 energy chips let's say.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And they're really, really good at allocating them against the most important thing.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Whereas maybe Jenny and Dave listening kind of let it seep out. They put 20 on Instagram, 20 over here on this.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And they spin their wheels
- SBSteven Bartlett
They spin their wheels
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
They go, okay, great. I'm gonna-- I listened to this podcast, and I got super excited about zone two. I'm gonna go hop into a bunch of zone two. And then I listened to this other podcast, and I got super excited about journaling. Let me go add journaling to my mix.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And then what ends up happening is you see their daily routine, and you're like, "Okay, your daily routine is twenty hours." And then at some point, like you didn't actually do anything that mattered. What is the one thing that can get you to that goal in the most effective way possible, and then everything else has to actively be stripped away. So the traditional thing we like to do is we give one to two, what we call active movements per week, which is, this is something, Steven, you have to actively remember to do. You don't actively remember to brush your teeth. You don't have to actively remember to shower, blah, blah, blah. You might at this point not have to actively think about your gratitude practice or your meditation time. Like you probably have these things you've been doing for years. Great. I don't actually call those additive because you, you do those, you're gonna get those in. But I might ask you to do one thing different. I don't know what that'd be, but I would, I would look at this and say, "Here's your constraint. I'm not gonna ask you to do five things new. It's too difficult. Maybe this is a change in what time you eat."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Your training style. Find what's constraining you from your energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What things could it be?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It could be sleep. It could be mismanagement of relationships. It could be you're working too much. It could be you're under-fueling. You're not eating enough. It could be that you're overusing stimulants, sleeping poor, and you're in that cycle, right? It could be you're not seeing sunlight. So what you need to do is run a, a quick analysis and think, what is the single biggest thing in your way? Is it the fact that you're in pain? Great. Maybe the only one thing I want you to go after then is, let's go figure out why that knee hurts.
- 1:02:55 – 1:07:26
Steve's cholesterol results
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. So for me, you've seen my blood results.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So what things might improve my energy from the blood results that you saw?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Okay, great. What are you, mid-thirties, early thirties?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm thirty-three.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Thirty-three. All right. You're lean, you're active. The first thing that jumps out on your report-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, can we skip that page, please? [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And think, uh, yeah, skip, skip the page. You're gonna see quickly the difference between medicine and performance.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Okay? Um, this is medical. So we're looking at cholesterol and cholesterol-related markers. You've got, I don't know, a dozen of them or so there. Not one's good.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Eh.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
This is incredibly actionable.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Can I ask a question about this? What, what does it mean? And then I was gonna ask a secondary question, which is, I was gonna try and self-diagnose why I think this is the case, but-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I would love that second question. That'll actually tell us where to go. So when you look at things like blood work, these are secondary measures of physiology. They're trying to predict what I-- what we'll call an outcome. Meaning, in this case, we are looking at your heart health.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
There is an association, and I choose that word carefully, between cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. High cholesterol, low cholesterol, good cholesterol, bad, bad?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
All of the above. Very traditionally, excessively high cholesterol is gonna be associated with earlier heart disease, heart attack, could even manifest itself into strokes and things like that, right? So if we were to just like zoom all the way out and we say, "All right, your cholesterol is extremely high. I'm concerned about your heart health."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
There's m- way more to the story, but at the top of it, that's where we're at.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So the second question I was gonna ask is, at the time that I did these blood test results, I was frequently in a ketogenic diet.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I know. There's a lot to unpack here, and a lot of ir-- people are gonna get mad online. Cholesterol has lifestyle, dietary, and familial causes. Oftentimes, you might have high cholesterol and all these various markers simply because that's a familial genetic inheritance, and there's not a lot of action behind it. When you see these things independent of obesity, now we have a different connotation. If I were to look at all this stuff and go, "Oh yeah, sure, you're thirty-five percent body fat. I know you drink alcohol," then I'm like, "Okay, this is true, but let's tackle those things first," because those have so many robust implications on your health. That's the starting place. You don't drink alcohol excessively. Um, I don't even know if you drink alcohol at all, haven't in years, I assume, right? You don't smoke. You don't like any of those things. So all those things are checked off the list. This means this is actionable.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I should give you some context here. My uncle died of a heart attack, and my dad had a heart operation last week.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Ooh.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Do you remember what kind of heart operation?
- SBSteven Bartlett
He had a pacemaker put in. Um-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... but he's been on statins, I think, for-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, yeah. To lower his cholesterol
- 1:07:26 – 1:10:40
Why healthy people can have an enlarged heart
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
step. Let's run the experiment and see. This is an indirect marker. And remember, what is it trying to predict? Your heart health. Have you had your heart scanned?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes, I have.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And?
- SBSteven Bartlett
They said that I had like a, I had a thick wall.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Okay. Exercise induced cardiac remodeling, if especially if it's left ventricular-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... it's a good thing, right? So your heart has four chambers, two on top, two on bottom. The two on the top are called atria.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh-huh.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Ventricles on the bottom. Oh, you got a great image there as well. Yeah. So you can look at this a- a- as a maze. Okay, so we'll use double modeling here. Can you see how the left ventricle is much larger than the right ventricle?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh-huh.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
There's a reason. The right ventricle only has to kick blood to your lungs.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Which are, you know, physically-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Quite close
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... a few inches away. The left ventricle has to kick it up, out, through your entire body, down to the tip of your toes, all the way back up against gravity, and then back up into your heart.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And so what you're seeing here is strength training. This is resistance exercise, your left ventricle's lifting weights. It has to be bigger, it has to be stronger so that it can contract really hard and shoot all that blood up and down and up and out. If you said you had a thicker wall, either naturally or exercise induced, just like when you lift with your biceps more, it's larger. The same thing is happening in your left ventricle. Incredibly common and healthy adaptation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
What we would be concerned about is if there was any type of blockage or any type of plaque buildup.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the things that I remember them saying is they, again, I'm gonna butcher this, but they told me there's kinda like two types of plaque-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yes
- SBSteven Bartlett
... build up in my veins or my arteries, whatever, and they said the bad type you haven't got. And they said, "But the other type you have got." And they, I think they were referring to like the bad type as being like more sticky.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it like doesn't go [laughs] .
