That Time We Talked To a Sleep Expert

This is episode number 102 of the Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to what has become known as the worst move ever.

Well, we made a mistake, and it was all my fault.

It's been It's been a lot of fun though.

Aw.

Hey, you know what? As long as you think it's been fun, then we're going to go with that.

That's right. So we are actually in a time crunch here because we have a very special guest that we wanna make sure gets the maximum opportunity to share with you guys what she has to say, 'cause it's so important.

Yeah.

And we wanna make sure, so no stories, no banter. Kev, you're ugly. And we're just gonna move on with the show.

Yeah, let's do it. If it sounds like we're rushed, well, We are.

So you guys, we reached out to our new friend Molly McLaughlin, who is a sleep specialist. And I don't know about you, but this whole corona, COVID-19 world pandemic has just thrown my sleep patterns into the whirlwind.

It's been crazy. And so without talking over things that we just don't know much about, Let's kind of get into this. Molly, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into being a sleep expert. I mean, did you just decide you wanted to sleep more? And how did this work out for you?

Well, first of all, this is just awesome to be here. I feel like I got a quick snapshot into how things go for you guys, the banter, the whole world of it. And this has been awesome.

It's been an excellent lesson in how not to podcast is what—

No, you're rolling with the whole thing. I know we got tech stuff and it happens. So you guys are doing great. Put monkeys at the helm.

This is what happens.

That's right. Yeah. So to, so to be clear, my whole commitment around sleep and the creation of this company came because I was solving my very own problem with my just really atrocious relationship to sleep. And then for many, many years, I related to sleep in the— in a capacity of I'm a night owl, I go to bed late, I'm an entrepreneur in the middle of Manhattan, so I make my own schedules, no big deal. And that was how it was for me for a long time until I started really burning the candle at both ends. And then I began to look at traveling internationally, you know, doing the digital nomad route. And once starting that, bringing jet lag into the mix, then

that's when I went through my first period of insomnia. And it was really, really a draw a line in the sand time in my life of it's— I got a couple options of how to approach this and what I'm really going to do to make a difference in how I'm managing my life, my well-being. And I went to the doctors in Croatia with Google Translate, and I left with a prescription of their version of Ambien. And it was one of those moments of like, ooh, okay. I mean, and I can look back on it now and be light about it, but at the time it was a very disempowering, to say the least, situation. And also just with a real

unclear future for myself of, okay, well, how am I going to— am I going to be reliant on taking a drug to do something so primal that kids can do? You know?

Yeah.

That all of us are—

At the drop of a hat.

We would assume would be given to us all. Yeah, exactly.

So was the out of that just real quick?

Was the stuff you said you went to was it was Croatia and it was their version of Ambien. So was it was it like a different formulation? Was it the same drug essentially just like a generic? Because I mean this is this is the stuff that got Roseanne Barr in trouble.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It was just in there. They had a different generic name for it, but you know all its in the hypnotics, benzodiazepine group, which is as it relates to sleep. So basically just that ability to fall asleep, but certainly not something that you wanna be on for the rest of your life, but with no real clear guidance on how to, like what the plan is. And there was a missing of a plan.

Right.

So for me then, but then at the same time, I felt at a loss of what else to do. And, I was so desperate to sleep, so I took the Ambien or whatever the generic name was right there. And then, so began this period of this quest for myself of, okay, how am I going to make a difference with this? I went down the rabbit hole on chronobiology, circadian rhythms, and healing this problem that this really had taken over my life at that period. But what was amazing was what came out of it was this entirely new relationship to my sleep, but also just my life in general because in order to transform this area, I had to transform countless other areas. So then, I started working with people in small groups

just because I wouldn't shut up about sleep basically. And then, started bringing in technology, accountability, and then my background in behavioral change because there's so many behaviors that are important to bring into this conversation. And so, it does take quite a lot. So, to have a support system around you can make all the difference because certainly when I was dealing with this, I felt very alone during that time. So, it's been a commitment for me to ensure that people have a place to go to really get— not only complete that element of bringing homeostasis to their sleep, but actually optimizing their sleep and bringing it to the next level.

