Simple Fixes For A Good Night's Rest - Shawn Stevenson (4K)

1. 0:00 – 7:40

   Are Sleep Issues Causing the Mental Health Crisis?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Andrew Huberman mentioned in an interview that I did with him recently that the potential mental health epidemic that we're seeing at the moment could be downstream of poor circadian rhythm, uh, dysregulated sleep, disrupted sleep. How much truth do you think is in that?

   2. SSShawn Stevenson0:16

      Ooh. Circadian medicine is really top tier science right now. We're synced up with the 24-hour solar day. All of our hormone production, our neurotransmitters, we're synced up with what the universe is doing. And the funny thing is humans can kind of hide out from that, that interface, but our, our genes are really expecting us to be in constant communication with what's happening outside. And humans are really interesting, we can create our own habitats. We're kinda like big hairless beavers, or many of us are hairless. Um, but even when we're creating, it's still nature, because we're a part of nature, but we can e- essentially hide out and create a 24-hour day artificially. And so our circadian timing system is getting really screwed up. So absolutely I agree with him, and here's the rub, right now in the United States estimated about 115 million Americans are regularly sleep-deprived, to boot.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:11

      Out of 330?

   4. SSShawn Stevenson1:13

      Yeah, so it's a sizable amount, and we're talking about on a regular basis, like essentially daily. And my big thing is always looking for what is the connective tissue, why should people really care about this? And I, I always like to tie it to metabolic health and how we look, right? And a really fascinating study was done, and this was actually published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and they looked at people's biometrics and used CT scans to look at their belly fat for five years, tracking a group of people. And they found that people who were sleep-deprived gained over twice as much belly fat in that five-year period. And sleep-deprived in this particular study was less than six hours a night. All right? So kind of there's something about six as being that sweet spot, and by the way, there is no cookie-cutter amount of sleep. That's one of those things that, you know, we just kind of drink eight glasses of eight-ounce water a day, like it's very superficial. Is that the same for Shaq and for Simone Biles? It's gonna be different, and the same thing holds true with sleep. It's not just the number of hours, it's the quality of those hours. It's a lot like the calorie conversation, you know, yes, calories matter but the quality of those calories definitely matter. And I've been a big proponent in pushing into popular culture this term epicaloric controller recently, which we can circle back to and talk about. But in particular with sleep, I wanna share one other piece too because especially right now in this energy equation and how important this is and some of your friends and colleagues as well like doc- Dr. Gabrielle Aline, really good friend of mine, we're looking at how important testosterone is not just for maintaining our muscle mass and our energy but for longevity, and this is critical for men and women, and it's finally really shifting gears to be all-encompassing of humanity how impo- how important testosterone is. Now listen to this. This was published in 2011 in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, top tier medical journal here in the United States, and they tracked young men, average age about 24, all right? And they brought them into the lab and they put them in this awards study. So they sleep-deprived them for just one week, all right? So they basically got five hours of sleep for one week. That one-week period their testosterone dropped 15%, all right? Now that might not sound like a lot, but suddenly that's as if they're 10 to 15 years older as far as their testosterone production is concerned. This is the power of sleep. Testosterone is right next to HGH, our most sleep duration dependent hormone, it's kind of like you're a human Tesla jacking into your charging station at night and filling up the testosterone. There are things we can get little spikes during the day, but a- basically when we get up, testosterone is just going down, and when we go to sleep, it starts rising again.

   5. CWChris Williamson4:04

      So if you are not performing in the bedroom or in the gym in the way that you want, it might be because of how much sleep you're getting on a nighttime?

   6. SSShawn Stevenson4:13

      Absolutely, and it's always the first thing to go unfortunately, you know, and it's just part of our culture, but fortunately things are, are changing. You know, this has become a big part of our popular conversation especially in health circles, and it tends to trickle its way out to the larger culturescape eventually. But, you know, my first book came out in 2015 I believe, and it was the first sleep wellness related book to become an international bestseller. It had never been done before. It's just like the public wasn't necessarily interested in that topic, but I argue against that. It wasn't that we're not interested in it, we didn't know how much it mattered, and it wasn't framed in a way that made sense. And that's kind of my story going to a conventional u- university and having biology and having kinesiology and nutritional science but really not understanding how that is applicable to me as a human being.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:02

      Yeah.

   8. SSShawn Stevenson5:02

      Right? So when we're in biology and we're looking at the human cell, my professor did not know nor had they made that revelation nor did any of the students that as we're looking at the mitochondria, that mitochondria is made from our meals. As we're looking at the cell nucleus, that's made from the nutrients that we eat. As we're looking at the cell membrane, it's made from our menu. All of the things we're looking at is made from food, and that interface between our diet, our sleep, our movement, all of these things are impacting the cells that we're actually building right down to the, the level of the genes. And for probably about 10 years now, I've been really keeping my finger on the pulse of something called nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics. So these are fields of science looking at how our nutrition is impacting our genetic expression. And one of my mentors, incredible, incredible thinker, uh-... pioneer in epigenetics, Dr. Bruce Lipton. He's a cell biologist, and he really impressed the, the term epigenetics into popular culture. He's the guy. And one of our early conversations, he was sharing with me that, you know, when they did the Human Genome Project, we just knew there was gonna be like a million different genes for humans, right? Because the- there's bananas that have more genes than us. There's corn that has more genes than us. They found about 25,000 genes. And the question was, how are we so diverse? How do we look so different? How are personalities so different, our different levels of health and functionality, all these different things? What's so remarkable about us that he highlighted for me is that with one epigenetic influence, like a bite of food, it can change a gene's... Because in, in school we were taught DNA to RNA to protein. So e- eventually we're printing out proteins. One bite of food can change what proteins are getting printed out to the variety of about 3,000 different options of what type of proteins are getting printed. So basically, copies of you that are getting printed out. There's 3,000 options with one gene. So that's the power of food, it's the power of sleep. These are the top tier things to pay attention to, but we tend to run out, "Let me get that new supplement. Let me get that, you know, whatever." We're looking for all these external-

   9. CWChris Williamson7:20

      Mm-hmm.

   10. SSShawn Stevenson7:21

       ... you know, inputs, but truly for my money, I'm putting it on optimizing your sleep first and foremost, and then let's work on the other stuff so you can be a badass while you're awake.

   11. CWChris Williamson7:33

       Yeah, the performance enhancer that you're looking for is not in a supplement store, but it's, uh, your bedtime and your wake time. What are...

2. 7:40 – 18:14

   What is Causing Mass Sleep Problems?

   1. CWChris Williamson7:41

      What is it that's causing this mass dysregulation? Like I can throw bro science out there and guess what I think is going on, but is there any longitudinal l- uh, research looking at the average amount of time that people used to spend asleep, do now, quality of sleep, micro awakenings, REM, deep, et cetera? What are we looking at kind of, uh, across time with regards to sleep over the last 50 years?

   2. SSShawn Stevenson8:05

      Ooh, such a good question. So as you know, things have changed dramatically in the last about 50 years. And one thing to, to kind of transition into that, and part of the reason that my first book, Sleep Smarter, was so successful is that I understood the missing link between all this incredible insight and all the science we've gained the past 50 years and making it applicable for people, which is we need to make this simple because it is. And so coming from a conventional education, I started off my career, I've been in the field for 21 years now, speaking in the language of academia, and a, a little not so fun fact is that it takes upwards of about 15 years for us to have like a gold standard, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study, all the things that might affirm, you know, what we're talking about today with improving your sleep quality, before it gets, like, put into conventional education. All right? It's a huge lag. And this is in the age of the internet, all right? It doesn't make any sense. And so what I did was, because of working with people, which is very different than just, again, working from theory, which that can be true, but it's different when you sit face-to-face with somebody and they're depending on you to help them to get where they wanna be. And I knew this really interesting secret about humans, which is we want change, we want change, we want the results, but we don't want to change much to get it.

