647: How to Get the Best Sleep Ever (From Someone Who Spent $45K on Sleep) With Matt Gallant

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from WellnessMama.com, and this episode is all about sleep, and more specifically, how to get the best sleep ever from someone who spent $45,000 learning how. I’m here with Matt Gallant, who is the CEO and co-founder of BiOptimizers, and he has a Bachelor’s degree in kinesiology. He’s also been a strength and conditioning coach for multiple pro athletes and a self-defense instructor, and he has over 15 years of experience formulating supplements. He’s also a serial entrepreneur that’s built over 13 profitable companies.

In this episode, we go deep on the sleep component. He starts off with a wild story about how he was shot during a robbery. But then we get into the sleep side and talk about how and why he spent $45,000 learning how to sleep better and what his main lessons were. We talk about inexpensive things that anyone can do to improve sleep how temperature comes into play, some ways to improve deep sleep specifically. Why 1 hour of sleep before midnight is worth 2 hours after. The reason that when you work your body, you tend to get more deep sleep. When you work your brain, you get more REM and why this is a good thing.

We talk about how even small changes like daylight savings time can make a big difference, why shift work is classified as a carcinogen, how not getting enough sleep leads to weight gain and loss of muscle mass and can directly impact hunger, willpower, and more, as well as blood sugar. And then we talk about sleep supplements, what to know about wearables and trackables, how to improve HRV, and a lot more. So, lots of very practical tips in this episode. I know that you will learn a lot and let’s join Matt. Matt, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Matt: Great to be here.

Katie: I am excited for this conversation because sleep is a topic I care very deeply about and I think is extremely relevant to every human on the planet, and you are an expert in that area. But before we go deep on sleep, I have a note from your bio that you were once shot in a robbery. And I just have to hear this story because you are the only guest I know of to date that has have been shot at a robbery.

Matt: Yeah. So I don’t scare people off from visiting Panama. I live in Panama, Central America, and I’ve been here for 19 years, and it’s the only time anything like that has ever happened. But I came back from an event and I had left my lights on in my car, so the battery was dead and had to go pick up a good friend of mine nearby. So I flagged down a taxi and in Panama, it’s not that unusual to share a taxi. And I trained self defense for a long time. I was a little bit worried about getting in, but I’m like, I’m late. I’m just going to hop in. So I hopped in, hopped into the front, and within a few seconds, there’s two guys in the back. One of them grabbed my shirt, pinned me to the seat.

And then if you’ve ever watched Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. He kind of plays the scenarios in his head before they happen. So I’m like, grab the guy’s finger, break his finger, open the door, jump out of the car. So I grab the guy’s fingers, and the next thing, I’m just disoriented and I smell a gunpowder. And I look back and the guy had a gun and told me in not so polite terms, give me all your stuff or I’m going to shoot you in the face. And I realized I was shot. Fortunately, when I turned around, the bullet hit my hand and my wrist. It would have hit my neck otherwise. And, yeah, I gave them my things and they fortunately let me out.

So I was bleeding pretty intensely and I was close to my home, so I was able to run home, which, by the way, if you’re shot, don’t run. It’s not a good idea. Came home, my shirt was filled with blood, and my wife screamed as I walked into the home. And I had to call my friend. I’m like, sorry I can’t go pick you up. I’ve got to go to the hospital. I just got shot. And he’s Australian, so I’m not going to say what he said, but are you F ing kidding me, mate? Yeah, that was it. Got surgery and lost some mobility in my wrist a little bit, but recovered, and it was a wild experience, that’s for sure.

Katie: Wow. Well, that is quite the story, and I’m glad that you are recovered and have most of your mobility back. That’s quite the wild adventure it sounds like, and hopefully one that you won’t get to repeat in your lifetime. But I know another thing that you do have a lot of direct experience with in a much more positive note is sleep. And I believe I’ve even read that you spent $45,000 really dialing in sleep. So I would love to start there. What would you say your biggest lessons surprising takeaways or kind of 80/20 key points are from that deep dive into sleep?

Matt: Yeah, I’ll start with the less expensive stuff than almost anybody can do. First one is light. So managing light starting in the morning. Again, Andrew Huberman has really done a great job hammering home the criticalness of getting light in your eyes in the morning. And I have a device called Retimer. It’s these $400 glasses that actually shine blue light into your eyes and it’s very effective. So for people that live in cold climates, I’m Canadian, but obviously I left a long time ago and don’t want to wake up and go into -30 weather which is very understandable although it is free cryotherapy right?