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It'll dislodge.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, okay, and that can cause a risk.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. It's-
- SBSteven Bartlett
They said I didn't have the bad type, but I had this other type that can ki- is like temporary, but could turn into the bad type or something.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. One thing you wanna be really careful of, and this happened to a, a dear friend of mine, Joel Jameson, young, super fit, all the things, no s- stress, doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, much like you, all this stuff. Family history.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- 1:10:40 – 1:14:15
Lowering cholesterol with lifestyle and medicine
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Now, in, what you're seeing over here is that client of ours, and so as an example, I'll give you a specific number. His total cholesterol was 347. We got him down to 223.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What did you do?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Fiber.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why fiber?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Stress reduction. Fiber, depending on the type of cholesterol, will actually bind to the cholesterol and clear it from the system.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It will physically reduce it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's why they, one of the supplements I was told to take is a fiber supplement.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's not always going to solve anything, and I want to be really clear. If you have numbers like you had, you need to work with a doctor.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And you need to get screened. Don't just be like, "I took fiber, I'm fine. This guy said it on a podcast." That's not what I'm saying. But it is, it, it can be effective. The other thing we did was massive stress reduction. Guy was a, a very hard-charging CEO for a large company.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How is stress reduction gonna impact my cholesterol?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Things like cholesterol can be what are called acute phase reactants, some parts of them, not all of them, meaning it responds to acute stress as stimuli. When you look at things like blood work, they aren't static. They are responding to the entire system. And so if you were to be stressed, and well, not to blame everything on cortisol, but cortisol is elevated, you are in a, a heightened alert state. This causes short-term inflammation. In fact, if you look at, I think your inflammation was a little bit, um, not so there. Oh, this guy as well. Probably like your, your most classic inflammation marker is called CRP. His was at two, which is really high. We got him from two to .2, so 10X reduction. That then allowed cholesterol to normalize. Um, the, the easiest, most technical way to, again, to say it is, is it's an acute phase reactant, meaning it will change in response acutely to inflammation. Some markers will go up, and some will go down i- in response to that, like, like D, like vitamin D goes down.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If what? If you-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
In a, a, a stressed environment. Some go up, some go down. Uh, blood glucose goes up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you got his stress down, you got his fiber up.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And that took him from 347 to 223, which is still high. Went from 223 to 163. Now, that took a statin.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, so you did give him a statin?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
We didn't, but his medical team did.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And so this, I, why I want to draw this point out is we were able to go a long ways with lifestyle, but he wanted to go more. He wanted to be green, green, green, green, green. So that's when medicine came in, and I, to me, this represents a, a great marriage of the two. Some people are very anti-medicine. Some people are... That's not my decision. That's up to you and your medical provider. But I think it's, it's, it's unfair to tell people things like all of it can be done with lifestyle And there's no need for medicines ever. Or the opposite of just like, "Oh, just take the drug. Don't worry about it." He needed all of it. He needed stress reduction, he needed some changes in his diet, and that made a huge change in his biological health. So if you were to be like, "Look, this is so complicated, this guy. Like, how can I make actionable advice of all this stuff this guy's saying? I don't have a private doctor." Cool. Just run the experiment. Try more fiber, try to regulate your stress. If you wanna go the opposite route and jump right onto the, the medical side, that's fine, too. Um, but it doesn't need to be super scary or super daunting because these are not, like, especially if your heart has been scanned, I'm not concerned about an acute emergency.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The two things on here that I thought were, were shocking to me are my, my vitamin D levels and my omega levels-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which I was told were deficient.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I thought I was smashing it with those two 'cause I think I was living in LA at the time and-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, so your vitamin D was borderline low. Fairly traditionally, people of African heritage are going to be lower in
- 1:14:15 – 1:17:02
Low vitamin D
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
that marker.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You're at 37. Kind of lower end of that number is 40. That might actually be fine.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think I heard you say something about vitamin D. Again, I don't wanna butcher your words if this wasn't what you said, but you kind of make the assumption that most people are deficient.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. It is true.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why does it matter?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So vitamin D is a nice microcosm of raw health. So what I mean by that is you'll tend to see people low in vitamin D who are also tending to make poor health choices. So it's a little bit like grip strength and all that where it's kind of a one-snap shot at saying are you generally healthy or not? Why is it needed specifically? It is involved in every re- reaction from your brain to your gut to your hormones to your immune system, metabolism, and everything in between. It's critical to maintaining bone health. It's critical to being able to grow skeletal muscle. It's also clinically low in a high percentage of the population and even sub-clinically low in a vast majority of the population.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So should we be supplementing if we are low?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The real world will always win. Whole foods, sunlight, positive social environments, that's always the place to start. So do you wanna supplement with it? That's up to you. I would much rather you get sunlight if possible. Now, enter everyone in the chat going, "I live in the UK. There's no sun," sort of up here. Fine. If you wanna choose a supplement, uh, because you live in those situations, then that's absolutely fine.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or I work in an office for t- 12 hours a day. It's f- it's interesting 'cause there is a bit of a paradox here in we're all in search of very natural solutions in a very unnatural way of living.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Had this conversation with my fiancée a couple of, couple of weeks back about a few things where in one area of our life we're trying to be really, really natural.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, [laughs] but I'm like, "Babe, l- l- look at the rest of our lives. It's so unnatural. We get on planes and have these smartphones and, and so almost forcing this one part to be natural is-"
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... arguably gonna cause a bit of a problem.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I mean, it happens to me, right? Like, I'll put in the entire hours of the day and not even realize I didn't step outside.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It absolutely happens. So what I think you have to do is, number one, give yourself grace, right? Like, you're not gonna be perfect. I'm especially thinking about, like, single parents. It's just like you're not gonna go out and spend 30 minutes in the sun.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Night shift workers.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Totally. Boy, that's a really hard thing. Um, we've dealt with a lot of nurses and surgeons and things like that where you're on call, you're out. And that's when we can lean towards modern medicine, modern supplementation. It, it, it... That's why those things are not trash. They're not garbage. They're not fake. Our strategy typically is that's can we find one actionable thing? One thing that you're doing as a focus that is something you gotta go out of your way and do, and that might be you have to go outside today. You have-- That might be your one thing to pay attention to. When you start asking for more than one to two active things per week, you start end up failing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. Fine.
