The Exchanges

Q of mind, but also our body. When we're stressed, for example, our field of vision like narrows and we, we have blind spots, not only with what we can literally see, but also with what we can cognitively see. Can you maybe take us through the relationship that vision and breathing have on our internal state and any behavioral practices that we can use to feel better and see more?

A Yeah. So we'll start with vision. Um, When we are relaxed, we are in panoramic vision. Even without moving our eyes or head, we actually have a wider aperture or field of view. Those from special operations communities will understand this as situational awareness. You have to be relaxed in order to see what's going on. Why? Well, the moment that you have adrenaline in your system goes up, Your field of view actually narrows. The pupils dilate. So, you know, um, police will look at, see how high people are by, if people are super relaxed, their pupils are very small. And if they're very, um, agitated, their pupils will be large, agitated or excited in a positive way. When the pupils are large, there's a movement of the lens of the eye and actually your visual field narrows. You get a soda straw view of the world. So when you're very stressed, you have a narrower aperture. And you're actually viewing the world. Um, just imagine trying to identify something in a scene by looking through binoculars, much harder actually than if you have the entire panoramic view. So stress in the visual system, relaxation in the visual system, I'm linked together. There's actually a simple practice that you can do. If ever you're in conversation or in an environment where you're stressed, you're trying to find a plane gate that you're running to. You're trying to find somebody God forbid you lost …

AI assessment note: “So we'll start with vision. Um, When we are relaxed, we are in panoramic vision.”

Q It seems common, at least among people that I know that they can fall asleep, like right away, almost instantly, but then four to five hours later, they're wide awake. You sort of mentioned depression. What else is going on there? What goes through your mind in terms of, uh, how to handle that and, and, you know.

A Yeah. So a couple of things, one is they might not be getting enough physical activity during the day. Or they're getting too much. They're overtrained. If you train too much and too often, uh, you'll find that you can't get enough sleep and you're always tired. If you train too intensely, you'll often find that you, um, you'll, you'll have this waking up, um, agitated thing. Now that's, that's, I wouldn't get too bogged down in that, but it's something to keep an eye out for people that are doing tons and tons of miles on the road. And then they're always exhausted. Well, your body's just not recovering. And Likewise with work, if you just work, work, work, and you're just burning yourself down, an appropriate amount of physical exercise each day is going to help you get the appropriate amount of sleep. And the rule of thumb from the literature is about a 150 to a 180 minutes per week of zone two cardio. So this is, um, cardiovascular exercise of any kind where you could have a conversation, but you're a little bit strained. You'd prefer to be quiet to keep it going. Zone two cardio, a 150 to a 180 minutes a week, approximately broken up into various sessions. And then it's very clear that the body and brain and the skeletal system and the muscular system benefit from any, from a minimum of six sets per body part per week, just to maintain muscle. I'm not talking about people …

AI assessment note: “one is they might not be getting enough physical activity during the day”

Q of mind, but also our body. When we're stressed, for example, our field of vision like narrows and we, we have blind spots, not only with what we can literally see, but also with what we can cognitively see. Can you maybe take us through the relationship that vision and breathing have on our internal state and any behavioral practices that we can use to feel better and see more?

A Yeah. So we'll start with vision. Um, When we are relaxed, we are in panoramic vision. Even without moving our eyes or head, we actually have a wider aperture or field of view. Those from special operations communities will understand this as situational awareness. You have to be relaxed in order to see what's going on. Why? Well, the moment that you have adrenaline in your system goes up, Your field of view actually narrows. The pupils dilate. So, you know, um, police will look at, see how high people are by, if people are super relaxed, their pupils are very small. And if they're very, um, agitated, their pupils will be large, agitated or excited in a positive way. When the pupils are large, there's a movement of the lens of the eye and actually your visual field narrows. You get a soda straw view of the world. So when you're very stressed, you have a narrower aperture. And you're actually viewing the world. Um, just imagine trying to identify something in a scene by looking through binoculars, much harder actually than if you have the entire panoramic view. So stress in the visual system, relaxation in the visual system, I'm linked together. There's actually a simple practice that you can do. If ever you're in conversation or in an environment where you're stressed, you're trying to find a plane gate that you're running to. You're trying to find somebody God forbid you lost …

AI assessment note: “So we'll start with vision. Um, When we are relaxed, we are in panoramic vision.”

