The Diary of a CEOThe Muscle Growth Doctor: Exercise At Night Is A Terrible Idea! Grip Strength = Disease! Andy Galpin
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,466 words- 0:00 – 2:49
Intro
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I've never seen a single paper that shows you can't lose weight, you can't get stronger. All of it can be done. But, you're paying attention to things that just do not matter. Dr. Andy Galpin.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the most highly respected exercise physiologists in the field today. He is the director of the Center for Sports Performance.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And he's a coach to many professional athletes. I'm gonna talk about how I lose weight, and how I improve my performance, move, sleep. But if you wanna live as well as possible for a long time, it comes down to a couple of things. Number one, you can't not pay attention to grip strength. And in fact, we can actually predict Alzheimer's and dementia risk via grip strength testing. And then leg strength and VO2 max, those things will out-predict how long you're going to live more than almost any metric. And I'm saying leg strength, because one of the most significant issues that we face during aging, it's our falls. If you look at the risk of dying after a hip break in those that are over 60 years old, there is a 70% chance of death over the next 15 years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow. What is VO2 max?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Your maximum ability to bring in and utilize oxygen. There was actually a study with 750,000 people and found smoking and diabetes had a 40% increased risk of dying, and VO2 max is 300%.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, fuck. So what do I need to be doing?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
It comes down to a couple of things. If you can do the stuff consistently, you're gonna be just fine. First of all-
- SBSteven Bartlett
But why do you care?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Most people will go through challenges at some point in their life. This is gonna give you the ability to not be in those situations anymore. Sorry, I need to collect myself a little bit here. There's just a lot of part of my story that the world doesn't know. Um...
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's absolutely crazy to me that so many of you have decided to watch our show, um, and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show. We now have five million subscribers on YouTube, which is a number that I just can't comprehend, and it's a dream that I absolutely never could have had. We started the Diary of a CEO just over three years ago now, and in my wildest expectations, we might have had 100,000 subscribers by now. So you can imagine how shocked I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into these conversations every week, um, and spend some time with us. So, thank you. And I made a deal with you, I made a deal that if you subscribed to this show, that we would continue to raise the bar. And in 2024, we're gonna raise the bar like never before. I've been working for the last nine months on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed to this show, and I'm very excited to deliver that for you. The production's gonna change. We're gonna go even further with our guests, and we're gonna tell even more global stories. So as always, if you appreciate what we're doing here, the simple, free favor I'll ask from you is to hit the subscribe button. Let's get on with the episode.
- 2:49 – 4:54
Enhancing People's Physical & Cognitive Performance
- SBSteven Bartlett
Dr. Andy Galpin, if someone's just clicked on this podcast right now, and if you were to speak freely about the things that you care about the most, what exactly is it that they would walk away from this conversation with in terms of value that would positively impact their life?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I've done hundreds of podcasts, and I have never had that question.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And I certainly never had it coming right out the gate. So, I love it. The way I would capture it would be, I want to enhance human performance. And when I say that, I want to make sure that you're not hearing sport performance. That means sport to you, fine, that's great, but I really break that down into three categories. People want to look a certain way. Whatever that means to you, I don't care. People want to feel a certain way, and people want to perform a certain way. You set the ground rules. You want to look this way. Y- When you say perform, when you think perform, that means X to you. When you say you want to feel, that means Y to you. Great, let's establish all that, and then my goal is simply to help you achieve all of those goals. So you want to be bigger and stronger and have more energy throughout the day. Great. You want to think more clearly. You want to be a better leader, athlete, spouse, parent. That's great. You want to, uh, be out of pain. You want to have a certain functionality, a certain... All those things are on the table. So when I say perform, I mean cognitively, physically, in whatever area of department that matters for you. All those are on the table. We, we analyze all that, we break it down, and we say, "Okay, this is the targets we're going after." Then my mission is just to help anyone I'm working with, but really broadly, the world, get better at that. I don't think I've ever seen any paper that has shown any genetic combination that shows you can't grow muscle. I've never seen a single paper that shows you can't lose weight. Never seen a single indication of any physiological marker that says you can't get stronger. Whatever you're interested in, nothing should stop you from making some progress in some area of your physical health, and if you do that, you got a chance.
- 4:54 – 10:37
Why You Care About Human Performance?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why do you care? Why do you care about human performance and exercise and cognitive performance? Where did that come from? What was the, like, first domino that fell in your life?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Sorry, I need to collect myself a little bit here. Um... I've been on a lot of podcasts, and there's just... I'm been in the media a lot, and there's just a lot of part of my story that the world doesn't know. Um... The shortest answer to that question was I grew up with sports being everywhere, right? And, and I played sports growing up. Everyone I knew played sports growing up. And I personally was an adequate athlete, which means-... I was good, but not exceptional, but I wasn't terrible either. I was told, uh, as a teenager and by the people around me, my parents and my grandparents, that, you, you know, you deserve nothing. Not in the negative way, but in terms of, like, no one owes you anything in this world. If you wanna get better at sports, you better train, and you better work harder. And, and in the most positive, loving, like, way possible, right? My ... I was very fortunate my parents were incredibly positive and supportive, and there's no negativity there. And so, it was just as simple as a matter of fact of, "Hey, you say you wanna win, then why aren't you working harder than everybody else?" Just the way that my parents raised us and the way that my grandparents and my siblings, um, there was just a sense of, like ... My ... Sorry, I'm trying to-
- SBSteven Bartlett
No, it's okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... give a more genuine answer, but, um, there's only so ... Most people will go through challenges at some point in their life, and, uh, m- I'm no different. I was just very fortunate to where my parents were in a position that my dad was a construction worker, my grandparents were construction workers. We grew up in the country. My mom did whatever she could to, you know, keep our house and things like that. And they raised us in a very positive way. They always said, "You're gonna go to college. I don't care what you do, what you spend your career on, whatever, but you're just not doing what we did." Just because they wanted us to have an easier and better life. Um, so for me, human performance was that, "Hey, here's your chance. Like, here's your chance to get out and do something." Um, this is gonna give you the ability to not be in those situations anymore. And I get to do that by being around sports all the time, which is, is pretty great. So, why I care ...
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the emotion, Andy?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Sorry, I've never d- been on the show in real public before. Um, there's a lot of things that people go through in life that are out of their control. To me, this represents stuff that will be within your control. And so, I give you the chance to make changes that you can control, your strength and your health. At least you got that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You tell me where the parameters are here, 'cause I wanna make sure that you're comfortable. But from that, I understand that in your childhood, there were things that you f- you couldn't control, and in, in ... What I heard there was that this was something that you could give you that control.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I don't wanna overplay my own situation. I had a tremendous childhood, had a tremendous life. Again, especially never being around alcohol or violence and things like that, like, I had a lot of great breaks and still had loving parents, support, positivity. There were a number of years, you know, as a child that were really difficult, and just being like, man, my parents never did anything, like again, never violence, never alcohol, never negative, never hate. Just ... Okay, fine. That was really horrible, really bad break. What are we gonna do? We're going to work harder. Like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Financially difficult.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, for sure. Um, and other ways. But the, the thing I appreciate is, like, many of the things w- ... The biggest one is just, like, it doesn't matter. We're moving forward. Like, not in terms of, like, ignoring it, we're letting it go, but like, okay, great, bad deal here. Got real bad luck, but we're, we're, we're pressing on. We are gonna overcome this stuff.
- 10:37 – 11:36
What's Your Academic Background
- SBSteven Bartlett
When we start talking about exercise and health and performance and all these things, what ha- what's been your academic and life experience that has built the foundation of everything that you know? Can you give me a little bit of a walkthrough?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. So I have an undergraduate degree in what's called exercise science. Kinesiology, it's same thing. I got a master's in human movement sciences, and then my PhD is in what's called human bioenergetics.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what happened professionally once you graduated from there?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So, as soon as I finished my PhD, I started my lab at Cal State Fullerton. Um, so I work and I'm now one of the directors of what's called the Center for Sport Performance there. So within that, we've got multiple laboratories, uh, biomechanics, strength and conditioning, um, motor control, motor learning, et cetera, and they all study ... The, the mission of that center actually is to study and disseminate research that enhances human performance.
- 11:36 – 14:21
What's the Range of People That Come to You & What Do They Want Fixing?