But yeah, you can use blue light panels or blue light glasses, things like Retimer to shine light and that way that does start a clock in your brain which will make you feel more tired 14 to 16 hours later and help you sleep better at night. T

he other critical aspect of light is managing it about like 90 minutes before your target bedtime. And that’s a really critical concept is you want to have a target bedtime and we can get into some of the reasons why, but you want to be as consistent as possible when you go to bed. And there’s a lot of rituals you want to do before that target bedtime. And the first one is about 90 minutes before you want to dim the lights so you can dim the lights. I’ve heard some great tips like using salt lamps with dimmers. Some people like wearing blue light blocking glasses. Whatever technique you use, as long as you’re dimming the lights in your environment, that’s going to tell your brain that it’s time to start preparing for bed.

And it also maximizes your natural melatonin production. So if you have too much light, your brain is going to be stimulated. You might struggle with wanting to go to bed. That’s one of my main issues. If I have too much light, and you’re not going to produce a lot of melatonin which is going to destroy your deep sleep and some other consequences.

And then while you’re in bed, you want to make sure that your bedroom is basically pitch black. So I live in the city, I have two layers of blackout curtains. So literally I can’t see my hand at night when I’m in my bedroom because the light if it hits your skin will also disrupt melatonin production. So that’s the first major tip is light. The only thing you really need to invest in all of that is maybe some blackout curtains which you can get on Amazon, very inexpensively.

The second one is temperature. So when I was we can get into some of my sleep crisis but my first sleep crisis in my 20s I just decided foolishly to try to minimize my sleep because I wanted to work more. I was a workaholic, training twice a day doing all kinds of things and I crashed and burned when I got to 4 hours of sleep. Took me two months to recover. Read Power Sleep by James Moss which was kind of a revolutionary book during its time. And I slept like eight to 9 hours for years. And then I started using sleep trackers like the Zo and the Oura Ring and shockingly I realized I was only getting zero to 15 minutes of deep sleep at night and that correlated with my testosterone crashing with my body fat being the highest I’d ever recorded on a Dexa scan. And I realized that the number one thing I could do was invest in high quality sleep and that’s what kickstarted me on this journey.

But probably at that time the number one thing that was destroying my sleep was temperature. Now keep in mind I was running air conditioning, right? I mean Panama, you need to – it’s not an option. What was happening, I was sweating so much underneath the bedsheets that I was losing three to 3-4 pounds of water weight every night, waking up groggy, waking up tired and obviously my deep sleep was getting destroyed. So you need to be in a very, very cold environment in the room as well as underneath the sheets to get deep sleep. So if your body is too hot, your deep sleep is going to get destroyed. And deep sleep is where there’s a lot of Rejuvenation happening, growth hormone production and all kinds of other really critical hormones.

So the temperature was again the main issue there and I got the Chilipad, they’ve released three versions. I think there’s Sleep Eight as well. But getting something, especially if you’re menopause premenopause, if you work out a lot, if you have a lot of lean muscle mass it’s normal to overheat. Basically your body is trapping heat between your skin and the mattress and it’ll cause you to sweat and overheat and destroy your sleep.

And then the last major thing I would say is a good mattress, especially if you’re a side sleeper. So if you’re a back sleeper, congratulations. That’s the best sleep position for a couple of reasons. One of them is you will get a natural spinal adjustment. Ask any chiropractor, they’ll tell you that’s the best sleep position. And the second reason is you get less blood flow constriction because you have a bigger surface area from your skin or your body and the mattress. And if you’re a side sleeper, you’re getting a lot more pressure on your shoulders or if you’re a woman with wider hips and legs, you will get blood flow constriction happening in those areas which causes you to toss and turn while you’re sleeping. And when you toss and turn, it’s going to pull you out of deep sleep or pull you out of REM sleep. So, getting a really good mattress. If you’re a side sleeper, I recommend a memory foam mattress. My brand of choice is Essentia. They use a more natural trees sats to produce the memory foam. And the heavier and shorter you are, the softer the mattress needs to be. You need to sink in more so that the weight is more evenly distributed from your toes to your head. So I’d say those are probably the top three things.

And one more big one is not eating at least 3 hours before bed. Ideally even maybe four. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is when you eat, your body temperature will spike from half a degree to a degree Celsius, which obviously goes back to body temperature. And the other reason is blood flow will surround your digestive system versus being distributed out to your extremities and basically it goes back to temperature. So don’t eat at least three or four hours before bed.