Q It seems common, at least among people that I know that they can fall asleep, like right away, almost instantly, but then four to five hours later, they're wide awake. You sort of mentioned depression. What else is going on there? What goes through your mind in terms of, uh, how to handle that and, and, you know.

A Yeah. So a couple of things, one is they might not be getting enough physical activity during the day. Or they're getting too much. They're overtrained. If you train too much and too often, uh, you'll find that you can't get enough sleep and you're always tired. If you train too intensely, you'll often find that you, um, you'll, you'll have this waking up, um, agitated thing. Now that's, that's, I wouldn't get too bogged down in that, but it's something to keep an eye out for people that are doing tons and tons of miles on the road. And then they're always exhausted. Well, your body's just not recovering. And Likewise with work, if you just work, work, work, and you're just burning yourself down, an appropriate amount of physical exercise each day is going to help you get the appropriate amount of sleep. And the rule of thumb from the literature is about a 150 to a 180 minutes per week of zone two cardio. So this is, um, cardiovascular exercise of any kind where you could have a conversation, but you're a little bit strained. You'd prefer to be quiet to keep it going. Zone two cardio, a 150 to a 180 minutes a week, approximately broken up into various sessions. And then it's very clear that the body and brain and the skeletal system and the muscular system benefit from any, from a minimum of six sets per body part per week, just to maintain muscle. I'm not talking about people …

AI assessment note: “one is they might not be getting enough physical activity during the day. Or they're getting too much.”

Q Brains deteriorate with age. What exercises for the brain have demonstrated either slowing or reversing some of this natural process? Is it just cardio like we talked about earlier?

A Yeah. So this is really interesting. So there, there are great data from, uh, the Nobel prize winning, uh, neuroscientist Eric Kandel's lab at Columbia showing that when we do certain forms of exercise, there's a hormone like molecule that's released into the bloodstream called osteocalcin. Osteocalcin Is known to provide support to neurons in a brain area called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. The 150 to 180 minutes of zone two cardio per week will support overall brain health and function by way of improving blood flow. So a lot of cognitive dysfunction is, um, over time and, and age related dementia is just poor perfusion of the brain. This is why people who have general cardiovascular issues also generally have issues with thinking quite honestly. Now, in terms of brain function, A couple of things I, um, just want to mention before I forget. One of the ways to improve cognitive function is to make sure that there's appropriate amounts of glymphatic clearance. The brain has its own lymphatic system. This lymphatic clearance happens during sleep. One way to enhance it is to have the feet slightly elevated, 10 to 15 degrees. I put a pillow under my ankles when I sleep at night. Usually in the middle of the night, I realize I kicked it away or something like that, but feet elevated naps of about 10 to 15 degrees are very useful. It increases the glym…

AI assessment note: “150 to 180 minutes of zone two cardio per week will support overall brain health”

Q What about caffeine? Maybe you can walk us through what we know about it and how we can use this knowledge to get better performance while minimizing the impact on sleep.

A Caffeine, as I mentioned, is in it, it works. It's actually a competitive agonist of, of adenosine. So how does it work? Caffeine parks in the adenosine receptor. Remember, adenosine is this molecule that builds up the longer we've been awake. So parks in that receptor. And it, and so it's an agonist, meaning it can park there, but it, it out competes the adenosine. So it creates an artificial state of alertness that way, but it also triggers the release of Of adrenaline, also called epinephrine. Epinephrine and adrenaline are the same thing from the brain and body, two sources. There's a, you have your adrenal glands above your kidneys. That's one source. And then you have a collection of little neurons in your brainstem called the locus coeruleus. Locus coeruleus is an amazing structure. It sends those little wires we call axons off into different areas of the brain, acts like kind of a sprinkler, sprinkler system, releasing epinephrine and creating states of alertness in the brain. And caffeine stimulates those neurons to release adrenaline. So it literally creates wakefulness in the brain and wakefulness in the body through locus coeruleus in the brain and the adrenals in the body. In addition, it does something really cool, which is that it increases the sensitivity of the dopamine receptors. Now we haven't talked too much about dopamine, but dopamine is perhaps the most p…

AI assessment note: “Caffeine, as I mentioned, is in it, it works. It's actually a competitive”

Q All right. Some quick questions before we get into some longer ones. Do you cycle your supplements at all? Or do you just do them every night? The three that you mentioned?