   3. CWChris Williamson9:34

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SSShawn Stevenson9:34

      And okay, I'm gonna say that again. We want change, but we don't want to change that much. We might not be happy with where we are or who we are, but we're comfortable with that. And so changing too much at once creates so much turbulence, and so we really... What we would ideally want is take who we are now and give us the new body. Take this person, give me the money, right? I don't have to qualify myself to have it. And so knowing that this is the case, I started looking for what are the lowest hanging fruits, right? What are the things people can do to optimize their sleep quality without having to turn their life upside down? And so I was looking for things that were science-backed, but very simple. Now, saying all this to transition this, this, into this question, in the last 50 years, we've seen the onset of hustle culture, right? There's always... Throughout humanity, there's always been a certain guild of people who are bur- quote, burning the midnight oil and looking out and, you know, standing guard for our tribe and whatnot, but that's a small sect of humans. For the most part, nighttime, danger. We don't see like other animals do. Like, that lion can see you at night. You can't necessarily see it. We're not really hardwired for nocturnal activity. With that being the case, optimizing what we're doing during the day is going to help us to actually sleep better at night, and that's really the key. So one of my tenets is that a good night of sleep starts the moment that you wake up in the morning. And understanding we've kind of devolved from our state of seeking shelter, seeking comfort at night in a safe place, and waiting for the sun to rise basically so that things are safer, now we've created this situation where we can basically, like I mentioned earlier, create a 24-hour artificial day and we can just be up whenever. So this is a new opportunity for us as, as people. Yes, there were people back in the day that got... They had a lot of candles, you know, but it's still very different. We evolved even with fire for quite some time, and that candlelight... Here's a really interesting study, and this also points to, like, one of the things that we can do to improve our sleep quality. Some researchers at Cornell took a test subject and put them in a completely dark room, all right? They wanted to track their actual sleep quality, so they were looking at their, their brain waves, they were looking at what their brain was doing. And they put a light the size of a quarter behind their knee, and that was ene- enough to throw them out of their sleep cycles. So it was disrupting their sleep quality just by that light exposure behind their knee.

   5. CWChris Williamson12:06

      Is this something special, photoreceptor modulation behind the knee? Or is this the same as if you did it on the palm of my hand or the back of my shoulder?

   6. SSShawn Stevenson12:15

      It could be pretty much anywhere because our skin from head to toe has photoreceptors.... that pick up light and send signals to every other cell in our bodies.

   7. CWChris Williamson12:23

      But because this particular subject was so deprived of any light, the very small amount of light was, "Uh, we have no signal. Oh, we do have a signal, and it's behind the knee."

   8. SSShawn Stevenson12:34

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson12:34

      "And we will follow that based on... And we will then run the circadian clock off that."

   10. SSShawn Stevenson12:38

       Because our c- all of our other cells are trying to figure out, "What time is it?"

   11. CWChris Williamson12:41

       Yep.

   12. SSShawn Stevenson12:42

       Right? There's this light coming in-

   13. CWChris Williamson12:43

       The knee knows.

   14. SSShawn Stevenson12:45

       (laughs) Knee-see.

   15. CWChris Williamson12:48

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. SSShawn Stevenson12:48

       All right, I knew a girl named Knee-see. So here's the thing, when we understand this really remarkable influence, if you talk even with, you know, Andrew Huberman in our conversation, really talking about this advent, this new term called light pollution, and how light is top tier as far as really syncing up our, ourselves, our biology with all of life, right? I mentioned that we're kind of lined up with a 24-hour solar day. And so it's light is really the kinda tip of the spear, and so using that to our advantage, recently because we simply didn't know, we just started consuming, you know. Like there's a lot... We're in the golden age of television, there's a lot of great stuff to watch. We got our devices and, you know, we got FOMO. There's also, there's so much going on, we don't wanna miss out, and so we're constantly having this influx of light information and it's completely throwing our clocks off. I know it when I'm in the studio, for example, all day under artificial lights, I can have... I see a noticeable detriment to my sleep quality that night. It just, it is what it is. And I do... But now of course I know little things that I can kind of help to optimize this, and so pointing to a tip like what is one, what are one of the things that we could do knowing that our skin... And by the way, let me give a very logical example. When the sun is hitting your skin, it can literally change the color of your skin. All right? You have photoreceptors that are picking up light all the time. All right? And the sun is very different though, the, the lux, the, the, the power of that light is so otherworldly. It is such a special thing, man. Like it's like, uh, that's how we have life here, and now we of course in our culture we've been sort of programmed more so to fear the sun, right? And so we need to have a more balanced perspective, but at the same time, of course respected, it's very powerful. With that being said, it's not moonlight that disrupts in the same way that artificial lights do, which the moon can seem kind of bright, like it's a bright moon, but it's the lux of that light, the way that it's, the way that that light is emanating, we evolved with that as well. It's like cellular data that makes sense, like it's nighttime.

   17. CWChris Williamson15:04

       Andrew said that firelight doesn't disrupt circadian rhythm.

   18. SSShawn Stevenson15:08

       There it is, very simple. And so if we look at what we have had thousands upon thousands of years next to as far as a light that we create... Well, not that we created, but we can generate with fire, that is a different hue, right? It's kind of this orangish-reddish, like it's a, it's a softer tone of light. And so if we do want to have some form of light in a room, maybe like a, a good salt lamp or something on a low dimmer for night light versus the bright ass, like, night light that my grandmother gave me. You know? So here's my point, one of the best ways and the first way that I noticeably improved my sleep quality, and it was one of those launching pads to writing the book in the first place, is when I got some blackout curtains for my room. All right? Total darkness. N- never really slept in total darkness before, ex- except when I was at like... if I go to travel to speak at an event and they had like a really nice hotel room and the blackout curtains, I was like, "Man, this, uh, this..." And I would attribute it to the place, like, "This place is great," but it's the sleep quality that happened in that environment. And so I got some blackout curtains and that night, man, my sleep was phenomenal. And so if you are okay with the dark, which most of us are, but of course some people have, you know, some n- neuro associations to where they want to have, you know, maybe a little bit of light, that is one of the fastest ways to improve your sleep quality, because melatonin requires basically two prerequisites. One is darkness and the other is kind of a cyclical nature, right? Being able to be produced at the same time essentially closely day to day, and this is why we have this new term of social jet lag as well, where, you know, again, we kinda stick to a routine but on the weekend everything is like whatever-

   19. CWChris Williamson17:02

       Mm.

   20. SSShawn Stevenson17:02

       ... and then we have that lag on Monday. You know, you got a case of the Mondays. It's not the fact that we're going back to work, it's that, "Man, my, my whole shit is thrown off and I'm sleep deprived now."

   21. CWChris Williamson17:11

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3. 18:14 – 26:51

   Cultural Shifts That Have Impacted Sleep

   1. CWChris Williamson18:14

      light pollution, which I think everybody can kind of see 50 years, uh, you know, go back 100 years, I don't even think that you would have had, uh, lights within the home be widely available.... advent of radio, which is stimulation but no l- no light, TV, devices, blue screens, tons and tons of screen time. What else have been the biggest changes? I mean, you mentioned even sort of cultural impacts like, uh, sort of the desire to hustle and grind. Um, what else do you think have been the biggest movers and changes, aside from light pollution over the last 50 years?

   2. SSShawn Stevenson18:50

      Such a great question. You said the key word. You said the C word.

   3. CWChris Williamson18:54

      Culture.

   4. SSShawn Stevenson18:54

      Culture, exactly. Let's define culture. Culture is defined as the shared attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors of a group of people passed from one generation to the next. All right? Culture is functioning as an invisible hand that's guiding our decisions. Here in the United States, we have aspirations of freedom. We believe that we are totally free, but our freedom is based on the choices that we've been exposed to in our culture. There are certain choices that we don't even know exist.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:28

      Yeah. You're free within the constraints of what you're aware of.

   6. SSShawn Stevenson19:30

      Exactly, because even our cravings are cultural. The food that we crave is cultural. It's based on the things that we've been exposed to. There are people in other cultures who crave different things because that is what has been impressed upon them as human food. Like, there are folks in Cambodia that will gladly eat a deep-fried tarantula, and it's real talk, you know? It's a real thing. Delicacy. Have you had it before?

   7. CWChris Williamson19:56

      No. Have you?

   8. SSShawn Stevenson19:57

      No, I haven't.

   9. CWChris Williamson19:57

      No.

   10. SSShawn Stevenson19:58

       But apparently, it tastes good. All right? There are folks in Iceland eating fermented shark, you know? There's folks in Kenya eating nyama choma, barbecued goat meat. All right? The list goes on and on. Some of these things might seem very strange to us because here in our culture, and you ask what another one of these big changes are, according to the BMJ, and we're talking top, top-tier peer-reviewed journal, approximately 60% of the average American adult's diet is now made of ultra-processed foods. All right? Humans have been processing foods forever, for thousands of years. Cooking a food is processing the food, whether it's cooking a steak, baking a sweet potato, taking olives and pressing, pressing the oil out. That's all processing, but those are minimally processed. They're not denatured so much that you can still tell where they come from. They still have an essence of something real. Ultra-processed foods, on the other hand, is when you see a field of wheat, and somehow, some way, that becomes fucking Pop-Tarts.