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the range of people that you work with that come to you and say, "Dr. Andy Galpin, I need help with this"?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, (laughs) oh my gosh. So we have traditionally spent most of my career working with our pro athletes. Um, I've been fortunate to work with Olympic gold and silver medalists, world champions, the highest contract in Major League Baseball and golf, all pros at every position in the NFL, et cetera, et cetera. But by far, in terms of numbers wise, we've worked with more executive clients than, than professional athletes. So our coaching program, RAPID Health & Performance.... is like, what if we took what we've been doing for a decade in only these elite athletes and put a system together for non-athletes? And that's exactly what we've done with that company, and it's gone exceptionally well. People that tend to come in for that, uh, kind of fall into a couple of buckets. A lot of times it's kind of like your- your adult athletes, if you will. So, "I wanna run a marathon, I wanna do something like that." But the overwhelming majority of people are just going, "Hey, I wanna just feel better, I wanna look better, and I wanna perform better. And I want to minimize my likelihood of missing." What I mean by that is, you can try a diet, you can try a thing and, like, see what happens for six weeks, and that's very effective, but some people have more money than they have time, and some people have been through the wringer. "I've been trying for a year, two years, five years. I haven't slept in a decade. What's it gonna take? I don't wanna miss anything." And so we do extremely comprehensive testing. Uh, it takes a very long time to finish all of our testing. We can get a volumetric measurement of each muscle in your body. So I can look at the size of each individual one. We can look at your VO2 max. We can look at cognitive performance. We're running very in-depth sleep assessments. We're looking at environmental factors in your house. Like, we're running everything possible that we go through with our high-level athletes. And by doing that, we're able to see and find what we call performance anchors. So these are things that are putting the most constraint on your physiology. And so the analogy I'll say is imagine you want to drive a car faster. People's initial inclination is to hit the gas pedal.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
That's great. My inclination is to look at your left foot, which is I wanna make sure your foot isn't on a brake somewhere. So before I let, uh, y- the gas pedal, let's make sure our left foot's off the brake. And in this case, that is a constraint. What are you doing to hold back your own biology? And so we can able to find those things, and then because of that, we can give them extremely specific solutions. And our program tends to be so effective because we can go through all this analysis that allows us to then give them very simple and hyper-specific plans.
- 14:21 – 20:51
What Stops Us from Reaching Our Optimal Performance?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you talk about that left foot on the brake analogy, which I thought was a really nice sort of crystallizing analogy, what are the most common, um, things that we have our left foot on the brake with in terms of, uh, uh, are there fundamental things that you see most- most often that are kind of getting in the way of us reaching our optimal performance?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. You wanna think about these in a couple of buckets. We call these stressors.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So the way that your body works at all times, in fact, I think this is one of the traits that separates human physiology from any other animal. Uh, we have a better ability to adapt and respond to our environment. That's the single thing your body is trying to do at all times, right? Pushing and pulling. It's always reading and sensing, trying to get to a certain place. Stressor comes in, and it adjusts. Okay, great. That's a good thing. We categorize those stressors into two major areas, what we call visible stressors, and then hidden stressors. Visible stressors are things you're doing that you are visible and aware of. So you went and worked out. You felt that. Great, that's a stressor. You drank alcohol. You felt that. You didn't sleep tonight. You feel these things, right? You can see them. You smoke cigarettes. Like, you have all these things, uh, your diet, your nutrition. So all those are analyzed from a perspective of their... One of the most common ones, well, the obvious ones you've probably covered countless times, right? Don't drink alcohol in excess, and don't drink... um, try to have quality water and sunlight. And honestly, like, the- the, you know, 15-year-old-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... health, like, could probably tell you, like, what are the five pillars in, of health? And, like, that would- you would line those things up pretty well. Now, where things get more interesting in- in our stuff is the hidden stressors. So these are things that are putting equal or greater stress on your system, but you can't see or feel them. So this could be things like a vitamin or mineral insufficiency.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You, no one wakes up and goes, "Oh, man, like, my vitamin D is low today."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You don't- you don't see that. You don't feel that, right? Where you know, like, "Man, I ate all-you-could-eat pizza last night. Like, I know why I feel this way-"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
"... 'cause of that thing I did last night." Um, if there is a pathogen, if there is an- something suppressing your immune system, if, uh, endocrine system is not happy with something going on, oxidative stress, something like that could be happening. Um, a lot of times these can be falling into sleep as well. We've seen a number of times where people have a, um, a self-perceived, "I sleep okay. I sleep pretty decent." And then we can actually run real true in-depth analysis, and we can see hu- In fact, we've had multiple times where we've, like, very likely saved somebody's life 'cause their self-perceived sleep was pretty good, and we were able to actually see, like, "Your- your step's away from a heart attack." Um, and in fact, we put them basically in a hospital within a few weeks, and- and we're- we're told many times like, "You basically saved this guy's life." That's happened countless times. Though there are things that are going on that are beyond your perception that we can see, um, whether it's through some of our molecular biomarkers, whether it's, uh, again, our brain analysis. Like, a lot of the stuff that we can see. Um, other ones that are common are things like muscle strength, muscle performance. People don't realize how telling those can be over your overall physiological health, but you don't necessarily see them. A really easy example is most people, um, are somewhat aware that grip strength-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... is a incredibly important predictor of... Uh, in fact, there's a really cool paper. It's titled something like Grip Strength is an Indispensable Marker of Aging. Something like that, right? Which is basically saying like, you can't not pay attention to grip strength. And we've actually published a paper last year. Tommy Wood, um, from the University of Washington, a neuroscientist led this project, and we've got a couple of them going. But one of the things we found there is- is we can actually predict, um, Alzheimer's and dementia risk via grip strength testing. A- and strongly. We actually have a project right now that we validated in the UK Biobank, which is 500,000 people or so. We validated it in the American equivalent, which is called NHANES. Um, we can actually predict muscle quality from four blood markers.And we can also predict the risk of dementia as well from those four basic biomarkers, and those are also directly tied t- to grip strength. And so looking at things like that and saying, "Okay, you have some potential signs of, of either short-term or long-term physiological stress that's happening and you don't necessarily feel it yet because you're 35 or 45 and you don't feel super weak, but we're seeing these early signs." Um, one other example of that, and I'll, and I'll caution to say that there's only been one paper on this. So in science, that's a way of saying, "Eh, well, we'll see."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, "Mm." Okay, but just as one example, uh, this paper came out last year and it showed that the symmetry in your grip strength, so the difference in strength between your right and left hand, is actually an early predictor of neurological decline. And the reason is, think about this, in order for your muscles to contract, they have to be sent a signal from your central nervous system, your brain and brain stem. And if you're having significant asymmetries from one side to the other, and by this they meant over 10%.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So if you have a grip strength of 40 kilos on the right hand, 10% of that would be four kilos. So if your left hand is 30 kilos, that's way more than 10% difference. That may be an early sign of, of early denervation of that left side, and so neurologically, um, potentially losing ground there. So just things like that are, are things we're able to detect that says, "Hey, we are seeing things that are putting stress on your system, whether you realize that or not." And so they can be these molecular biomarkers, but they can also be other things that people just either don't have the technology or they don't know how to, or, or they're not aware that that can give you tremendous insights into the overall stresses. Scientifically, we call this allostatic load or allostasis. But that's the marker we're after ultimately.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And in the case of grip strength, I find that so fascinating because I, I was reading about that in your work, um, a while ago, that it could also be the case that I've just trained one side.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So, totally.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It could, it could... So it, it's-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If you've trained one side-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... then you're... Yeah. Like, then if you've only gone after one side, you've done either a sport, or you have a lifestyle or an occupation that is really one side dependent, it could be as simple as, as that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But for the typical person, we tend to-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... be fairly even and asymmetrical, uh, s- sorry, symmetrical with our grip strength.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Remember, these are population averages.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sure. Right.
