909: How Sleep Impacts Mental and Physical Resilience With Jack Dell’Accio

Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from Wellness Mama dot com and this episode is all about how sleep impacts mental and physical resilience. And I’m here with Jack Dell’Accio who I hope I’m pronouncing his name correctly,but he’s the founder of Essentia and a certified sleep coach with over 20 years of experience analyzing and improving sleep.

He is particularly passionate about the role of restorative sleep in disease recovery, prevention, longevity, and performance. And his expertise has led him to work with many top athletes in the NBA, NFL, MLS, and others. Um, his organic mattresses have garnered recognition from several esteemed organizations, including the Mayo Clinic’s Well Living Lab, and for eight, um, consecutive years, they’ve been ranked as the top foam mattress.

In this episode, we go deep on why sleep is so vital for every aspect of health. Um, what the problems with chronic poor sleep and how to actually know if you’re getting good sleep or not. Some big needle movers that we can change to improve sleep quality and much more. So let’s jump in and join Jack.

Jack, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Jack: Uh, Hey Katie. Good to, good to see you. Good, good to, good to be talking to you again. It’s been a while.

Katie: It has been a while and I’m really excited for this conversation because I will say of the over now 900 episodes of this podcast, I would say the only common factor I can point to between every health expert is that they all point to sleep being important. I’ve never had a single guest ever say sleep doesn’t matter. And I know this is something you are very passionate about as a sleep coach with over 20 years of experience. And that’s something you’ve spent a lot of time and passion researching and helping others in. So I’m really excited to kind of go deep in a couple of conversations with you actually, but in this first one, really kind of deep diving into how sleep really impacts our mental and physical health, our performance, our resilience, kind of, it’s how it’s the master switch for everything.

And I know this is a broad topic, um, but I would love for you to give us some context maybe before we jump into a little bit more of the nuance of this conversation about what we know about what makes sleep so vital to our mental and physical health.

Jack: It’s really a, an exciting time, uh, for us and for me personally. It’s been 25 years of talking about sleep and, and the foundation of sleep and how important it is. And like you mentioned, all of the health experts, well, the experts, it just seems like right now we’re getting a tidal wave of everyone finally acknowledging it, you know, like, really, it’s, it’s in every conversation about wellness, whether we’re, we’re, we’re talking to athletes or just every individual as everyone’s aging, um, everyone has finally come to that agreement.

You know, I guess in the past, they’re just trying to focus on, on things they thought they could control in their daytime or wake time. Uh, but ultimately, the foundation to your well being really comes down to sleep. Uh, that’s when our bodies fully reset itself, uh, fully expel all negative toxins, uh, whether it be in your mind,  in your body, your body is repairing itself, both mentally and physically during sleep. That’s why we need it. But then, you know, what we specialize is, is talking about the quality of sleep and pushing the needle and increasing REM sleep and deep sleep to really make game changers for people’s lives.

Um, so yeah, it’s a good, good time for us because. Feel that we are not walking an uphill battle anymore and everyone consensus is that sleep is the ultimate foundation to your wellness.

Katie: Yeah, I kno I’ve seen some wild statistics too about even just a couple of nights of poor sleep or interrupted sleep or certainly a night of skipping sleep during travel or something can have such drastic hormone and blood sugar implications. And that I think if I’m remembering correctly, even things like it would be the similar to driving while under the influence of quite a bit of alcohol or. To be that impaired after sleep or having the blood sugar regulation of a diabetic or prediabetic just from lack of sleep. It seems like this is kind of like a master switch when it comes to hormones and health, which makes sense when you talk about kind of all those things that happen, the resetting that happens during sleep.

And so if we miss that, it’s like our body didn’t get those cues and now it’s kind of like operating from a deficit. Is that kind of what’s going on?

