Can you explain the purpose of breathing to all of us?

Yes. As human beings, what do we survive on? We eat food, we drink water, and we breathe air. When oxygen meets with the food that we eat, it generates energy. The powerhouse, the human organism, is fueled by the air that we breathe and the food that we eat. In essence, it's as simple as That's it.

Well, what we're going to learn today from you, and one of the reasons why I am so excited to talk to you, is that while breathing is really simple, most of us are doing it incorrectly. I would love to start with, how are we supposed to breathe and what are we doing wrong?

Yes, it's a good question. We would have been breathing correctly for hundreds and thousands of years. Breathing is very delicate. It's very susceptible to change. It's very susceptible to the food that we eat, the lifestyle that we lead, the trauma, the stress that we experience, the excessive talking, the sedentary lifestyle, the office-based jobs, many factors influence breathing. For some of us, we're more prone to developing poor breathing patterns than others. Very often it becomes a habit. We have to think of it's such a vital function. Earlier on, we spoke about how important breathing is. We, as human beings, we can live without air for just a few minutes. The importance of a function is determined by how soon the organism perishes when we switch it off. It must meet certain criteria. People often talk about the quality of air that we are breathing. Be out in the countryside, be at the seaside, don't be breathing polluted air. But what about the quantity? What about how we breathe? Breeding should be subtle, it should be light, and breath should be undetectable. The perfect person breathes as if they do not breathe. Your breathing should be so smooth that the fine hairs within the nostrils do not move.

If you look at the breathing of a healthy person, their breathing is nose, it's light, it's slow, and it's low. It's pretty much undetectable. If they do physical exercise, their breathing is pretty light for the given intensity of physical exercise as they are doing.

So maybe we should start with, what are we doing wrong? What do you want us to know about that?

Well, the foundation of breathing is breathing in the neck through the nose, Mel. When I'm working with anybody, I'll always ask, what does your mouth do when it comes to breathing? And if you breathe through your mouth, what part of the body moves? So if you look down at your chest, if you take a breath through the mouth, and as you breathe through the mouth, you'll notice that your breathing is faster and your breathing is more upper chest.

Yes. I can't get it down. I feel like it stays tight, like just under my boobs. It's like right in there.

Then we have to ask, what effect does that have on the physiology? When mouth breathing, faster breathing, and upper chest breathing is activating a greater fight or flight response. How should we be breathing? Our breathing should be in and out through the nose. There was an American ear, nose, and throat doctor back in 1976 called Dr. Morris Cotle, C-O-T-T-L-E. He said that the human nose is responsible for 30 functions in the human body.

Really?

Yeah, I couldn't find his list. So I wrote my own list of 30 functions.

Really?

I can go through them now if you want.

I want to hear about something because I think, okay, I smell, I sniff, I tend to get very prone to sinus infections and bronchitis and that stuff. So it also gets clogged. Those are basically the three things that my nose does.

Yes. When you breathe through your nose continuously, You see, oxygen uptake in the blood increases by nearly 10%, and that's discovered back in 1988 by a researcher, Swift. When you breathe through your nose during physical exercise, the gas carbon dioxide is higher in the blood. And discovered back in know for that when carbon dioxide increases and blood pH drops, the red blood cells release oxygen more readily to the tissues and organs. If you, during rest or during physical exercise, breathe in and out through your nose, you're going to increase not only oxygen uptake, but also oxygen delivery to the working muscles and tissues and organs, including the brain. We can influence the blood flow to the brain by changing our breathing patterns. It's not about taking the full big breath. Other factors that you wouldn't consider are visual, spatial awareness. So throughout our evolution, if we, for example, we were in a wide open space, we had to be able to see what was ahead of us, but also to scan the environment for predators. And that's higher with nasal breathing versus mouth breathing. Memory and attention is higher with nose breathing versus mouth breathing.

There's greater recruitment of the diaphragm. And the diaphragm breathing muscle isn't just for respiration, but it provides stabilization for the spine. So 50% of people with lower back pain have dysfunctional breathing. As you breathe through your nose, you spoke about bronchitis. We have to think of the gas called nitric oxide. This gas was first discovered in the exhale breath of the human being in 1991. This gas is antiviral, it's antibacterial, it redistributes blood throughout the lungs, it helps to open up the airways. So people with respiratory complaints, but people who are prone to COVID. When we think of the hundreds of thousands of people with asthma and bronchitis and bronchiectasis and COPD and different respiratory illnesses, why are we leaving them breathe through their mouths? And nobody seems to be telling them, breathe through your nose. That was my first steps into the whole world of breathing. My own personal journey was having asthma. I was a mouth breather for years because if we have inflammation in the lungs, that same inflammation will travel up to your nose. When your nose is stuffy, you're 2-3 times more likely to have a sleep problem, to snore, to have obstructive sleep apnea.

Of course, this then is affecting your mental health. This is affecting your concentration. This is affecting your attention span. Now, as I talk about even for children. Karen Bonnack is a researcher from the United States, and she did a study in Stratford upon Avon in the UK, looking at children from age six months to 57 months. So it was over a few years. She looked at 11,000 British kids, children who were snoring or apneic, stopping breathing for two breaths or more during sleep and mouth breathing. Those kids, if untreated by age five, had a 40% increased risk of special education needs by age eight. Now, we're not just talking about quality of life. We're talking about lifetime impact of chronic mouth breathing and 25 to 50% of studied childhood population mouth breathe. Mel, this is a topic that doesn't even come top of the list. In actual fact, it doesn't even come on the list. And in the last few years, we've started to see a greater awareness of breathing, and probably because it's too simple. But at the same time, breathing Everything is not that simple either.

I love absolutely everything that you said, and I want to take a gigantic neon yellow highlighter and make sure as you're listening to us, you understand the single biggest takeaway that Patrick has just explained, which is if you want to have a change in your health, a change in your stress, a change in the pain that you may feel or the sleep that you cannot get. You have a free treasure trove inside your body if you simply start to change from mouth breathing to nose breathing. And we're going to unpack what that means. I have a question about a couple of things that you said. I didn't want to interrupt you. But you said that breathing in and out of your nose increases the amount of oxygen versus breathing out of your mouth. Why does that matter?

I think it's very important. Oxygen is really the fuel for the human being. If, for example, we are not getting enough oxygen delivery to the brain, if there's an insufficient blood flow or oxygen delivery, it can increase brain cell excitability. So brain cells become more excitable. We're thinking more, we're more prone to anxiety. I remember writing a book back in 2010 called Anxiety Free, and I spoke about this paper that was published in 1988. And the paper said that the brain, by regulating breathing, regulates its own excitability. And then I was listening to a podcast by the neuroscientist, Dr. Andrew Huberman, about two months ago, and he cited the exact same statement and sentence. It's funny how things come around, but this is the importance of breathing and the importance of knowing how to breathe right. If, for example, we are breathing the way you described during the introduction, and that's the acute panic attack. But say, for example, somebody who's just breathing a little bit faster, a little bit harder, upper chest breathing, irregular breathing patterns. That's present in a minimum of 10% of the general population, but up to 75% of the anxiety and panic disorder population.

So 75% of the population with anxiety and panic disorder or have dysfunctional breathing. It's not just that stress levels change our breathing. Of course, when we are stressed, our breathing changes. But our everyday breathing is feeding into our stress levels. Who doesn't want to be more resilient? The other thing about stress is when we have a lot of mind activity, it's impossible to do mindfulness. We have to be absolutely... We have to think of this ourselves. The next time that we're having a really bad day, and there's a lot of thoughts going through minds, and I don't suffer from anxiety, but of course, things happen. That's the way it is as human beings. I can change my breathing patterns without having to be so aware of my breath to help to bring the body and mind into balance. That's the thing about breathing. Coming back to oxygen delivery and blood flow. If, for example, even getting to the working muscles, if there's insufficient oxygen getting to the working muscles, well, we're more prone to fatigue in terms of the brain I spoke about. We have 50,000 miles of blood vessels throughout the human body, and our breathing is influencing how dilated or not are they.