- 20:51 – 24:35
How Vitamin Deficiencies Affect Our Body
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
- SBSteven Bartlett
When we were talking about some of these invisible stresses, um, my partner came back to the house two days ago and said, "Babe, I've just found out from the doctor..." 'Cause she did a bunch of tests and she hadn't been feeling so great. But one of the things we found out was that she was very deficient in vitamin D. And it made me wonder how many people are walking around, and you must have seen this in some of the, the lab work you've done, with a deficiency in things like vitamin D. And what is, what is then the symptom of that deficiency?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So, vitamin D is one of the more common deficiencies you will see. You will not see or feel that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
This is another example of potentially hidden stressor, right? What could you be experiencing? Vitamin D is associated with low bone mineral density, low muscle size, low muscle strength, cognitive function, uh, immune function, um, mental health. So you could be experiencing any number of things, and vitamin D being low could be contributing to that. It's very likely to be the sole explainer of, of any individual thing-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... but it could be playing a large impact. Um, vitamin D is also one of the higher safety profiles. And so typically what I tell people is I don't like when people go after supplements, specifically vitamins and minerals. You can get away with vitamins a little bit more, minerals be really careful of. But vitamin D, honestly, you can go pretty wild with it, and the chances of you being deficient or even just subclinically low is what we'll call that, chances are pretty high. And the chances of you running into issues with the vitamin D are also very low. So it's one of those ones that mask, like, pretty good chance to be effective, pretty low risk. I'm okay with people d- like really pushing vitamin D. Obviously-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Supplements.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... the better answer is the sunlight.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right. Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
But if, if you wanna take a supplement and you don't have the... you don't have money for, or availability to get blood testing done and you're not sure, going after a little bit of vitamin D is... there are worse things you could do. We'll put it that way. So I'm okay with that one.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Are there other deficiencies that you're more concerned about in terms of, um, vitamins?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Well, well, I... You should be concerned about vitamin D being low because it is so effective in so many areas. Uh, that's generally how vitamins and minerals work. It's also very, very, very common. Uh, maybe I, I sort of inadvertently blew past that so much because there, there are things that we are going after much more that people are unaware of. Uh, when you see vitamin D on a blood panel, and if it is low, you can take vitamin D. That said, you do wanna be really careful if you get blood work done of trying to just move those numbers up and down. And I'm gonna say this for a couple of reasons. Vitamin D is one of those ones that's okay. If it's low, take vitamin D directly, move it up, no problems there. That said, when you go to interpret blood work, you have to realize most of those values when you're being told that number's high or that number's low, I won't say they're irrelevant, but they're misleading at the least. And that's to say, l- you've got some blood work done, right? And it gives you a whole bunch of things back. Let's say you did a basic thing like what we'll call a CBC and CMP, so a complete blood count and then a cardiometabolic panel. Those are like the most common things you'll get, and you'll see all kinds of stuff in there, white blood cell counts and vitamins and, and hormones and things like that. Okay. Great. And then on the o- as you look over at the paper on the right side, it's gonna tell you a reference range. And that reference range is gonna tell you whether you're high or low, right? And so on that-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... test you did, right, um, it probably said, you know, your vitamin D level is 20 and it should be between 30 and 100 or something like that. Great.Well, it's that 30 to 100 part where things get squirrelly.
- 24:35 – 28:20
Why We Don't Get Accurate Results from Blood Tests
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Because did they take into account ethnicity? Mm-hmm. Okay. Those numbers differ based on your ethnic background, right? What is normal, as we said earlier, is also not the same as what is common, okay? And it's definitely not the same as optimal. Now remember, and I'll try not to say this too many times, I don't deal with disease. High dise- I deal with, like, I'm not in a disease state, but I want to get better and optimize. And why I'm drawing that distinction is because on a blood test, you're looking for do you clinically flag for an actual metabolic disease or otherwise, okay? Most of those things are set against that. And so their reference ranges are built off of databases like the UK Biobank, like NHANES here, who are generally not healthy people. Mm-hmm. And the people that are in those data... In fact, we actually ran this and published this last year, that in the NHANES database, in America at least, the people that had the muscle mass had no association between their muscle mass and their exercise history. Which means these people did not gain muscle by exercising. Hmm. Now some people exercised in this database, but you're talking very, very small numbers. In addition, when they build reference ranges, so they're building it off of populations that are not the healthiest, and as you're aware, our, our world is not getting healthier. Mm-hmm. So those numbers are moving, okay? (laughs) Now when they build a reference range, they use typically most companies... By the way, every company that you get a blood draw from has a different range. So they're not all the same, okay? So the, i- i- it's not like ... They're not nefarious. There's not ... It's just like they have different databases to pick from. Many companies will give you a reference range based on their own database. Okay? So all you're seeing is like what's normal for the people that bought their lab. Right. Not population, okay? And they use a 95% curve, which is to say 95% of people land within this bell curve. And so if you are within that, you are normal. Two and a half percent the top, two and a half percent low. So what that could mean is you could be in like the 94th percentile and be told you're in the reference range. Eh, easy example is something like blood glucose, okay? Now normal blood glucose is gonna be in the mid fif- or mi- mid-80s rather, 80, 85, something like that. Mm-hmm. Okay? Technically, you're not gonna flag on most people's databases until you get past like 110, 120, 130 plus you're actually in diabetes. And so you can come and flag for like 108 and technically, medically, you're not diabetic yet. You're not pre-diabetic yet. But there is no world on this earth where somebody has a fasting blood glucose of 108 and they are healthy. Hm. Or they are optimally healthy, we'll say, right? That is cl- In fact, we have strong evidence you get past 95, you're starting to increase your risk of oxidative stress, retinopathy. Tons of issues happen with a consistent blood fasting blood goes over 95. And so a great example of that would be you would be within the reference range there. You'd be told you're normal, and then I would look at it and be like, "That's absolutely suboptimal." Is it clinically, officially diabetic? No. But I'm telling you right now it ha- to perform at your absolute best, that's not the range you wanna be in. I'm gonna make it worse for you. So the reference ranges are one particular concern. The second one is, and the reason I brought this up with vitamin D, vitamin D is okay, it's low, you push it up, no problem. Most of your markers you don't want to do that with them. Because physiology is responding to physiology, which means something moves something up and then it moves something else down, in the way, it's the push-pull thing. Mm-hmm. So if you don't know what you're pushing up, you might be pulling something else down. You're pulling something else down, it might be pushing something else up. You don't know what you're doing there, so you don't want to treat those markers as like A and
- 28:20 – 32:23
You Need to Understand Why Your Body Markers Are Down
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
B and C are low, I should make them all go up. You need to understand why they're doing that. Low testosterone is an easy example. Low testosterone is oftentimes a symptom of something going on. You need to go backwards and figure out why is your testosterone low to begin with, right? Because if you can do that, then, then you get it out of the way, testosterone will go up. We've done this a, a countless times with people, right? Uh, we've, we've doubled testosterone more times than I could even count without using hormones at all. Again, I'm not against hormone therapy, like, at all, but you don't always necessarily need it if you can understand, well, why is your testosterone suppressed as it is, if it truly is. Sometimes it's not. Like, you know, there are normal ranges for different people. But if we can see something going on where you've got immunosuppressed and there's depression or something else happening, that's, again, subclinical. So you're not sick all the time, you're not like in a hospital bed, but it's like, oh, okay, we can see A, B and C happening. Those are known to be associated with, you know, uh, compromised testosterone, clear those things up and then back out of the way and watch testosterone just take off. Uh, easy example of this one is, um, my, my colleague Dan Garner, he did this one famously. He had a, an athlete or a client who actually had a, a, a number of markers that are in, uh, blood tests, so basophils specifically that are associated with allergic reactions. They're not an allergy test, okay? But he noticed that this particular individual was doing everything right, but that number was off the chart. Found that actually what was happening is there was a, a tree in this gentleman's neighborhood, that it was causing him a little bit of a response. So he had to make sure he stayed away from that tree. His basophil number went back to normal and his testosterone rocketed. Really? Yeah, absolutely. It gets more complicated, okay? So take something like, uh, albumin. Uh, albumin's a protein. It's the, uh, it's actually the protein in egg whites. Mm-hmm. Which is great. It does a lot of things. It's a carrier protein though, so carries, um, red blood cells. It carries cortisol throughout your body. It's also what's called an acute phase reactant, meaning it will respond to acute changes in your body. Albumin is a really good way to measure hydration. Most people have no idea about that, right? It's because when you get dehydrated a little bit...A- albumin is measured based on concentration, so how much is there relative to how much blood. So, if you take the total amount of blood down, then the concentration of albumin looks like it goes up.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Right? You see what I'm saying? So, in- when you're dehydrated, albumin levels will go up. However, when you're inflamed, it goes the opposite direction.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And so if you look on a blood test, if you're a little bit dehydrated and a little bit inflamed, what's albumin going to look like?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Level.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Dead in the middle.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
This is exactly what happens when people do things like, "I feel suboptimal or terrible, or just not at my best, but my labs look okay. Nothing's off the markers that much. Like I don't- I'm not clinically deficient or excess of something." So everything can be within the reference ranges, but given the reference range problem, given the association problem, and giving other things that we, uh, realize happen as that multifaceted approach, we can absolutely see what- what's explaining why you're feeling what you're feeling dead in your blood panels without anything ever being off your reference range. In that particular case, if your albumin was up or down, and then you went in and did something specifically to change your albumin, you've actually now messed with the entire system when it had nothing to do with albumin. It was just the fact that you needed to drink some more water and lower overall inflammation. So, I say that t- to caution folks of saying, like, be really careful about, especially if you're going to go to minerals and then absolutely with medications, please let a qualified physician or somebody that understands blood work, uh, at this level really make sure that they're helping you. Um, one more time, vitamin D is a good example of something that's okay. You push that one up, no problem there for the most part. There- there are times when it is, but the rest of them, folks, like, be a bit careful there.