Katie: Yeah, you made several key points there. And just to highlight what you said, the light thing I also find is very impactful with kids. So one change I made that lines up with what you said was we have full spectrum bulbs in our ceiling Lightning in our house, but then lamps that are eye level or below that have red bulbs with no blue light. And at sunset we just make the switch in lighting which helps everyone’s circadian rhythm kind of mimic what’s happening outside, even if we’re not just living around a campfire like perhaps humans ideally would be.

Also, food timing makes a huge difference. I noticed when I only adjusted that and stopped eating as close to sunset as possible, my sleep improved proportionately to how far in advance of sleep I was stopping eating. So I love that you talk about those. I also want to go deep on deep sleep because you said you for a while were getting very little, almost no deep sleep. And this is a problem for many people and it seems like there’s a lot of confusion about what are things that can reliably help improve deep sleep. So I would love for you to go deeper on that as well as any tips for learning to back sleep. Because I used to until I got pregnant. Then you’re not supposed to when you’re pregnant and now I have not yet been able to transition back to sleeping on my back.

Matt: I have no tips for that. I’ve just accepted I’m a side sleeper. So sorry, I can’t help you there. Actually, when I’m on my back, I just get into a really meditative state and I just want to stay there. So it’s very difficult for me to sleep in that position. But yeah, deep sleep. So temperature we address. That’s a big one. But here’s another major one. Most people have heard that 1 hour of sleep before midnight is worth 2 hours. There’s a little bit of science behind that and then we’ll add some nuances to that saying if you go past your target bedtime. So let’s say you’re consistently going to bed at midnight and you go to bed at 1:00am., you will destroy your deep sleep that night. A couple of reasons. One is your body will produce cortisol after 30-45 minutes. And again, it’s probably an evolutionary survival mechanism because if you needed to stay up at night for whatever reason, obviously your body needs to find a way to keep you awake. And again, we’ve all experienced that where we stay up too late and you get that second wind. So when you get that second wind, you’ve missed that window and your deep sleep will be wiped out that night. And typically you’ll feel almost a little bit hungover the next day because of that.

So I would say the top two things for, or maybe three things for getting deep sleep is again, don’t eat three or four hours before bed, make sure your room is cold and again, use a Chilipad or a Sleep Eight to optimize the temperature and need the sheets. And the big one is make sure that you’re within range of your target bedtime and being consistent with your target bedtime will improve your circadian response. Again, you’re hardwiring your body to go to bed at a certain time and that’s more important than waking up at a certain time.

We talk about the optimal amount of sleep and it ranges from person to person and it also ranges based on what you’ve got going on in your life. So for example, if you get a really hard squat workout or a deadlift workout or any sort of high intensity interval workout, you’ll notice typically that you need maybe a little more sleep that night because again, you push your body. And what I’ve noticed over time is that when you push your body really hard, you’ll tend to get more deep sleep. And when you push your brain really hard, you’ll tend to get more REM sleep. And it makes sense because again, deep sleep is typically more for the body and REM sleep is a little bit more for the mind. That’s where there’s a lot of emotional processing happening, memory consolidation and all kinds of other key benefits.

Katie: That’s fascinating, I hadn’t heard it said that way before. But it makes sense that if you push your body, your body will prioritize deep sleep and if you push your mind, it will prioritize REM. I also think to your point, it’s one of the things I’ve resisted doing for a long time and I still rebel against a little bit. But having that consistent bedtime and wake time when possible really does seem to make a difference. As much as I wish that were not the case and it didn’t matter, it seems like it really is.

And this is something most parents do with their kids because we sort of intuitively know it helps their sleep schedule and also our sanity when they have a consistent bedtime. But it’s one that I feel like a lot of adults resist and that’s one, like some of the other things you talked about. It’s inexpensive or free to implement that just getting more consistent on that. So I think that’s a huge tip.

Also, it’s no secret that Americans especially kind of are terrible at sleep these days. We’re not getting enough statistically. So I would like to talk more about what is the optimal range of sleep and also what happens on kind of an increasing level when we don’t get enough sleep, because I know the research ties it to a lot of chronic diseases and acute issues.

Matt: Yeah, so the thing with sleep is a lot of people think the consequences are long term and obviously there are long term consequences. If you’re not getting enough sleep, you will almost certainly die earlier than you would otherwise. And that’s been shown with all kinds of long term studies. But what I want to focus on is actually the short term consequences because I think when people it’s hard for sometimes for people to focus on what’s going to happen two or three decades from now, but we can all focus on tomorrow.