People with poorer breathing are more likely to have cold hands and cold feet. It's not just the blood circulation in the hands and feet that's the problem. It's How do you get the body.

I feel like I might be your test case here because now I'm thinking, Well, I wear socks to bed because when I touch my husband with my feet, he's like, Ah, you're so cold. So one of the things that I read on your website and in your books that I absolutely loved was you said breathing is not just for relaxing. It is an incredible tool when you get intentional about how you breathe every day to fight stress. And I would love for you to teach us right now how to stop being a dysfunctional breather and to breathe in a functional way in and out of our nose to get the maximum health benefit.

Okay. So the first exercise that I'm going to start off with is small little breath holds. And this is going to introduce you to a means of helping to activate a relaxation response. Then from that, I'm going to show you an exercise to decongest the nose. Oh, great. Because if you have a stuffy nose, inevitably, it's going to cause them out breathing. Then I will do breathe light and then breathe low and slow. Okay. I'm going to go from one sequence into another. It will be no more than five minutes. We're going to cover a bit of ground, so I think people will have to replay this. The first exercise, Mel, that I would like you to do, when the mind is racing and you're not feeling in form of focusing on your breathing, simply hold your breath in an exhalation. Take a normal breath in through your nose and out through your nose and pinch your nose and hold, and hold for five, four, three, two, one. Let go. Just breathe normal now for about 2-3 breaths or even four breaths. Not to change your breathing, just breathing normal. Again, take a normal breath in through your nose and out through your nose and pinch your nose and hold.

Five, four, three, two, one. Let go. Now just breathe normal for three to four breaths. You're just breathing normal. The small breath hold will help to stimulate the vagus nerve, which secretes a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which causes the heart rate to slow down and the brain interprets that the body is safe. Again, take a normal breath in through your nose and out through your nose and pinch your nose and hold. Five, four, three, two, one. Let go. Breathe in through your nose. Now you're just breathing normal for three to four breaths. In a couple of repetitions, then I will show you how to go from this to decongesting your nose. Again, normal breath in through your nose and out through your nose, and pinch your nose and hold. Five, four, three, two, one. Let go and breathe in through your nose. Also, as you hold your breath, nitric oxide is pooling inside your nasal airway. Then when you let go, you're breathing in. You're carrying this nitric oxide into your lungs. Nitric oxide is antibacterial, antiviral. It's a bronchodilator. For bronchitis, this is your natural way to help open up the lower airways. Last one.

Again, normal breath in through your nose, out through your nose. Pinch your nose and hold. Five, four, three, two, one. Let go. So now we're going to go on to the nose unblocking exercise.

Can I ask you a question? Yes. So when you say breathe normally, you mean not like how we normally breathe. You You mean breathe in and out of your nose, right?

Correct. Okay. Well, that's how we should be normally breathing.

Most of us are probably mouth readers, so I just wanted to make sure everybody's getting the coaching that when he's cuing us to breathe, normal, Patrick means in and out of your nose. And one thing I will tell you is even after the first round of breathing in and out of my nose, and then breathing in and out of my nose, and then pinching and holding for five, I started to feel almost that sensation of going down in an elevator. You really start to feel the pressure that you're not even aware that is built up in your body start to lower. So it had an immediate impact on me. And I just wanted to point that out. Is that normal to experience that?

I think people will have different experiences. That exercise is very much an exercise we do with people who are prone to high stress, racing mind, panic disorder. See, the thing about breathing is we as human beings, breathing is such an important function. But every time that we get into a difficult situation, our breathing changes. When we start playing with the breath, we can often relive the situations in our history. I'll give you this example. Somebody who's coming in to me with panic disorder. Every time that they've had a panic attack in the past, they've been breathing faster and harder in upper chest, and they're feeling suffocated. Now, even just placing attention on their breathing can make them anxious. If I start doing any breathing exercises that alter the volume of breathing and it brings on air hunger, it can tip them into a panic. We have to be very careful, too, about breathing in terms of tailoring the breathing exercises to suit the individual. Now, the next exercise I'm going to show you will decongest the nose. However, ever not to do this if somebody is prone to panic disorder or anxiety or pregnant or cardiovascular issues.

Now, despite that, it's actually relatively safe. I would like you, and do this You do all of these exercise, you always do them. You tune in to your body and do them to the level that you're comfortable with. With this exercise, Mel, you take a normal breath in through your nose and out through your nose, and you pinch your nose. Just gently hold your nose and just nod your head up and down, holding your breath. Keep holding your breath. Keep holding. Keep holding. Keep holding. Keep holding your breath. Keep holding. Let go there and breathe in through your nose. When you do a breath hold after an exhalation, so if you hold your breath after a normal exhalation, that will help to decongest your nose. Now, we need to do it five or six times.

I got worried about how much you were counting. I'm like, How long am I holding this?

Oh, my God. Whenever you're ready, take a normal breath in through your nose. Only normal. I'm going to have you just do that again. Remember about the subtlety of the breath. Just a light breath in.

Patrick, there's nothing subtle about me. Here we go. Light breath in, everybody.

A light breath into your nose and a light breath out through your nose. Just gently hold your nostrils to stop breathing and nod your head up and down as you hold your breath. Keep relaxing into the body as you're holding your breath. Now, it's a very normal thing to hold your breath. Kids, if they go swimming, they'll do breath holds all the time. It's a very normal human trait to go into the water and hold your breath. Now, as you hold your breath here, it's activating a slight stress response, which will help to open up the nose and now let go, Mel, and breathe in through your nose. The key to help decongesting the nose is to hold the breath for at least 30 seconds or so. But I would say when you start off, always start off gentle and just tune in on how is your body reacting to breath holding.

I'll tell you what just happened. I literally feel like my nostrils are now the size of a Tootsie Roll. They widen up. All of a sudden it was super clear because my allergies are starting to kick in now that it's going summer to fall in the United States. It worked that second time in particular, like Yeah, it's a very reproducible technique.

I've used it with thousands of people. We had a small pilot study involving 26 people at a hospital here in Limerick in Ireland. The three-month follow-up, symptoms of rhinitis, which are stuffy nose and runny nose, et cetera, had reduced by 70%. But I thought that pilot study, which was published as an abstract, I thought it would lead the way to generate some curiosity into a bigger study. It never happened. That study took place 10 years ago. But despite that, the exercise works.

So it's for people to try. We're here now. We want to know. And I felt like it worked. Again, I have so many elementary questions that I'm almost embarrassed to ask this one.

Oh, please do.

What coaching do you have for people that are so used to mouth breathing? That breathing in and out of their nose, it just feels weird. And so they try it, but then they keep going back to the mouth breathing. How do you make this the new default? Given the health benefits?

There's two parts to it. There's always theory first, a little bit of theory. People have to understand about the importance of nose breathing. And in comparison to the mouth, the nose does all the work when it comes to breathing. The second aspect of it then is breathing exercises, gentle exercises. Just, for example, starting off with the two that we just did. We use a very simple tape around the mouth that's elasticated, that pulls the lips together. Oh, that's correct. I have your tape. That's the one.I have your tape.Because.

I have no samples here. I have your tape. I'm going to put it on right now, everybody. Last night, I taped my... We're going to get into mouth I'm not taping, but I literally- You have to stretch it, Mel, about 30 or 40 %.

So it's only when you stretch it that you'll feel a tension.

Oh, I didn't even take off the sticky part. Okay. So everybody, it's like the shape of a Of a O. Yeah. And I stretch it?

By about 30 to 40 %.

Not too much or not. I'm not that strong. Okay.

Like that? Not too much, not too little. Maybe a little bit less. Okay. And you're just stretching it and then placing it surrounding them out. And the elasticated tension should be pulling the lips together. So it should be... You should feel some tension there.

I do.

With children and teenagers, we very much use that as a training tool during wakefulness. Because kids are kids, and they get distracted, and they're watching television, they're on iPhone, the mouth is open. But for some adults as well. So it can be very helpful. So part of this is the training during the day. So if an adult has the mouth open and they forget about it, the tape will automatically remind them to breathe through the nose. It's all about changing habits.