Jack: Well, you know, we’ve, we’ve seen people who have gone a drastic way of either if anyone’s experienced, like you mentioned, through travel. Uh, real true interrupted sleep or no sleep and you see that it takes several days to recover from that. What most people are not getting is that that chronic poor sleep, which means you’re getting sleep But not true wellness and not true deep sleep, you know So they’re they’re just having that chronic fatigue mental fatigue not being able to function, uh to their top. That’s what most people are experiencing and they’re not identifying that it’s because of sleep, but ultimately that’s where it is, is, uh, being consistent at night will make you way more effective and consistent in the day, um, but it just puts your whole body out of whack and that’s what it, and I think the biggest, the more common error is the chronic poor sleep rather than the extreme of no sleep or, you know, that you get occasionally, either through a party session or through a travel session or whatever that may be. Obviously, at our age, we’re talking more about travel than parties, but, uh, but ultimately, anytime you go really too far in sleep deprivation it really is a major shake up to the body.

Um, and, uh, you know. Again, focused on pushing that to the next level, um, affects longevity wellness. And that’s kind of what everyone’s looking at right now is how do I live a better, longer, happier life? And, uh, you know, we’re here to tell people sleep is actually so basic. Some, some things seem so simple, but that is the foundation to all of it.

Katie: Yeah, I agree. I know I’ve shared this a little bit before, but when I was in kind of the intensive healing phase from having autoimmune issues, which I’ve now recovered from, but there was a solid year where my main focus was just pure recovery and sleep, and I wasn’t doing anything that was hard on my body.

I was just trying to nourish my body during the day, get natural light and then get as much quality sleep as possible. Um, but I love that you use that term chronic poor sleep because you’re right. At least the closest I get to a wild party is being up with a kid who had a nightmare. Um, but chronic poor sleep, I feel like is something that can affect moms, especially because there are so many demands on our time and our energy.

Can you sort of help us define what chronic poor sleep is? Maybe what are markers of poor sleep and or what are markers of quality sleep?

Jack: Well, generally speaking, if, um, and these days are great because a lot of people have trackers and you’re able to really identify, uh, you know, when you’re not getting enough REM sleep and deep sleep. So, uh, when I say chronic poor sleep, it’s not about eight hours or six hours. It’s how much time you’ve invested in REM sleep and deep sleep.

Cause those are the game changers. Cause we can, we can, we can break up the night sleep, uh, Well, we can actually shorten that night, that sleep time, but what you can’t really, uh, sacrifice is the REM sleep and deep sleep. And these are cycles that the body gets into, approximately every 90 minutes, it’s going through cycles.

Finding ways to extend the REM and the deep cycles and shorten the light cycles are are ways that you can bank in a lot of those times. So if somebody’s getting generally under two hours of REM and deep sleep combined, to me that’s a chronic poor sleep. We want to be able to push those numbers to three hours plus in combined REM sleep and, and deep sleep. So but that’s where most people are not at those levels. Most people are chronically having low levels of, of, of deep sleep and, and REM sleep. And when it comes to parents, it’s easy to fall off track. You know, if, if you have an infant and you need to wake up for feedings and all that, your sleep’s gonna be broken up.

So how do you. How do you log in that deep sleep time where, you know, every time you wake up, you need to start those cycles again. So it’s easy for a mom to really have chronic poor sleep, but ultimately need to invest into that, into that, uh, thinking about sleep and adapting to it. So for a mom, it may be more important to, uh, make that stretch of time that you’re going to be asleep a little longer because there’ll be some interruptions and wake ups in between.

But if you’re investing that extra two hours for your whole, uh, sleep cycles that happen, um, that’ll go a long way. Uh, so that’s, that’s, you know, specifically for parents with infants, it’s important for them to think about expanding the total sleep time because there will be interruptions in between, but ultimately if they’re getting in their rem and deep, as they should, uh, they’ll feel a whole lot better for it. They’ll be better parents for their children. It’s not, not easy to do, but it’s about, uh, being aware and planning for it.