- 1:17:02 – 1:17:52
Omega 3 and mercury levels
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So with your omegas, so your omega score at five is low.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You want that to be eight. But you probably didn't notice your mercury was right on the line of high as well. Those things will typically track. The more omega-3s you consume, the more mercury goes up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Because most omega-3 sources are gonna be filled with mercury.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I was low omega and high in mercury.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So what that tells us is if you were to jack your omega-3s up, your mercury's gonna get into the line that we don't want it to be in. So solution, you need to alter the source of your omega-3s. Get it from a higher quality place. So I'm not sure where you were getting them from there.
- SBSteven Bartlett
All over the place.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. But you would want to, to either choose your supplement more carefully or choose better quality foods.
- 1:17:52 – 1:23:37
Exercise and the SAID principle
- SBSteven Bartlett
What actually moves the needle on this subject of energy, which is what we're talking about here? Is there anything that is more consequential as it relates to these people that are trying to get more energy in their life? They feel lethargic. We talked about sleep as being a real foundation here.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. If you're looking for more energy, I would divide everything into two buckets, hidden stressors and visible stressors. Visible stressors are things like you're not exercising. We know from excellent databases physical exercise enhances energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why and how?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mitochondrial health is one of the many aspects of it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You'll have more mitochondria if you exercise more?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Generally. Not only will you have more, they'll be larger, and they'll be healthier.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And mitochondria basically process your energy.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
They-
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you get b- more efficient energy production.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
They're one of the ways you can make it. You can make energy a lot of different ways. It is the end path of all aerobic exercise. So in other words, anytime you're using oxygen as a byproduct to make fuel, mitochondria have to be there. So it is central and core to that. Um, but it is more than mitochondria. You'll have more total blood.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If you exercise?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's one of the primary adaptations to endurance, is you'll physically have more blood in your body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that will mean?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You carry more oxygen.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, okay. Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You have more red blood cells.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So you're able to carry more oxygen to fuel those mitochondria.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that a certain type of exercise that gives you more blood?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Generally, anything that demands blood flow will increase blood supply.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Cardiovascular exercise?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Can be. Can be anything.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Stress equals adaptation. Meaning if you put a demand on your heart to pump more blood, it'll get better at pumping more blood. If you put a demand on bone to resist tension, it'll get better at resisting tension. You run the whole cascade of connective tissue to cellular health. It is simply, it's called the SAID principle, S-A-I-D, specific adaptation to imposed demand.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And also, is it fair to say then, if we take the word exercise out of the traditional definition, which is like in a gym doing a thing, and we broaden it to work or just, you know, cognitive performance.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Remember, exercise is a novel made-up term. This is a new thing to us. Historically, humans have carried, have sprinted, have jumped, have climbed, have grappled, have done all those things. Putting that into a structured non-daily activity is a last seventy-five year phenomenon, right? It wasn't actually until we started to realize that stress reduction to the end of the limit is a bad thing, and then we had to recreate stress into our lives. One form of that was we call that exercise. So yes, if you think about exercise as either running, cycling, swimming, or lifting weights, you have left a bunch on the table. I don't care how you're challenging yourself, even if that structured exercise in your example is more vocationally based.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's the stress being provided to the system. And so when you start to look at things like what's the best exercise protocol for A, B, and C, one of the things you start to realize is all of them can have equal responses given a few constraints, and if they hit that constraint, they work. So if you have a movement practice, you skateboard, you play pickle, you walk, you garden, fine. All those can have equal clinical outcomes, mortality, joint pain, body composition, because they're getting to the same spot.
- 1:23:37 – 1:28:11
Use it or lose it with age
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is one of the things I've learned from this podcast and meeting all these exceptional people is, um, this like use it or lose it principle.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know, 'cause I'm getting older and you start to feel the odd pain, you know, and so you start to like not use that part, you know, your back, for example.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or bending down. And so you find ways to not bend down properly, so you can-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... like avoid the pain. And what's happening there is because something is difficult, you do it less-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which then means it becomes more difficult, so you do it less, and there's this downward feedback loop to decline.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Atrophy leads to atrophy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, and like, you know, I think the critical idea that got in my head a couple of years ago from someone I was interviewing on the podcast was that aging isn't always the excuse, and I think we assume it's just aging, so we accept it and we don't fight back.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When I sat here with one of the exceptional PhDs that I interviewed, she showed me, I think it was a DEXA scan of a seventy-year-old-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep
- SBSteven Bartlett
... who was like a pentathlete, and then a, a DEXA scan of someone that was like thirty years old, and the seventy-year-old was just phenomenal.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The, the, the sort of bone, the muscle, et cetera, and she basically proved to me. I'll put up the scan on the screen. It really is a mind-blowing scan. I've actually sent it to my best friends because it really did-- I couldn't, I couldn't get this idea out of my head that I actually don't accept everything as a, an aging problem because the minute you do-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... you go on this downward cycle, and it blew my mind, and that was such an important idea to get in my head at my age, at thirty years old. So when I feel like a pain in my back, my, my solution isn't, "Oh, okay, Steven, you're getting older. Stop bending down and protect the pain." It is go to the gym [chuckles] and start squatting and bending, et cetera.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
There are some things that will go down with age. Sleep is actually one of them. We, we typically just see you will sleep a little bit less as you age. Fine. There are some aspects of that, but I think you can resist and fight as much of that as possible. This is actually, you're seeing a turning of the tide right now that's just starting to emerge With longevity. Longevity is currently being positioned as this anti-aging phenomenon, and people are already bored.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's like, is your goal to just not age? Or is your goal to dunk a basketball at 70? Do you wanna have the four-by-four truck that has the best off-road package ever, and it stays in your garage? Probably not, right? Like, you wanna be able to be like, no. You, you want to live because you want to experience life. And so then you wanna be able to take advantage of those capacities and functionality.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, someone said to me, "You wanna extend your health span, not necessarily your lifespan."