- 32:23 – 37:21
Why People Struggle to Sleep
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales) So what are the- if I- if I stay away from the temptation of the industry that says, like, drugs and minerals and supplements are the answer to everything, and I come back down to these sort of fundamentals-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... of health and performance, sleep is one of the fundamentals, right?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, it prob- arguably the core, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, thinking about sleep then, so many of us are suffering with sleep. My sleep, f- for whatever reason, is really, really good in terms of duration. I don't know about quality. We can (laughs) ... You're- you're making a face on me.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I don't know about quality, but the duration is great. And I speak to so many people, I think in- in increasing numbers that are struggling with sleep for whatever reason.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If someone comes to your labs, you know, and you realize that there's an issue with sleep, A, how do you realize there's an issue, and what are the first steps you take to help correct that so that they can get that foundation i- in place?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So, I want to know exactly how you're sleeping, so I know exactly why you're sleeping that way, so then we know exactly what to do about it. And this is why, frankly, our success rates are so high. Okay, what do we want to do? I want to run the most in-depth analysis of your sleep absolutely possible. So I have a company called Absolute Rest. And so what we do is we actually build full functional sleep labs in people's houses. And this is all wireless. So we can run full, full clinical grade, FDA-approved sleep studies in your house. You don't have to go to a hospital, you don't have to go to anywhere else, right? Um, we're gonna run that, we're gonna run this all wirelessly, and we're gonna run, uh, we're- we're looking at not only depth of sleep. Um, there the- the s- the gold standard in science is called polysomnography, right? So it's the, like, the wires attached to your brain, all that stuff. Actually don't think polysomnography is the best way. There's a better way to do it called cardiopulmonary coupling, where we can actually look at your autonomic nervous system and how that's actually responding. So, I prefer that method. We'll do both. We- we actually run full PSG and, um, uh, cardiopulmonary coupling as well. But we're looking at that. So we can look at are you... Do you have bruxism? Like, are you- are your jaw clenching at night? Uh, we're looking at y- are your leg moving? We're doing that also while we're looking at position. So we're having this on y- on your right side, on your left side, on your back, where are you at. Um, we can actually do a whole bunch of other fancy stuff with ocular metrics, with eye tracking, with facial scanning, and, like, all kinds of other stuff. But we wanna s- most specifically look at how you're sleeping. We're looking at then why. And so in terms of why you're sleeping, that's in a bunch of different buckets. One of the buckets is environmental. And so we actually run full time environmental scanning of your sleep environment. We actually have a little device. Uh, I take it with me, like, everywhere I go. So, uh, we have our athletes always checking the environment when they're in hotels and places like that. We can always run environmental scans to make sure that, um, it's an optimal thing. So we're looking for temperature, humidity, but carbon dioxide, uh, dander, pollen, allergens, molds, things like that, we can all measure in real time instantaneously on that thing. So we want to make sure nothing in the environment is causing the sleep. If we can check off environment, then we're looking at behaviors. Um, you've probably heard a lot about sleep hygiene and, you know, don't watch exciting TV thrillers before night. Don't get on your laptop and work and answer emails and then fall asleep, try to fall asleep five minutes later. That's all behavioral stuff, right? And- and I'm happy to talk about as many of those as possible. Um, but that- that's the, like, stuff people have kind of shared with the world a lot, right? But th- and then those are very true and very real. Outside of behavioral, then we're looking at physiological. So, what are your actual melatonin concentrations? How much serotonin are you making? Dopamine? Are there... Uh, what is it in your blood biochemistry? Uh, precursors? What is actually happening? And so we're taking salivary markers and blood markers to see what is going on in your physiology that is, um, potentially causing or is a result, iron concentrations, B vitamins, like a ton of stuff that are- that are needed for proper sleep physiology. We're measuring all of that. We also are measuring psychology. So we have a very in-depth, um, way to- to evaluate psychology of sleep. So previous trauma and PTSD and associations. There's a, uh, funny enough, there is a ton of actual sleep disorders caused by people's psychological state of their sleep.... meaning we have had a lot of success, you know, fixing sleep problems because people just have such a negative association with their sleep because they've slep- slept so poorly for so many years that they actually start getting anxiety when it starts getting late at night, 'cause they just know they're not going to sleep well.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
And so now actually, the, the problem is gone, but they have such a problem, they get into... This is a common one of like, "I get so tired, I get so tired. I can't... I fall asleep on the couch, and then I get in bed, I lay there for hours."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Or the, uh, the classic one we get here is, "I fall asleep immediately, but then two to three hours in the night, I wake up, and then I'm shot awake." Okay, great. Like those are all, like, pretty clear solut- or causes a lot of the time, so they have very clear solutions, um, that are not... not very often
- 37:21 – 42:57
How to Improve Your Sleep
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
supplements.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What do you do in those cases? 'Cause I, uh, a lot of people that have messaged me speak to exactly what you've described there.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. So we would go back and actually figure out, uh, again, is this behavioral? So are you doing the, no offense, the idiot proof stuff?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, are you drinking? Are you, like, doing all those things? So and, a lot of times, it is simple as that. A lot of the times, you don't need to spend a dollar-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... on any assessment. It is really, truly, do the stuff people have told you 100 times to stop doing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, on the psychological point.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If it's just an anxiety reaction.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Well, y- I started there for a reason-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... 'cause that can be causing it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah, okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So it is an actual sleep problem you're happening- you're having because of your behaviors.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Okay? Now, let's say it's not all those things. Remember earlier when I said your body's superpower is adapting and responding, right? That's exactly what's happening. If you get into bed and you learn a pattern of continuing to lay there and stay awake, or wake up in certain hours, that pattern will be recognized and that pattern will be repeated. You have to break that pattern. So how do you do it? This is not very common, but I'll give you like an extreme example, okay? There's a thing called sleep restriction training. Okay? It's very effective, but it is brutal. We don't go into it often, one more time, but we have gone to it. I have used it. It, it can be successful. This is the same for people who wake up after a few hours or struggle to fall asleep. So what you do is, let's say, um, you wanna get up at, we'll make the math easy here, 5 o'clock in the morning. Okay, great. And you typically get in bed at 10:00, and you lay there, and you're kind of up all night, and you have all these sleep issues, right? And then you wake up at 5:00, you're exhausted. So then you have to have caffeine all day, and then you're up from your caffeine, so then you have to have melatonin, right? I can't tell you how many times we've looked at people's next morning melatonin concentrations and seen them 20, 30, or 40 times higher than the upper limit on the reference range of value. So then what happens when you're walking around with-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... extreme amounts of melatonin the next day? Like, you're sedated. Great. So how do you break this cycle? Well, one of the ones is you stop those habits. Like, not that much caffeine that late, and then you stop the melatonin. Okay? I don't like melatonin, like, at all very much for almost anything. But we're gonna set the clock, and you're gonna wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning. I don't care what happens, you're waking up at 5:00 in the morning, period. And we're not even going to get into bed until 11:59. So you're gonna have five hours of sleep at most. And do you know what happens night one? You lay there, and you don't fall asleep, because you're in that pattern, right? And you're also staring at the clock knowing, "I have to get up at 5:00." And you're laying there worrying and thinking about how you're not sleeping, and it is brutal. And you're going to have a couple of hours of sleep, and you're going to wake up at 5:00. And you are going to get up at 5:00 every single day, period. No sleeping in on weekends, okay? You're also going to not get into bed, no matter how tired you are, you're not getting into bed until 11:59. If you do that for a week, what will happen very quickly is your body will start to realize a new pattern of, "Yo, the second she lets us lay down, you better fall asleep."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
"And you better not mess around during those five hours, 'cause we're not getting any naps. We're not getting anything else," right? You will start to fall asleep quickly, and you will jump right into deep sleep, and you'll, you'll go through a p- a pretty compressed but a proper sleep architecture. Every week then, you add back 10 to 15 minutes. So next week, you go to bed at 11:45. And you know what happens next week when you get into bed at 11:45? You lay around, falling, trying to fall asleep? No chance, right? 'Cause now you've got a week with pretty gnarly sleep restriction. You fall asleep immediately, f- 10 or 15 minutes a week after that. And so what you end up doing is you backfill until you get back up to your eight or eight and a half hours. But the pattern you're learning the entire time is, "When I go to sleep, I fall asleep, and I do not wake up until that next time." So you stop the overnight wakings. You stop the struggling to fall asleep. It takes a couple of months clearly, and it is brutal, but it is very, very effective.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How effective from your research?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
We, we've never had a problem with somebody and not working-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... putting it that way. Now again, we don't use it very often.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You don't need to.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
You can do a subtler version of those things. Um, so I want to acknowledge that as an extreme sort of thing, and I don't recommend doing it, especially if you have legitimate health concerns, like you wanna have a, an MD or walk through that, something like that on you. You can do it on a more condensed scale though. If you... Generally, if you're laying there struggling to fall asleep, uh, almost every sleep scientist is gonna tell you, "Get out of bed." 'Cause you don't wanna set that pattern of like, "Every night, I toss and turn for an hour and a half." That's a problem, right? And so you wanna break out of that pattern one way or the other to not just set up that routine. And the same thing would be, this is why it's important to not do things first thing in the morning that are deleterious to sleep. So rolling over, waking up, and immediately turning the TV on, or immediately looking at social media, because your body will anticipate that response. It will then start a cascade prior to that, that kicks you up and starts waking you up earlier and earlier every morning, 'cause it knows that stimulation is coming at 6:00 AM. And so instead of you waking up at 6:00 AM with your alarm and then checking your phone-... your body starts to wake you up at 5:45, 5:30, 5:15, 'cause it just knows that thing is coming at 6:00. And so making sure that your morning is not jumpstarted, um, in that direction, that it really does wake up appropriately, is really important to those that, like, wake up super early and they just can't get back to sleep.