Katie: That’s a helpful metric that so kind of our aim ideally is we want to get three hours combined. So not three hours of deep sleep and three hours of REM but total of them added up three hours. Okay.

Jack: Exactly. Yes.

Katie: What are some of the factors that can affect deep sleep and REM sleep specifically, like anecdotally, for instance, I’ve noticed if I eat late at night, I tend to maybe not get as much deep sleep, or I’ve seen like some kind of correlations in that in my sleep data, but are there any kind of hard and fast things that tend to either help or hurt deep sleep or REM sleep?

Jack: So we’ve identified quite a few of them and, and that here’s the tricky thing about sleep is you need to try to be scoring well on all of these things because any one of them kind of becomes that sleep interruption. Any one of these that I’m going to mention can reduce that time spent in REM sleep and deep sleep.

So the number one thing that we’ve, uh, we’ve identified is our toxins. So toxins are one of the things, if you’re breathing in chemicals during the night, what ends up happening is that is basically stimulating your central nervous system. So if your central nervous system is stimulating, it’s, it’s spending more time in its wake periods and less time in its deep sleep cycles.

So that’s one of the things that it’s invisible. You can’t see it many times. You can’t smell it, but it actually is keeping your, uh, your internals working at a higher capacity. What the brain needs to do is to slow down to get to those sleep cycles. So if it’s stimulated it’s spending less time in those cycles.

So toxins is one, uh, heat buildup is another. So, so, you know, you hear a lot of times people complaining about sleeping hot. Sleeping hot is not just a comfort issue it’s an actual, uh, it directly impacts your deep sleep and REM sleep because your body identifies kind of with the circadian rhythm, it identifies that as it’s warming up, um, sort of like the day and night as it’s warming up, it’s triggering the body telling it that it’s time to wake up. As it’s cooling down it’s actually triggering the body to slow down for sleep. So our bodies are made this way. Our internal clocks are all designed this way and it’s a dynamic movement. It’s not about sleeping cold or sleeping hot. It’s the actual action of the body heat being released is slowing down your, your, your central nervous system.

The actual action of the body heating up and increasing in temperature is accelerating and waking up the central nervous system. So, you know, room temperature and mattress temperature is huge. So if you’re sleeping on something synthetic that traps heat, well, you’re not going to be dropping in temperature, which keeps you in those cycles longer.

Obviously pain, discomfort, pressure points. Those are the obvious things when we in our segment, when we’re talking about mattresses, those pain points are something that again, react to movement, react discomfort, let us feel discomfort. All those points, uh, get us out of the REM sleep and deep sleep cycles.

So, but ultimately toxins, heat. EMFs, that’s something people don’t talk about a whole lot, but those are those invisible waves, uh, that are coming from all the Wi Fi signals, the data signals. Again, those come in very, um, chaotic and erratic, and those erratic behaviors of those, of those waves affect your blood’s flow.

And, and, it creates an environment where your, your blood cells are, Kind of clamping together less oxygen flow and that’s one of the other points that really affect REM sleep and deep sleep It’s kind of crazy. There’s there’s a lot of factors. It’s not so complicated But ultimately we need to eliminate stimulants when you’re going to bed.

That’s that’s the simple answer is eliminate stimulants. Could be light, sound, toxins, heat, EMFs, those are are the major points that really impact how you’re sleeping. You mentioned something about when you, when you eat too close to bedtime, that’s interrupting your sleep, that’s interrupting, not just your onset of sleep, but that’s affecting because if, if your body is actively digesting, that’s another point where it’s not slowing down for sleep.

So any, any workload that we give the body other than cellular repair, um, you’re, you’re, you’re taking it away from that. So, one of the things we always talk about is, is not consuming any foods two to three hours before bedtime. One small trick after that is that once you’ve, once you’ve had dinner, um, people forget what some of the simplest things after dinner, go for a walk. Why? You want to get the digestive systems working.