   11. CWChris Williamson21:03

       (laughs)

   12. SSShawn Stevenson21:03

       You see that field of wheat, and it becomes Frosted Flakes, right? It's like, where... If I was to present that box of Pop-Tarts or those Frosted Flakes to someone living in Cambodia or, like, a rice paddy in Thailand, and was like, "Where did this come from?" They're not gonna have any clue at all, because it's like it's not real. That doesn't come from anything real. And so, not to mention, the processing that it takes, yes, but let's not forget about all of these newly invented synthetic ingredients that are added along the way.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:40

       How does this impact our sleep?

   14. SSShawn Stevenson21:41

       Ooh. Such a good question. This is such a good question. So there's two really interesting things that is coming out in the data. So one part is what we're not getting. All right? There are certain... You can have... You could sleep in darkness. You can have the most fancy-pants mattress. You can-

   15. CWChris Williamson21:59

       I do. I do.

   16. SSShawn Stevenson21:59

       You can check all the boxes for all the things.

   17. CWChris Williamson22:02

       Yep.

   18. SSShawn Stevenson22:02

       But if you're deficient in the key nutrients that build your sleep-related hormones and neurotransmitters, you are still going to have disrupted sleep quality. If you don't have the stuff that literally builds th- the stuff that makes the magic happen, you're gonna have problems. And I saw this again and again and again working with real people in the real world. Just, for example, vitamin C. So, a lot of folks... Of course, we know about vitamin C for your immune system. All right? Now, that is putting vitamin C in a very pithy box. It's responsible for so many things. For our skin health, it's a big contributor for our skin health, but it is a huge contributor to our sleep quality. And one study was published in PLOS One, Public Library of Science One, and they uncovered that folks with a vitamin C deficiency were more prone to disrupted sleep. They didn't have problems falling asleep, but they had problems staying asleep. And so knowing this, what we tend to do is, like, "I wanna make sure that I'm getting my vitamin C in," and we get a vitamin C supplement. I went to a conventional university. I had the big auditorium nutritional science class. I paid for this shit. I paid for this miseducation I'm about to tell you. In that class, we were taught very rudimentary things, and first and foremost, based on the food pyramid. All right? So I went to college in the late '90s. Right? This is when I first went to college. And within this, they said, you know, my teacher would be like, "Get the hallmark of the diet, 7 to 11 servings of healthy whole grains, and make sure also that you recommend for yourself and patients, if you work with people, to take a multivitamin to get all your vitamins and minerals." And so I was taught that vitamin C is one thing, and I can just get it from this multivitamin. Of course, there's vitamin C in foods as well, but what we were not taught and what most people, unfortunately, have not realized, and that's changing today in this conversation, is that there isn't just one form of vitamin C. There are multiple forms of vitamin C. There are multiple forms of B12, multiple forms of vitamin D. The list goes on and on. Multiple forms, and we're st- we just know maybe, like, 5% of what's in food now. There's so much we don't know. And so the question is, are you getting the vitamin C that is actually usable by your cells? Now, here's where this gets a little bit s- uh, sticky.So, looking for that vitamin C to support our immune system or sleep quality, a lot of times we'll grab those little packets. You know, those little Energy, e- E- Emergen-C, whatever. And we don't realize that over 90% of the vitamin C products sold in the United States are made from genetically modified corn starch and corn syrup. It's ultra-processed in every sense of the word, and one of the studies that I actually share in my new book, the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook, looked at what happens when we're taking real, whole food-based vitamin C versus synthetic. And this was published in the Journal of Cur- Cardiology, the Journal of Cardiology. And so what they did was, they took people who were doing a behavior that would cause a lot of inflammation and oxidative stress, namely smoking. Shout out to Smoking Mark. All right? Namely, smoking. All right? And so they take these test subjects and they give them a concentrate of vitamin C in the form of this really ... I- I ... Superfood has been really drug through the mud. All right? Truly, this is the most vitamin C-dense food ever discovered. So if anything's gonna fit in this category, it's camu camu berry. C-A-M-U camu. So they used a whole food-based concentrate of camu camu, or a conventional vitamin C synthetic supplement. So they're continuing their behavior and they're checking their biomarkers. They- they track their data for a week. They found that when the test subjects took the real, whole food-based vitamin C, they had a significant reduction in inflammatory biomarkers. You know, things like C-reactive protein, oxidative stress, and there were no changes with the synthetic, run-of-the-mill vitamin C supplement. It didn't impact them at all. And as a matter of fact, that synthetic form of vitamin C ... And this is another study that I mention in the book as well, doubles the incidence of developing kidney stones. All right? So, the question is, can my cells relate to this nutrient? Is it real? Is it recognizable? Just because the chemistry is the same does not mean that they are the same in the human body. We evolved interacting with food chemistry. But today, we have all of these isolated synthetic versions of things, and it simply doesn't function the same way.

   19. CWChris Williamson26:46

       I think a lot of people are pretty well aware ... Or at least they've got an idea they're supposed to have a morning

4. 26:51 – 37:47

   How to Properly Get Ready for Bed

   1. CWChris Williamson26:51

      routine. Right? Whether it's the 15 minutes of sunlight in the eyes and the cold plunge and the grounding and the meditation and the breath work and all that sort of stuff. Far fewer people have a cool-down sequence at the end of the day, an evening time routine. If you were to give the big movers for somebody who just spends a typical amount of time doing typical things, some time on their phone, some time on their screen, exercise an adequate amount, but it's not insane. They're not a professional athlete. What would you say? When do you begin getting ready for bed, for sleep time? What are the dos and what are the don'ts, and how big is this territory of time leading up to bed? What would you... How would you prescribe someone's pre-sleep ritual?

   2. SSShawn Stevenson27:32

      Ooh. We could get the sexiest, juiciest sleep of our lives if we follow what I'm about to share. It starts with dinner. It starts with dinner, that evening routine, because the dinner table is potentially the most powerful down-regulator of that kind of sympathetic fight or flight nervous system. And this is based on some of the strongest science that we have, period. I'll share two quick studies. One of them was a colleague of mine, Dr. Robert Waldinger. We had a fast name-

   3. CWChris Williamson28:03

      He's been on the show.

   4. SSShawn Stevenson28:04

      Okay. Robert Waldinger. There you go. He is the f- the director of the longest running longitudinal human study on longevity, and their data indicates that beyond beating obesity, beyond exercise, great diet, all the things ... And these things matter. The number one determinant on- on how long we're going to live is the quality of our relationships. Couple that with a- a new study that I highlighted in the Eat Smarter Family Cookbook, conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University. They ... This was a meta-analysis of 148 studies, 300,000 people, and they found that our relationships led to ... Having healthy relationships, or what they called healthy social bonds, led to a 50% reduction in all-cause mortality. So that means a 50% reduction in death from everything. You know, prematurely. And so there's something special about human interaction and relationships. And what it really is, just a sidebar, is that our relationships, more than anything, influence what we eat. It influences our sleep habits. It influences our exercise habits, how we relate to ourselves, uh, what we think about ourselves, how we feel, our emotional stability. It's the tip of the spear. And so here's how all of this ties together around the dinner table. The dinner table really functions as a unifier to bring people together. This is something we evolved doing into the evening, uh, when we're ... Even- even in tribal constructs, and if anybody's been to Hawaii, for example, they do this kind of dramatization of a luau.

   5. CWChris Williamson29:31

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SSShawn Stevenson29:31

      Right? There's the- the hunting is-

   7. CWChris Williamson29:33

      I've been to Waikiki Beach. I've seen the exact thing. Yeah.