It definitely signals that I shouldn't be breathing in my mouth.

Having the mouth open. Yeah. And then during sleep, when the person is comfortable with breathing through the nose and in terms of their nose being congested. Bear in mind, the one thing about the nose is that the more we breathe through it, the better it works. But normally what happens is the nose gets stuffy, the person feels uncomfortable breathing through the nose, they switch to mouth breathing, and when they switch to mouth breathing, it increases their nasal stuffiness. Again, it's a vicious circle. I would also say to people that when you first switch from mouth to nose breathing, remember, this is the natural way to breathe. In and out through the natural nose. Even if you feel a slight air hunger or a slight feeling that you're not getting enough air, and when you're doing physical exercise, initially you might feel an increased sensation of breathlessness, stick with it. Slow down your intensity of movement in order to maintain nose breathing, or in other words, only go as fast as you can while breathing through the nose. The benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. The other aspect of it is, if you continue walking with your mouth closed, the body adjusts to it, and you then can do a physical exercise with less ventilation.

So it's almost as if you're training your body to do more with less.

There's so much to cover. Can you just bottom line it for people about what happens, like what's wrong with breathing out through your mouth? We know the benefits of breathing in But what goes wrong when you're breathing constantly in and out of your mouth?

I suppose the biggest one is that you lose moisture. So there's a 42% greater water loss breathing out through the mouth. And losing moisture, if your mouth is dry and you're losing moisture from the body, of course, you're more likely to be dehydrated. But that will impact your dental health. Gum disease, bad breath, for example, chapp lips. But the other problem about breathing out through the mouth during rest is that it's a fast exhalation. See, when we think about the body's relaxation response, it's all in the exhalation. It's not really in the inhalation. You can take a fast breath in, or you could take a slow breath in. But really, when it comes to activating relaxation during rest, it's the speed of the exhalation. If you breathe out fast, it's a stressor. If you breathe in fast and out fast, it's a stressor. It's not just how you breathe that way during stress, but if you deliberately breathe that way in your everyday, you're telling the brain that the body is under threat. You're going into this fight or flight response. Of course, your brain is here to protect you, and your brain wants to get you out of the situation.

You don't want to be breathing fast going into a boardroom meeting, put it that way, because while you're going in in person, in physical, your brain wants you to get out of there as quick as you can. So coming back to mouth breathing, if you breathe out through the mouth, there's less resistance to your breathing. It's a faster breath out.

It's a bigger exit ramp because the mouth is bigger than your nostril. And so breathing in and out of your nose, if I'm tracking correctly, one of the added benefits is that the exhale is going through something smaller than your mouth, so it slows you down. And in preparing to talk to you, we came across that Stanford study that you cite that is on your website, too. And I thought this was super cool that your breath is like your brain's remote control, that there are actually neurons in your brain watching your breath. And when you start to breathe faster or out of your mouth, growth, it signals to another part of your brain that something's wrong. And so I want to make sure you listening to Patrick and all of this research and the 10 books that he's written, what he is saying to you is that learning how to breathe in and out of your nose has extraordinary benefit for lowering stress, for lowering anxiety, for being able to focus. You not only You work with people, Patrick, that are struggling with anxiety or sleep apnea, but you're also coaching athletes and high performers because your breath and being somebody that can breathe in a slow and steady fashion out of your nose helps you with focus.

And so can we break down just the mechanics of the ideal normal breathing? Like, how many breaths in and out If you're breathing normally in a healthy way in and out of your nose, should you take in, let's say, a minute?

So typically during rest, it's about 12 to 14 breaths. But the only caveat there is how much air is involved with each breath, the tidal volume. We can't just focus on the respiratory rate. We also need to focus on tidal volume because ultimately it's the volume of air that we are breathing. If we breathe too much air, less oxygen is delivered throughout the body. This This is another aspect. There's a myth out there that if you want to bring more oxygen throughout the body, you take this full big breath. But if you take this full big breath, you're getting rid of too much carbon dioxide. The loss of carbon dioxide will cause your blood vessels to constrict and also red blood cells to hold on to oxygen more readily.

Can you coach me through this? Because if I take a big breath, if I go in through my mouth and I'm like, I'm trying to get a breath right. What happens as I go to get oxygen is my My shoulders come up and I feel my chest pinch and I feel my stomach suck in. And I actually can't get a deep breath because I can't get it below my boobs. I can't get it down into that really satisfying full breath. Is that what you're talking about when you talk about the flow or volume or whatever?

Yeah, there's two aspects. One is when you're talking about there, you're talking about shallow breathing, which is not ideal either. So we do want to breathe low with good recruitment of the diaphan.

How do you do that?

The best way to do that is in the neck to the nose. So for example, if you place your hands either side of your lower ribs.

Okay. So everybody, unless you're driving a car, I want you to cup your rib cage. Okay. Are we cupping the rib cage or we're going underneath it?

Just at the base of the ribs. So just at the base of the ribs. Got it. And as you breathe in, you're just gently directing your lower ribs to move outwards. Oh, how do you do that? As you breathe out, you're directing your lower your ribs to move inwards. The aspect is to hold your sides because normally when people put it on their belly, they're pushing and pulling their belly irrespective of their breathing. That's why you have your hands on your sides. Mel, as you breathe in, You're just gently guiding your ribs out. As you breathe out, your ribs are gently moving in. Now, that's a deep breath in the true sense of the word. We don't hear it. You're breathing in and out through your nose, and you're breathing slow, and you're breathing low. Now, we can slow it down. If, for example, during rest, we want to have the ideal breath to help to bring the body and mind into balance, that's between 4.5 to 6.5 breaths per minute. Let's practice that with low breathing for just one minute, if you like.

Okay. Yeah, I would. Can I ask a question?

Of course.

Before we do this exercise. What I'm gathering from this is that I'm a health breather with bad breath who's causing myself stress and anxiety because I'm signaling to my brain with my shallow breathing that something's wrong. And that I always thought deep breathing because I practice yoga was this belly breath. And so I've always focused on inflate and deflate the stomach. And what you're talking about when you cup the bottom of your ribs, because I want everybody to get this, you can watch it on YouTube. But for those of you listening to Patrick and to me, I want you to really get this. That it's really more of a horizontal thing. You're not inflating your stomach. You're making your bottom rib cage expand and come back in. And I'm realizing that so much of my breathing pattern has been almost like vertical up and down, and I hadn't been thinking about that. So that was super, super helpful. And you said that in a normal, just going about your life, you're You're not trying to relax. You're just trying to focus. You're going through your day. You're not trying to stress yourself out. You're getting the benefit of normal in and out of your nose breathing.

You said that it would be somewhere between 10 to 14 breaths in and out of your nose in a minute. And now what you're about to show us is that for relaxation, you can do this deeper breathing where you fill your diaphragm horizontally, your rib cages move out, but it's for four to six times a minute. Is that what we're about to do? Yes. Okay, great. I just want to make sure everybody's following.

And just coming back to the diaphragm, like when the diaphragm, which is the main breathing muscle, and it separates our chest from our abdomen. So during inhalation, the diaphragm is moving downwards. It's the movement of the diaphragm downwards that draws air into the lungs. But as the diaphragm is moving downwards, you will have some movement to your front. You will have some belly movement and movement to your sides and movement to your back. But I always think it's much better to focus on your sides because very often people, when they focus on their belly, they're pushing and pulling their belly, which has nothing got to do with their breathing. It's a good gage of the generation of what's called intra-abdominal pressure, that when you breathe in, that your ribs are gently moving out. Because this is what's giving you good indication of the recruitment of the die from, and from that then, stabilization of the spine. So the die from breathing muscle is really important, because when you breathe with good recruitment of the diaphrom, it's also a calming effect in the mind. The diaphragm and the brain are connected. When we think of the phrenic nerve, and then we think of the mental health condition such as schizophrenia and schizophrenia.

