Better Sleep W/ Dr. Jay Khorsandi:Grounded Sleep Podcast #17

Hey everyone,

My name is Dr.

J.

Corsandi and I'm a doctor in the Los Angeles area who treats patients for sleep problems.

The name of my practice is called Snore Experts and I focus on what's called sleep disordered breathing so this would be things like snoring and sleep apnea.

The reason you're hearing my voice is because David and I recently did an interview together on my podcast called Best Night Ever which is dedicated to helping you get your best night's sleep.

And for my show,

I've taken my experience in clinical sleep practice and all the latest sleep tech and routines and share them with you so you can take your sleep to the next level.

David asked me to share my expertise on sleep for all the grounded sleepers who use this podcast to get a good night's rest.

So tonight's episode will be a little different.

I'm going to share my personal top 7 tips to get great sleep and the first 5 you may have heard of but I encourage you to stick around to the end because I'm going to go over two bonus tips that come from the biohacker world that you may have not heard about that might transform your sleep.

But first,

Why should you even be focusing on sleep?

Let me tell you a couple reasons.

Poor sleep is an inflammatory process.

Research has shown that poor sleep increases something called C-reactive protein which is a blood marker that's an indication of the inflammation in your body.

Long term inflammation has been shown to cause chronic diseases.

Things like inflammatory bowel disease,

Crohn's,

High blood pressure,

And type 2 diabetes.

Another reason you should be focusing on your sleep is because poor sleep can cause weight gain.

Yes,

Weight gain.

And this is due to the regulation of two hunger hormones called leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin is a hormone that makes us feel full and ghrelin is a hormone that makes us hungry.

Research has shown that when you have poor sleep and particularly poor REM sleep,

You get a dysregulation of these hormones where they actually get reversed.

And in turn,

You wake up hungry and you never feel full throughout the day and you end up actually craving more carbs and junk food which ultimately can lead to weight gain.

And the last reason you should be focusing on sleep is something that's very near and dear to my heart and that's snoring and sleep apnea.

Now research has shown that on average people who are dealing with someone who snores will lose an hour of sleep a night.

Now if you take the average of the US population sleeping 7 hours a night,

That puts you into the 6 hour category which is detrimental to health.

And if you're the one who's snoring or has sleep apnea,

Then you're the one who's sleeping with your mouth wide open and missing the benefits of nose breathing,

Things like humidification,

Filtration and something called nitric oxide which is a molecule that we get when we breathe through our nose.

It's a potent vasodilator which helps relax and open up the blood vessels.

It's also a potent antimicrobial which helps prevent upper respiratory tract infections.

Okay,

Okay,

Enough doom and gloom and let's talk about the 7 ways to take your sleep to the next level.

Alright,

So one of the easiest things that you can do to help get better sleep is to go to sleep and wake up at the same time.

Now people who tend to like to sleep in on the weekends or stay up late at the weekends will suffer from something called social jet lag where you keep throwing your circadian rhythm off every weekend.

But if you are able to maintain a constant schedule,

What's going to happen is you will start to wake up without an alarm clock.

And what I've done over the years is focus on going to sleep at the same time which means I wake up at the same time which means I don't need to set an alarm which means I don't get blasted awake with crazy noises.

The next tip has to do with two things that regulate our sleep and that's temperature and light.

So for temperature you're going to want to cool room something under 68 degrees is recommended and for light you're going to want to consider blackout curtains or at the least an eye mask.

Okay,

So this tip is for all you late night snackers.

You do not want to eat anything for at least two hours before bedtime and the reason for this is there is an antagonistic relationship between two hormones.

One's called insulin and one's called melatonin.

And if you do fire up one you're going to block the other one so you can think about eating late at night.

It's going to spike insulin which is going to block melatonin or the reverse of eating early at night will get the insulin levels up but by the time it's time to go to sleep that's gone down and melatonin starts to be secreted by the pineal gland and all is good.

Alright so this tip has to do with what to do when you wake up in the morning and one of the best things you can do is catch the sunrise and there's a reason for that because when your eyes hit the sunrise what you'll get is a huge dose of infrared light which will help actually melatonin production in the pineal gland in the morning to help pull up a reserve for you at night and you will also get some blue light activation from looking at the sky and that's going to help with cortisol release which is what we actually want in the morning to help wake us up and get us going.

Alright so this next tip is one of my favorites and that's what I call going for a lunchtime walk.

So whenever possible I will try to get at least a 30 minute walk during the day,

During lunch,

Midday sun with as much skin exposed as possible and what that's going to do is help increase my vitamin D production and it's also going to get the sun exposure for my circadian entrainment so I go to sleep nice and comfy and easily at night.

Alright you made it through the first five and now as promised I've got two bonus biohacker sleep tips that are going to take you to the next level.

The first one has to do with something called EMFs.

Now EMFs are electromagnetic frequencies and people are becoming more and more aware of the potential health hazards and risks of getting exposure to these things all the time.

One of the biggest offenders of EMFs in your house is your wifi router.

In fact you can go home,

Turn on your wifi on your phone and probably see most of your neighbors networks on your phone as well which tells you how strong these things actually can be.

So the way I mitigate my EMF exposure from my wifi router is by getting my router on a timer.

You can buy these timers,

They're cheap,

They're on Amazon and you'll plug it into the wifi and mine shuts off at night and doesn't turn on until the next morning because let's face it I really don't need wifi while I am asleep at night.

Alright and the last tip I have for you is how to hack your bathroom at night.

So for a lot of people they do get up and need to use the restroom at night but one of the tricks that I did is I actually had an electrician come to the house and set up my bathroom where I have two separate switches,

One for a daytime switch that goes to bulbs that are white daytime color and the other switch goes to bulbs that I've put in that are red.

And the reason I did that is because if I do get up and use the restroom at night I use the red light at night and that will not interfere with melatonin release.

In fact if you are exposed to white light at night you can get melatonin release blockage of up to 50%.

So one of the hacks there is try getting some red lights into your bathroom,

You may not need a switch you could just put it on a separate switch and use that when you get up at night and I hope that helps.

Alright I hope all of these tips help you get you on your path to better sleep and if you want to learn more about tips like these please check out my podcast called Best Night Ever.

And you can also find me on Instagram at sleep bio hacker,

Again that's sleep bio hacker where I'm on Instagram sharing all these different tips,

Tricks,

Routines,

Videos and technologies.

And again my podcast is called Best Night Ever.

Thank you so much for listening in and I hope you have a great night.