A Yeah, I do them every night unless I pass out reading without them. And I've never developed a dependence on any of them. I do notice that, um, you know, if I don't take them consistently, then I'll start, you know, my sleep isn't quite as good. There are two other things I should mention that I do use just in full disclosure. I do take about 200 milligrams of GABA. I've been doing that lately because it really improves my sleep and I'm really big on sleep. And I sometimes will take a gram or two of glycine as well. So I'm taking a lot. I'm taking bisglycinate. I'm taking epigenin. I'm taking theanine. I'm taking GABA. I'm taking glycine. But why am I doing all this? Well, I fall asleep and stay asleep for about six to seven hours, and I feel Completely charged during the day. To me, sleep is the foundation of all mental and physical health, and I'm not somebody who struggles with clinical depression. I'm 46 years old. I, I, I feel great most all of the time, even if life is hard, and that for me is a, is sort of a, like, a wow. I can't believe it, right? Given my work schedule, given life is challenging, now I have a wonderful life, but I, also a number of challenges like anybody else, and I think What, what's different? Well, what's different is that I've been getting really good sleep consistently for, for years now. I didn't finish up with melatonin earlier. I'm not a fan, …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I do them every night unless I pass out reading without them.”

Q All right. Some quick questions before we get into some longer ones. Do you cycle your supplements at all? Or do you just do them every night? The three that you mentioned?

A Yeah, I do them every night unless I pass out reading without them. And I've never developed a dependence on any of them. I do notice that, um, you know, if I don't take them consistently, then I'll start, you know, my sleep isn't quite as good. There are two other things I should mention that I do use just in full disclosure. I do take about 200 milligrams of GABA. I've been doing that lately because it really improves my sleep and I'm really big on sleep. And I sometimes will take a gram or two of glycine as well. So I'm taking a lot. I'm taking bisglycinate. I'm taking epigenin. I'm taking theanine. I'm taking GABA. I'm taking glycine. But why am I doing all this? Well, I fall asleep and stay asleep for about six to seven hours, and I feel Completely charged during the day. To me, sleep is the foundation of all mental and physical health, and I'm not somebody who struggles with clinical depression. I'm 46 years old. I, I, I feel great most all of the time, even if life is hard, and that for me is a, is sort of a, like, a wow. I can't believe it, right? Given my work schedule, given life is challenging, now I have a wonderful life, but I, also a number of challenges like anybody else, and I think What, what's different? Well, what's different is that I've been getting really good sleep consistently for, for years now. I didn't finish up with melatonin earlier. I'm not a fan, …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I do them every night unless I pass out reading without them.”

Q I want to briefly touch on caffeine and alcohol. Maybe we can start with alcohol. What happens when someone has a glass or two of wine or an after dinner cocktail? How does that impact our sleep? And is there anything we can do to counterbalance the effects of booze in the moment? Just acknowledging that it's probably going to happen to get a better sleep.

A I think that the key is to not do it too close to sleep. I think obviously hydration is key because alcohol is dehydrating. Remember a lot of the negative effects of alcohol on sleep are by way of the temperature system. Remember we used to hear that, oh, you know, if you drink and you're outdoors, I guess we've all had the experience of partying and you're outside and you're not wearing a jacket and it's freezing cold and you feel fine. Right. And that's because of the way that alcohol, um, actually it's, it's a little bit counterintuitive. Alcohol actually lowers your body temperature, but your perception of that lower body temperature is disrupted. Um, so part of the reason you can fall asleep When you drink alcohol is because it lowers your body temperature. Now there's a dosage component and so on, but one idea would be if you're going to drink alcohol, hydrate the supplements I refer to, at least to my knowledge, but they don't, um, interact with alcohol. Uh, obviously the deadly combination is alcohol and any kind of barbiturates or sedatives. So there, there's actually a strong incentive for staying away from sleep medication if you're drinking, right? I mean, people, a lot of deaths have occurred just because people combine sedatives, um, prescription sedatives with alcohol, but the supplements I'm referring to, um, as far as I know, don't do that. Um, there's a loss o…

AI assessment note: “a lot of people will feel better if they'll drink water with some electrolytes.”