   8. SSShawn Stevenson29:35

      There you go. Like, "We- we did this hunt, we got this food." You know, we're all dining together. We're telling stories. And that's really how human history has passed along before the advent of books. And we're celebrating, right? Through our evolution, we hunted, gathered together, procured our food together, prepared the food, ate together, and celebrated together. That was the time of human bonding. It's deeply ingrained in our DNA. We expect that. Our genes expect us to do this. And so this is where dinner is the first domino, because when we're eating with people that we care about, friends and families, uh, uh, as well ... Fam- family and friends are included, there's this really remarkable switching over from the sympathetic fight or flight to the parasympathetic nervous system. That's what the data is indicating, which is so exciting. One of the reasons is we start to produce more oxytocin. Right? And so oxytocin ...It's got a couple of nicknames, cuddle hormone, love hormone. But why it really matters in this context is that it's been found to neutralize cortisol, so to help us to down-regulate. And we're very good, we're very, very good at going zero to 100. All right, real quick, shout out to Drake. But we're not very good at going 100 to zero, at all. Being with people that we love does something for our nervous systems to help us to down-regulate faster than anything. So take advantage of that. And how does this play out in the data? Do I have a, any data to affirm this? You know I do. All right, so really quickly, I'm gonna rattle these off. Researchers at Harvard tracked human eating behavior, family eating behavior, and food intake, all right, for years. And when I found this data, I was like, "Why doesn't anybody know this?" And so they found that people who eat together with their family on a regular basis have dramatically higher intake of real, whole, unprocessed foods, and by nature, significantly higher intake of vital nutrients that prevent chronic diseases and help us sleep better, by the way. And those family members consumed significantly less ultra-processed foods, namely chips and soda. What about for kids? Published in the journal Pediatrics, they found that eating with our children just three meals per week, or more, but three is that effect- minimum effective dose, which I'm a big fan of, knowing that we want change but we don't wanna change that much. Eating with our kids three times a week led to dramatically reduced incidents of those children developing obesity and eating disorders. What about for us as adults? Tech workers at IBM were tracked, looking at their family eating behavior around dinner, being able to, quote, "make it home for dinner." Regardless of how much stress they were experiencing at work, if they were able to consistently eat dinner with their families, their stress remained negligible. It was manageable, it was neutralized. Work morale and productivity stayed high. Stress stayed manageable. But as soon as things started cutting into their ability to eat dinner with their families, stress levels bec- went up exceedingly high, work morale went down, productivity goes down. All right? There's something special about eating together with, with people that you care about. I mentioned oxytocin, I mentioned the switchover to the parasympathetic. Here's the key word tying all this together. The nickname of the parasympathetic nervous system is rest, rest and digest. Do you hear me? That is wha- (laughs) that's the nickname of this part of the nervous system. And this is a binary system, it's either this or that. It's, it's on or off. You're either sympathetic, parasympathetic. And so switching over, being with people that we care about, especially under the context of good food, it is incredibly special. Last part here is the psychological benefits, to be able to help to, to, to offload and down-regulate. When you are feeling seen, we have a deep human need for significance. And being able to see your child or your loved one and for them to feel like they matter, versus, you know what we're doing now, it's this. Because not only did we devolve from tribes to neighborhoods, where we start to get more separate, but when neighborhoods were, the advent of that, we still had extended family in close proximity.

   9. CWChris Williamson33:54

      Mm.

   10. SSShawn Stevenson33:55

       Then we started to get isolated to our nuclear family only, and then, in just in the last couple of decades, as we leaned into this whole conversation, we've e- become even more divided within our own household because of our devices. Our devices have divided us. And not to villainize these things, of course, but we need to keep them in context. We need real face time with real people.

   11. CWChris Williamson34:16

       Well, my video guy, before we got started, was telling me there's a meme going around the internet that I haven't seen yet, but that, um, like how would guys be able to eat if they didn't turn YouTube on? Like, that, th- what you need to do is turn YouTube on in order for you to then begin eating your food. Right? And I remember, uh, (laughs) an ex-girlfriend of mine from ages and ages ago told me this story about one of her exes, the first time that he'd come round for food with her family. And he'd sat down and they were all sat around the table, and he took his plate off the table onto his lap to eat it on his lap, because he was so conditioned to his family sitting on the couch and watching the t- watching the TV-

   12. SSShawn Stevenson34:57

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson34:58

       ... and eating food from his lap. So he was sat at a dining table with no TV there, had to slide back and put the, the plate on his lap, which is just such a funny bit of conditioning-

   14. SSShawn Stevenson35:08

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson35:08

       ... that he obviously didn't see, but to everybody else sat around the table was like, "This is crazy." Um, but yeah, I, I see it in myself. Uh, um, Dr. K Healthy Gamer who is a, a psychiatrist, classically trained in Western medicine, but also did f- four or five years in Eastern medicine too, so he's got this really lovely holistic view, and he has a fantastic community for young guys and girls that are into gaming. Some of them have got screen addictions, some of them don't. But it's, it's mental health for, you know, young people that use the internet a lot. And him and Hamza, another kid from the UK, started doing Zoom calls, daily Zoom calls, so that people could just eat food with other people.

   16. SSShawn Stevenson35:54

       Mm, interesting. Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson35:56

       So they would jump on a call and sometimes people would say nothing.

   18. SSShawn Stevenson36:00

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson36:00

       They'd just have a screen with a bunch of faces and they would do it together. Because i- it's all well and good saying, uh, being around people that you love, uh, uh, being with your family, so on and so forth, like I moved away from the country that I was born in, I'd love to eat food with my mom and dad, but if, th- they'd have to be up at midnight in order to be able to f- even FaceTime me. Uh, I've got my housemate, so yeah, I can do it with him, but I do think that it's just so interesting to look at the solutions that people are coming up with to try and recreate...... what it is that you're suggesting that they do, let's just slow down a little bit. May- I'm gonna guess as well, that you would tell me, that if you have to try and have a conversation in between bites of food, that it's going to slow down the pace at which you eat, which is going to reduce s- satiety, it's going to ensure that you chew your food properly, which is gonna make it easier to digest. It's gonna give you more breath between it, which is going to mean that your digestion's got more time to... You know, all of these different things. It's a full stack of improvement, uh, around what you do. And then maybe everyone's sick of spending time indoors and goes, "Why don't we go for a little walk once we finish up?" And the whole family goes for a walk, and then you get all the benefits of the 10-minute walk that you-

   20. SSShawn Stevenson37:06

       There's no supplement that can do all the things you just mentioned. There's no drug that can do all the things you just mentioned. These are things that our genes expect us to do, you know, that's the really remarkable part about it, so... Of course, we do wanna find some, some transitionary tools, like being able to talk on FaceTime or whatever the case might be.

   21. CWChris Williamson37:24

       Mm-hmm.

   22. SSShawn Stevenson37:24

       But when I walked in here, you were eating with your boys.

   23. CWChris Williamson37:27

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SSShawn Stevenson37:27

       You guys were ha- hanging out, eating, eating some food, but it's those moments, you know? But I- of course, it might be a little bit rushed, it might be this or that, but there's something about taking a moment to pause and just be present, eat, and connect with people.

   25. CWChris Williamson37:45

       When it comes to timing

5. 37:47 – 44:04

   The Ideal Gap Between Food & Sleep

   1. CWChris Williamson37:47

      here, I remember, and it's something that I follow just 'cause it's easy to remember, a three, two, one rule for sleep. Three hours before sleeping, no more food. Two hours before eating, try and limit fluids, and then one hour bef- uh, uh, two hours before sleeping, try and limit fluids, one hour before sleeping, uh, try and limit light. When it comes to us going from eating on an evening time, have you got a rough, uh, rule that you try to follow between s- uh, food time and sleep time? And then let's continue this sexiest night-

   2. SSShawn Stevenson38:18

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson38:18

      ... of sleep of your life protocol all the way up to getting into bed.

   4. SSShawn Stevenson38:21

      Yeah, that's a great question. So, um, this is gonna be situationally dependent. It's gonna be unique, because there are some folks... And now we have the advent of like, you know, continuous glucose monitors where you could track this. If I eat too far out from dinner for myself, I notice that my blood sugar goes significantly low at night and it could pull me outta sleep, all right? So... And I'm talking about like more than five hours before sleep, which doesn't seem... That's not a lot of time. And so for me, it's like finishing my last bite of food maybe two to three hours before I go to bed is ideal for me personally. Now, I've done all kinds of stuff. Again, 21 years being at this level, I've experimented a lot. So I've done f- all kinds of fasts, I've done 21 days, y- I've done all kinds of stuff I don't want anybody have to go through. But I found it, I found my way to sleep, like your body will sort stuff out. But you gotta find what's optimal for you, all right? So... And to transition into this from the dinner table where, where we left off... And by the way, all of those studies are featured in the new Eat Smarter Family Cookbook. There's over 250 scientific references in the cookbook, which has never been done.