Wow, okay, so let me start off here with kind of a basic question. Are there people that go years and years and years kind of undiagnosed with sleep issues? They just think that maybe they wake up too often or maybe they gotta go to the bathroom too much and so they get up or maybe they just wake up tired all the time. How can we know if someone is just not sleeping well? You're talking about insomnia. I mean, that's pretty obvious. I mean, you're not sleeping, so that's pretty obvious. But what about people that are just kind of out there just feeling tired all the time, not sleeping really well?

Oh, shoot. I think I lost the audio, but I think what I got was the people that it's beyond just insomnia, but then actually dealing with some of these more kind of hidden or latent sleep issues. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Okay, great. Yeah. So with that, one of the things that we can see is that, of course, right now, getting a polysomnogram is kind of the gold standard to diagnose any things that might be kind of latent, sleep apnea being one of the things that can be really transformational for people if they do discover that that is lurking. But then there might just be other things that are disrupting their sleep and creating really fragmented sleep. And to your point, I think what happens for a lot of us is just this resignation and we think, well, this is—

I guess this is how sleep goes, or we don't have that awareness that it doesn't have to be like that. So one of the things that I think can be really helpful to get a baseline so that we have a knowingness of what we're speaking about when we are speaking with experts to see, one, if there's a real clinical problem here, or two, if there's behaviors that we can engage in to make a difference. So one, there are different sleep trackers on the market. I've had different clients that have been able to have a sense or a speculation that they actually have some lurking obstructed breathing because of some of the results from some of their sleep trackers. So like I have the Oura Ring, I have just about every client wearing that.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it is pretty solid at detecting sleep-wake. cycle, so whether or not you're asleep or you're awake. None of these trackers on the market are so great with sleep stages, but often they're pretty solid at understanding, providing an automated sleep diary for you. Then when you do go in to speak with someone, if you decide to go that route, then you can say, okay, so I'm averaging 6 hours and 25 minutes. I tend to have frequent wake-ups between the hours of 2 and 5. We can really start to get into the nuances and the levels of restlessness that might be happening. And then from that information, we can start to figure out certain kind of key things. There might be blood sugar imbalances that are causing people to wake up. I'll work with different

people to have them wearing continuous glucose monitors on the back of their arm. And then so for 24/7, we're getting readouts of their glucose so we can see if they're having wake-ups as it relates to that. Then there's also things some basic stuff too that we can tweak around fine-tuning things like hydration. Are we having frequent wake-ups as a result of a disruption in sleep cycle because of a mix of being dehydrated and then overcompensating with hydration? Some of those basic things, but then also a lot of it does tend to be in the realm of that either psychological issues. So as we get ourselves kind of a rise in cortisol in early morning hours, so we can look at testing for hormones to see if things are out of whack. And then all the, you know, so there's a

number of different things that we can look to, to kind of get to the root cause and help heal what isn't really working there.

And Molly, what I'm hearing from you, if I'm listening correctly, which can be problematic sometimes, is there a combo? It's usually a combination of things. You're not whittling down to trying to find like one, but usually it's like this, this, and this. It's all working together to affect your overall sleep.

Oh, so great listener. And yes, no, I love that.

There's a first time for everything over here.

Yes. No, there's, um, there's often a layering effect that will happen too, because, um, one of the things that I find so interesting about all this is how much of— if we pan out, because there's so much that we can talk about about sleep, but from a basic perspective of this element that Really, since Edison, since, you know, the late 1800s, since that time, we've been able to augment our days in such an unnatural way that— and we're all swimming in this way of being where we're just— the sun sets, we don't even notice, and then the lights go on and we can be up for all hours, and that's not a strange thing. But prior

to that ability to do that, No one was really living like that. That would be very, very odd. And actually, previously to Edison, so there's different reports of how much we were on average sleeping. It's hard to know. There weren't proper census reports, but there's speculation of around 9 to 10 hours being on the average amount of sleep that people would get prior to Edison. Again, that's not that long ago in the history of humans.