You want to get moving. If you’re not going to move the digestive recovery is going to take longer and may actually interrupt your, uh, your sleep cycles. But if you go for something like simple walk after dinner, you’re, you’re getting the movement in, the digestive system is working earlier on, rather than continuing towards when it’s time for you, for you to be considered for the onset of sleep.

Katie: Yeah, I love that. I feel like it’s such a simple thing. And the data is so strong on that postprandial movement. Um, and even right now we’re apparently at monsoon season where I live, but even just doing something like air squats after eating, if you can’t go outside if it’s raining, but just that movement after eating seems to make a huge, huge difference. Um, and it seems like I feel like you really hone in, I love that on your toxin exposure during sleep. And we’re going to get to go deeper on that actually in a follow up episode to this one. So you guys stay tuned for that. But I love that because I feel like that’s not as well talked about it. That sort of dovetails with the anecdotal things I’ve noticed that seem to help my sleep, like getting enough minerals and salt, getting enough light during the day, getting enough movement, like you just mentioned with walking, which also all support sort of the body’s natural detox pathways and recovery and all those things that you were explaining.

So I feel like that’s kind of like a perfect puzzle piece that often doesn’t get talked about enough. And all this talk about sleep as well Iwould love to kind of delve into a little bit more on what happens when we don’t get enough sleep, or we’re getting that chronic poor sleep. How does that affect our mental health and especially our decision making? Because I feel like this is a big one for women, especially.

Jack: That’s, that’s actually huge when it comes to our mental health, decision making focus. So when you’re not getting your full cycles of REM and deep sleep, uh, specifically REM, REM, when it comes to your mental wellbeing, REM sleep is there. That’s when we’re, we’re not only where you’re dreaming, but also where you’re archiving all the thoughts and, and memories of the day and filing it away.

In a sense where when you wake up the next morning, it’s all been done and you’ve fully recovered. If you are getting this chronic bad sleep where you’re not getting, uh, the cycles that you need, what ends up happening is you have brain fog. Uh, your focus is not there. It could lead to actually anxiety and depression as well.

There’s, so, I mean. You can roll down this hill. Everyone is a little different that way to how they react to bad sleep, but the results are always negative mentally. Um, we, we’ve done so many tests with, uh, with athletes as well. Just seeing their mental focus, their mental agility when they’re sleeping well compared to when they’re not sleeping well.

It’s, it’s insane. It’s not even close. The reaction times are, are substantially slower. About a year ago, we did, um, probably going on two years now, we did a huge, um, test with 75 professional athletes. And they did 10 weeks on Essentia, double blind test. With the same 10 weeks on non Essentia, 75 players and the results were outstanding.

First of all, we scored about 20 or 60 percent higher in REM sleep and deep sleep for those athletes who are sleeping on Essentia as compared to those who weren’t, who thought they were sleeping on Essentia. Uh, but beyond that, beyond just the REM sleep and deep sleep, the mental agility. Anxiety before games, everything was impacted by not having as much REM sleep and deep sleep.

Uh, so it’s an incredible thing as far as, uh, being able to be there for, for your family when it comes to parenting, uh, comes to parenting, you’re there for your family first. Uh, you can’t be there for your family first if you’re going through anxiety, your reaction times are not as well. Um, and be feeling depressed and sometimes overwhelmed by everything thrown at you.

But if you’re sleeping well, it really takes you to a different level. And a lot of the things that maybe are not big issues become big issues with lack of sleep.

Katie: For sure. I, um, during COVID randomly, I took a standup comedy class and part of my comedy was related to comparing parents to special forces, um, and the demands of us, like physically, energetically, you know, sleep deprivation, noise exposure, all the things. Um, but you’re right. I feel like for athletes, they, it’s very easy for them to think of like, Oh, this is my focus, my job I must support my body. But parents have a tremendous amount of physical and mental demands as well. And maybe often don’t have that same top of mind focus on recovery. So I love that you kind of tied that in. Um, and I would guess in that study, what did you see as far as how sleep routines and sleep hygiene, for instance, can really support physical performance?