   5. CWChris Williamson39:29

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SSShawn Stevenson39:29

      But then also we talk about, what are we eating so that we can get those good sleep nutrients in? And I'll just throw this out here really quickly. There's... Well, I- I'll share two really quickly. One of them, dark cherries, all right? There, there are a couple of studies looking at cherry juice as an implement for improving sleep quality, but the, the sugar can be a little bit, you know... That can be sketchy. But a couple of the studies I share in the book, first of all, cherries are one of the most dense sources of naturally occurring melatonin of any food. Cherries are, dark cherries in particular, pretty rich in melatonin. On top of that, one of the studies looked at the anthocyanins in these cherries and found that it, they could have the potential to shrink fat cells. And so it's cool, like you find this stuff and I put my emojis next to every kind of benefit.

   7. CWChris Williamson40:18

      (laughs)

   8. SSShawn Stevenson40:18

      So like for the metabolic health, like the fat loss, there's like a little muscle emoji, there's a sleep emoji there, then you go back to the associated food like, "Okay, what do I do to eat this food?" And we've got like a couple of, you know, cool recipes. One of them is a cherry frozen yogurt pop that you can have after dinner, uh, my kids love it. And they're fun, it's like fun stuff to make too, and they're very simple. That's another thing about this, is making it easy as well. I don't want a recipe that's got 37 ingredients. Like let's just make this simple, delicious, and there you go. But another food which is really a great kind of nighttime routine, and there are many, and you don't wanna necessarily eat this dish every night, but salmon is really something special when it comes to improving and supporting sleep quality. Salmon's got a moment in the sun right now, for sure. A lot of people are aware of some of the benefits, but those omega-3s are one of those things where a deficiency in omega-3s is clinically shown to disrupt our sleep cycles, all right? So it's not just this like, "Oh, it's good for your brain." No, no, no. Like seriously, your brain needs these omega-3s. They're responsible for creating structural fats in the body, not as energy, but like to build, rebuild and support your brain cells so they can talk to each other. It's kind of important. And one of the studies used FMRIs and tracked people's like... Actually looked at their brains, which is again, instead of guessing, and they found that people who ate less than four grams of DHA and EPA, these are animal-based omega-3s, four grams or less had the highest rate of brain shrinkage. Four grams is that minimum effective dose, and you can get that in a high-quality, wild-caught eight-ounce piece of salmon. And every... We've all had nice salmon filet, that's great. I've got, I've got a honey sriracha salmon in th- in the book, which is great. But what about a salmon burger? All right, so that's probably one of my favorite foods right now are these salmon burgers. But like turning these great sleep-supporting foods, having delicious food experiences, have the, all the dinner table benefits, and now we transition into the next thing. And so... Again, this is gonna... I'm gonna say generally-... two to four hours before bed to finish your last meal, ideally. For most people, but there are gonna, there's gonna be outliers, all right? So now, what do we do? Do we get off, do we finish dinner, let's say the goal is to go to bed at 10:00 PM, just in this context. And I finish dinner at 7:30. All right, now that, do I want to go and jump right back on my screen, watch a show, whatever? I could, that could be part of my brain's reward. Like, I watched 30 minutes of a favorite show, right? Or I go and game with my son, play 2K, bust his ass.

   9. CWChris Williamson43:07

      (laughs) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   10. SSShawn Stevenson43:08

       He's pretty good too. Right after, a- again, creating that post-meal reward for sitting down and eating together, right? But now, you might want to pop on some blue light-blocking glasses, you know, you might wanna do that.

   11. CWChris Williamson43:23

       So we're starting to think about light pollution three hours f- before bed?

   12. SSShawn Stevenson43:27

       It depends on the person. But I just, that's why I put the word might.

   13. CWChris Williamson43:31

       Just rough, rough heuristics.

   14. SSShawn Stevenson43:32

       You might.

   15. CWChris Williamson43:33

       Around about three hours before bed, start thinking about the light you're exposed to.

   16. SSShawn Stevenson43:36

       Yes, exactly. Start thinking about it, at least. And then from there, you know, again, if we're popping back on, whatever. For me, I'll just tell you what it is, for my kind of s- light curfew, is one hour. It is.

   17. CWChris Williamson43:47

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SSShawn Stevenson43:47

       And I've, I might be the person who's impressed that in popular culture, because again, I wrote about this almost 10 years ago, um, at least, that's the, that's the minimum for me. Ideally 90 minutes to two hours, ideally.

   19. CWChris Williamson44:02

       I think a lot of people would have a question of,

6. 44:04 – 50:56

   Balancing Good Sleep & Enjoyable Evenings

   1. CWChris Williamson44:04

      okay, especially now, right? We're approaching, uh, winter, uh, you guys, uh, are losing daylight savings. That's just, that's getting axed. Uh, evening times get dark pretty early.

   2. SSShawn Stevenson44:18

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson44:19

      And the more northerly you get, I'm from Newcastle in the northeast of the UK, which is the last city before Scotland. So around about December, mid-December time, it can be sunset at 4:00 PM, right? So it's, it, it's really dark all the time.

   4. SSShawn Stevenson44:33

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson44:33

      It's not sunrise until after 8:00. So it's very, very, very short amount of time. How am I supposed to exist?

   6. SSShawn Stevenson44:41

      (laughs) Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson44:42

      I don't wanna bump into things, right? I've got fear.

   8. SSShawn Stevenson44:44

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson44:44

      I'm also, there's, let's be real here, I don't wanna be bored. I don't wanna be bored for the last 90 minutes of every single day. I, if I want to, uh, I, you saying it's probably a bad idea for me to watch a screen, but if I read a book, I need a light to light the book. Uh, is an eReader going to disrupt my circadian rhythm? Can I use my Kindle? What if it's on warm? Like, what can people do to actually enjoy the last two hours of their day-

   10. SSShawn Stevenson45:08

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson45:08

       ... if they also need to be conscious of the light pollution?

   12. SSShawn Stevenson45:10

       I love this. This is what really, I think, has, has made my teaching of this information more relatable and doable, is because we've gotta, we've gotta put the neurotic behavior to the side, all right? And we all, especially when we're working to get healthy and to achieve certain things, we do go through a phase, I think everybody does-

   13. CWChris Williamson45:28

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SSShawn Stevenson45:28

       ... of being neurotic about these things. We've gotta chill. We live in the modern world, and there's stuff, there's stuff going on. And there are certain things that can help us enjoy that stuff even more if we feel better.

   15. CWChris Williamson45:41

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SSShawn Stevenson45:41

       And so, if we can create an evening routine for the majority of the time that works for us, where we still can do some of our favorite things, because that's what life is all about as well. We've gotta get that juice.

   17. CWChris Williamson45:55

       Well, yeah.

   18. SSShawn Stevenson45:55

       The-

   19. CWChris Williamson45:55

       What's the point in optimizing your sleep if you sacrifice the enjoyment of your spare time in order to get it? Like, what's the point of getting good sleep? Presumably so that you enjoy life. And if you sacrifice the enjoyment of life to sleep well in the hopes that sleeping well will give you an enjoyment of life, y- you, like, you're shortcutting everything.

   20. SSShawn Stevenson46:10

       Exactly. You just said it perfectly. You know, so we've gotta come into this with some balance, with a balanced perspective, and give ourselves some grace and some wiggle room and some enjoyment. And if we can do little things like, again, throwing on some blue light-blocking glasses. We do have-

   21. CWChris Williamson46:25

       Do you have any brands that you prefer?

   22. SSShawn Stevenson46:26

       I don't wanna throw brands out, but, um...

   23. CWChris Williamson46:28

       Okay, well, Ra Optics, Matt Maruca from Ra Optics.

   24. SSShawn Stevenson46:30

       There we go, boom.

   25. CWChris Williamson46:31

       I, I like Ra Optics. I know that he's done an awful lot of research. They're not cheap, but it seems like a lot of the blue blocking glasses that are cheap, that don't have a very heavily colored lens, if you can still see all of the normal colors with a little bit of a, a blue tinge, that's not really doing very much. According to him, you need to be, it needs to be like offensively colored, and you can get them in yellow or red. And I noticed, anecdotally, if I put them on, and I know this is the same with some of my other friends, any high quality blue blocking glasses, after about 30 minutes, you almost feel this down regulation.