Q Brains deteriorate with age. What exercises for the brain have demonstrated either slowing or reversing some of this natural process? Is it just cardio like we talked about earlier?

A Yeah. So this is really interesting. So there, there are great data from, uh, the Nobel prize winning, uh, neuroscientist Eric Kandel's lab at Columbia showing that when we do certain forms of exercise, there's a hormone like molecule that's released into the bloodstream called osteocalcin. Osteocalcin Is known to provide support to neurons in a brain area called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. The 150 to 180 minutes of zone two cardio per week will support overall brain health and function by way of improving blood flow. So a lot of cognitive dysfunction is, um, over time and, and age related dementia is just poor perfusion of the brain. This is why people who have general cardiovascular issues also generally have issues with thinking quite honestly. Now, in terms of brain function, A couple of things I, um, just want to mention before I forget. One of the ways to improve cognitive function is to make sure that there's appropriate amounts of glymphatic clearance. The brain has its own lymphatic system. This lymphatic clearance happens during sleep. One way to enhance it is to have the feet slightly elevated, 10 to 15 degrees. I put a pillow under my ankles when I sleep at night. Usually in the middle of the night, I realize I kicked it away or something like that, but feet elevated naps of about 10 to 15 degrees are very useful. It increases the glym…

AI assessment note: “150 to 180 minutes of zone two cardio per week will support overall brain health”

Q Let's end with what is success for you?

A Uh, that's a hard question, uh, but a really good one. Um, well, I place tremendous value on certain things, and I think some of those will be obvious, so I'll just list those, and I'll try, then I'll try and give a more succinct, um, answer. I'm not a good philosopher, but, you know, the things that have really made a huge difference in my happiness in life are, first of all, feeling physically and mentally well. Um, is our own individual obligation. Uh, regardless of upbringing, we, no one can do it for us. There's no magic pill or fairy or stork that's gonna deliver the solution. So I place tremendous value on keeping my physiology where it needs to be. I wanna, I wanna have endurance. I wanna have strength. I wanna have mental strength. I wanna have kindness. I want to have openness. I want to be open to learning. Friendship to me is, is a, is the bedrock of my well-being because I, I depend very heavily on it for the feeling that, that life is moving forward. And that's just unique to my own experience. But I think, um, you don't need many friends, but friendship is, is a wonderful and important part of my life. Um, so I try and take good care mentally and physically. I try and invest in my friendships. And obviously other relationships too. Success to me really is about embracing this capacity that we have to, to improve our nervous system. It really is. It's not just a j…

AI assessment note: “Success to me really is about embracing this capacity that we have”

Q Is that why kids do that when they're crying or we adults do that when they're sobbing too?

A Yes. When we sob, we are effectively asphyxiating ourselves. That's the, because what are, if we think about sob, sobs are mostly exhales. Is the crying thing. That's my weak, you know, attempt to, to, um, cry on cue. But you're collapsing those little sacks and then it, then there's a, this kind of thing. Okay. People with sleep apnea do this every once in a while. They're falling asleep. They're in sleep and they're, they're basically asphyxiating themselves. People who are very large, and that includes, by the way, people, not just people who are obese, but people who have a lot of muscle, who have big necks. Oftentimes they, they sleep on their back and their mouth breathers. They're, they're basically oxygen starving themselves. And then they'll, they'll do this kind of physiological science. The body's attempt to offload carbon dioxide and bring in more oxygen. There's a well-known neural circuit for this involving an area called the parafacial nucleus discovered by Jack Feldman at UCLA. I just mentioned those things so that if people want to dive deeper into this, they can. If you're in a claustrophobic environment, actually, if you're in a crowded elevator or something, there isn't much oxygen nowadays also because people are in the masks. Every once in a while, people will take off that mask. Finally, if they're outside, right, and they get, they're allowed to do that.…

AI assessment note: “Yes. When we sob, we are effectively asphyxiating ourselves.”