No.

And now that we've sliced off so much, one of the things that chronobiologists are looking at is just how important light is in this conversation.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

And how important it is to get outside and get that daily sun. And of course, as it relates to COVID, you know, there's a lot in the press about vitamin D and, you know, it's a hormone and what that does for our overall health, but it does a ton for our sleep. And it's actually really essential to get the sleep that we're looking for. So a lot of what we do at Sleep Is a Skill actually begins during the day. And so it's like right when you first wake up, getting us outside, getting kind of burning your sunglasses, you know, tossing the hats, the whole thing, 'cause you're looking to get sun in your eyes because that connects to your suprachiasmatic nucleus, which

is your master clock, which is looking to keep your whole— the workability of your physiology on a particular time loop. And, if we're not exposing it consistently at the same times, then you're missing out on that kind of synchronization of that clock.

Wow. Okay. So, there's a couple of things here that I want to kind of touch on.

She just said words I can't repeat.

Yeah.

Well, you can't repeat them Because that might have been a swear in Russian.

Well, we're, we're, we're all unsure.

We might get censored. I don't know.

It's very possible. We, we have to maintain our user rating here of PG, and you just said some like cortisol or something, and I'm just not sure.

But I heard something like super charismatic.

I've heard of super charismatic.

That's right.

Yeah. So, uh, there's a couple things here. Uh, one, I want you to touch on— okay, you— this has always been fascinating to me. So I work with teenagers, and the— and, and I've got a background in psychology a little bit, so I've got a little bit of information here. If I remember correctly, uh, the, the studies that were out, I don't know, within the last few years, teenagers need somewhere around like 9 to 10 hours of sleep. And so I would really like to hear what the recommended hours of sleep are for people, because I think a lot of people are misinformed. They just think, oh, well, I sleep 7 hours a night, or I sleep 6 or 8 or whatever it is. But I think there's a recommended number there

somewhere, and I'd like you to touch on that. But there's another thing that I just want to kind of comment on. And that is, uh, I've done a fair amount of like backpacking in the wilderness, especially in like Colorado and New Mexico and stuff. And what I find is that when I'm there, I sleep much, much differently. And part of that, I believe— I've just felt this while I've been there, it's been no scientific study in any way— uh, is that I wake up whenever the sun comes up and I kind of go to sleep when the sun goes down because it's dark. There's really nothing unless you want to burn your flashlight batteries, which you don't want to do, or unless you want to, you know, burn a fire all night, you really can't move

away from the fire. Just, you lose light. And so I think that there was a period of time where people's clocks were set by the rising and the setting of the sun, and we just don't need that anymore, and we don't live on that cycle anymore. So what you're saying about light coming in, like, you wake up because you can't go back to sleep because the light's too bright in your tent, and you go to sleep because it's too dark. And so you just go to sleep, and that winds up being like 10 hours every night of darkness. So I just wanted to kind of comment on that, and I don't know if you want to touch on that

before you get into the recommended times. I'm curious about that.

Camping can be one of the best ways to just kind of get a sense of resetting our clocks because then the whole thing about this is that we're looking to do what's known as circadian rhythm entrainment.

Yeah.

And so, again, circadian rhythm, for those that aren't as connected with that concept, it's that we have this 24-hour cycle or rhythm that we're on. And, as humans, we are meant to be diurnal creatures, which means we're meant to be active during the day and at rest at night. And, that simple kind of duality of our days was, to your point, so perfectly illustrated. It's just how it went, you know, because it— and really what it boils down to is 2 things, light and temperature.

Mm-hmm.