   26. SSShawn Stevenson47:05

       Yep. Interesting, right?

   27. CWChris Williamson47:07

       It's a palpable effect that I noticed. And I was using it in the UK remembering that it gets dark early in the summer, uh, in the winter, but in the summer, it really overcooks it. So you can have sunset at 10:30 at night. Uh, so for me, I would pop them on and go for an evening walk, maybe 9:30, and I would find while I was on this walk, I would get this down regulation. So, we're looking at some blue blocking glasses, again, if we're going to be exposed to light.

   28. SSShawn Stevenson47:32

       Yeah, I've got, I have some from him-

   29. CWChris Williamson47:34

       Yep.

   30. SSShawn Stevenson47:34

       ... as well.
7. 50:56 – 55:27

   Are Storybooks & Podcasts Good for Sleep?

   1. CWChris Williamson50:56

      listening to this may, uh, listen to podcasts when they fall asleep. I sometimes find if I'm listening to something that is too cerebrally compelling and demanding, that it puts me into a kind of sort of lean in, uh, curiosity state on an evening time. Uh, whereas if I get some nice, uh, fiction or some narrative non-fiction-

   2. SSShawn Stevenson51:21

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson51:21

      ... uh, I like, um, you know, s- stories, uh, history documentaries about, uh, stuff like World War II and bits and pieces like that. Uh, that to me kind of puts me into more of a, what feels like a narrative story mode-

   4. SSShawn Stevenson51:34

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson51:34

      ... that feels like it primes me more for sleep. Have you ever... Is there any data to back any of this stuff up?

   6. SSShawn Stevenson51:38

      Yes, there absolutely is, yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson51:39

      Fantastic. I knew it wasn't bro science.

   8. SSShawn Stevenson51:41

      Yes. Specifically fiction, you know. Reading fiction, listening to... This is how we evolved, is having those stories in the evening. Like our genes, it's an input, it's something we've done for a long time. And we have this cultural, you know, kind of iconic thing of like reading your kids a bedtime story.

   9. CWChris Williamson52:02

      Mm.

   10. SSShawn Stevenson52:02

       We're just big adult babies, if you really boil down to it. But instead of a nice bedtime story, now we're just stressed. Like, we're just thinking about all kinds of shit-

   11. CWChris Williamson52:13

       Yeah.

   12. SSShawn Stevenson52:13

       ... to stress us out. Instead of giving ourselves the opportunity to like, "Let me switch over." Like literally, our brain is functioning differently when we are engaged in story, you know? And so absolutely, there's some really cool science. It's already been affirmed on that. But also, you know, this is an opportunity too, as you just mentioned, I love that ab- of listening to a podcast as well, 'cause you don't have to stare at a screen to listen to a podcast.

   13. CWChris Williamson52:40

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   14. SSShawn Stevenson52:40

       The same thing holds true with, there are people eating lunch right now watching us.

   15. CWChris Williamson52:44

       Oh, yeah.

   16. SSShawn Stevenson52:44

       All right? And shout out, if you are, leave a comment-

   17. CWChris Williamson52:46

       (laughs)

   18. SSShawn Stevenson52:47

       ... down below. Tell us what you're eating.

   19. CWChris Williamson52:48

       What were you eating? Yeah, exactly. Was it from the cook-

   20. SSShawn Stevenson52:49

       It's-

   21. CWChris Williamson52:50

       Was it from, uh, the new cookbook?

   22. SSShawn Stevenson52:51

       Oh, right, if, that part.

   23. CWChris Williamson52:52

       (laughs)

   24. SSShawn Stevenson52:52

       If you're from, eating the, something from the new cookbook. But the thing is, I've been known, especially on a lunch break, to like pop on something on YouTube, like, you know, Co- Conan O'Brien clips or some random thing, you know? And so again, it's not to be neurotic.

   25. CWChris Williamson53:08

       Mm-hmm.

   26. SSShawn Stevenson53:08

       And I've structured my life in a way, I've created a micro-culture in my household where I have real face time and eat together with the people that I care about on a regular basis. So it's a, it's a both/and world. This is the point. We don't have to be either/or. We don't have to, you know, like be completely a, a, a, a tech addict or a Luddite.

   27. CWChris Williamson53:31

       Yep.

   28. SSShawn Stevenson53:33

       It's a both/and world. What we do need to do is listen to our bodies, listen to our minds, acknowledge where we are feeling this kind of dysfunction or turbulence within our spirit. Because oftentimes, it's like g- a guidance system, because there are certain inputs that we are missing out on and other inputs that we might be getting too much of.

   29. CWChris Williamson53:55

       One of the things, it's funny that you mentioned the ancestral disposition that we have or the evolutionary sort of priming that we have to hear stories around the campfire before we're about to go to sleep. Uh, and this is absolutely bro science, but if someone wants to do the study on it, it works for me. Radio dramas, as they're called technically, so a full cast rendition of a story, um, there's my favorite author, uh, fiction author, Pierce Brown, uh, who does Red Rising, is slowly releasing all of his books in full unabridged, but with an entire cast.

   30. SSShawn Stevenson54:31

       Mm.
8. 55:27 – 1:05:25

   Dealing With Taking Ages to Get to Sleep

   1. CWChris Williamson55:27

      very common issue, and hopefully earlier in the day people have exercised, got sunlight, done all of the things to wind down. Even having done all of that, I've noticed periods in my life where I struggle to fall asleep. If somebody is regularly getting into bed and having, you know, an hour plus of latency before they're able to fall asleep, what are the- what are the first few culprits or places that you would be looking at in order to try and optimize this?

   2. SSShawn Stevenson55:57

      All right, the... It's like the Matrix right now. There's- there's 100 different things that it could be, you know.

   3. CWChris Williamson56:03

      Rank order the top five.

   4. SSShawn Stevenson56:04

      It's- it's gonna be situation dependent. I'll- I'll rank some of them. But even with you mentioning that... The- the full cast and the story-

   5. CWChris Williamson56:12

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SSShawn Stevenson56:13

      The ancient tenet is to know thyself. Know thyself. Like that's top tier importance because we're so unique. And so I just wanna throw in a little parentheses as well of like, by the way, it doesn't have to be a fiction. It could be a personal development thing, it could be a sermon, it could be whatever helps you to make that transition in- into sleep. Whatever works for you. Give yourself some space and some grace to- to try some different things. Now, with sleep latency... So I'm gonna tell you the first thing, period. And, you know, this is... It- it encompasses so much, but oftentimes it's just stress. It's excessive stress and us not metabolizing that stress efficiently.

   7. CWChris Williamson56:54

      What do you mean when you say metabolizing stress?

   8. SSShawn Stevenson56:56

      So being able to... You know, cortisol, for example, has kind of been drug through the mud and given this bad name, but cortisol is not bad. It's... I like to think of it like The Incredible Hulk. You know, it's like, yes, it can smash some shit and like... But also it can get stuff done. It is powerful. It gets us up and going, and it can get a little bit out of hand, especially if there's a lot of Hulk, you know? And so we need Hulk to turn back into Bruce Banner, basically. This is a great analogy. I just came up with that one just now. All right? And so to downregulate, actually in the movie, the first Avengers movie, uh, Scarlett Johansson's character, uh, Black Widow, she would do this little kind of, uh, rhyme, like this little kind of song, this little kind of technique to help the big guy to downregulate and soothe him and bring him back down. All right? A lot of times, we're just kind of running too hot, we've got a lot of adrenaline, you know, epinephrine, norepinephrine. Cortisol is not the only stress hormone, but we've got a lot of that just pumping through our system based on our thoughts. Our thoughts create chemistry in our bodies instantaneously. And a lot of times, one of my really good friends, Dr. Daniel Amen, he calls them ANTs, automatic negative thoughts. And we just get on these loops of these, you know, things that can just weigh on our spirit. We've gotta be able to... When I say metabolize, really I'm talking about, uh, to- to neutralize, to shift gears over to that parasympathetic. And it- it depends on you what that's gonna be, what the treatment's gonna be. So this could be a simple change in perception. You know, sometimes it's just a reality check, and I'm a big fan of that one personally, which is like, I might be thinking about the 10 things that I need to get done. Like I just did Good Morning America, uh, a couple days ago, and I was in with my publisher the day before, and she's like, "So, you know, are you excited? Da da da." And she's like, "I would be a nervous wreck." I don't even know how-

   9. CWChris Williamson59:00

      Hey, thanks.