- 42:57 – 48:32
Is 8h the Optimal Sleep Time?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's obviously a- a well-known pro- might be a myth, I don't know, that says we should sleep for eight hours a night.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Well, any time you throw out numbers like that, again, you're talking on average for most people most of the time. Uh, we certainly have some people that are high performing at seven-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... maybe seven and a half. Um, we certainly have plenty that need nine, 15, need more. Um, there's actually excellent research on, um, it's called sleep extension research. When you look at... So this, I love this 'cause this is a great example of going from like, are you talking about risk of long-term health, or are you talking about maximizing performance? Okay. Now, the research is clear going from like seven and a half hours to nine hours is probably not needed to minimize your risk of brain health over there. Okay. Like seven and a half, probably fine. However, if you're trying to maximize your performance, it's a different answer. The sleep extension research will show you that th- those classic one, Cheri Mah's work out of Stanford many years ago now, but she took the Stanford basketball team and she had them sleep an additional two hours a night in season, right? Th- they asked them to sleep for 10 hours a night. The end result was, I think, like 1.8 hours of additional sleep per night for five to eight weeks in season. Okay. Now, there's no control group. There's- there's lots of potential criticisms. I'll acknowledge all that, but it doesn't matter because what we're getting at here, you'll- you'll see the bigger point. And so she did this in high level athletes in season, right? Um, these also were not chronically sleep deprived, so they didn't go through like three hours of sleep and like that. They were sleeping seven hours or whatever and said, "Go from seven to..." Or, uh, eight hours, go from eight to 10 on average. Th- those numbers differed for every person, but that's what she did. And what she saw was a 9% improvement in free throw percentage. Enormous, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wow.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
About a 9% improvement in three point shooting percentage, improvements in reaction time, reduced sleepiness, um, improved mood, and a handful of other markers improved in season in Division I basketball players. Now, probably would've gotten better in season anyways, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like that tends to happen. Again, no control group, so I don't want to oversell it, but I think it's pretty powerful saying, hey, going from okay sleep to maximizing your sleep, pretty big improvements, um, in all these tests. In some of the tests, like the- the reaction time test, they did daily for the whole season. So it wasn't just like, well, the one time they did a test, they happened to get better that day. Same thing, the free throw and three point shooting percentage stuff was done like in a weekly practice. And so they measured it, you know, weekly over the season, and- and pretty marked improvements. That's been repeated in tennis, swimming, cycling. It's been done in as little as 45 minutes of extra sleep per night for three days, and we're seeing improvements of reductions in cortisol by 20%, uh, has been shown in rugby players. Uh, reductions in body fat, improvements in VO₂ max. All this stuff has been shown when you go from this like even seven to seven and a half hour range to eight, eight plus. Um, there's been, there's actually evidence of 30 additional minutes per night, uh, reduces the likelihood of getting a cold by four times. So good to great, it's not the same thing. Now, I run many companies and a lab. I have two small children.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like I- I- I know some of you out there are going like, "Oh my God."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
"If I could only sleep for 10 hours." Like, trust me, like my wife will murder me just hearing that. But my point is not that. My point is to say, look, what if, what if that work at Stanford was exaggerated? Okay, so instead of improving three point percentage by 9%, it was actually 5%.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Or four. Like I- I don't know, but who- who cares, right? Pretty powerful. And look at all the other studies. Like they're- they're all generally... In- in science, when you see multiple studies from different labs, different scientists, different groups, different populations, and they're all generally pointing towards the same thing, the numbers aren't exact and the mechanisms, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that is when you start to get real confidence. And with- with sleep extension, that's where I believe the collective research is. It's like there's a lot of studies from a lot of different scientists and a lot of different athletes measuring different things, and you see this three to 10% improvement in most measures when you go from anywhere between 45 to an additional two hours per night for as little as three days to up to five to seven weeks. So, uh, from a normal person perspective, if you can sleep even 30 more minutes, it's probably gonna matter. If you can, if you need it, if you're a person who needs a nap and does well with napping, that can be your additional 30 minutes or 45 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever. Um, so different people will get this differently. I personally hate napping, like as- as a personal human, um, but we'll use it a lot, a- a lot actually in our, um, like our executives and CEOs. We do a ton of- of very concentrated, like intentional napping. Um, that's super, super effective. So whatever it is for you. Um, I personally do better if I just go to bed earlier.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
I can't sleep in. Like that- that will never happen. But if... I can definitely go to sleep earlier. I can't nap and those things. So whatever works for you and your situation and your physiology, um, but it's generally a good idea. Um, I can't make the argument that you'll live longer by going from eight hours of sleep to 8:30. Not at all. But I can pro- make a strong argument that it will make you perform better.