So earlier on, you were talking about that work by Stanford, which I think is so cool, that there's a structure in the brain that's literally spying on our breathing. Now, we can use that to our advantage. Don't breathe fast, don't breathe shallow, because you're telling the brain that you're under stress, and your brain is going to arouse you from sleep and put you into this stress mode. So now we're talking about, well, say, for example, we have five minutes to spare. And instead of just scrolling aimlessly, wasting time on our mobile phone, give ourselves a little bit of attention. Attention, getting attention out of the mind and holding your attention to your breath, which in turn is training your brain to be focused, but not just about awareness, it's also about changing the physiology. So if you have your hands, again, just gently on either side of your lower ribs. As you're breathing in, that you're breathing in for a count of five. You're breathing in, two, three, four, five, out, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five. Now, I will say Mel, say, for example, if we have somebody with pretty poor breathing and they're breathing 20 breaths per minute, I would say, don't go from 20 breaths down to 6 all of a sudden.

Gently soft in your breathing, but slow it down to a level that's comfortable for you. If you're starting off, what you could be doing is maybe breathing in for 2 seconds and out for 3. That's slowing down the respiratory rate down to 12 breaths per minute, in for 3 seconds and out for 5. During rest, we always need to think of the exhalation. It should be about one and a half to two times the inhalation, the length of the inhalation.

Could you say that again about the length of the exhalation versus the inhalation with the normal nose breathing? Because you've said repeatedly, the exhalation is the most important part.

Yeah. The speed of the exhalation during rest should be about one and a half to two times that of the inhalation. And you can play with it. I'll give you an example. If I'm having a meeting that's pretty intense, I don't want to go into that meeting breathing fast and shallow. I will deliberately In that situation, nobody even knows what I'm doing. I could be sitting down or I could be standing outside the door waiting to go in. I will just take a soft breath in through my nose. I don't even time it. A soft breath in through my nose and a really slow and relaxed and gentle breath out. Because by doing that, I'm telling my brain that everything is okay. I'm also taking my attention out of my mind and onto the breath to put the critical mind aside because I want to go into that meeting and I want to be in a state of mind that I'm fully there, that I'm listening with all of my attention, not just lost in thought. Now, I would say, don't wait until the important meeting before you start to do it. Start bringing it into your way of life.

There is a story you were going to tell us.

Yes. There's a really well-known doctor from Italy called Bernardi, and he did a study back, I think it's in 2000. He looked at the breathing that was taking place when people were saying prayers of different fates. So one was mantras, and the other was the rosary, which is a prayer from the Catholic faith. And both, whether it was a mantra or the rosary, both of them lower the risk part right down to six breaths per minute. Now, I think there's something really brilliant in this, that when we think of people who are saying prayers, it wasn't just from a spiritual and psychological aspect, but it was also the effect it was having on their body and mind physiologically. It's so cool that this information was always out there, and now it's time to start embracing it.

Well, it's one of the reasons why I asked you the question in the very beginning, what's the purpose? I was thinking about it from a neurological, scientific standpoint, but there's something so much deeper that it really is the quality of your life that you have within you if you take the advice and you apply this research to your life and you start to teach yourself how to use the tool of normal nose breathing and longer exhales, and you keep talking about this soft and gentle, that this is something that your body was hardwired with, a natural intelligence. And so it's really cool that the research shows that when people are in a state of being present, in a state of purpose, in a state of deeper connection, that your body naturally drops in to this breathing. And one of the things that I wonder is, are there Are there other specific types of breathing that people need to know about that either reduce stress or that you should use in certain situations?

Yes. When it comes to breathing, you can downrate upregulate, which is inducing relaxation, or you could upregulate. For example, if you want to stress your body and mind a little bit, well, you could go for a jog with your mouth closed. It's a pretty safe way to do it.

Jog with your mouth closed?

Jog with your mouth closed.

Do you have to be in amazing shape to do that? Hiking up the mountain that I live on, I'm panting like a dog. I don't know that I could get up there with my nose.

When you're walking up the mountain, go with a pace that you can sustain nasal breathing. If necessary, get a nasal dilator, which just helps to gently open up your nose. But also, breathe nose slow and low because your ventilation is going to be more efficient. But physical exercise anyway is a stress, but it's a good stress, but it should be dosed according to the individual needs of the person. I do breath holds with athletes. I will have them breathe in and out and hold their nose, and they sprint for 40 meters without breathing. They then rest for 30 seconds, and they sprint again for 40 meters without breathing. Or I could have a 400 meter sprinter. In some of their trainings, when they're well warmed up, I will have them no sprint for 360 meters, and the last 40 meters that they have to stop breathing breathing. We do exercises to stress body and mind. If you want to stress your body and mind using breathing techniques, just dip your toe into the water and just see how your body feels. You don't have to hyperventilate for 30 breaths and then do a long breath hold.

That's doing the entire thing. If you want to do a stress, maybe hyperventilate. If you want to do it for five breaths and then do a breath hold, but it's comfortable for you. We don't teach hyperventilation. Got you. The reason being is because my whole thing about breathing is I want to get persons everyday breathing right. Let's get the foundation right first. I love that. Then if they want to do the peak, we can do that.

Get the foundation for everyday life nailed first, in and out of the nose, low and slow.

But the other thing, Mel, is anybody who's waking up at a dry mouth in the morning, there's been any studies that investigated nose versus mouth breathing during sleep. The people who are breathing through their nose naturally during sleep always had a deeper sleep. You can imagine a mouth breather during sleep. They're breathing faster, they're breathing harder, they're upper chest breathing. I'll give you this example. Do the sound of a snore through your mouth and it goes like this.

It does. Like a pig.

Now, bring your lips together and try and snore through your mouth with your lips closed. Only through your try and snore. Try and snore through your mouth with your lips together.

I can't do it.

It's not possible. Mouth snoring stops once we get the mouth closed. The second snoring then is nasal snoring, which goes like this.

Yes.

Now, if you take a very soft breath in through your nose, and a really slow and relaxed and a gentle breath out, and a very, very soft, silent breath through your nose, and a relaxed and a slow and a gentle breath out, as you breathe Sleep very softly in and out through your nose, try and snore through your nose. You will see it's more difficult.

I can't.

Mouth snoring, we can stop once we get the mouth closed. Nasal snoring, we can significantly reduce. The whole aspect in sleep medicine has focused on the airway, but they haven't focused on the person's everyday breathing. It's our everyday breathing that's influencing our breathing during sleep. This comes back to, remember that study by Stanford? If you're breathing fast during sleep, it arouses you from sleep. Who gets aroused from sleep? People with insomnia. They're breathing fast during their sleep. Their brain is interpreting that the body is under trash, and the brain wakes them up. They're there 2:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning, 4:00 in the morning, thinking, thinking, and thinking, and thinking. And then they're waking up exhausted. And of course, that's going to affect their productivity, their focus during the day. We need to look at the big picture.

How does breathing impact your sleep?

In terms of insomnia, there's two times it can manifest. Insomnia affects about 30% of the population, and 10% have it chronic. One is that we go to bed at night, but we don't fall asleep readily. Typically, we should fall asleep in a few minutes. That's an ideal situation. But if we have over-stimulation of the mind, we're not going to fall asleep so readily. It's very important to be able to go into relaxation before we go to sleep. Now, that would involve, I would say, use blue light filter glasses and follow sleep hygiene. Your bedroom is cool, it's airy, it's dark, and all of that stuff. But also, we need to tell the body that we're going into rest and digest. You could be sitting down, you might be watching some light TV, you might have your blue light filter glasses on. As you're sitting there, really take a soft breath in through your nose, almost that you're breathing less air. That's what I would like you to do. You're taking a really soft breath in through your nose, and you're having that light in a really slow, slow, slow, relax, gentle breath out. Then when you need to breathe in again, instead of taking your normal 100% of the breath, maybe take in about 70% of the breath in, and then a really soft and slow gentle breath out.