So one of the first things that happens is your hippocampus, which is where a lot of short term memory storage will get damaged. And I had dinner with a good friend of mine recently and he told me that my short term memory is just shot. My first question was how much sleep are you getting? And he was only getting like three to five hours. So I’ve hooked him up with all the goodies and he’s been getting great sleep and his brain has been improving, which is great. But that’s one.

Two is it will damage your DNA. So literally there is damaged DNA happening from one night. There’s all kinds of bad epigenetic switches that turn on. And we’re talking about epigenetics involved in inflammation, cardiovascular disease and tumors that will get turned on when you’re not getting enough sleep. Here’s a wild stat which is very relevant for this upcoming weekend because there’s a clock change.

So during daylight Savings time when we lose an hour of sleep, heart attacks go up 24% the following day. And during the fall when people gain an hour, the heart attack rates go down 21%. And one more shocking stat is that the World Health Organization has deemed night shift work a carcinogen. So again, that’s the consequences. I’ll give you a couple more, especially for anybody who wants to lose weight. So they did a study with two groups. One group was sleeping five and a half hours. The other group was sleeping eight and a half hours. The five and a half hour group lost 55% less body fat and 60% more muscle mass with their weight loss. Now, for anybody that’s on a weight loss program, my advice is always you want to protect your lean muscle mass at all costs. Like that is one of your top priorities. You want to be losing as much body fat as possible and preserving and if possible, even building a little bit of lean body mass during your weight loss journey.

So what happens when you’re not getting enough sleep is you’re losing about half your body weight or half the weight loss is lean muscle mass. The other thing that happens is food cravings go up significantly. Grelin, which is your hormone, your hunger hormone, goes up about 28% in the following day and your willpower is compromised. So you’re hungrier, your willpower is lower, and any weight loss that’s occurring is essentially half lean muscle mass. So for anybody that’s trying to lose weight, that’s all the things you don’t want to happen. And one more key point is your blood sugar response after one bad night of sleep, you can look pre diabetic.

I was actually talking to a pro athlete recently. We were talking about sleep. And he tracks his blood sugar using a constant glucose monitor. For people that don’t know what that is, it’s a device that’s tracking your blood sugar 24 hours a day, typically for a month. And he showed me the data and basically from one single night of that sleep, the following day, he looked like he was prediabetic, which of course, when you have elevated blood sugar, your skin is aging faster, you’re just aging faster. You’re going to have all kinds of potential health issues. So that’s the consequences of one bad night. We’re not talking about decades of bad sleep.

Katie: Yeah, that’s so fascinating. I’ve seen that from wearing a glucose monitor as well. Those changes from just one day, I will say from having a lot of listeners who are moms. It does seem like there’s some kind of hormonally protective effect for new moms in that first six months of a baby being born with having to be up with the baby all night. It seems to somewhat blunt those negative effects, which would make sense kind of evolutionary wise for survival. But outside of that narrow window, it seems like sleep is such a big factor.

And that was one of the lessons I also learned from that glucose monitor and now have really prioritized sleep, even more so for that reason. I’ve also talked about this before, but I talk about my own sort of trauma recovery and weight loss journey and losing 80 pounds in a relatively short amount of time. And I always emphasize, I did not do any additional exercise during that time. I was doing actually very gentle movements only, but I prioritize sleep like crazy up to the point of sleeping almost like 10 hours a night, some nights. And I felt like my body was in an intense recovery phase. And so I think that was a huge key and one that’s not talked about enough when we’re talking about weight loss and any kind of recovery, even emotional recovery and the demand that puts on the body and the brain.

I also know a lot of people experiment with kind of a wide range of supplements related to sleep, and I know I’ve seen good results from certain ones. I would love your take on this, what you tried during your own journey and what you found most impactful.

Matt: Yeah. So for people that know who we are and what we do, I’m the CEO, co-founder of BiOptimizers. We’ve been creating supplements that help optimize humans since 2004. And personally, I’ve been trying every sleep molecule that’s commercially available since I started this whole sleep journey, which has been almost a decade.

There are certain things that I found really worked well and worked well for virtually everyone. One of them is l-theanine. L-theanine has probably been one of my favorites. It’s an amino acid derived from green tea. Been using it probably 99% plus percent of evenings for years. And what’s great about it is that it does a few things. So let’s talk about another major problem that a lot of people suffer from that disrupts or really makes it hard for them to sleep, which is hyperactive brain activity. And when you put electrodes on their brains, what you’ll see is they have hyperactive beta brainwave activity. L-theanine is one of the molecules that will actually decrease that activity. What’s great about L-theanine is that it helps you feel relaxed without causing drowsiness.