So, for so long, what would happen is you would be living within nature, within the environments, and versus how, you know, 2016, the World Health Organization quoted that the average person is spending over 90% of their days inside. So, and that was in 2016. I'm sure with the lockdown, it's like Way more than that. So what we've created for ourselves is a very kind of like bubble, insular, zoo animal-esque way of living. Yeah. So the camping analogy is such a good place to begin because it can just be a fantastic way for us to have that undeniable reminder of how much we are linked up with the rhythms of nature. And this is so not a like preaching

standpoint because when I was in Manhattan, I could not even have told you when the sun would rise, when the sun would set. set. It's like 24-hour lights, all the things. And, I was just so disconnected. Now, to be connected to those rhythms in such an intimate way is just life-changing. And so, I think what is important to look at the reason of the why because I think it can feel, or at least for me, it could feel like a little woo-woo or just light like, oh, what's the big deal? Rhythms? Come on. But, That camping analogy is a perfect place to look at that because that involves both light and temperature. So when the sun

is rising every morning, when it is hitting the Earth's surface, that's warming the Earth. So then that acts as the first cue to our bodies that it's beginning to warm up. So this is important that we shift off the production of melatonin and we create cortisol. And then when, as the sun's coming, of course, the light element is also that other cue because it becomes undeniable that that this means that now we're meant to be active during this daylight hours. And then, when the sun would set, it immediately gets cooler and it gets dark. So, those 2 things become so important and I can share how we can bring that in because I'm sure many of us are not going to

start camping 24/7, so what we can do in our day-to-day lives. But once that sun sets, Then, what actually happens is that darkness is related to melatonin, and melatonin is known as the hormone of darkness. So, what's really missing for so many of us is that if we are being surrounded by so much light 24/7, that we are not creating a sufficient amount of melatonin each night. And then, that's where one of the source points that so many of our disrupted and fragmented sleep patterns come in.

Which is why— Some people would go and just buy melatonin to help them sleep, right?

Exactly, exactly. And one of the things I think is super important about that point is that, one, in America we think of it as being like, oh, that's the healthy option. I'm being really so mindful of my— whatever, wellness-based. But the thing is, one, in America it is very much illegal. We give it to kids. Go to certain other countries and it's not legal in the same way that we have it here, very casual about it. It is important to remember that it is a hormone, so it's really taking an element of hormone replacement therapy even though it seems so nonchalant. But I think what's important for us to get is that we can actually produce and we have all the capabilities within us. We've

done it for thousands and thousands of years to produce the amount of melatonin that's necessary to get a sufficient amount of sleep. And I think it then just becomes a number of behavioral patterns that we can shift to make a difference with that.

So are there then things that we're doing to actually block the production of melatonin?

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. So a couple things. So if we go back to those 2 guiding principles of circadian rhythm entrainment, it's light being number one, most important, and then below that is temperature. So one, the easiest thing you could do to really make a difference with your sleep is when the sun is setting, then really just Just turning out your lights. So, ideally, you would turn all your lights out, maybe do candles. But for those of us that aren't going to do that, you can do some red lights. So, I have this guy. I don't know if you can see that, different red lights. Then, you can do more red-based hues because that doesn't seem to impact melatonin in the same way. No matter what though, bright lights lights across the board

are disruptive to that production of melatonin, but at least if it's more in the warmer hues, that can help support that creation. But ideally, if you could take kind of— I had this anthropologist on the podcast talking about taking the candlelight challenge where you just use candles at night and see what happens to your sleep. So, it's one. The second one is actually just turning down your thermostat or your air conditioner to making it cooler. in the evening to align with— so it's kind of like circadian heating and cooling. So basically, once the sun sets, then you're turning that down. But then during the day, you turn that up so that it kind of mimics how life would

be, so that you're warmer during the day and then cooler at night.

Well, that's, that's really interesting because I can't sleep very well if it's warm.

I know, me too.

Yeah, we do turn it down in the evenings for that. But, you know, like my wife, she does not like being in the dark. So like when we're watching TV at night, which is— if you go back and listen, uh, to what I do whenever I wind down, we, we watch TV at night. And so she doesn't like being in the dark. So we have, you know, I would just turn the, the light be almost down, but for her, it does— she doesn't like the feeling of that. So yeah, um, that's a, that's a challenge that I guess she would just have to kind of over time work through.