The whole aim is to breathe about 30% less air into your body than what you're normally used to. You know you're doing it correctly if you feel a slight air hunger. Now, as you do that, pay attention to the saliva in the mouth. We'll continue for one more minute. I would like I would like you to under breathe, Mel. I would like you to breathe in a way that you feel that you're not getting enough air. How do you do that? Take a very soft, gentle breath in, almost as if your breath in is imperceptible, and a really relaxed and a slow and a gentle breath out. So gently soft and then slow down your breathing so that you're taking 30% less air into your lungs. If you get stressed, just take a rest. But keep working on this because now what you're doing is you're telling the brain that everything is okay. And pay attention then to the saliva in the mouth. When we get stressed, our mouth tells us because our mouth goes dry. When we are ready for rest and digest, rest, we feel sleepy. Digest, we have increased watery saliva in the mouth.

When we alter our breathing, we're stimulating the vagus nerve, which is secreting that neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is telling the heart to slow down. The brain is interpreting that the body is safe. The brain is also spying on our breathing at the same time and interpreting that the body is safe. We feel sleepy. We do this for 10, 15 minutes before we go to sleep.

I know that you recommend Some people try this tape on their mouth when they sleep, and I tried it for the first time last night. I did not have this fancy O-ring, so I used packing tape. I know that that's probably not what you recommend. And when I pulled it off this morning, I think I gave my upper lip a wax. But I put it from the nose down so that the sides were exposed, and I learned something really interesting. I put the tape on my mouth so that I would be cuing myself to nose breathe. And it's how I sleep. And I'm a fantastic sleeper. And I realized I sleep predominantly with my mouth closed. And my husband, on the other hand, he has this sound that he makes that goes... It drives me freaking crazy. I know it's sleep apnea. I also know that one 1 billion people around the world have obstructive sleep apnea, one billion. How does this nose breathing improve even people's lives with obstructive sleep apnea?

Okay. So obstructive sleep apnea is when the person stops breathing for 10 seconds or more during sleep. That would be an apnea. Or a hypopnea is when there's a reduction in the flow of their breathing due to partial collapse of the airways is that their blood oxygen saturation drops down by about three or four %. The problem with sleep apnea is that it arouses you from deep sleep, but it's very stressful. It's very stressful on the cardiovascular system. There are four characteristics in obstructive sleep apnea. It's not just the anatomy. Insomnia that we spoke about earlier on is one of them. It's very important to be able to downregulate. Upper airway muscle recruitment, getting these muscles to do their job is very That's very important. There's a therapy called Myofunctional Therapy that's excellent for that. Mouth closed with the tongue resting up in the roof of the mouth with good recruitment of the diaphon helps to open up the airway. You think of the typical middle-aged man. We're drinking a few beers, we're putting weight on the belly. This is impacting the movement of the diaphon. We're now breathing more up her chest. This is reducing lung volume and the throat collapses more easily.

Our diaphon breathing muscle, as I said earlier, is connected with the brain, but the diaphon is also connected with the upper airway dilator muscles in the throat. So, coming back to mouthpuffing, and the mouth closed is really important with obstructive sleep apnea. There are a group of people with severe obstructive sleep apnea and people who may be obese as well. They're more prone to mouthpuffing. You still need to allow them to mouthpuff during sleep. We were lucky with the design of the tape, the Myo tape, because it allows the mouth puffing. Whereas before that, we were using 3M, one-inch micropore tape, which is going right across the lips, but that doesn't allow mouth puffing, and that can make sleep apnea worse than some people. I'm going to come back to sleep apnea with taping of the mouth. Tested in people with mild obstructive sleep apnea, just getting your mouth closed reduces the AHI, which is sleep apnea severity, by 33 %.

Wow.

So just with mild, just by getting the mouth closed, that's not looking at how do you improve your breathing patterns. If you have somebody with obstructive sleep apnea and they bring nose breathing into their everyday life, they learn to slow down their breathing, they learn to have good recruitment of the diet. From all simple skills that you bring into your everyday life, that will help your sleep up there. For moderate to severe, overall, it helps when you get the mouth closed also. But for some people with moderate to severe, they need to be allowed to mouthpuff. So whatever you use as a support to get the lips together, make sure it allows you to mouthpuff.

Got it. Well, I'm going to make sure to tape my husband's mouth with your tape, and I'm going to stop shoving him or pinching his nose when he goes, poof, poof. Can you explain why we sleep and why it's so important?

It's a great question, actually. Not stupid at all. It's something that we've been looking for an answer to for the last 50 years, probably 70 years, and actually longer than that. But it's not easy to come up with an answer because there are so many answers. There's so many things happening during sleep that can't happen at any other time, that new answers keep bubbling up. So sleep is great for the immune system. It's great for cognition. It's great for the emotional system. It's great for growth and repair.

What is the difference between being awake and being asleep? Is there a physiological or neurological difference between the two?

Yeah, it's huge, actually. So when we fall unconscious and into sleep, neurotransmitters, chemicals in our brain completely change their composition. So there's a set of neurotransmitters that are associated with wakefulness and being able to intend to the environment, have conversations, think thoughts, and they just completely switch when we fall asleep. So that one main one, which is called acetylcholine, which is really important for attention to the environment, switches off. And that's very characteristic of non-REM sleep, which is the first state we normally go into when we fall asleep. So acetylcholine turns off in animals that sleep unihemispherically.

Okay, that's a big word. What is unihemipher? I can't even see the thing. I'm not even saying the thing, seriously.

Unihemispherically means one hemisphere at a time. We have two hemispheres in our brain, and each hemisphere controls half of our body. And so the right hemisphere controls the left half of our body. So one hemisphere of the brain is asleep and the other hemisphere is awake. And the hemisphere that's asleep switches off the attention, acetylcholine neurotransmitter, the chemical, that your brain is doing all kinds of essential things that can't be done during wakefulness. It's another work time. It feels quite different than waking work. Then you can justify, Hey, I need this. I'm going to feel better. I'm going to be able to tackle my next day better.

Never even occurred to me that it goes way beyond rest, because what we're about to learn today is there's all these really critical health and mind functions that can only happen when part of the brain is in sleep mode. Is that right? That's right. Absolutely. Holy cow. So why don't we start with what the perfect night's sleep, based on your 30 years of research. What does a perfect night's sleep look like? Just so that we have a benchmark for what would be ideal.

I think if you just look at a 10-year-old, you'll get what the perfect night's sleep looks like. They sleep beautifully. They have a beautiful homeostatic, which means it responds to what you're doing during the day, a response, and how long you've been awake. They have a beautiful circadian, which means their body knows what time of day it is and what time they should go to sleep and what time they when they wake up. And so the 10-year-old's sleep is perfect. Don't ever wake up a 10-year-old if you can possibly help it. They're doing a lot of really important things. And after that, our sleep changes during our teenage years and We need just as much sleep as a 10-year-old, which is about 10 hours or 9 or 8 to 10 hours for sure. But teenagers, circadian rhythms change a little bit so that they fall asleep a little later and want to wake up a little later. So it's also a beautiful night's sleep if they are calm and not too engaged with social media at the wrong times. But But anyway, that's a great night's sleep. Our sleep is actually pretty great until we're about 40 or 50 years old, and then varying, depending on the individual, your sleep can start to become less efficient.

And so what does a perfect night's sleep look like in terms of how long you sleep, the various phases of sleep?

Right.

Okay, so the perfect night's sleep for health as an adult is something around seven and a half, eight hours, plus or minus an hour, something like that. Okay. You should be awakened by the sunlight, essentially. So that's something that resets our clock every day. And then so you work back from there, from the time you need to waken to get at least seven and a half, eight hours of sleep a night. Different people need different amounts of sleep. Some people need more like nine. Some people are fine with six for a while. How How do you know? You just have to know from your own body. Some people, if they get six hours of sleep, they know already immediately when they wake up and going throughout the day, it wasn't enough. And so your body will tell you. And other people wake up at six hours and they're fine. They feel great. And one way to know is how sleepy you feel during the day. Okay.

You already said one takeaway that I want to make sure that you listening got from us, which is you start with the time that you want to wake up, and then you roll the clock backwards, and you're basically saying that it's seven to eight hours, give or take an hour. So you roll the clock backwards, probably seven to nine hours, and that's when you need to fall asleep.