- 48:32 – 50:49
The Misconceptions of Sleep Debt
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about sleep debt?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know, 'cause there's a- a lot of misconceptions that if I sleep for four hours today, I just make it up-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... tomorrow by sleeping another four hours. And I think I've lived under that illusion for a certain, several years of my life.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) It's an excuse I tell myself. I'll just make it up on the weekend.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
The, here's the misconceptions about sleep debt.Um, one of the guys that works for us at Absolute Rest, Stephen Lockley, uh, from Harvard, he, he will always laugh about this and he'll say, "Yeah, man, you can't time travel."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
As in, like, you can't go backwards and make the debt up. So if you only slept for four hours, you'll never get those additional four hours back. But that's not what we're saying with sleep debt. Okay, you can't do that, but you can absolutely go from consistent diminished sleep to getting back out of that sleep debt. So when you think about sleep debt that way, you absolutely can do it. You phrased it well, though, a second ago, which is to say, it is a huge mistake to think, "I'll have inconsistent sleep, short sleep, and then just sleep more, and over the course of seven days, as long as the total amount of hours add up to the same, I'm fine." And that is, is a terrible strategy, and I don't think a single sleep scientist in the world would disagree with me there. Trust me, we interact with as many of these people as you can. So one of the things, um, you mentioned earlier, you said your total sleep duration is good. Okay, great. That's only one component of sleep. You also mentioned sleep quality. That's another really important component. I would argue the overwhelming majority of people have never had an accurate assessment of sleep quality, but that's another thing, right? What people also don't realize is sleep consistency. And in fact, a lot of data will suggest that sleep consistency is more important than total sleep time, meaning you need to be going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time. Plus or minus 30 minutes is the goal. I'm a human too. I will stay up, you know, later and, you know, occasionally do things like that. So we'll give our people typically 45 minutes, a grace period, but as, like, uh, your default state, you should be trying to go to bed and waking up plus or minus 20 to 30 minutes most of your nights. Um, if you can do that, you will see many of the benefits of longer duration by simply getting more consistent. The other major component of sleep here is sleep timing. So,
- 50:49 – 55:02
The Power of Doing Tasks at Your Usual Circadian Times
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
um, the performing at the same time of day, the same type of tasks is as important as sleep duration and sleep quality, meaning w- we take advantage of this with athletes all the time. Y- you can predict winning percentage of NFL games, NBA games, NHL games, and Major League Baseball games. The big four in America over a 30-year span can be predicted by simply looking at who performed, not in their time zone, but who performed in the time that was their normal circadian time. What I mean by that is, let's say you had a West Coast team. Whether they traveled to the East Coast or not doesn't matter, but if they played on the East Coast at the same time of day that they normally play on the West Coast, it doesn't matter that they got on a plane for three hours, they, they perform at the same time of day that they normally did. They have a competitive advantage somewhere between 2 to 4%, depending on the study, maybe a little higher, over the team that is playing at home in their same building if they're playing at a different time than they normally play.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So I'll give you, like, one example. We worked with the University of Washington football team this year on their sleep. And so if they play a normal West Coast game at 1:00, um, in normal West Coast football time, 1:00 p.m., and then we had to go to the East Coast, which we didn't have to too often, but next year we're gonna start having to go there, right? And we got there and we played a game in Ohio, but we played it at 4:00 Ohio time, which is still 1:00 our time, and we don't have any concerns with jet lag or travel. But in fact, in that case, the Ohio team, who typically plays at f- you know, a different time, is having to compete way earlier or way later, and they're actually at a, at a circadian disadvantage because we're playing at the same local circadian time. So it's not the time change that gets people. We do the same thing, by the way, with, with our executive and professional clients when... Especially in neg- negotiations. If you're doing, like, a team meeting and you have to think well, that's great. But if you're gonna, like, actually have to battle somebody, like negotiation or make a really hard decision, I want you making that decision on your local schedule, and I want your opponent off schedule.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Don't, don't tell anybody I said that. But you have an advantage.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So you get the East Coast person-
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's interesting.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... to have, to have a, a, a 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM West Coast meeting, that's 8 or 9 o'clock their time, their, their cognitive performance is going to be lower than yours, or the inverse. So, um, we make sure we give our people advantages.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking about the gym, because the time that I go to the gym-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... fluctuates wildly. Sometimes I go in the morning, and I'm going to be honest, because it's what I have to do, sometimes I go at midnight.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Terrible idea.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I know you're going to say that.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah, we actually have, we encountered this a number of times where we see, uh, sleep issues, we see energy issues, we see struggling to lose body fat issues, things like that. And they come in and they think they want this, like, secret recipe of supplements and, you know, blood markers, and they want all this stuff. And I'm like, "We do it," and I'm like, "Yo, you gotta stop training at night." And we start looking at things like their respiratory rate, their HRV, other markers of sleep quality, and it can be as simple as the fact that you are doing too much high intensity stuff in the evening. That has a carryover. That carryover can be a couple of hours for some people, it could be six hours for other people. And so if you are doing a, a training session at 10:00 PM, you better expect not to sleep very well. That's going to happen. Now, some people are a little bit more resilient to that, and others it's really, really, really damaging. And so we have to pull people off of exercise a lot at that time, or at minimum go, "Hey, yo, for you, if you're going to train at night, it needs to be restorative training." Short duration, get a little sweat going, don't get your heart rate up too high, don't do anything too neurologically fatiguing, and then get out of there. We got to do our harder work in the morning. Um, I'm just make... It's not always the case, but, and, uh, it's more often than not that we have to peel people back. That said, again, I work with professional athletes. We play Major League Baseball games at 7:00. We're not done till 10:00 or 11:00. Whether it's like, hey, they literally can't control it, that's their job, or you know-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Busy, yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... their schedule wise or whatever, you, you can work around it. The world is...... not perfect, but in an ideal scenario, uh, you really want to pay attention to that, 'cause that can, can seriously affect...
- 55:02 – 1:04:55
Environmental Factors That Affect Our Sleep
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are the topics on sleep that most people just aren't talking about? C- because you're right, there's the 3D proof stuff we all know about.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, but, but from your research, you must have discovered another set of issues that just don't get the same level of spotlight and attention.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Um, I mean, I could, I could go on about this stuff for a long time. We've mentioned the environmental piece of it, really important. We actually have a, a literature review, um, in review right now, that, that should be published fairly soon, uh, ent- entirely on environmental factors related-
- SBSteven Bartlett
I've never thought about it before. When you started talking about sort of pathogens in the environment, I thought, "Jesus Christ, is that... I didn't know that was an issue."
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And CO2, I didn't think that was an issue when I was asleep.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Oh, absolutely. So think about it this way. When you take a breath in, you breathe in oxygen. When you take an exhale, and you breathe out, you're breathing out CO2. So the difference is O2 and CO2 is the carbon molecule. Now, your tissue is breaking down carbon for all of metabolism. In fact, the way that you produce all of your energy, doesn't matter if you're using carbohydrates or fat. Remember, fat is just a big long chain of carbon. That's what fat molecules are. Carbohydrates are a carbon that has a water on it. It is a carbon that has been hydrated.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So the chemical equation for, like, glucose, blood sugar, is C6H12O6, which means six carbons and six H2O. That's all carbohydrates are, right? It's a big chain of carbon. So whether you're using carbohydrates or fat, it doesn't matter. They're e- the end product of metabolism is gonna be three things. Water, ATP, which is the central energy currency, and carbon dioxide. Great. So it doesn't matter what you're using for fuel, and it doesn't matter what you're using the fuel for. Exercise, digestion, building your immune system, thinking, it doesn't matter. Remember, your brain is a massive suck of, of energy, right? Uh, uses the majority of your ATP throughout the day is, is to power your brain. So great, doesn't matter what it's coming from or where it's being used. More metabolism for any reason, from any source, results in more carbon dioxide buildup. You take the carbon dioxide out of your organs and tissue, and you put it into your blood. Your body is paying attention to carbon dioxide deeply. All right? That's one of the primary ways in which you regulate your pH. Your body will regulate pH a- al- almost, over almost anything else in the, that it has. Uh, blood sugar, pH, um, uh, blood pressure, things like that are, like, the tight things that it doesn't want to mess with. pH is arguably the number one thing. And the reason is, if you get too alkaline or too acidic, uh, enzymes don't work. So then everything shuts down. So you want to keep... Your pH will stay very, very, very tight. You could do basically whatever you want. You could eat and drink. You could do anything you want, and it's gonna keep pH, like, really, really tight, right? You... It's hard, hard, hard to change. So it's watching that CO2. You take a breath in of O- O2, you're pretty much using that to run and regulate cellular metabolism. You're managing O2 by altering respiration. And so if you were to hold your breath right now, and you were to... 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds would go on right now, I... You could actually do this at home. I would encourage you to hit pause and, and do this if you can. Not while driving.