Q I want to briefly touch on caffeine and alcohol. Maybe we can start with alcohol. What happens when someone has a glass or two of wine or an after dinner cocktail? How does that impact our sleep? And is there anything we can do to counterbalance the effects of booze in the moment? Just acknowledging that it's probably going to happen to get a better sleep.

A I think that the key is to not do it too close to sleep. I think obviously hydration is key because alcohol is dehydrating. Remember a lot of the negative effects of alcohol on sleep are by way of the temperature system. Remember we used to hear that, oh, you know, if you drink and you're outdoors, I guess we've all had the experience of partying and you're outside and you're not wearing a jacket and it's freezing cold and you feel fine. Right. And that's because of the way that alcohol, um, actually it's, it's a little bit counterintuitive. Alcohol actually lowers your body temperature, but your perception of that lower body temperature is disrupted. Um, so part of the reason you can fall asleep When you drink alcohol is because it lowers your body temperature. Now there's a dosage component and so on, but one idea would be if you're going to drink alcohol, hydrate the supplements I refer to, at least to my knowledge, but they don't, um, interact with alcohol. Uh, obviously the deadly combination is alcohol and any kind of barbiturates or sedatives. So there, there's actually a strong incentive for staying away from sleep medication if you're drinking, right? I mean, people, a lot of deaths have occurred just because people combine sedatives, um, prescription sedatives with alcohol, but the supplements I'm referring to, um, as far as I know, don't do that. Um, there's a loss o…

AI assessment note: “a lot of people will feel better if they'll drink water with some electrolytes”

Q Is that why kids do that when they're crying or we adults do that when they're sobbing too?

A Yes. When we sob, we are effectively asphyxiating ourselves. That's the, because what are, if we think about sob, sobs are mostly exhales. Is the crying thing. That's my weak, you know, attempt to, to, um, cry on cue. But you're collapsing those little sacks and then it, then there's a, this kind of thing. Okay. People with sleep apnea do this every once in a while. They're falling asleep. They're in sleep and they're, they're basically asphyxiating themselves. People who are very large, and that includes, by the way, people, not just people who are obese, but people who have a lot of muscle, who have big necks. Oftentimes they, they sleep on their back and their mouth breathers. They're, they're basically oxygen starving themselves. And then they'll, they'll do this kind of physiological science. The body's attempt to offload carbon dioxide and bring in more oxygen. There's a well-known neural circuit for this involving an area called the parafacial nucleus discovered by Jack Feldman at UCLA. I just mentioned those things so that if people want to dive deeper into this, they can. If you're in a claustrophobic environment, actually, if you're in a crowded elevator or something, there isn't much oxygen nowadays also because people are in the masks. Every once in a while, people will take off that mask. Finally, if they're outside, right, and they get, they're allowed to do that.…

AI assessment note: “Yes. When we sob, we are effectively asphyxiating ourselves.”

Q Let's start with light. Light seems to impact the way we feel, how we learn and how we sleep. How does light exposure or sunlight exposure impact the way we sleep during the day? We have the opportunity to interact with light in various ways and our cells use that information, but maybe you can take us through how we can use light to get a better night of sleep.

A Sure. So light is perhaps the most powerful stimulus for our mental, physical, Health and for our performance in every endeavor. We often miss this point because the effects of light are what we call slow and integrative. You know, if you look at a particular color of light, it's not that suddenly you're going to be endowed with superpowers. Um, if you don't view light it, uh, for half a day or for a day, you're okay. But what light does is it sets the foundation of our abilities and it does that indirectly, indirectly. It does it indirectly by controlling when we are asleep and when we are alert, and it also has direct effects on the way that our nervous system functions. So I'll just get right into some practices, and then I'll flesh out those practices with some science Um, to explain why they work rather than, um, dropping a lot of scientific nomenclature and then telling people what was, is useful. The way that we function is by way of our nervous system. Our nervous system links all the organs of the brain and body, brain, spinal cord, but then of course, spleen, heart, lungs, et cetera. And the nervous system is the system that coordinates all of those. The nervous system therefore is without question, the most powerful Organ system of our body, and it acts as a conductor. It is locked inside of our skull and body, and it has no knowledge of the outside world and vision,…

AI assessment note: “vision, um, which involves photons, light energy... is the way that the nervous system decides”

Q What about caffeine? Maybe you can walk us through what we know about it and how we can use this knowledge to get better performance while minimizing the impact on sleep.