That's right.

And what happens when you fall asleep? What are the phases that we go through as we're sleeping?

The very first stage is, of course, dozing. And we don't really know when we're dozing, except that we come conscious once in a while and say, Oh, wow, okay, what happened in the last couple of minutes? I don't know. Because our memory starts not recording what we've been doing. And that lasts on average about two minutes. For example, if you're reading a book and you fall asleep reading the book, you won't remember the last two minutes of reading. Or if you're listening to a podcast, you won't remember the last few minutes of the podcast before you actually fall asleep.

Or if I was talking to my husband and next thing you know, he's snoring. He doesn't remember the last minute and a half of what I said. That's exactly. Exactly. So there's that dozing period, which I rather like. I love that you drift from your mind spinning to all of a sudden, almost like you're floating in a pool. That only lasts two minutes?

No, stage one is variable. It's about two to five minutes, something like that.

Okay. And you need that stage one of dozing to get into stage two. What happens next?

Then stage two is really an exciting stage. So between stage one and stage two, there's something called hypnagogic hallucinations, which I'm not even going to try.

Hypnagogic solutionations? Hallucinations. Hallucinations. Hallucinations.

It's our brain losing hold of reality and all kinds of imaginary, imagination things happen. For example, it can be as boring as feeling like you're falling off a step because not all of parts of your brain are asleep at the same time as you drift into it. And so you feel the muscles relaxing and part of your brain says, I'm falling, and the hallucination is incorporated into that feeling of falling. And so you think you're falling off a step.

Wait, is that why they call it falling asleep? That makes so much sense. And I have had that experience before where I dozing, my favorite part, you can drift off into the pillow. But then I, every night, have a jerking sensation, and it is like falling. It's almost like you're moving into the phase where your body is clumsily trying to turn your muscles off so you can drift into the deeper one. That's pretty cool. Now I know why I do that.

Or it can be as horrifying as feeling like there's a monster jumping on your chest and shaking you. And it can be very, very disturbing as well if you wake up from it. So they're pretty vivid hallucinations, almost like the dreams we have in rem sleep, only you don't have the atonia, which is all your muscles being inhibited to prevent you from acting out the dream. So oftentimes people, if they have a vivid hallucination that's scary, can wake up from that and then feel like, oh, what just happened? Was there a monster in my room? Really? I think that's the idea of nightmares. It comes from that idea of just the hallucinations, the weird hallucinations.

And this is as your brain is trying to drop itself into a deeper state of sleep. Yeah. Oh, interesting.

I didn't know that. Yeah. And not everybody, and most people, in fact, don't wake up from that. N2, it's called. N1 is dozing. N2 is that state of sleep, which has pretty vivid dreams, But they're not long story-like dreams like we have in rem sleep. But we'll get to that in a minute. So then from N2, which our brain is very active, we go into N3, which is also a time of activity, but it's really synchronous activity, like waves of activity going through our brain, and it's disconnected in time one wave from another. So consciousness can't be maintained. And if you wake someone up out of N3 sleep, slow wave sleep, and ask them what they dreaming, they will not report having dreamed anything. It will be a blank slate. And it's actually pretty hard to wake someone up out of that state. It's a deep, it's called a deep sleep.

And what's the purpose? You use the word wave. What is actually happening in your body when you're in that third phase and the wave is happening?

Yeah. So that's a time when we know that our brain is cleaning itself, actually. Wait, what? Yes. It's cleaning itself? Yeah, it's cleaning itself. Of what? Of all the junk that builds up during the daytime when we're awake and alert. What junk builds up? Well, proteins get unfolded, and Yeah. So things break down, energy is used. All of that gets restored in that deep state of sleep.

What would happen if you didn't get that deep stage of sleep? And the wave, the cleaning wave I'm seeing like somebody coming in after a big party and cleaning up all the cups. It's like this wave comes through your brain.

It's like a wave cleansing the brain. Yes. And there's one per minute or so. Actually, one per second, actually. So a lot more often than that. And it sweeps from front to back, and it just pushes all the junk into your cerebral spinal fluid and out into your body.

Is that why my back hurts?

I I don't think so. I'm just kidding. But yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, so if you don't get it, you actually don't get a chance to clean your brain like that. So you really need it. And that's the sleep you get, mostly in the first half of the night. After you fall asleep. So you go from N1 to N2 to N3. N3 lasts 20 to 30 minutes or so. And then you go back into N2 briefly and then into rem sleep, which is It's called rem sleep.

How is that different than the wave?

It's very different. It's actually also called paradoxical sleep, because if you look at brain activity, it looks just like someone's awake.

Really?

Why? Thoughts are going through and dreams are happening. It's really strong imagery in your dreams. If you wake someone up out of that state of rem sleep, they will always report a dream. Like 90 % of the time. Even people who, if you ask, say, Oh, I never dream, or I never remember my dreams, if you wake them up out of that stage, they'll remember. It's the reason why people... I think the reason why people don't remember their dreams is because they are solidly asleep and don't wake up out of that state. So don't worry, you are dreaming.

I'm sorry. I just think this is so cool. Now, I also read that sleep cycles last about 90 minutes. What does that even mean and what is in a sleep cycle, and why should we care?

Yeah. On average, it's 90 minutes, and that's when you go from N1 to N2 to N3 to N2 to rem. And that whole process takes, on average in us about 90 minutes. In other animals, it's shorter or longer. So we don't know why it takes the amount of time it does, but it seems to be important that it happens in the order that it happens, because if you disturb that order, if you get rid of one element of it, the whole process does not work nearly as efficiently or at all. So for example, if you just eliminate the rem sleep part, you can't consolidate your memories and put them together. If you eliminate the deep slow wave sleep part, the N3 state, the cleaning part, you will wake up with a junky brain and not be as efficient and able to handle the day.

Well, that makes sense because if you haven't brought the Zamboni to your brain to clean out all the junk, then you're not working with a clear palate when it comes to locking in the things that are new. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. How many sleep cycles do we do in a night?

About five. Five would be ideal, actually. So that's four, five, six and a half, seven hours of sleep, something like that. The first sleep cycle is a little longer than 90 minutes, probably because that N3 state is a little longer, and you don't have as much of it in the later part, the last half of the night. You don't have nearly as much N3 sleep. So if you miss the first half of the night, you'll miss most of that N3 sleep, which is the cleaning stage. So you don't want to miss that first half.

How would you miss the first half?

Staying up too late, staying up three hours later than you normally do. If you go to bed at 11:00, and now it's two in the morning and you're falling asleep, you'll get lots of that rem sleep, but you won't get near as much, if at all, any of that cleaning state.

Okay, hold on. Now I'm confused. Okay. Because I thought that if you fall asleep, that's like, let's just say the clock's at zero. You fall asleep, whether it's at nine o'clock at night or one o'clock in the morning. That's hour zero. No. No? Wait, what?

Your body knows what time it is of day it is. So your body knows the difference between nine o'clock at night and two in the morning.

So if you chronically go to bed late, your brain is jumping to the second half of sleep? No. Because I don't understand how you would miss the wave coming through and cleaning your brain out if it typically happens in the first.

So if you go to bed late chronically and wake up late chronically, then your body says, okay, it's aligned with your wake up-time. It's actually what it aligns with best is the light that you're exposed to during the day.

What is the purpose of the second half?

The second half is for... I like to think of it as more creative. It's creative part. It's emotional resolution and creative building of new schema. So the first half of the night is, let's do a little correction, it's more for locking in, like you said, strengthening and sealing the things that you learn during the day. But the second half of the night, or rem sleep more like, every rem cycle, is more for building new schema and making new connections and changing your mind and resolving the emotional aspects of your memory. So for example, if you remember a painful event, whether it's emotionally painful or physically painful, that happened a year ago or 10 years ago. You will want to remember that because it's adaptive and it's good to have those memories, but you won't want to recall when you're remembering the event, the actual pain. You don't want to feel the pain, again, either emotional pain or physical pain. That's not adaptive. You don't need that part of it. And so in our research right now that we're doing in collaboration with a few other laboratories, we're discovering that it is that rem sleep period, specifically the rem sleep period, and you get much more of it in the second half of the night, that helps to separate out the novelty and the immediacy and the physical reality of the emotions of those memories from the facts, the semantic facts that you put together that you can recall for the rest of your life.