Obviously that comes into play for athletes, but really for anyone.

Jack: It does. What I love about evaluating athletes is just because they’re very much in touch with their, with their body. They’re, they’re able to communicate quite well, but they’re feeling and because they’re trying to, uh, be high performers, there are metrics in their performance that they can give us feedback on.

So the athletes, whatever we learn from athletes is, is applicable to everyone else. That’s for sure. Uh, but they’re just, easier to work with just because of their uh, they’re measuring everything throughout their day. Uh, but absolutely the the You know that this is one of the things where finally today, like I was saying earlier on people are acknowledging the importance of sleep but because it’s so simple really, you know, we’re talking about having a walk or some light exercise after supper. Not ingesting any foods for three hours before sleep. Eliminating toxins from your bedroom .Eliminating, uh, you know trapped heat we’re talking about some basic things that if you really people focus onit’s life changing.

Um, and a lot of times because there’s so, so little, um, and it seems so easy, people feel that they need to work hard at something. You need, you need to, you need to be bench pressing to make a difference, you know, but, uh, when it comes to sleep, it’s actually just, uh, knowing about it and knowing the issues and, and taking the time to resolve them.

And once you do it, it does change. What we learned from the athletes were, uh, what was incredible, uh, recovery from injury uh, was accelerated. We were actually running a study to see the recovery from concussions. Um, again through rest and through sleep, the better the sleep quality, the better the REM and deep sleep, the faster the recovery from everything, including concussions.

So it is, it’s so huge, it’s so important and it makes, uh, physical tissue repair, muscular, everything repair happens faster with proper sleep and the opposite when, when, when, when you’re sleep deprived, you don’t, you don’t recover physically and mentally. And, uh, unfortunately people identify again, when they’re not feeling well, it’s easier to identify when you, than when you uh, when you’re chronically not feeling great, uh, but the solution is through sleep right there. Um, moms can recognize this because in the early stages, you, you know, they’re, they’re the first to be sleep deprived and those who thrive are the ones that adapt to it and focus on their sleep around their child’s schedule and make sure, you know, they, some of them don’t realize it, but what they’ve done is they’re, they’re making sure they’re compensating and getting in their REM sleep and deep sleep.

Maybe they haven’t defined it that way, they haven’t labeled it that way when they’ve done that and re adapted to their schedules and their focus and mental health and physical health recovers faster, and that’s really important.

Katie: Did you also in that uncover some maybe myths and misconceptions related to sleep? I love that we’re comparing, you know, moms to high level athletes because it seems like we can learn a lot there, but are there any myths and misconceptions worth debunking as well?

Jack: Well, a lot of times naps, uh, naps could be great, but if, uh, if you’re really not tapping into your REM sleep and deep sleep, uh, naps don’t work, you know, so that’s one of the major issues again, naps can be great, but if they’re obstructing your, your nighttime routine, they’re not going to come in, uh, really, really healthy. Um, I guess the major myth is the eight hours. I addressed that a little bit earlier on and again, revolving back to athletes, like our mom athletes are, but ultimately eight hours is just a general topic. People think they need, need that number, but that number is not really relevant. It’s, it’s deep sleep and, uh, and, um, REM sleep. Uh, I have athletes who were suffering from, uh, sleep deprivation at five hours, as soon as we got them honed in on their REM sleep and deep sleep, probably got them up to five and a half hours, which is a long way out from, from eight hours. But all of a sudden they were hitting three to three and a half hours of REM sleep, deep sleep within five and a half hours. And their performance went through the roof. Their, their happiness was through the roof. Their, their agility, everything, their focus, everything was done right. All we’ve done to increase the half hour, but it was really the focus on REM sleep and deep sleep that was a real magic bullet here.