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If you don't breathe, what's gonna happen is, you're gonna not breathe in oxygen. Okay, fine. But really, you're gonna start building up CO2, because the way that you do is you build it up in the blood, you get it to the pulmonary system, and then you exhale, and you get rid of it. So your breathing, your respiration rate is entirely determined by how much O2 or how much CO2 you want in your system. That's what regulates respiration. Such to say, that air hunger you're feeling when you're n- holding your breath, it's not that you're running out of oxygen. You have anaerobic metabolism. You can produce boatloads of energy without oxygen. You have enough oxygen in your system currently to go extensive amounts of time. You're not running out of oxygen. What you're feeling is a buildup of CO2. It's the CO2 that drives your respiration. So when you then breathe out, you've exhaled, and then you're probably gonna go, ha, ha, ha, and breathe pretty hard for a few times, because what you're saying is, "There was too much CO2 buildup. I need to dump it so I can lower that level." Okay? Now, physiologically, we call that hypocapnia. Capnia is, is carbon dioxide, and hypo is low. If you breathe a bunch, ha, ha, hyperventilate, you're getting CO2 concentrations very, very, very low. We're gonna ... if you hold your breath and hypoventilate, you let CO2 concentrations go up. CO2 concentrations have a bidirectional relationship between psychology and physiology.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Okay? So if CO2 rises, not only do you feel a physical sensation in your chest, you feel a physical panic, but you'll feel a psychological change. Right? It is telling you, you need to move into what's called sympathetic drive. This is your fight, flight, or freeze. Right? And this is great. If you think about this from a normal exercise perspective, we'll get to a more interesting one here in a second, if I start moving and start expending energy, I start building up CO2, I want my brain to know, "Hey, this is potentially a fight or flight situation." Doesn't matter if it's that extreme, right? I mean, it's just a gradient. Be more focused, be more alert, be more aroused, be more intent. Your vision literally narrows, right? Be more focused. Um, I'm on task. I'm... Like, right now, I guarantee you, our respiratory rates are higher than they need to be. Um, our HRV is a little bit lower, right? HRV is heart rate variability. That's a measure of, of where I'm at in the sympathetic, parasympathetic drive, right? I'm more focused. Our vision's very narrow right now. I got four feet to look at, right? Uh, and I'm attuned. I'm paying attention. Like, all of our senses are really heightened right now. When we're done, we're probably gonna go the exact opposite direction. All right? O- our vision's gonna open back up. I'm not gonna be paying things, et cetera. I'm gonna go into parasympathetic. Parasympathetic is rest, digest. It is chill. It is zen. It is depressed. It's lethargic.It's all these things, right? So parasympathetic, sympathetic is not good or bad. You, as a normal human, want high resilience on both sides. When you go to bed tonight, I want you to feel lethargic. I want you to feel no motivation. I want you to feel zen. Great. I want digestion and things like that. Right now, I w- I don't want you to feel super zen.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like I want you to be a little bit like, di- me- me- same way, right? Little bit alert, speaking a little faster than you'd like to be, but really focused, driven and motivated. That's great. I don't want you feeling that, though, before going to sleep. I don't want you feeling lethargic when it's time to wake up. I don't want you feeling lethargic when we got to go to the gym. So it's about just making sure we're on when we want to be on and not when we don't want to be on. So your CO2 is going to tell you that. So a physical stressor, like the exercise, elevates CO2, tells the brain, sympathetic drive. A psychological stressor does the exact same thing. So we could be not doing anything... We're experiencing that right now. We're not moving at all for the most part, but I guarantee you our cortisol levels are higher, our, uh, glucose is being dumped into the blood, elevated. Uh, I guarantee you our strength right now is higher. Our, our speed, our power, our muscular endurance is higher right now than in the exact same situation if we were watching TV. Okay? It's like we are primed and ready to go. Our nervous system is actually literally primed. You just let out neurotransmitters into the system already that are there ready to activate, so it's faster. Okay? So that's awesome. That's telling us to, to go the direction we want to be in. Now, if CO2 goes the opposite direction, we have the opposite feeling. Okay? So we get super zen, super chin. So what you want to be doing is breathing at a rate to where your supply meets your demand. If, um, my supply is up a little bit and I have a little more demand, then I'm going to breathe a little bit more. (exhales) Normal respiration rate at night should be something like 11, 10 breaths per minute. Okay?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
If you're looking at your overnight sleep tracker and you're seeing you're breathing 16, 17, 18 breaths per minute, a couple of things are probably happening. Number one, you may have some form of sleep apnea. You can't get enough oxygen, (breathes rapidly) so you're ventilating more than you need to be. Number two, you could be in sympathetic drive more than you need to be. Okay? Now that could be happening for a number of different reasons, but you're over-breathing. You shouldn't be breathing that much, because your demand, uh, of energy is very, very low, and so you're dumping CO2. By doing that, your CO2 concentrations get too low. This puts you in a little bit of a state we call respiratory alkalosis. Your kidneys will oftentimes, not always, often though, respond by trying to put you into metabolic acidosis. And so there's a lot of research showing that people that are diagnosed with metabolic acidosis, it's actually misdiagnosed. In reality, it's respiratory alkalosis that caused the... It's the over-breathing that caused the problem. The metabolic acidosis, um, i- i- you'll start changing how much bicarbonate you recycle, electrolytes. Um, we see hydration issues with this constantly. So if you're an over-breather, like you're going to have all kinds of hydration problems. All that's going on over there. Okay, so getting back now that we have a little bit of foundation to what's really happening with CO2 in your room, if you are what we call CO2 sensitive and you're intolerant to CO2, so a little bit of CO2 starts building up and your body already kicks you into a position where it thinks you're way too high, it then will tell you to start breathing. (breathes) You'll start over-breathing. That whole cascade I just explained then kicks in. So what happens to your HRV? Gets worse.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
What happens to your ability to fall asleep? Gets worse. "Oh, I wake up and then I can't get back to sleep." You look at your respiratory rate, you, you check your CO2 tolerance, you're going to know exactly why, right? Now, I'm about to finish the circle. If it's not those things, and you simply are sitting there, let's imagine you and your partner are in your room. Um, do you guys have any other living things in your room that sleep with you?
- 1:04:55 – 1:06:34
Create the Optimal Environment for Restorative Sleep
- SBSteven Bartlett
My dog.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Your dog?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
What size a dog?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, not big. No- not big. Uh, a, a foot and a half.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
blows raspberries ] Okay. Now, um, without getting too personal here, what does your, uh, room look like when you guys are asleep? How big is the room, roughly?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, it's about the same size of the space we're in now.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Okay, fantastic. And is your door shut? Is it closed?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sh- always closed.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Always closed?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Perfect. You, you couldn't be teeing me up better here. So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... you're at night laying there breathing in, and you're breathing out, and you're breathing out CO2. And your lovely little bulldog is breathing out CO2. And your partner's breathing out CO2. So what's happening to the CO2 concentration in that room as that door is closed?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's rising.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Right. Going up. Generally not an issue. Not a huge deal. But one of you is maybe a little bit CO2 sensitive. The amount of CO2 in your room is rising. You're re-breathing that CO2 right back in. CO2 is then getting too high. That's going to cause your entire system, like we said earlier, when CO2 levels increase, this kicks off sympathetic drive, puts you into fight or flight. Now all of a sudden HRV goes down a little bit. Resting heart rate goes up a little bit. Arousal goes up a little bit. Your body temperature changes. You're not getting into the same sleep stages, and we're having either a struggle falling asleep, staying asleep, et cetera. In addition to that, um, there's a handful of studies now, we need way more research here, but there's a handful of studies that have taken people at what's called 900 parts per million. So that's the CO2 concentration. That's the level, right? Below 900 parts per million, we have no issue. And so normally, like, I'll check my house, um, if, if our doors are closed and stuff all day, I, myself, two, uh, shepherd mix, you know, rescues, um,
- 1:06:34 – 1:09:50
Sleep Debt
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
wife, two kids. Ours will usually get up to 15, 1800 parts per million. Now the research on this stuff has done experiments where they take people up to like 3000. Okay? So t- can I make a strong claim that if you're at 1100 parts per million, it's really gonna screw up your sleep? Um, I, I, I don't think so. But now we're playing a game of like, the studies have gone to the extreme-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... and what they will see is a huge reduction of sleep quality, both subjective and objective. So actually measured on like a, a PSG system or similar, as well as subjects saying, like, "I did not sleep well last night."... next-day cognitive function, memory, reaction time, um, sleepiness, um, wakefulness, um, next-day executive function, decision-making at work. All this stuff is significantly, and when I say significant here, I want to make sure I'm saying not only, like, research, statistically significant, but of a magnitude that matters to your life, right? So it's both clinically relevant and statistically significant. So we're seeing real reductions in sleep quality. In fact, there's a thing called, something with, like, a building sickness?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Um, where people, like, they, they have headaches and they have, uh, they feel like, you know, brain fog and all that stuff, because they're in large, like, apartment buildings, and the quality of the air gets so low. And by that, I'm specifically referring to CO2, that they feel these issues. And once they get CO2 out of the room, then this building sickness thing goes away. So if you're in that situation, and that starts to rise, and it does get up to 22,000 or 2,500, um, which is not that crazy, you're absolutely going to see reductions in sleep quality. Um, sleep onset, again, which is a time, it's called latency, the time it takes you to fall asleep, waking events, disturbances, and then next day, sleepiness, wakefulness, and cognitive function will be compromised, certainly up to 3,000 to 3,500 parts per million. Um, what happens at 2,000? I don't know. Like, again, we need more research, like, where is the exact line that starts to matter? I do know you get up that high, it starts to matter, and that number's not crazy, especially for people who close their door.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. I was just thinking, "Damn."