And that's what happens normally. But people who have insomnia and they don't have good quality of rem sleep, their noreponephrine or noradrenaline is too active because they're too anxious while they sleep, then they don't have that distancing from the immediacy and the saliency and the sense that it just happened today. So that's what we're looking into.

That's really profound and exciting in terms of that insight, because if you think about it, I would imagine it's also applicable to somebody that has a lot of trauma. Somebody that has a lot of chronic pain, that all of that is a very real, lived, stored experience in your body. And if your brain is not able to get that seven to nine hours of sleep where it can do all of this functioning for a health and a mindset and neuroplastic. I think the implications of that, because what you're basically saying is that having good sleep habits and consistent sleep habits actually can help you heal.

Yeah, absolutely.

Not only can help you, but it's necessary.

It's necessary to heal. It's necessary to heal.

One of the things that I found really interesting in your research is the importance of a consistent bedtime and a growth hormone that gets released. And why is that connected to a consistent bedtime?

Well, growth hormone is the thing that helps you repair your muscles, build proteins involved in consolidating your memories and just rebuilding damaged parts of your body. That gets released in little spurts, if anything, all day long and while you're awake. But when you go to sleep and your circadian system is aligned, in other words, you're going to sleep at the right time relative to your clock, which means that melatonin is being released. Melatonin and growth hormone together gets the release of growth hormone to be 10 times higher than it is when you're awake. So it's a big spurt of growth hormone that can do things that little spurts can't do.

What does a growth hormone do?

Growth hormone helps you build proteins. All those amino acids that you eat during the day needs to be built into proteins, and proteins that get broken down during the day and misfolded can get built back up during sleep. And it's really only sleep. If you delay sleep so that it's past the time when your melatonin surge is going, then the growth hormone surge can't be nearly as big.

You know what question I'm about to ask next, right? Does a melatonin supplement help spike that? Is that a way or not really?

We don't know, actually. We don't know, but I doubt it because it's not just melatonin. There's a lot of other things that are happening simultaneously with that melatonin, and it signals other parts of your body. The other thing about melatonin supplements is that they're not regulated by the FDA, so So in any one melatonin supplement, there may be zero melatonin, or there might be 10 times what you need. It can actually help all of the processes that happen normally in the first few hours of sleep.

I am fascinated by this. And I start to see how now the inconsistent bedtime now is also screwing up the signaling. I think about it this way. When our three kids were little, they had a bed night Same bedtime, the same routine. We're winding down, we're picking up the toys, we're saying good night, we're going up for the bath, we're reading the bedtime story, you're in your pajamas, you have the little song or prayer, whatever, the kiss on the forehead, you turn off the light. And it was this intentional pattern that was training our kids. It's time to wind down and sleep.

That's right.

And it sounds like that's exactly what we need as adults. Yes.

We need the same thing as adults. Exactly. You've put it really well. And in fact, you mentioned a bath.

Yes. I take one every night. Yeah.

It really helps you sleep better. Why? It's thought to be because you are warming your periphery and vasodilating your hands and feet because there's a nice and warm- Oh, that sounds sexy.

Vasodilating. That's what I'm going to say to Chris. Chris, I'm going to go vasodilate my hands and feet in a hot bath, honey.

Right, yes. And vasodilation is good because what that does is it then helps cool your core, which is something that happens as you fall asleep. The core of your body cools by half a degree, something like that. And people get the best night's sleep if they can have warm hands and feet out there exposed to the air, helping to cool your core. So that's great. Also, to have a a great night's sleep, exercise during the day. Our bodies are made to exercise. They are made to move. And if we get a good time of exercise where our blood is racing and our hearts are pounding and our breathing is deep, then for some reason, we don't know exactly why, it might be due to adenosine build up or needing growth hormone. And the signals your body gives you says we need to repair ourselves. It gives you a really wonderful night's sleep. Those two things are beautiful.

A bath and exercise. You heard it here, and bright light in the morning, and a consistent bedtime. Those four things that you are giving everybody for free based on decades and decades of research.

And not too much caffeine too late.

Oh, yeah, that's right. That's number five. Not too much caffeine, everybody. Thank you for explaining that, Dr. Poe. And one of the things that I love as I listen to you is I'm realizing you're designed to sleep well. This is part of your hardwiring, your natural intelligence, your DNA, you run on a circadian rhythm, and sleep is a critical function. So this is something that we can all learn how to do better.

Yeah, that's right. Exactly.

So you're one of the most renowned sleep researchers in the world. What is your sleep routine? What time do you go to bed? When do you stop looking? Walk us through your evening. You've had dinner, then what do you do for your optimal sleep?

That's a great question. So sometimes I have to work after dinner in the evening, but the best time for me to go to sleep is around 11:00 or 10:30 at night. And so if I can put away my work by an hour before that. That's the best time for me. Take a shower. That would be amazing and usually good. And then in bed, what works great for me is either just prayer and relaxation, deep breathing, or I can distract my racing brain with a really dumb little game on my phone, with my phone set to non-blue light.

Wait, did the sleep researcher just tell me she's playing a game on her phone?

Right, but I turned off the blue light.

I feel like I need to delete this.

It's a dimmer screen and it's non-blue light.

See, now you look embarrassed that you're actually saying, I'm proud of you for admitting it. Everybody was just like, She's normal. God, thank God.

I play a game called- How do you block the thing on the- On the blue light? Oh, it's a setting on my phone. You can take away the blue light. Oh my gosh.

Okay.

I don't recommend this, by the way, everybody. The dumb game is something that's not mentally challenging. And of course, if I lose, it's okay. So it's threes where you numbers together to form three. Anyway. So yeah, and within 10 minutes, I'm usually, I'm out. Wow. I don't even bother putting my phone all the way on my night stand.

I just don't drop it. Okay. I don't even like to have the phone in the bedroom.

No, it's better to have it not in the bedroom. And of course, my phone is set to do not disturb mode so that it's not disturbing me, and it doesn't. All right. It's better to have it not in the room. And for some people, actually, what works great also is reading a book, whatever it is, just relaxing. And within 10 minutes, 12 minutes, you should be asleep.

Wow. How do you know if you're getting enough sleep? Based on the things that you study? Yes. Because you hear eight hours.

How many hours do you sleep, by the way?

The older I get, the more boring I am. So I would say nine or 10.

Yeah, I love that. People who sleep less than 6 hours have higher mortality. They have lower mood, and they are hungrier, as we said, with the leptin. What you want to do is really to realize how much sleep you need is when you sleep without an alarm, how many hours do you sleep? And not when you're sleep-deprived.

Oh, I bet I sleep 10 hours. Yeah. If I I don't have an alarm on, I sleep way longer than I think I'm going to.

When you look at the last couple of weeks of your life, the best days, the when you felt the most refreshed, the best mood.

Were the days I got the highest amount of sleep?

By far. That's how much sleep you need. And every American that's listening to this is going to be like, I can't sleep that much. But you I think about your best days of your life happened when you slept adequately. It changes your hunger hormones. It changes your hormones in general. For women, especially as we get older, this is important. It changes your mood. It changes your ability to make decisions.

Yeah.

And your interactions with other people. So why would you want to skimp on that? Why would you say that you'll be like everybody else, sleep when you're dead. When you look at the data, the data says opposite. It says if you don't sleep, you'll be dead much earlier.

That's true.

If you don't sleep, you will be more depressed, more anxious, have more hunger and craving signals. You are going to be a version of yourself that is a shell of what you want to be.

So one final thing that I think would be extremely helpful to people. Let's assume that we went to bed early, and we wake up and we get a good night's sleep. Can you walk us through what you would recommend the eating routine or what is on our plate and when are we actually eating? Okay. For complete hormone balance.