So when we were working on Sleep Breakthrough, we were trying to create something that help people sleep better and also help them feel more refreshed the next day. There’s a lot of sleep molecules that will help you fall asleep and maybe stay asleep, but then you feel drowsy the next day. So L-thanine is a phenomenal molecule for that, and it’s the reason why green tea or your Bomate has a better feeling than coffee. A lot of people prefer the green teas or your Bomate because of the L-theanine. So it’s a really great molecule.

Another molecule that acts very similarly is GABA. So we tested all kinds of Gabbas. We settled on pharma GABA, GABA, and pharma GABA will also decrease beta brainwave activity and increase alpha brainwave activity, which helps you feel more calm and relaxed. Alpha is a really heart, open space, and in general, 2 hours before your target bedtime, you want to be trying to downshift, right? Downshift your brain, downshift your nervous system. So anything you can do that will help you relax is going to be a good thing. And these molecules do that.

When you look at people that really struggle with falling asleep, you’ll find that they’re typically about 30% deficient in GABA. So GABA for a lot of people, is an amazing sleep molecule. We call it the molecule of chill. It’s really great for that. Back to moms, and we’ve been getting just last week, I had two people that I know personally that have been using Sleep Breakthrough. They’re both moms of young children, and they both said the exact same thing, which is that even though they’re having to wake up throughout the night to take care of their child, they’re feeling much better and much more refreshed. And the reason for that is glycine. So glycine is an amino acid. It’s an amazing amino acid. I think it’s one of the most important amino acids for health and antiaging. It’s involved in all kinds of things, from collagen production to detoxifying your body and all kinds of other things.

But for sleep, it does a couple of things. One is it will actually help lower your body temperature by pushing your blood to your extremities, which is awesome. But my favorite part of glycine, and this is why the moms are reporting that they can wake up, take care of their children, go back to bed, and feel much better the next day. Is the research showed that if people are not getting enough sleep but they’re taking 3 grams of glycine, that they will feel a lot better and more rested the next day. So glycine for moms, I think, is a game changer. And again, if you’re just not getting enough sleep, you’ll feel much better using glycine. So that’s why we included that in Sleep Breakthrough. It also improves sleep onset. You’ll fall asleep faster, and it will help improve REM.

The next molecule….. So I’m a big fan of trying to give the body, like, all the building blocks that it needs to produce a target molecule versus taking, let’s say, melatonin. And we can talk about melatonin because I think it has certain applications at certain times. But if you give your body magnesium for an example, and our best selling product is Magnesium Breakthrough, and it’s helped tens of thousands of people improved their sleep. Magnesium is a building block for serotonin, and serotonin is a building block for melatonin. So giving your body magnesium before sleep, again, about an hour before, is a great idea. It will help relax your nervous system and it will help your body produce more melatonin naturally, especially if you’re managing darkness.

One of the things I think we do really well at BiOptimizer is create full formulas that not only include the building blocks, but all the cofactors, such as P five P, which is a bioactive form of vitamin B-6. And what that does, it helps transform more of the magnesium into serotonin. And we just prove we have a lab with 20 people doing nonstop experiments. And we just proved, like, two weeks ago that the P five P increases the absorption of the magnesium in red blood cells, which is really exciting because it helps validate our whole strategy.

But there are some other really good sleep minerals. One of them is potassium. So Mr. Nudes, who helped me formulate Sleep Breakthrough, told me that we need potassium in this. And of course, I’m a huge fan of potassium. I think most people are deficient in potassium. Potassium is really the molecule of hydration. And what I didn’t know until I read the literature was that potassium actually helps quiet down your neurons. So it helps basically relax your brain, and sodium excites your brain. So in the morning, it’s a really good idea to put some salt in your water or salt in your coffee. If you’ve never had salt. Coffee, like black coffee with salt. Try it out. I like it. It’s more like a savory experience. Gives you minerals, especially if you’re using Himalayan salt or sea salt, maybe a quarter teaspoon blend. It tastes great, but it also helps wake up your brain.

But again, as you’re moving into the evening, even for dinner, there’s something called new salt, which is a potassium chloride salt that you can use in your food. And that’s a good idea. It’ll help basically, again, give your body more potassium and help balance your potassium to sodium levels and sodium, there’s nothing wrong with sodium. The issue is most people are just not consuming enough potassium.