Katie: I feel like that’s mentally so helpful as well, especially like we talked about for moms who get interrupted sleep or who definitely don’t get eight hours uninterrupted with babies. And maybe I know, like for me, felt like I was maybe failing at sleep if I didn’t hit that benchmark and like get an a, but understanding that there’s more nuance to that and having sort of better metrics to pay attention to I feel like is a much more helpful conversation than just sort of like a pass, fail at eight hours. Um, I know we’re going to get to have a whole follow up conversation about creating a sleep sanctuary, which I’m really excited for, and in that, we’re going to really go deep on the science of Essentia as well.

Well, but I don’t want to end this episode without also mentioning that, because this is the mattress that I’m sleeping on now and that it’s been huge for me. So I want to make sure we also touch on Essentia. I know this is a big passion for you as well. Um, I’ll of course link to it in the show notes, but can you explain a little bit about the difference with Essentia and what you guys have done to make it so, so much more, um, beneficial and helpful for people in sleep.

Jack: So this has been a 25 year passion and project of mine. So obviously it goes way back. Uh, it started when, uh, my dad was going through cancer treatments and, uh, just going, seeing his journey and, uh, his, uh, pain too, with, with, with sleep, with allergens, with toxins and everything he was going through. Uh, got me on track to start researching sleep, researching sleep materials. And one of the first things we discovered was, uh, how toxins really impacted sleep and, uh, how it impacted REM sleep and deep sleep. Uh, what I’ve done with Essentia, I’ve been responsible for all the material science. The development of the cores the development of the material.

We’re the first to make a slow response, latex foam, uh, made of completely certified organic material. That readapts your movements, adapts your body type and posture type. Uh, it’s extremely dense while having the elasticity to follow each contour of your body. We’re the first and still the only ones to have, uh, established a mattress surface, mattress core that hits all of the, points and scores best in all the points of not stimulating your body and not stimulating you out of deep sleep. So what we’ve been able to do over the course of the last 20 years is be the leader in sleep. Through the material science of what we’ve put forward, something that dynamically drops your, your, your body’s core temperature, uh, something that, uh, eliminates toxins in your sleep environment, something that readapts your movements to, to not make you stay into the light sleep cycles and gets you into the deep sleep cycles longer, something that, uh, Um, is tested by Johns Hopkins that not to have any allergens. Again allergens is another stimulant. Um, so we’ve done, you know, I’m so proud that we’ve taken all of these issues and addressed them all as we’ve developed it, obviously the very first Essentia mattress, the Essentia material that we launched in 2005 is, um. probably still would be the leading material in mattresses today, but we’ve come a long way from that.

And we’ve addressed EMFs, we’ve addressed so many different things throughout the course of the 20 years. We’ve never taken off our R and D hats and continue to develop the best core. Again, to have those outcomes of her physical recovery and mental recovery. Uh, no, one’s been able to do it as good as Essentia so that’s what we’re proud of. And that’s why I talk about stimulants that take us off mark and that’s why I talk about deep sleep and REM sleep. Cause that’s been kind of the obsession, uh, behind the development of Essentia.

Katie: I love that and fun story. I actually have had in my house an Essentia mattress for years. I ended up switching almost all of our mattresses to you guys when I went to a health conference and brought my kids with me and I kept losing them in the vendor hall because they were resting in the Essentia mattresses and absolutely were adamant that they had to have them.

So, that’s for me, what led to switching a whole lot more mattresses out of my house. And we’re very grateful about that. And like we said, we’re going to do a whole other episode about really creating a sleep sanctuary. And I know you have a tremendous amount of practical advice there as well. So you guys stay tuned for our next episode about that.

But Jack, for this one, thank you so much for your time. I’ve learned a lot and I’m so grateful for you for being here.

Jack: Thank you, Katie. Appreciate being here.

Katie: And thank you for listening and I hope you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.