A Caffeine, as I mentioned, is in it, it works. It's actually a competitive agonist of, of adenosine. So how does it work? Caffeine parks in the adenosine receptor. Remember, adenosine is this molecule that builds up the longer we've been awake. So parks in that receptor. And it, and so it's an agonist, meaning it can park there, but it, it out competes the adenosine. So it creates an artificial state of alertness that way, but it also triggers the release of Of adrenaline, also called epinephrine. Epinephrine and adrenaline are the same thing from the brain and body, two sources. There's a, you have your adrenal glands above your kidneys. That's one source. And then you have a collection of little neurons in your brainstem called the locus coeruleus. Locus coeruleus is an amazing structure. It sends those little wires we call axons off into different areas of the brain, acts like kind of a sprinkler, sprinkler system, releasing epinephrine and creating states of alertness in the brain. And caffeine stimulates those neurons to release adrenaline. So it literally creates wakefulness in the brain and wakefulness in the body through locus coeruleus in the brain and the adrenals in the body. In addition, it does something really cool, which is that it increases the sensitivity of the dopamine receptors. Now we haven't talked too much about dopamine, but dopamine is perhaps the most p…

AI assessment note: “Caffeine, as I mentioned, is in it, it works. It's actually a competitive agonist”

Q Let's end with what is success for you?

A Uh, that's a hard question, uh, but a really good one. Um, well, I place tremendous value on certain things, and I think some of those will be obvious, so I'll just list those, and I'll try, then I'll try and give a more succinct, um, answer. I'm not a good philosopher, but, you know, the things that have really made a huge difference in my happiness in life are, first of all, feeling physically and mentally well. Um, is our own individual obligation. Uh, regardless of upbringing, we, no one can do it for us. There's no magic pill or fairy or stork that's gonna deliver the solution. So I place tremendous value on keeping my physiology where it needs to be. I wanna, I wanna have endurance. I wanna have strength. I wanna have mental strength. I wanna have kindness. I want to have openness. I want to be open to learning. Friendship to me is, is a, is the bedrock of my well-being because I, I depend very heavily on it for the feeling that, that life is moving forward. And that's just unique to my own experience. But I think, um, you don't need many friends, but friendship is, is a wonderful and important part of my life. Um, so I try and take good care mentally and physically. I try and invest in my friendships. And obviously other relationships too. Success to me really is about embracing this capacity that we have to, to improve our nervous system. It really is. It's not just a j…

AI assessment note: “Success to me really is about embracing this capacity that we have to, to improve”

Q Let's start with light. Light seems to impact the way we feel, how we learn and how we sleep. How does light exposure or sunlight exposure impact the way we sleep during the day? We have the opportunity to interact with light in various ways and our cells use that information, but maybe you can take us through how we can use light to get a better night of sleep.

A Sure. So light is perhaps the most powerful stimulus for our mental, physical, Health and for our performance in every endeavor. We often miss this point because the effects of light are what we call slow and integrative. You know, if you look at a particular color of light, it's not that suddenly you're going to be endowed with superpowers. Um, if you don't view light it, uh, for half a day or for a day, you're okay. But what light does is it sets the foundation of our abilities and it does that indirectly, indirectly. It does it indirectly by controlling when we are asleep and when we are alert, and it also has direct effects on the way that our nervous system functions. So I'll just get right into some practices, and then I'll flesh out those practices with some science Um, to explain why they work rather than, um, dropping a lot of scientific nomenclature and then telling people what was, is useful. The way that we function is by way of our nervous system. Our nervous system links all the organs of the brain and body, brain, spinal cord, but then of course, spleen, heart, lungs, et cetera. And the nervous system is the system that coordinates all of those. The nervous system therefore is without question, the most powerful Organ system of our body, and it acts as a conductor. It is locked inside of our skull and body, and it has no knowledge of the outside world and vision,…

AI assessment note: “controlling when we are asleep and when we are alert”