The other benefit of potassium for sleep is that it can help minimize your bathroom trips throughout the night, because when your sodium to potassium ratios are off, you’re going to go urinate a lot more frequently. So if you can get your potassium levels up, you’ll notice you’ll essentially go less frequently to the bathroom, which is great.

Next is calcium. Calcium improves REM, and it helps transform tryptophan, which is another amino acid, into serotonin and then into melatonin. And then finally we use zinc. Zinc oritate, is another great mineral for your nervous system. It calms your nervous system, and it’s another cofactor for melatonin. So magnesium, potassium, calcium, zinc are all just amazing minerals for sleep. That’s why we included all of those. And that’s essentially it.

So our Sleep Breakthrough formulas, all those minerals glycine, L-theanine and GABA. And we’re targeting different sleep pathways. And there’s incredible synergy to drink. You drink at about an hour before your target bedtime, and within 30 minutes, you’ll start to feel definitely relaxed, and you’ll definitely want to be going to bed and get better sleep, fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling refreshed.

Katie: I love that I was taking notes for the show, notes that whole time. I will, of course, put a link to the supplement you’re mentioning, because I think it’s great to have those all in one place. But some of those things I did not know. For instance, the tip about helping potassium, helping reduce nighttime trips to the bathroom. I feel like that’s going to be a big key for a lot of people and a great one to know. I know, I’ve heard that a lot of people are deficient in both sodium and potassium and of course, magnesium. We know. But it’s good to know that the timing of those can also be used really strategically as well.

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Another thing I think that I get a question about a lot with the access to wearable sleep tracking devices now. Like we talked about people wanting to increase deep sleep, I also get a lot of questions about HRV. And so I’m curious if you went into this during your sleep journey and anything that you learned that seems to be helpful in improving HRV.

Matt: Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about HRV. And how about wearables? So first of all, the wearables, when we say wearables, the rings, Oura Ring or any wrist type of technology is about 60% to 70% accurate for tracking sleep. That might sound low, but it’s still better than nothing and it’s directionally correct, meaning that if you’re using the same device all the time and you’re seeing better numbers than your sleep is improving. So I am a fan of these devices.

However, where I really think they shine is on the readiness score in terms of measuring how healthy is your nervous system and HRV heart rate, how fast your heart rate drops while you’re sleeping, your body temperature are all direct measurements. So unlike the sleep. And the only way you can get accurate sleep data is to have electrodes on your skull.

So I’m a big fan of the readiness score. And what is that measuring? It’s essentially measuring how healthy your nervous system is and there’s massive variances from person to person. So HRV is not something that you want to compare to other people. You want to essentially compare that to yourself. And if you see a major drop in HRV that’s telling you that either A, you caught something and your body is fighting an infection or a virus, or you’re over stressed, you might be overtrained, or there’s some major stress event occurring in your life, it’s very accurate for measuring those experiences and those events. And that can help you spend more time and energy than the following days on parasympathetic activity to help your body recover and rejuvenate and get your HRV back in check.

Now, in terms of things that improve your HRV, a couple of things. One, I’ve noticed that cardiovascular health, the more fit you are in terms of cardio, the higher your VO2max. Typically you’ll see some improvements in HRV. I would say anything you’re doing to really manage your nervous system throughout the day can improve your HRV. So, for example, I’m a huge fan of sensory deprivation tanks. I think that those are probably the most powerful thing anyone can do for recovering their nervous system. So it’s incredibly parasympathetic for anybody that has never done it. Strongly recommend it. You’re essentially in a tank, in a salt water tank. It’s a magnesium salt, Epsom salt, and you can’t see anything. It’s pitch black and you just float for I usually go for like 90 minutes. And you’ll notice that after about 45, 60 minutes, your nervous system just down shifts. You’ll feel it, it’s very experiential.

Another thing I’ve noticed, and it’s more on the expensive side, but the NanoVi, which is people call it a bio hacking device, but you’re breathing in these signaling molecules that help repair your DNA. And if you run it long enough, you’ll sense your nervous system shifting as well. So there’s things like that that I’ve noticed that improves HRV. So in general though, it’s difficult to improve your HRV. Like you’re going to have to do those things and improve your VO2max, and try to relax throughout the day. But if you see it crash, that’s really more where I pay attention. If you see your numbers go down 10, 15 points, definitely try to spend more time on recovery, relaxation, anything you can do to really manage your nervous system.