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's not health span, though.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No, that's what I'm, that's what I'm pushing back on. Health span, cool. I mean, lifespan, fine, great. We're all past that. Health span, though, is still like, I don't wanna be in pain. I don't want to be-- I'm saying performance span. I'm saying I want you to be focused on having the most skill. I want you to just be crushing cognitively. I want you to be able to do anything you want physically for as long as we possibly can, and not just being like, "Well, that's gonna go away. Let's just stay alive and be out of pain." I want you to be thinking about, no, like, I'm gonna be doing awesome stuff in whatever venue you like to do it in for as long as you possibly can.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think people want both.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, of course.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
But let's not for-- let's just not leave that end of the table off and assume that performance has to go away.
- 1:28:11 – 1:29:30
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- AGDr. Andy Galpin
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- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 1:29:30 – 1:34:30
Is grip strength linked to mortality?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Speaking of training, you know what this is, don't you?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Sure.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is a, a grip strength machine.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A lot of people told me that, um, grip strength is the single biggest predictor of, I think they said, like, longevity and stuff like that.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I wouldn't call it the number one predictor of mortality. It is a really nice scientific test. Late 1980s, Stephen Blair and his team started looking at giant databases and started to realize that cardiovascular fitness, VO2 max, VO2 peak, things like this, were predicting how long people are gonna live. And in fact, they started to realize it was out-predicting what we call traditional clinical markers: blood pressure, your cholesterol levels, things like that. And this launched an entire forty-five-year field that we're in now, which is like, wait a minute. These performance-based markers are actually predicting health more than these indirect markers. The unfortunate problem is that got, like, too-- taken too far, and so when you hear things like people, and my colleagues who have been on your show and said things like, "Oh, grip strength is an important predictor of mortality," it's good. It's great. It's an important message. But we have to be careful in being lost in what that means. Getting a grip strength device like that, which is probably under forty dollars, is amazing. And what you will see consistently is those people that are really, really, really weak are in worse health on average. Where we come, become false is saying, "Okay, therefore, you need to alter your lifestyle to maximize grip strength."
- SBSteven Bartlett
I did do my grip strength results, actually.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Do you remember how they were?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It was, it was, it was good. It was, uh, it was high.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You know what that tells me about your health?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Nothing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Why wouldn't it be high? You're young. You're fit. I have all those other markers. It's not gonna tell us anything. You know when these things are really powerful? Somebody who doesn't have blood work or doesn't have a body composition test or doesn't have anything else. It can give us a crude strength or a crude metric and say this person's probably at a health risk.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I- I've always been quite confused by this because is grip strength a proxy for my overall strength of my entire body, and therefore it's just indicating that my overall strength is low, or is it actually like my arm?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's both.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's both. Here's why. You know what you're really testing right there?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's that?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Ner- ner- nervous system.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You're testing your brain.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you're not testing your strength as much?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You are.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But it's both.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
There's an overlap.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's why your grip strength, does it indicate general poor health? Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's the value. Does it tell you anything directly about your... It can. And so this is when you see two camps here. So camp one is like, "Great, I'm gonna open up a gym down the street, and it's gonna test your grip strength, and then we're gonna focus all of your training on grip strength training." That is, we've exaggerated the point. The other camp is, "It doesn't matter. It's all indirect." That's not true either. It is an actionable, useful thing. What you don't need to worry about is optimizing it, maxing it. Like I-- if you're in the 80th percentile, going to the 90th percentile probably doesn't make you live a day longer. Over the last probably three years, I would imagine there's over 20 to 25 studies that have been published on a very specific type of grip strength, and that's grip strength asymmetry. Do you know why that matters?
- 1:34:30 – 1:37:03
How to build muscle power
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
for that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is a better marker of my overall health?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
There's not a single marker that will tell you everything.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about muscle power?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Muscle power is great as well.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is that?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Power is defined as force multiplied by velocity. Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So like if I-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If I throw this.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you wanna throw it then?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Go ahead.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I can put your hand on there. [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You can do it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Great. So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that, is that muscle power?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That wasn't much power because you did it slow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So think about it this way. This is, uh, 12 kilos, right? 12 kilos, I don't know, pounds, kilos. That is mass. Kilos, pounds is a unit of mass. Force, that's what you think when you think of strength. That's force. Force is defined as F equals MA. It's mass times acceleration is force. Okay? So it's the mass multiplied by how you can, how well you can accelerate it. Power is your force multiplied by your velocity. So here's the difference. If I were to take this 12 pounds of mass or 12 kilos and hand it to you slowly-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... okay, that is an expression of 12 pounds of force is how we'll think about it. Now, if you hand it back to me in the exact same speed, that is the same amount of newtons of force. How I create power is now I do that same thing with speed. Ready?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So there are two ways you can get more powerful: more force, more velocity.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You would use an implement like that because you're trying to say, "Give me a little bit of mass," but you can obviously lift more than 12 kilos. But now I'm gonna emphasize the velocity in the spectrum. Where people make the mistake in training for power is if you go slow, the mass is too light to do anything, so you don't get stronger, and you don't get faster. Why this matters in the current conversation is you see power and, uh, what some people will, will call, call things like powerpenia. So the, the term that we've been using for a long time is sarcopenia, and this is the, the accelerated loss of muscle and probably muscle strength with aging. You're gonna drop some, but sarcopenia is are you dropping faster than you should? And now there's a turn of scientific attention to powerpenia, which is are you losing the power faster than you should be losing power? That matters because it is everything from prevention of fall-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... catching yourself when you slip, to be able to move and accelerate quickly. And you see that thing, that stuff highly associated with breaking of bones, uh, fractures, dislocations, uh, which are incredibly impactful to health, especially post age 60 or 65.