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Right? People who live in apartment buildings, uh, or hotels where they can't control, people that live in environments where they can't open up their windows 'cause it's too hot or too cold or rainy, or the air quality is really poor, or whatever the case is. So if that happens, a couple of steps you can take. One you're not gonna do, 'cause I don't do it either, which is don't have your dog-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
(laughs) ... in the room. Uh, I have two dogs, and they sleep right on the end of my bed. Like, not on my bed, but on the floor below it. So that, that's out of the question. But making sure you have a lot of ventilation in your room. If you can and you want to use a fan in your room, that's fine. Don't make it too loud. If, if you want to download, there's all kinds of apps you can download on your phone that allow you to measure the decimals of noise. Keep it under 35. 35 decimals. Um, same thing, by the way, if you're using, like, a white noise machine. White noises will actually compromise sleep quality. They'll make it worse if they're too loud. The other thing to do is if you can get away with having your doors and windows open during times of the day where you can at least let that clear out a little bit, and then if you can shut them. You know, even if you can open them up for half an hour or something like that, um, all those steps will help manage CO2. That's just CO2. We haven't even gotten into the other stuff in
- 1:09:50 – 1:12:06
How to Stop Travels Disrupting Your Sleep
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
your environment.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So is there any other big ticket sleep items that are unobvious? 'Cause CO2 for me, that's a revelation for me.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah. Sticking with the environmental theme, there are some things you can do for travel-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... that are not super well-understood. One of them is, we've talked a lot about patterning. If you can pattern your sleep environment at home with your sleep environment on the road, you're going to have much more success. Many people are aware of the first night phenomenon, which is the first night you get into a new place, you tend to struggle-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... with sleep. So the first night in a hotel or another place, doesn't matter how comfortable it is.
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause the body's on edge.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Bingo.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
So how do you take that away? Well, make the body think it's at home. So how can you do that? The sound, the smell, the temperature, all of this is, all these sensors are going into your brain. If you artificially design your sleeping environment in your house in a way that can be transported with you, then you can cut that problem, uh, down in large part. So, uh, if there's a particular scent. I, I don't mean, like, have a, a plug in that ... there, but-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Diffuser.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
... some, um, like, lavender is very common. Lavender is highly associated with sleep quality. Um, so a lot of people will do, like, a little bit of a lavender spray on the bottom of their bed or in the corner of their room, or just something very, very subtle that you're not paying attention to. Um, there are companies that make little lavender sprays, right? And so then you have that lavender scent at your house. A-again, something that you would barely even be conscious of when you walk in. Then you take that scent on the road with you. When you get in your hotel room, you can spray it around a little bit, and now your body will go, "Oh, okay, we're at home." Uh, not gonna fix it entirely, but these things can, you can start stacking little behaviors like that. Trying to stay in the same rhythm. Do the same thing the, the 90 minutes before sleep that you did at home when you're on the road. So don't all of a sudden, you know, like, switch out and shower at a different time, or eat at a different time. Like, try to be as consistent with your sleep routine as possible, uh, would be the bigger ticket. But then little things like, you know, having the same setup. If, if you have a noise machine, take that thing with you and try to bring that environment as much as you can. Um, but the smell is a very big one, because it's very high reward, very low risk, and, you know, pretty easy to take a couple of ounces of a spray or something with you on the road.
- 1:12:06 – 1:13:33
How Important Is Your Heart Rate Variability (HRV)?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is sleep equal to recovery? 'Cause I'm thinking, okay, now I'm really well slept, sometimes I wake up, like last night, in fact, and I'd had eight and a half hours sleep. I'd flown in from London, landed here in LA. My recovery on my WHOOP band here was 10, 12%.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
It was really, really low, and I was shocked. Even though my HRV was quite high, it was quite confusing. I, I spend a lot of time thinking about my HRV. I'm pretty obsessed with it.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I spend a little bit less time thinking about my, my recovery. But my HRV, me and my friends almost are, like, competitive with it. We all have a little league table. Me and my girlfriend, it's one of the first things we talk about in the morning every morning. Do these things really, really matter?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
HRV is a very, very strong metric. It is effectively telling you w- the overall balance of your autonomic nervous system. And that is very strong. There's a lot, there's, I don't know, 50-plus years of research on HRV. It's not new. It's not, like, it- it's very well-established. It's highly associated with actually, um, long, long-term cardiovascular risk, strokes, um, hypertension, blood glucose, hypercholesterolemia. Like, lots of things that are associated with, with HRV. Um, mental health, anxiety, depression, tons of stuff. We also know, uh, interventions that are generally associated-... to be positive for you. Exercise, um, stress regulation, breath work, meditation all generally improve HRV. And things that are associated as poor for your health, like lack of exercise, low-quality nutrition, alcohol use, are also things that are
- 1:13:33 – 1:16:16
The Impact of Keto Diet and Carbs on Your HRV?
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
going to reduce.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In December, about December the 20th or 30th, around that time, that 10-day window, my HRV was fantastic. And then I went keto-
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... for about four, four or five weeks. For the entire time I was keto, my HRV was in the bin. And then I came out of keto and my HRV was still in the bin. And to be honest, it's only in the last three days, and we're in February now, we're like mid- mid-February, where my HRV has started to recover.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I was like, "What the hell happened?" Was it the keto that I did? Was it... I don't know.
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Um, again, a lot to say on that. Uh, (laughs) depends on how far you want me to go down this road. I'm not surprised. Um, I w- I would love to see your blood work, and I could probably tell you exactly what's happening from that, that will explain a lot of what's going on. The reason I'm saying that is we have seen, uh, many, many times situations which people are fatigued, HRV goes down, sleep... Like, we see all these issues, right? And you'll see kind of a c- interesting combination here. Um, and I've used this example a lot, 'cause it's come up so many times, where testosterone starts to go a little bit low. Then you start looking at another thing called sex hormone-binding globulin. It's one of the hormones, it's a sex hormone-binding glo- globulin is like a collection of proteins, right? So it's a protein that holds onto sex hormones, like testosterone. So when that gets really, really high, the amount of free testosterone goes down. That's what free testo- r- how much is not being globbed up. And so you see this combination of, like, sex hormone-binding globulin gets really high, testosterone gets super low. And then you start poking around and you look at insulin, and insulin's low. And you're like, "Oh, okay, great." And we have, we know that there's a known association, there's an inverse relationship between sex hormone-binding globulin and insulin. Okay. Now, could be a million things. You don't know a- a- a- anytime... Like, this is one of the reasons why I love blood chemistry so much, because it allows you to be in a little bit of a detective. Now, you're always working off the human, you're always working off symptoms. Y- y- you don't treat or coach blood markers. It's a bad way to go about it, right? But you're looking for clues. Okay. So you're looking around and you're poking around there. And, like, trust me, like, you can check the record. I've given this example plenty of times, so I'm not d- I'm not just saying this for you. It's just going to work... You're teeing me up, man.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
Like, you just lightened me up here. So in this particular case, you think, "Okay, why is insulin low?" Again, could be many, many, many things, so you start asking additional questions. But what we've seen a lot is you start poking around and looking at what carbohydrate intake is like. And if carbohydrate intake is insufficient and lower than what that person needs... Now, that number is different for every person, situation, all context. But if it's lower than what you need in that particular instance, then your insulin can start getting too low. As a result of that, sex hormone-binding globulin goes up. As a result of that, testosterone starts going down. As a result of that, you start feeling the feelings of low
- 1:16:16 – 1:18:20
The Effects of Introducing Carbs Back into Your Diet
- AGDr. Andy Galpin
testosterone. So the solution in that particular case, we give people carbohydrates. Do you know what it feels like when they have some carbohydrates back? Insulin starts going up, testosterone starts going up, they start feeling incredible. In addition, they start sleeping better, right? So we know there's an association between carbohydrate intake and serotonin concentrations. This is the molecule that helps you fall asleep at night. There's also meta-analyses that will s- show a pretty tight correlation between carbohydrate intake and sleep onset and sleep quality. That is not at all to say you can't be ketone and sleep great. That is not at all to say you can't be ket- i- in ketosis and have high testosterone. Absolutely possible, and I'm not against it. We just see that one often enough to where, um, this is a good example of it just didn't work for you in that situation.
Episode duration: 2:28:37
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