Katie: Those are all such great tips. And I will say alcohol absolutely tanks my HRV, and I’m seeing that play out over and over in the wearables, it makes me much less likely to want to drink just because of how drastic that effect is. And I do see positive changes from some of the things you mentioned. I haven’t done float tanks in a while, but that makes sense that they would help with that. And I’ve also tossed around the idea this year of doing one of those darkness retreats where you’re in a cave for three days. So I’d be curious to see how my Oura Ring responds to that.

Another trend in the sleep space that I’ve played with personally and seemed to have good results from. But I would be curious, your take is the practice of mouth taping at night to encourage nasal breathing over mouth breathing. I know there are of course, some cautions around that it doesn’t work for everyone, but I’m curious if you tried it, if you noticed any benefit and what you suggest.

Matt: Yeah, I’ve not tried it. I’ll tell you a couple of things that I’ve tried. So let’s just talk about kind of optimizing the air in your bedroom. So I have tried a lot of things related to that. Now, I’m not a snorer. I think people that snore and I’ve heard people that have apnea issues use mouth taping and have incredible transformations around that.

I’ve used nasal expanders. So these really inexpensive kind of nasal expanders you can buy on Amazon for like $8-$10, which literally open up your nasal pathways a little more and allow you to breathe in better. That helps in my opinion. I use an air purifier in my bedroom. I think if you’re living in a city, it’s a really good idea. I will say that if you’re living, let’s say in the countryside and you don’t have any noise or light pollution around your home, opening up the windows so you have oxygen coming in is a really good idea. I think having more oxygen in your bedroom will improve sleep.

One device that I use that I’m a big fan of is called Elonra, it’s from this Australian company and it produces hyper-charged oxygen molecules. And when I say hyper-charged, hyper negatively charged and there’s some really interesting data starting to come out on these types of ionization devices. What it does, it charges these molecules and I’m not a fan of woo in general I think I need science and data to show me that these things actually work. So the first thing I did, I use this device called an orp. And what this does. They use it a lot in the boat world to measure how oxidative the water is or other things are. And it’s the highest reading I’ve ever seen on anything, including negatively charged water things. It was like -1500. So for sure, this device is legit. I think they’re using it in some Australian hospitals. And you can even change the frequency of the molecules. Anyways, it’s an interesting device. You just put it kind of next to your bed and you’ll be breathing some of those molecules. And the theory is that it can help neutralize any positively charged toxins in the air. So I think those are all good tips on breathing in better air while you’re sleeping. In my opinion, that’s a sleep enhancer.

Katie: And it seems like that also just speaks to whenever possible prioritizing your sleep environment. I know from a budget perspective this is a priority for me just because like you said, this is a big portion of our life that we spend sleeping and I feel like anything I can do passively that improves my experience of sleeping but doesn’t take actual effort is an easy marker toward health. So I’m willing to budget and prioritize a mattress like we talked about as being a priority, or ChiliPad being a game changer for me in my sleep, or whether it’s blackout curtains, air quality, because we do spend so much of our life sleeping and that time is supposed to be so restorative. I feel like anything that we prioritize related to our sleep environment kind of pays dividends exponentially.

And so that’s one that I find for my kids as well. So I always encourage parents like if your child is having trouble sleeping, prioritize that sleep environment as much as possible. Are there any other kind of stand out lessons from your whole deep dive into sleep or what are now your non negotiables and 80/20 that you feel like are your top priorities?

Matt: Yeah, I think we covered most of it. I mean, like, I actually set an alarm for my sleep stack, like 90 minutes before my target bedtime, which for me is midnight. And I’m a night owl. So for me, midnight is more on the early side. Talk a little bit about chrono-types if you want, but not even as before. I have an alarm that tells me, okay, it’s time to take my magnesium breakthrough, my sleep breakthrough, dim the lights. So I do all of that and then hit the sack and get great sleep. My environment is hyperoptimized and I get 8 hours pretty consistently. Again, and sometimes if I’m pushing it, training harder, I’ll need like eight and a half, sometimes nine. When I used to work with pro athletes, the formula that I learned was 8 hours plus 1 hour for every hour they work out. I read stories of LeBron James and Serena Williams sleeping 10-12 hours a night. I mean, they get it. They’re obviously pro athletes.

Some people need less sleep. I think there’s a genetic element to that. Some people seem to get higher quality sleep in less time. And I do think sleep quality trump sleep quantity. And again, I learned that the hard way where when I was getting like, 9 hours and not getting any good quality sleep, I was waking up feeling horrible. Now I feel much better with even seven hours than I used to with nine. So I think there’s some genetic variance there some people have.