- 1:37:03 – 1:41:36
Does more exercise equal better?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think a lot of people listening, a- and m- me, me too, so I guess one of the questions we have as it relates to the gym and working out is we often think that in order to get better results in the gym, and you can define that however you want to, fat loss, muscle-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Sure
- SBSteven Bartlett
... gain, whatever strength, we need to go more often. A- and I, I was curious, someone who spends so long with athletes, is that a bit of a myth? Because even my, even me, I'm thinking, well, if I want better results in the gym, I probably just need to s- I'm currently going three or four days a week. I need to go back to going six or seven days a week to get better results
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You could go either way. It is generally true that if you train more, you give yourself more opportunity to create stress, which is more opportunity to create adaptation. But that said, depending on the marker, the answer here could range from yes to no. Let's use muscle growth as an example. As long as you hit the same volume throughout the week, the amount of times you go to the gym doesn't matter that much, in theory.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Volume.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
How much load did you lift, how many times?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Does time period matter? i.e., if I lifted four weights in one hour versus lifting four weights in 20 minutes?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Nope, because now all you've changed is really the rest in between.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. Does that matter?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It does in the sense that if you take a short rest interval, and that leads to excessive fatigue accumulation, and then that compromises how heavy you can lift or how many reps you can do or how many sets you can do, that will have compromised your volume.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wait, so because everyone talks about taking shorter rests in the gym to build more muscles.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Not consistent with the evidence.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep. But this is, this, this is the game you're playing at all times, right? Who has the time to wait two and a half minutes between every set? You're gonna be in the gym for an hour and a half.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, a lot of people are on their phones.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Totally. And then because of that, they're like, "I gotta get out of here," so they do half the amount of stuff, they leave 'cause they're out of time. So the battle is, in an isolated world, if you were to probably spend sixty to ninety seconds or maybe up to two minutes resting in between each set, generally you recover enough to have a higher quality set the next one.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So is that the most important thing to be optimizing for, is the high-- making sure the next rep you do is high quality?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
In my world, quality is always number one.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So you're saying take a bigger break as long as you can recover and are more strong for the next rep?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
As long as it doesn't put you in a position where you're in the gym so long that you won't do all the stuff you needed to do.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But in a world where you had unlimited time?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Generally.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Depends on what adaptation we're working for. If we're working on endurance, then we don't necessarily have to do that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
But if we're working on speed or skill or flexibility or balance or muscle growth or fat loss, now we have options. So depending on the outcome you're looking for, you have tools. I th- I think the biggest point we want to make here is where the field struggles right now is making a little bit of information get in the way of motivation. If you're going to the gym three days a week, I'm clapping. Done. Like, we're winning. I don't want you to hear messages and go, "Oh, I'm doing it all wrong. I'm not gonna get any results. I'm tanking my metabolism. I'm breaking my hormones." That's the shit that drives us nuts. You're motivated. It's hard enough to get to the gym, and when you get there to try really hard. W-we've gotten over the hill. Now, if you're past that point, we could start tinkering with some things, but I hate it when people leave conversations like this and go, "Oh, did you know that if you don't rest more than sixty seconds, that you're not getting anything?" That's not true. So we can get, like, upgrades, but in general, I think most people, quality should be the biggest thing you pay attention to because this is gonna reduce your likelihood of injury, and there's even evidence that whether you're trying to get stronger or grow muscle, the quality of the repetition as defined by your technique, as defined by your range of motion, as defined by your intent, as defined by what we call your mind-muscle connection. So like are, if you're trying to contract your shoulder, are you really contracting your shoulder? Like, all these things start to matter, and so what you'll see happen is you can get more results with less work and shorter time because each individual repetition is of a higher quality and a more focused intent.