   10. SSShawn Stevenson59:02

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson59:02

       Hey, real good pep talk.

   12. SSShawn Stevenson59:04

       (laughs) But for me, it's just like... Because I just don't perceive it like she does. And if I was to be like, "Oh my God, I gotta- I gotta- I have... I have a very short window of time. I gotta get up super early and I need to..." da da da da da da da da da da. I'm just gonna be like, "There's nothing I could do about it right now. Chill. Just it doesn't matter. I- I'm here in my bed. None of that matters. Just chill." So I could sp- I know how to speak to myself.

   13. CWChris Williamson59:35

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SSShawn Stevenson59:36

       You know, and again, it's a reality check for me that these things that I'm- might be pining over, there's... And here's a really cool thing too is that, it's during sleep that so much of our problems are solved. And we got some really cool data on this. Um, even REM sleep in particular, and dreaming. Like dreaming is some freaky stuff, man, you know? And we- we- we think we've got some good ideas about what's happening, but during REM sleep, we know that this process called memory consolidation is taking place. So like, things from our short- short-term memory, kind of like from the day are getting converted to our short-term memory and being- becoming more retrievable. But also there's this kind of like... As we're playing out, it's kind of like our brain, in a way, is keeping us entertained while it's fixing shit. And one of the things that I do, and I'm just gonna share this tip, another way to- to downregulate, is if I'm- if I'm dealing with a problem, I'm not just gonna sit there with it and worry about it. And this is from Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill.... and it changed my life, years ago. And actually, the person who introduced me to it is Bob Proctor, and I had multiple conversations with him. It's just like, man, just to even say that stuff coming from where I come from, to be able to share time with people like that is mind-blowing. But I s- I have a meeting with my board of trusted advisors. So as I'm laying in bed, if for example, it's a challenge with, uh, let's just give an example of if it's somebody w- with their health, all right? If they're wanting to deal with a health issue, they can pick maybe f- you know, a table, like a long table like this, and there's three people on one side, three people on the other. And who are those trusted advisors that would sit at your table to offer you counsel? You know, maybe this might be, um, you know, um, Andrew Huberman. Maybe this might be Dr. Daniel Amen, neuroscientist. Maybe this might be, I'm, I might be at the table with you. And then on the other side, maybe it's like, you know, your friend who's really into health or r- you know, what- whatever the case might be. And then you just go through and you ask them what, what is their opinion on what you should do to get better or to feel better. Because the thing is, you already know what they're gonna fucking say. You know what they're gonna say. But sitting down and doing this practice and allowing them to speak to you through your mind is so remarkable.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:01:55

       Well, the depersonalization of that tactic, right?

   16. SSShawn Stevenson1:01:58

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:01:58

       Of removing (clears throat) yourself from being both judge, jury, executioner, uh, the, the, the evidence-gatherer, uh, and the person that is supposed to coordinate this entire charade-

   18. SSShawn Stevenson1:02:12

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:02:12

       ... is so important. Like I've got written on my, on my fridge, "What would you tomorrow want you today to do?" And the reason that it's so useful is it gives you that perspective, just a tiny, tiny little bit of distance between what's happening now and what's happening tomorrow, and what you would want to do. And, uh, yeah, I like that. Okay, so we've got, um, looking at the stresses, the kind of, uh, open loops-

   20. SSShawn Stevenson1:02:33

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:02:34

       ... that as of yet we haven't dealt with.

   22. SSShawn Stevenson1:02:35

       Finding a way for yourself-

   23. CWChris Williamson1:02:36

       Yep.

   24. SSShawn Stevenson1:02:37

       ... to help to metabolize that stress, to down-regulate, instead of, you know, going into the-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:02:42

       Mm-hmm.

   26. SSShawn Stevenson1:02:42

       ... you know, the rattling.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:02:43

       Exactly, I, I think that most people, when they're trying to fall asleep and struggling, what's happening is they will ruminate aggressively. Very few people are struggling to fall asleep while their mind is perfectly peaceful and blank.

   28. SSShawn Stevenson1:02:55

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:02:55

       Right? It, they are, uh, trying to keep their heart rate low whilst doing very intense exercise, all mentally, right?

   30. SSShawn Stevenson1:03:03

       (laughs)
9. 1:05:25 – 1:09:16

   Top Superfoods for Sleep

   1. CWChris Williamson1:05:25

      sleep superfoods?

   2. SSShawn Stevenson1:05:27

      Ooh, good question. I mentioned cherries earlier.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:05:29

      Yep.

   4. SSShawn Stevenson1:05:30

      That's a top-tier, uh, good sleep food. Salmon, another top-tier good sleep food. And I'm gonna share another one with you that, you know, it's one of these foods been around for a long time, but and also it has, number one, the omega-3s are there as well, eggs. Great. We, uh, identify it oftentimes for it's like a morning food. It's not the fact of any of these foods you're just gonna eat and fall asleep, all right? But eggs are remarkable in that the choline, choline is involved in the sleep process as well, and those omega-3s are really helpful, and also just amino acids, because when we're talking about, when, I've said hormones and neurotransmitters several times today. These are essentially cellular DMs, all right? It's enabling your cells to talk to each other. That's what a hormone is. And at its core, hormones are proteins. If you're deficient in certain amino acids, you can't even make that shit anyways, so your body will do a patchwork job, but if you provide your body with the amino acids it needs to build those things, you're gonna be in a m- much better favor. Okay, another one...Tryptophan. All right, tryptophan, that's where it gets the association with the, what we call, from where I'm from, itis. Like, being sleepy after you eat food, especially on Thanksgiving and the turkey and all the things. Yes, turkey is a rich source of tryptophan, but there are, you know, certain plant foods as well. But yeah, turkey is... We'll just put, throw that on the list there. So, chicken, turkey. There's a song that has that in it. But those are gonna be a couple of other ones, because tryptophan, amino acid, all right? And it's deeply involved in our sleep process. And so what is that? Is that four of them?

   5. CWChris Williamson1:07:16

      Five. Cherries, salmon, tryptophan, and eggs.

   6. SSShawn Stevenson1:07:23

      Turkey. Okay, you, we said turkey already, and eggs.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:07:26

      Yes, eggs.

   8. SSShawn Stevenson1:07:26

      Yes. Let me give you a drink. There's so many here. Again, we're not talking about guzzling a, a pint of water. We're talking about, like, a, a serving of, like, a teacup. We know about chamomile for downregulating, for relaxing. We know about Kava Kava. One of my favorites is reishi, reishi tea, a dual extracted reishi tea. So this study was published in the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, and the researchers found that drinking reishi just prior to bedtime, we could say an hour before bedtime, 30 minutes, an hour, maybe a little bit longer, was able to, number one, improve sleep latency, meaning you fall asleep faster. It improved overall sleep time, and it improved the quality of test subjects' sleep, namely improving their non-REM deep sleep time. All right? So, that's pretty remarkable, and reishi's been utilized for thousands of years.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:08:23

      Do you have a brand that you prefer for that?

   10. SSShawn Stevenson1:08:24

       Four Sigmatic, my guy's Four Sigmatic. It's a dual extraction of the reishi, that's why primarily, so that means it's an alcohol extract and a hot water extract, because different things are gonna get pulled out of the mushroom based on the extraction method. If you're just getting one, you can be missing out on, like, the hot water extract to get a lot of these antioxidant components, beta-glucans, things like that. But the alcohol extract can get some of these more hormonally, uh, pointed compounds.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:08:50

       You've mentioned the window there. How important is eggs? Does eggs have to be later in the evening? Does salmon have to be later in the evening? Does... It's just throughout the day, we can create the building blocks that are good for sleep?

   12. SSShawn Stevenson1:09:00

       Exactly. Your body knows what to do to, to store things away when it needs.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:09:04

       Cool, okay. So, we've looked at stress, and we've looked at nutrients. I think that those are two pretty big movers. We've already touched on some of the new work that you've done. Your book came out this week. Congratulations. Um, talk to me about the

10. 1:09:16 – 1:18:46

    Issues With the Health of General Americans

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:16

       current state of American adults' health from a, a metabolic and a weight perspective.