Yeah, great point. So number one, there's a couple of books that kind of speak to this element of— because we have— we've gotten so far away from having total darkness that many of us get— it just seems very foreign. You know, there's actually— I always speak to— I think it's so cool. There's certain dark protected skylines, like Idaho is one of only like a dozen-something that protects their skylines from what they call light pollution. And so then The stargazing is insane.

There's a couple places here in Texas that do that, too. In fact, there's one in the Dallas area. It's in the middle of North Dallas. I cannot remember the name of it. It's near Fairview, that area. They don't have lights at their football stadium because it's illegal to have lights over a certain height in the city so that it does not contribute to light pollution. It's interesting.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, well, I actually hate it, but that's just because I'm around football a lot. But I understand it makes sense.

Friday Night Lights, yeah.

That's right.

Totally get that. Well, yeah, so it does take— I mean, when we're talking about the element of behavioral change that's necessary to get great sleep in 2020 and beyond, Yeah. There are a lot of things that we don't necessarily think about. I certainly didn't for so many years have any connection to the knowingness that the amount of light that I'm getting first thing in the morning is going to then impact me around 16 hours later when I go to sleep. I wasn't making any of those connections. And then, of course, I wasn't making any of the connections of how much dimming the light or putting on blue blockers Just really also aligning my behaviors with— because often I would just be gearing up with my work. It's 11:00

PM and I would be going to town. The mismatch that that is to our circadian rhythm, we haven't evolved in a way that would warrant such a shift in a deviation in our normal patterns in such a short period of time.

You think that that is one of the reasons why people quote unquote have to wind down whenever they get home, that they feel the need to do that. Like, that's not just a coping mechanism as much as that is literally the way your body was just designed, is to wind down and kind of get into a more restful place, I would assume.

Oh yeah. And we haven't even talked about, you know, that's like a whole other topic too around the neurological difference in being in a fast-paced modern society with all the stimulation and the nonstop dingings and bells and dopamine hits and all of that stuff, we're like little mini gambler nutballs that are running around, you know, and then just— And what that does to our brains, it's just really not something that we would have been connected to because like we said in the great camping analogy, for so long, maybe a bonfire would extend the life of once the sun sets, we'd get squeeze out a couple— an hour, a little bit of time, but really you're going to bed shortly after that. And you would have been very, very

weird in the tribe, probably kicked out of the tribe if you were like lurking around doing strange things at, you know, 1, 2 in the morning, which now we think is very normal, watching Netflix and chilling, you know. And we just haven't— because we're all swimming in this way of being, we don't necessarily notice how strange it is and then the impacts on our psychology and physiology.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because like we are definitely in the infancy of just even understanding what this stuff is doing to us. And I— what blew my mind the other day when I was— when someone brought this to light is like Trump was the very first president to ever use social media in an election.

Yeah.

And like to think about that, that he's— I mean, like basically he's been president for coming up on 4 years now. To be the very first one, even though the internet's been around longer than that, that he's the first one to use social media. To your point that we're getting dinged and, you know, whatever, all these notifications thrown at us all day long, we don't know what that's doing to our brain because really it's only been happening to us for less than 20 years.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So I don't, you know, we may not even know in the next 10 years how that's been affecting us. in the long term in relationship to our sleep and really just our overall mental health? My guess is not a net positive. It's not.

Yes. Well, and to hearken back to your original question too about the amount of hours that are necessary to, you know, it plays off of that concern of the amount of stimuli we're getting. So many of us have impacted that total number of sleep hours as well. But so, for the average adult, we're looking at around 7 to 9 being the kind of current suggestion. But then, of course, as we begin to further improve our environment to mimic how it— by improve, really going back to how it was previously, there are people, a lot of biohackers that are looking to improve those numbers and extend those numbers, meaning and ensuring that the quality of that sleep is kind of out of the

norm for what we're seeing nowadays. And then teenagers go into a whole other bracket too where they require quite a bit more sleep too than the average adult.

And then is— my follow-up to that is I talk to a lot of people who are like, well, I didn't get enough sleep last night. I'll just make it up tomorrow. You know, is that an effective strategy or a healthy strategy for your overall Yeah.