- 1:41:36 – 1:43:32
What supplements do you take?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, this might be a good time to just quickly take a-- I mean, everyone's talking about creatine at the bloody moment.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you have your athletes taking it?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, of course.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You do?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, everybody.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you take it?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do you take? What's in your supplement stack?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
My personal supplement stack, same with all of our clients and athletes. There's two things: correct physiology, performance enhancement.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Totally separate categories. Correct physiological deficiencies are, in your case, your vitamin D. What is low, what is high, what is off track based on blood work, right? We try to solve this through food, but what this oftentimes looks like is a high quality multivitamin, oftentimes fish oil. Now you have performance accelerators on the other side of that equation. This is when creatine can come in. If I'm traveling, I'm gonna take things like fiber, right? Because it's harder to get vegetables when you travel. You, you probably know this, but airplanes, airports, restaurants, like vegetables are nowhere to be found. And so I know those are gonna be a struggle. I'm gonna take fiber there. Where I'm generally not taking it as much when I'm home 'cause I can control my diet. Performance enhancers are things like creatine, are things like beta-alanine, sodium bicarbonate. So depending on what fitness training goal I have at the moment, I'm gonna alter those based on if I'm looking for muscle growth or endurance or-
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are you taking right now?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Zero.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Zero. Vitamin D, like this week?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No. No. Summertime.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I live in the, I live in the forest.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Omega-3?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Nope.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I got full control of my diet, and we get a lot of fish right now. So we are good there. I also have-- I'm fortunate, I get to harvest my own meat, and one of the things you'll see pretty consistently is even in red meat sources, they're higher in a lot of nutrients wild caught versus un-wild caught. So we're in a pretty good... Plus, I have my blood work. I know where my omega-3 numbers are, so I'm gonna get there. If I don't have to take those
- 1:43:32 – 1:51:01
The best way to lose weight
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
things, I don't
- SBSteven Bartlett
A lot of people, I imagine, come to you for, with weight loss goals.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Whether they're trying to cut weight for a, a fight or-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Sure
- SBSteven Bartlett
... if it's just mom and pop looking to lose a few pounds. What are the big misconceptions about weight loss?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, it's the magic of it, right? It's the, there's one specific element you can't eat, or one way you have to train or can't train. That is the, the biggest misconception around fat loss, the specificity. It is categorically quite simple to lose fat. It's practically hard. It's difficult human endeavor. But categorically, it's incredibly simple. We only have a few things we have to do, and now you have a billion choices of how to get there. So if you are the type of person who struggles with moderation, then I'm not gonna give you moderation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Moderation of calories?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Could be, or exercise or environment. Do you know the difference between baking and cooking?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, yeah, I guess so, conceptually. [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Baking is chemistry.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You mix something together and put it in the oven. You can't just fake the amounts.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
'Cause it won't rise, it won't set, it won't do the things, right? I- if you're cooking on a stove and you could just be like, "Okay, what's in the fridge?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
You can just throw things in.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
"Put it in there." You can't do that in baking, right? Depending on what you're baking. We will a- address this fat loss problem with trying to identify are you a cook or are you a baker personality type? Here's what I mean. If you came to me and we were gonna help you lose some fat, you're already pretty lean, but let's say you wanted to, to get super lean. All right, great. I will-- I, first question I would ask you is, how do you want this to operate? You could one of two ways. One way is I tell you exactly what to eat. You weigh and measure every single thing. You do not deviate. You track your weight every single day, and you follow exactly what I tell you. The other option is I give you concepts. We have one to three rules. You're gonna check weight, maybe daily, maybe once a week, and I want you to stay airtight to those concepts.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I prefer the concepts.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Concepts, great. Concepts are cooking.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Baking, weigh and measure everything, right? Here's why this matters. You're a concept kinda guy. Why? You do not want to be thinking about all that little stuff 'cause you got other stuff you'd rather be thinking about, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's great because it's freeing. You know what the downside is? If you don't know exactly what's in your food and you don't have a really good eye on calibration, someone like you might have a hard time losing fat because you're already at the end. We need to be weighing that olive oil. We need to be measuring that rice cup. We can't just be like, "Ah, a little bit of rice over there," right? If you're trying to lose 100 pounds, we, we can probably eyeball a lot of things and get really, really far.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
But personality type is what I'm really getting at here, okay? If I gave that concept to some people listening, some people would be going, "Blah, blah, blah, blah," like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah," like, like, "W- how many meals am I eating?" Um, like, "What's f- what's the fiber com..." Like, they want the detail, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's the, what's the concept?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The concept could be something like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Give me an example of a free concept
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... I want you eating fresh vegetables at every meal, and I want you to have a dedicated protein source every time you eat.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- 1:51:01 – 1:53:08
Exercise and weight loss myths
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
even play the game.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are the big misconceptions about exercise's role in weight loss?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It is valuable. Forever, we've been telling people, "Burn more calories than you ingest," right? And then, then it's still true. And then we had a, a bunch of research pop out that was sorta like, hey, exercise is not playing the role we think it is in fat loss. And th- those data still hold true in the sense that you don't burn as many calories in your workouts as you think. Most of the time, if you hop on a piece of exercise equipment and it tells you you burned X amount of calories, you burned most likely significantly less than that. It's also true that there's, there is places where you can get to with adaptive thermogenesis, meaning if you burn, say, 500 calories with exercise, if you are lean enough or non-lean enough or fit enough or non-fit enough, your body will change how many calories it burns throughout the day in response to that 500 calories from exercise. Meaning you could be in a situation, theoretically, where you burn 500 calories in your workout, but then your body down-regulated your energy expenditure by three or four or even up to 500 calories.
- SBSteven Bartlett
To make up for it. So it was-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, neutral.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
When you're lean, like that, that can happen quite often, right? And so then what do you do? You pull more calories. You train harder. You get a more of a response. This is a like, oh, okay, calorie counting doesn't matter. Like, it absolutely matters. It may not be the strategy you want, but it matters there. So then there was a big push of like exercise is playing no role in fat loss, which was fundamentally also not true because now we have meta-analyses, uh, in the recent years as well as more studies showing probably the fairest way to say it is exercise is a fantastic way to burn some calories. It is not the only thing that you can do though, to lose weight. You can handle weight loss entirely through nutrition if you want. That said, people who exercise during their weight loss journey consistently are better at keeping that fat off over the weeks to years at
- 1:53:08 – 1:54:45
The 54321 method for fat loss
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
the end of the diet.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You have a 54321 method.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, sure. 54321 was, is just a little thing I came up with that says, all right, can we help people with fat loss rules? Five days a week, be active. Now, this can be exercise, it can be walking, it can be your vocation. I don't really care. But what was consi- has to happen with fat loss is you have to be able to produce caloric expenditure, and you gotta do a lot of it. This is my way of saying be active. And also, I'm saying it's cool to take a rest day too. Like, it's totally fine to just veg. You can do that, but be as active as you possibly can. Then from there, I want four days a week of structured exercise. One of these days can be a super hard day, it can be light. One of those days could be a yoga day. Like, not all four days have to be head to the gym, volume 11, like, train as hard as you can. But four days a week where I want you doing structured exercise. At least three days a week, I want you training hard enough to sweat. If you're doing all that, you're active five days a week, you're doing structured exercise four days a week, three of those sessions, you're doing it hard enough where you're getting a really good, solid sweat, you're probably doing enough to burn enough calories to give yourself a, a chance from the exercise perspective, um, to losing weight. If you've done those first three, we could even, we could even just call it the 543.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[clears throat]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, you're in a pretty good spot. If you want more granular, I would love a couple of days a week of strength training, and I would love at least one day where your heart rate's getting really, really, really high.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- 1:54:45 – 1:56:27
Why am I not progressing?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So a lot of people, including myself, often think, you know, I'm going to the gym three, four days a week, but nothing's changing. I feel like I've stagnated.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What, what is going on there typically?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Typical solutions for this are lack of focus, and I don't mean in your training, I mean in your programming. So if you are looking at your program saying, "I'm going to the gym three, four days a week," my first question would be, "Okay, what type of training program are you on?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm kinda just winging it.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's why.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If I said the same thing to you and gave you any business analogy here, you would look at me in the face and smile.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, you have a plan. Why would you expect without a plan to get to any particular direction?