Yes. Okay. So as you know, everybody is different, and their life circumstances are different. Every time I do this, people Oh, but I work night shift, or I have little kids. I get it. I had many years where I didn't get enough sleep, where I didn't get enough sunlight, where I couldn't make the best decisions because I was just so pulled in all the different directions. So I get it. But we didn't even talk about circadian rhythms, but Mel, sunlight and darkness run our bodies. We have internal clocks every one of ourselves. So routines are excessively important in terms of our mood and our body, our nutrition. So when you wake up in the morning, you want to get sunlight. I have a rule that I learned from someone online. Basically, I did this for a few days, and I felt the best I've ever felt, and I'll tell you what it is. When you wake up, instead of scrolling your phone, checking Following your messages and your emails, go get sunlight first. Sky before screens.

Oh, I love that.

So sky before screens is how you should start your day. Your body is wired to see sunlight in the morning. Even if it's a cloudy day, it just has to be bright light. You can just walk outside. For me, it's my back door. Just walk out for a few minutes. It could be 2 to 10 minutes. You could do... For me, I'm usually just in my pajamas, so I'm coming back in and Getting ready for the day. Okay. So you don't want to have food or caffeine in the first 45 minutes of your day.

Why?

I'll tell you why. When you wake up, you feel groggy, right? Yeah. That grogginess is partially, mostly from adenosine in your brain.

Adenosine.

Adenosine. Okay. And it clears out, as you know, within 30, 40 minutes, it clears out. Then you have your coffee. Then When you eat your food. And the reason why is coffee, the way it works, it blocks our adenosine receptor. So that means that it doesn't help get rid of that adenosine. It just blocks it from actually binding. So if you don't let that adenosine clear out and you just drink your coffee, when the coffee wears off in a couple of hours, that adenosine is still there. And it just binds those receptors and you feel excessively tired.

And that's why you think you need another cup of coffee.

And then you're fully dependent. Like the people that wake up and they need the coffee right then, and then they need it again at 10:00, and then they need it again at one o'clock. It's because you're not letting that adenosine Whoa. Go. Okay. You need to let that clear out.

I'm guilty of this. So I am going to try this tomorrow. I am going to absolutely have my coffee, and then... Oh, no, I'm not. I'm going to wake up. I'm going to wait 45 minutes. Then Then I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to see if I have a craving for a second cup. Yes. That is fascinating. Okay.

So you want to let it clear out naturally because it's not going to clear out naturally if you start the caffeine cycle right away. Got it.

So clear it out for 45 minutes. Get our son in. What's next?

Eat.

Okay. No intermittent fasting.

So everybody... I love intermittent fasting.

Then why are we eating?

Because I do it the opposite way.

Talk to me.

There's very good evidence that for thousands of years, We ate in one scheduled way, which is daylight hours. There was no microwaves, Uber Eats. They had a fire, and you'd maybe eat an hour or two after sundown. That's it, right? You are not snacking at midnight. There's nowhere to store the food thousands of years ago. Our internal clocks are set so that when melatonin hits 2-3 hours before your head, your organs shut down. You cannot process sugar as well as you did. You can't take it into your muscles. You are not releasing digestive enzymes. So basically, when you're eating late at night, you're waking your body up in the middle of the night and asking it to do a math problem. Your body is going to be like, I don't want to do this. I'm going to make mistakes. You wake up and you're tired and you're pissed that someone woke you up in the middle of the night. That's what happens when you eat late at night.

Holy smokes. You put your body in conflict with itself.

Yeah. So intermittent fasting, everyone's doing it the wrong way. They're eating way late into the night, and then they don't eat all day when the sun is out, right? That's the time that your body is ready for food, right? So ideally, you wait an hour because nobody needs to be eating every minute of every day. Americans, we just eat 14 to 16 hours a day. It's just too much, right? So you wake up, maybe you get some movement in, you get your sunlight, you eat about an hour or two, even after you wake up. You don't need to push it to two, three, four. People are doing this thing. There's good evidence that skipping meals is actually bad for you and that people who do it habitually actually have worse health outcomes. Got it. So eat your breakfast. You want to have a high dopamine breakfast? Let's have cottage cheese, eggs, tofu, scramble, veggies, nuts, berries.

Great. When do I eat next? Because I'm already hungry. No. Am I hungry right now? When I eat vegetables, I would eat vegetables right now. There you go. So that must mean I'm hungry. But I got to have a glass of water first, and then I'm going to ask myself that again. See, I'm learning.

Then you tune in with the inner mouth, the brain-gut mouth. So then you can eat when you're hungry. Again, you can use your inner cues. Could be 12, could be 1, whatever your inner cues. You'll notice your Ghrelin is set on a Timer. Every day, you'll get hungry at the same time.

So hello, Ghrelin. It just, I think, dumped on me. So what do you eat for lunch?

So basically, lunch is a chance for you to get... The healthier you eat earlier in the day, the better your chance of sticking to it. So they always say exercise and eating healthier foods, breakfast and lunch is your best chance. So for me, I automated. And I had already I'll talk to you when we had talked before that I try to eat the same things every day. So what do you eat for lunch? So I eat a salad for lunch. I usually put a protein source on it. It could be different beans, nuts, it could be tofu, it could do eggs, you could do salmon, whatever you want. Protein and veggies, a salad with protein on it. And I always have a fermented probiotic food with my lunch because that's the best time for you to get in at least one to two servings of the kimchi, of the sauerkraut. It could be kombucha for a drink, apple cider vinegar in your dressing. So that's when you have the best chance. Really simple. It can be very simple. And then your dinner is when you want to eat. If you are someone- Serotonin, baby. Yes, you're learning.

I'm paying attention.

So I know it's not sexy to say eat carbs, but carbs actually can be very healthy for you, especially in vegetable form, sweet potato, quinoa, whatever it is, you can eat that later in the day if you want to have that big boost of serotonin.

And what about snacks? If I'm legit hungry, but I'm not really craving anything, but I'm legit hungry midday, what's your go-to snack?

So remember that protein has this effect on your body that it tells your hunger hormones to stop. So if you want more leptin, eat more protein. So your snack can be yogurt. Your snack can be a protein shake. Your snack can be a piece of cheese. Something with protein because that will keep your dopamine levels up, and it will keep your hunger hormone stable. It's really incredible. So protein snack, I think women, especially, we're eating just too little protein. There is a theory that the reason we get fat from eating ultra-processed food is because it's so low protein that your brain never gets the signal that you're full. Your protein threshold is never met.

Wow. One final thing I want to ask you because we didn't really cover it, gluten. Everybody I know is gluten-free.

Yeah, it's not the gluten. There's very few people who are actually allergic to gluten. It is very common to have GI issues with processed gluten. So when you eat a lot of bread, pizza, carbs, but that's not the gluten itself. It's the fact that you're eating processed food. So gluten gets mislabeled all the time. What I say to people is, go gluten free for a few weeks, three to four weeks. See how you feel. When you add the gluten back, don't add back the bread, the cookies, the cakes, and the processed gluten. Add back a small wheat burger, like in a salad. Okay. Add back a healthy sourdough bread. Add back wheat in small unprocessed amounts, and then see how you feel. And what I realized is that people villainize gluten all the time. And in America, gluten free has become such a tagline that those foods are more unhealthy.

Oh, because of all the processing. Look at you, Dr. Amy, is there anything else on this topic that we did not get?

I think we covered so much. I think, like you said, and I have taken this to heart, is that there's no pill that's going to save you. There's no person that's going to save you. When you learn about all this, when you actually listen to your own self, you're going to be the one who saves yourself.

Well, Dr. Amy Shaw, let me just say thank you, because without this information, we can't save ourselves. You've explained the internal, extremely elegant but complicated systems inside of us so that it makes sense, so that we understand why these choices, these substitutions, why it actually matters. That's my huge takeaway. I have never actually understood any of this at the thank you, thank you, thank you. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for checking this video out. If you like this one, I have a feeling you're going to like this one, too. I'll see you there.