So that is really challenging because what that does is it plays into that conversation of we've got this sleep debt. So for a while, that was really in vogue, talking about sleep debt. And so you got to pay off that sleep debt. But unfortunately, that kind of created this relationship to our sleep where we really all went bankrupt in a lot of ways. Not all, but we have a tendency of really going to town with that debt because unfortunately, that can create a bit of a jealousy jet lag for people. It's known as social jet lag where we don't go anywhere, we don't take a flight, but we are throwing ourselves up to such differences in our bedtime, wake time.

Right.

So, for many people, it's very not uncommon to see people sleep in an extra 3, 4 hours sometimes on the weekends and how much that is as if you just took a flight across the country and what that does to your body and getting back onto that schedule.

Yeah, that's interesting. Well, listen, there's so much more that we did not get a chance to touch on. We are really going to have to do a part 2 to this at some point, but we know we have to—

We want to honor your time.

Yeah, we got to honor your time, and so we're gonna go ahead and say adieu, but there's— we're just gonna— Craig and I are gonna commit to kind of making a list of some more questions because I think there's a lot of things that we don't want to get away from this topic. I feel like what we did was we just confused everybody because we said way too many things and we didn't have enough time to broaden those answers out a little bit.

Yeah.

But what I heard, and I think if we can summarize a little bit, what I heard was our sleep is extremely important and our rhythms are one of the most important things we can do to affect our sleep, and so maybe So maybe if you're out there listening to this and you think maybe I need to sleep differently or better or healthier or whatever, change your rhythms. And this light-dark thing is probably a good place to start.

Or just go follow Molly and she'll tell you what to do.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, you've got a lot of stuff going out there and so we're gonna link some of that stuff up to this podcast as well so people can get back to you.

Well, just real quick, I mean, if you have a sec, Molly, could you tell Can you tell people where to go if they're listening and driving in the car? What are some easy ways to find you and get ahold of your information?

Sure, no problem. So going to sleepisasaskill.com is kind of the catch-all bucket. So on there, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. Every single Monday, we send out a newsletter on what I call the most obsessive sleep newsletter on the planet, where it just goes nuts obsessing over the topic of sleep. If you couldn't tell, I'm kind of an obsessive personality, so really go to town on that. We also have a sleep assessment. We have a downloadable PDF for the optimized bedroom. We've got a couple gadgets and things, but also low-tech as well. Then from there, we also have an online course. We have a podcast. We have all kinds of stuff if you really want to dive deep on this area of

sleep. I make the argument that it's the, I believe, the most important place to begin on this quest for health and wellness so that you then have the aptitude to be able to take on the The eating and the working out and all those other things that we traditionally think of, but if we're exhausted, it's really challenging for us to fulfill on those.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you sharing that with us so we can get that out to everybody that is struggling with their sleep. I really do hope that you can find some time to come back on because I have a list of questions here I didn't even get to. Yeah.

Yes. We'll do a part 2.

That would be fantastic.

This was really cool.

Yeah. So anything else you wanna share before we jump off of here?

Well, I love that concept of a part 2 because I know we just kind of scratched the surface, so we can go deeper for sure. And it's just been a pleasure getting to know you guys. And I didn't realize you're in Texas. We're looking at, my boyfriend and I are looking at possibly looking at Austin. So we'll have to continue on that conversation.

Oh, you're jumping on the Joe Rogan train, huh?

I know, exactly. And Tesla and the, I know, the poor Austin folks are probably like, oh God, these people.

No, no, no, no, no. Austin, Austin can take it, and they deserve what they get.

Yeah, they're weird. They're weird. Hey, listen, they're weird and they're self-assigned. That's right. Weird. So it's their fault. Well, listen, thank you so very much, and, uh, we've got so much more that we want to talk about, so we're going to get that scheduled up and we're going to let you go. Uh, thank you so much. Thank you for all the listeners out there. Uh, you can find this on YouTube as well as on our regular podcast. Be sure to subscribe to those, click the bell, get all the notifications, all that kind of stuff. But until next time, we'll see you later.

See ya.