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's a good point.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
80% of the time, that's the answer. Now, here's the thing, and we have literature on this. There's good evidence. The plan itself isn't the biggest factor. It's actually just having a plan
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Because you have the ability to progressively overload.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What does that mean?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Meaning you were able to increase your number of repetitions than you did last week. You can do a few more sets than you did. You can increase the load. You can increase the range of motion. There's all kinds of ways that we can overload the system progressively. You can't do all them.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is-- Do you know what? I think this is really the heart of it, which is most of us go to the gym, and we do the same thing.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Totally.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We do the same thing we did last week. We put the, the StairMaster machine on level A, and we do ten minutes.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And we did that for the last seven months. [chuckles]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Whereas we should really just put it up one, but in order to do that, we kinda need a plan, as you say.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Because you can't just go up one every time.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, right.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, how many, how many weeks in a row can you add five pounds?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Three? Four? Like, it's not going to be very long. This is the entire reason exercise is a scientific field, right? We have that. So my strong recommendation
- 1:56:27 – 2:00:43
Can AI create a workout plan?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
would be, if you're an absolute beginner, and you're not going to the gym at all, you're not doing anything, you can probably use AI tools and give you some basic starting program. In fact, I s- people send these things all the time to me and be like, "Hey, I prompted my thing with, like, all of your content, and I have a complete personalized training program from Andy Galpin." I'm like, "Great." And I look at them, I'm like, "Pretty good." Like, [chuckles] "All right, that's pretty reasonable." And it's-- they're good enough to get you started. They're gonna get you the basics. They're gonna get you going, and then you have something to follow for six, eight, ten weeks, whatever.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Let me ask AI for Andy Galpin's [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So put in your constraints. Tell it how many days a week.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, let's do it, like, so everyone can hear. Hi, um, I wanna go to the gym four days a week, and I want Andy Galpin's formula for me to gain muscle. But what are the principles that I need to apply based on Andy Galpin's work over the next four months in order to gain this muscle?
- SPSpeaker
To gain muscle and strength over the next four months, you'll want to focus on a few key principles from Dr. Galpin's work. First, prioritize progressive overload by gradually increasing the weight, reps, or sets over time. Second, use a variety of repetition ranges, incorporating both heavy low-rep work for strength and moderate to high-rep work for muscle growth. Finally, ensure you're taking adequate rest between sets, usually two to five minutes for heavy compound movements, to allow for full recovery and maintain high-quality effort.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Pretty good. That's not-- There's a little bit of hallucination in there, which is AI, but that's pretty close.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A lot of people are doing this now, aren't they?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They're using AI as, like, their...
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
We've saw a huge pendulum in the last five years. Twenty twenty almost ended health and fitness. Uh, gyms went out of business. Everyone went home. Everyone bought their exercise equipment. And as soon as AI came online, online coaching tanked, and online companies got crippled 'cause everyone was like, "Why am I gonna pay you a hundred bucks a month, two hundred bucks a month, three hundred bucks a month for that?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And they were right. It's going the exact opposite now. It's already swung back. In-person training is way more in demand.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm not surprised because-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Everyone's tired of that
- SBSteven Bartlett
... it's also, uh, personal trainers don't just tell you what to do.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
No.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They make sure you do it. Uh, uh, you know? So-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
How do I do it?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's the-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's the emotion. It's the connection.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's the emotion. It's the connection. It's the, like, holding me accountable.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So what you're seeing is people going, "It was never about the information."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. We always had the information.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
We always had it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. [laughs]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Nothing in that-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... I made up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That stuff's been around for-- Like, it's funny, every time I talk about, like, exercise prescription, somebody will hit the comments and be like, "Why don't you give credit to blah, blah, blah? They're the one that invented that." And I'm like, "None of us invented this stuff."
- 2:00:43 – 2:07:03
What motivates people to change?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Are there any commonalities in the catalyst moment that causes behavior change in people who are otherwise stubborn? So I think everyone that I, I sit with, and just even myself, there's a, there was a moment in my life where I heard something or something happened where I go, "Fuck, yeah."
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that was the day-- It was like a before and after moment, I call them. That was the day that I decided to take this shit seriously.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And do you see any commonalities in what that is for different people?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's such a fabulous question, and I don't have a good answer for you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because it's always so different.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It's so hard. I would love to say it was the rock bottom moment. I mean, it can be true. It's not always true.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Can I suggest another?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Please.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Maybe, like, big life changes like kids.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Death, friend, family.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Life becomes real.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I've heard that a few times on this show, actually.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You, you'll see that. Um, yeah, here's-
- SBSteven Bartlett
My dad had a heart attack and da, da, da
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... like, here's crazy. The threat of death doesn't motivate anybody.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If it would've, we wouldn't have a forty percent obesity rate.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Who doesn't know Obesity takes-- Everybody knows. It's not a information issue. You know the risks associated with alcohol, smoking, social media. That does not change behavior. You get closer, though, when it, it's at home, right? Somebody died in a car accident, "Fuck, I'll sto- I'm gonna stop, look at my phone when I drive," 'cause my neighbor just died.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
My ex... Like, that's the thing that makes you go too close to home.