And I have bad genes for sleep. It actually showed up in my genetic test and I figured that was the case because my father struggled with sleep. And by the way, magnesium breakthrough, my favorite testimonial of all time for BIOptimizer is from my parents. Magnesium Breakthrough. Sleep Breakthrough has been transformative for them for getting sleep, especially my dad, which is awesome.

I think from an entrepreneurial perspective, the way I look at sleep, it’s like one of the top investments I can make, both short term and long term. Short term, obviously, if my cognitive performance is optimized and I can make better decisions the following day, it’s going to pay off.

And in my opinion, the only way you can buy more time in life is to improve your health. Right? There’s no guarantees, but if we want to live not just a longer life, but a higher quality longer life, investing in sleep, investing in your health is where it’s at. Yeah, I tell people, listen, sell your car, sell whatever you need to do, or buy a less expensive car and invest in a great mattress, invest in the ChiliPad, invest in blackout curtains, invest in good sleep supplements. And the payoffs are just tremendous.

Katie: I love it. We’ve gotten to cover so many different parts of sleep today, and you’ve given so many really practical tips. I’ve been taking notes, and those are all at Wellnessmama.fm and the show notes and a couple of last questions I love to ask. The first being if there’s a book or a number of books that have profoundly impacted your life and if so, what they are and why.

Matt: Yes, it’s always a tough question because there’s a few, but I think The Body Keeps the Score is definitely one of the biggest game changers for anybody that really reads it and implements it and I’ll just give everyone the punchline. The punchline is when people experience things that hurt them and they don’t process those events, they’re essentially stored in your limbic system. And that’s what the body keeps the score means.

And I’ve spent months of my life cleaning house, cleaning my limbic system, doing neurofeedback. I’m certified in EFT, which is tapping. There’s all kinds of things that help. Of course, a lot of people have gotten good results with psychedelics, emdr, but you need to find a way to go into your limbic system and do an inventory of all the things that have hurt you. Which, by the way, a normal person that has had a good childhood, it’s around 300 to 500 events. And what I’ve seen with myself and with other people, and I’ve helped a lot of people throughout this journey is most people can only remember about 50 to 100 things at first, but as they start clearing house and cleaning all these different events, then they can remember more and more. And as you get deeper, you start getting into some very maybe hidden or buried memories that are really kind of hidden from the surface. So I think it’s an incredible book and it gives all kinds of tools, but ultimately people need to go and find a way to do the work. So yeah, that one.

And I would also say anything from Dr. David Hawkins. Letting Go the Pathway of Surrender. Power Versus Force. All his books were tremendous for me to get back on the spiritual path because I was an atheist and agnostic for a long time and it’s been transformative for me on my spiritual health. And spiritual health dramatically impacts your physical health. So there’s more and more data showing that.

Katie: I absolutely love both of those recommendations. I could not agree more strongly. I will link to those as well in the show notes. Those have all been very impactful for me personally as well. And it sounds like also in your experience that those factors are huge when it comes to sleep, but truly every aspect of health, from sleep to nervous system function to how we feel during the day and so much more. So I love that you recommended those. And in kind of the same vein, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to sleep or it could be entirely unrelated life advice?

Matt: Yeah, again, doing the work, making that inventory of things that have hurt you, which a lot of people are scared to a lot of people, they’re kind of scared to look within and see things they don’t want to see. And that’s really the cause of the issue, is that suppression. So, yeah, just making an inventory of things and then finding some tools that can help you clean house, whether it’s your feedback EFT finding someone that you trust that you can share those things with, that can guide you through those things. I think what happens is your emotional health transforms, and that transforms who you are, especially around people that you love. So you’ll be a better parent, a better boss, a better partner to your lover. You just become a better version of yourself. So I think when I think about something that’s just transformed the quality of my life and the quality of life of the people around me, I think doing the emotional work is probably top of the list.

Katie: I love that. Well, I’m so grateful we got to have this conversation. I’m super grateful for all of the knowledge that you shared and all the practical tips, and I know that you guys have resources specific to this on your website, as well as products that directly help with this. I will make sure all of those are linked as well, and there’s so much more learning available on your website. But, Matt, thank you so much for your time today. This has been wonderful, and I’ve learned a lot.

Matt: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was awesome.

Katie: And thanks, as always, to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of The Wellness Mama Podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.