    2. SSShawn Stevenson1:09:23

       All right. This was pub- by... This was published by the CDC in 2022, so just about a year ago as of this recording. They determined that 60% of American adults now have at least one chronic disease, at least one, and 40% have two or more. All right? So just a kind of overarching perspective look at this, now one of our top-tier journals that's looking at metabolic health recently published some data, and it's been making the s- just making the rounds on the internet, and they established that only 12% of American adults are metabolically healthy. So, 88% of adults are not metabolically healthy, and this is looking at certain biomarkers, you know, whe- whether we're talking about hormones, whether we're talking about the role of insulin and leptin, and the list goes on and on. And so, now, to, to... What does this look like in the real world? Like, what do we see? Well, prior to pandemic-related shutdowns, we were at about 42.5% of American adults being clinically obese, and it was projected to reach 50% by 2030, but when things shut down, there was a mighty jump. The data hasn't come out yet completely, but we're, we're probably very close to that 50% already. If we're talking about overweight and obesity, then we're looking at about 75% of the population right now. Something dramatic has happened, because... And also, like, uh, we can't leave out kids in this conversation, by the way. There was a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and it looked at 200 years of diabetes. That was the title of the paper. And essentially, diab- type 2 diabetes, which used to be called adult-onset diabetes, because kids didn't get that shit, but now a lot of kids, younger and younger and younger populations are getting heart disease, are getting diabetes, are developing obesity. And so... But it was within about a 40-year time span, just, like, in the last 40 to 50 years, rates of type 2 diabetes essentially quadrupled in the US population, and along with that, childhood obesity, just in the last 30 years, has tripled, all right, let alone us as adults. Like, this is trickling its way down to our little ones, which is incredibly abnormal. And so, just a couple of other quick stats. Uh, um, I mentioned earlier about the sleep deprivation stat, but right now, our number one, our leading cause of death is, is still heart disease, and I gotta throw this in here as well. A lot of people don't know this, but Alzheimer's is number six. It is just charging up into the top five leading causes of death in the United States. It's an epidemic, and it is scary, and a lot of times we don't think about, like, how is that killing people? Like, loss of our cognitive function like that, man, like, that is such a terrible way to die, and researchers are now calling Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes, because it's so related to insulin dysfunction in the brain.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:12:28

       That's literally what Max said.

    4. SSShawn Stevenson1:12:30

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:30

       That's literally what Max said.

    6. SSShawn Stevenson1:12:32

       Yeah. And so, I want to mention that, but heart disease being the number one killer, now according to, again, published data, about 60% of American adults have some degree of heart disease onset already. Like, that can be, that can be...... tracked, simple blood test, we could see, okay, you're on your way to die from a heart attack.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:12:54

       Is the most common precursor to heart disease obesity or, or being overweight?

    8. SSShawn Stevenson1:13:01

       That's a great question. There's definitely some interplay. Here, let's talk about obesity because, you know, right now we're living at a time where people are... There's a framing around obesity and working as a clinician and working with real people who are struggling with their weight for many years, a lot of people are try, they are trying very, very hard to lose that weight.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:13:25

       Mm.

    10. SSShawn Stevenson1:13:25

        But they're existing in a culture that is fighting against them. And so, we place a lot of judgment cognitively if we are healthy or at, of a healthy weight and don't understand the struggles of people who are really trying hard. Now there are some people who don't give a fuck, and I'll tell you what, even with that, even as I'm joking about that, I've never met one person who doesn't want to be healthy. If they had a choice, the person who appear- apparently doesn't give a fuck and they're 350 pounds, if they had a choice, they would be healthy. They would be of a healthy weight. They would have an ideal body and energy and all the things that they want. What happens is, we develop something called learned helplessness. On top of that, we have these stories. Like sometimes it's literally about worthiness, it's about what's possible for me, it's about access, it's about money, it's about all these things. My mother, for example, you know, I grew up in a, a low income environment. A lot of times, like my mom would sell her blood. She'd go to the blood bank, sell her blood, get $20, and get us some fast food a lot of times. And she, you know, we got food from charities. You know, there's a place called the Hosea House. We'd get, we'd get food, you know, government assistance, all the things. But she was working. She worked overnight at a convenience store, and one of those nights, somebody tried to rob the store and she was stabbed multiple times.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:14:51

        Oh, God.

    12. SSShawn Stevenson1:14:51

        But my mom is different. She's alive and well today. She actually detained the guy and he ended up getting arrested.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:14:58

        (laughs)

    14. SSShawn Stevenson1:14:58

        Yeah, I mean, no, I'm not-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:15:00

        (laughs)

    16. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:00

        ... I'm, I'm, I'm not kidding at all. I'm not kidding at all, man.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:15:02

        Picked on the wrong mother.

    18. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:03

        Like listen, I'm not kidding. I got, I got so many stories. My m- uh, listen, I'm, I'm tryin' to n- I'm trying to hold back and tell you some of the crazy shit she's done.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:15:11

        (laughs)

    20. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:11

        But here's, here's why I'm sharing this story is that when she went in for, you know, surgery, get the stitches and all the things, afterwards, the physician was examining her and he said that, "If you were not overweight..." He said these, these were his words, "If you weren't a heavyset woman, you probably would've died."

    21. CWChris Williamson1:15:29

        Because the depth of penetration of the knife would've been closer to vital organs?

    22. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:33

        So her story is, "My fat is my safety."

    23. CWChris Williamson1:15:36

        (laughs) Yeah.

    24. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:39

        Right?

    25. CWChris Williamson1:15:39

        I can see, I can see how that's a, a double-edged sword, for want of a better term.

    26. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:44

        Damn. (laughs)

    27. CWChris Williamson1:15:45

        (laughs)

    28. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:46

        And so here's the thing too. Again, we have these stories, and for some people, that excess that they're carrying is protection. Maybe it's protection from an assailant. Maybe it's a protection from a family member.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:15:58

        Mm-hmm.

    30. SSShawn Stevenson1:15:59

        Maybe it's a protection from attention, unwanted attention. There are so many different reasons why folks are in the state that they're in, and I wanna remove the judgment and just talk about the biology. Fat cells are phenomenal. It's enabled us to be sitting here today, is because of our ancestors and these badass fat cells. We evolved our capacity to utilize stored energy in times of famine. And something, a little fun fact about our fat cells is that our fat cells can actually grow and contain about like a thousand times their own volume. Like the, the size of it itself, a thousand times its volume, it can hold energy essentially.
11. 1:18:46 – 1:26:02

    Is it Harder to Not Be Fat Today?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:18:46

       of trying to remove the moralizing from this. It's what I learned from Max when I first spoke to him last year, and he-... he reminded me that there are lots of different ways that people can get fat. Uh, a good example of this, Robert Plomin, the guy that did the largest ever twin studies in the world, uh, every single pair of twins born between 1991 and 1994 in the UK was contacted about being enrolled in his study. He's the father of behavioral genetics. Uh, and he was talking to me, and he was saying that he has the predisposition to be fat. And he said that when he walks past a bakery, some people aren't that bothered, but he smells bread and his ghrelin response just goes through the roof. But it could also be that you don't really like exercise that much, and it could also be that you don't really, uh, enjoy eating foods that are a little bit leaner. And it could also be ... You know, there's lots of different ways to get the keiko equation to work against you from an obesity, uh, perspective. And just because I come from ... I- I have a background where I would be ti- I'd be like 63 kilos if I'd never been to the gym, that's not the same disposition that everybody has. That being said, there is an awful lot of agency. Like ultimately, if you don't put it in your mouth, it doesn't go into your body, right? So, finding this balance between, um, empowerment and reminding people of the sovereignty and agency that they have over their health and fitness, whilst accepting that the base that people are working from is not the same. The difficulty, some people are swimming upstream and some people are swimming downstream, right?

    2. SSShawn Stevenson1:20:29

       Absolutely.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:20:29

       Uh, and I think, again, from Max, I'd be interested to know if you agree with this, that as far as he's concerned, the current world that people find themselves in, if they want to eat foods that do not cause them to be obese, if they want to not eat beyond satiety, they're finding it harder to do now than ever before because of how ultra-processed foods are hyper-palatable. They're more calorie-dense. They're quicker and easier to put into your mouth and get into your stomach. They're more readily available. You're able to graze throughout the day. All of the things, again, that get this keiko equation, the- the- the balance to just lean more and more and more and more toward surplus calories, it's never been more difficult to be underweight, right? Or to be of a healthy weight.

Episode duration: 1:49:08