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's so true. I was saying to my fiancée when I was, um, driving the other day in the car, 'cause I'm notorious for asking everybody to put their seatbelts on. If we get in a car, I'm the guy in a black cab or a ta- I'm like, "Everyone, could you put your seatbelts on, please?" My team know this as well. Like, if we going anywhere, I look around at every single person to make sure they have their seatbelts on.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When did this begin? When I was 10 years old.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And they came to my school. I remember being sat in the front row. I almost remember my seat number. It was that vivid for me. Two things I remember from 10 years old.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm.
- 2:07:03 – 2:09:20
Are my goals bad?
- SBSteven Bartlett
How important is it to get clear on your why?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You're not gonna love the answer because traditionally, when people approach me, they already have that figured out. They're getting to me, they figured out why they're here, or they're-- If they haven't figured out, they at least have, have had the motivation to seek outside counsel like that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So now they're getting to the what and how part.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about bad goals? I, I look back at my life, and I had some bad goals that set me up for failure.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Now, that's, that's more realistic to what we all do.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And this is a you're aiming at the wrong target.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was aiming at, my goal when I was 20, I think it was 27, was to go to the gym every day, and I failed.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I failed six months later, but then once I'd failed, it was catastrophic for me.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And how are you not going to fail?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah, but it, it, yeah, a- a- and-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, were you going to go every day the rest of your life?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It was a terrible goal because the day that I missed one day 'cause some, some flight, my en-- it was like my entire motivation was over.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, yeah. Sure. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then I was like, "Ugh, how do I get back on the horse now?"
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Here's an example. You wanna lose fat.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Your goal is fat loss. Cool. Why aren't you leaner right now? And you automatically think, "I have to exercise more and diet," and I'm like, "Great. That's the tactic. I wanna know why you're not there right now."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, what is the thing that's actually getting in the way? 'Cause, like, y- calorie, fine. Like, yeah, yeah. Like, you know that, though, but it's not working. What is really in the way? Do we actually have some hidden stressor? Um, a lot of times people will say things like, "I, I gotta lose fat so I can get healthy."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And we will generally say, "You need to get healthy first."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And then the fat loss will be a whole lot easier. That's the bad goal. And, and so we'll ask this question, like, "What would success look like? What would failure look like?" And when we hear things like, "Oh, success is I lose these 25 pounds," all right, great. Let me ask you this. If we lost 12 pounds and then your shoulder pain went away, you have normal bowel movements now for the first time in 10 years, your energy's way up, is that all a failure? No, that's success. So then we didn't just find success properly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So it is a huge focus of, of how we help people actually make progress in those areas that they've struggled with.
- 2:09:20 – 2:12:18
What is worth doing if you might fail?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Dr Andy Galpin, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing who they're leaving it for, and the question left for you is, if you were sure to fail, what would still be worth doing? What a great question.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Fantastic question.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I am ultra-competitive, but I really don't mind losing. So my answer to that question was, it sounds like a cop-out, but it's all of it, 'cause I actually don't care about failing that much. It just doesn't bother me. Like, I just like the competing thing. I like the doing thing. So my initial reaction to that was, like, God, being around my kids, right? There's n- you fail anything you want there, and I'm like, "We're winning, right?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
[chuckles]
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And then I went to business things, and I'm like, "I don't even really care about losing those." Like... 'cause you get to do it. You get to be active and whatever. So kind of a cop-out, but my answer would be [inhales] all of them, man. Like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
The podium-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The process is dope.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The podium is the process.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, man.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or the process over the podium. Hmm. Dr Andy Galpin, thank you so much. Thank you. You're held in such high regard by everybody. I think there's two reasons. I think it's so-- you're so deeply obsessed with this subject matter for reasons that we talked a lot about last time, but also I think the essence of your motivations is so unbelievably pure. You know, b- before we started recording, you were saying to me how, like, you, you, you're really not that concerned with the business side of things because what you'd love to do is just be focusing on the research, the education, and the coaching, and I think that says a lot about you, and it comes through. People understand that you're just deeply obsessed about this stuff in a way which allows us to benefit tremendously from all the work that you have done, and you're a wonderful synthesizer of very, very complex things. So please, uh, carry on doing what you're doing. If people wanna go and listen to your show or if they wanna go consume more of your stuff, if they wanna continue this journey with you, where do they go? Where's the best place to send them?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Well, first of all, thank you for those kind words and, and to be invited back. It's, it's a huge opportunity, and I will never be ungrateful for it. Uh, my podcast is called Perform with Dr Andy Galpin, available everywhere, and then andygalpin.com and social media, uh, Instagram and all that stuff is probably the easiest way to follow along.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I highly recommend you go and subscribe to Andy's channel. Um, we're gonna link it down below now, but it's, um, it's-- you're incredibly rigorous with all the work that you do. Having spoken to Andrew, Andrew Huberman, who's a, who's a good friend of, uh, both of ours, he, he's also told me just how utterly obsessed you are with truth and also your mission of helping people become who they could be. Um, and that shines through in all of your work, so please go and subscribe to Andy's podcast as well, Perform, and, um, I shall link all of his other resources below, including some of them that we've mentioned today, including the tests and questionnaires that we talked about. Andy, thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior, and the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out. I bet you you might love it
Episode duration: 2:12:19
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Transcript of episode dmz--DQty8o
