Root Cause Solutions For You

From Sleepless to Supercharged: The Science of Circadian Optimization with Sleep Expert Mollie Eastman

• Fabiola Reyes, BCHHP - Root Cause Expert, Cert. AK, CellCore & Nutrition Response Testing® and Quantum Nutrition Testing Practitioner • Season 3 • Episode 4

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Discovering that sleep is a learnable skill can be life-changing for anyone struggling with insomnia or poor sleep quality. Mollie Eastman, founder of Sleep is a Skill, shares her transformative journey from battling severe insomnia while traveling internationally to becoming a sleep optimization expert who has coached high-stakes poker players and interviewed over 250 sleep specialists.

At the heart of quality sleep lies our circadian rhythm – a 24-hour biological clock that governs countless bodily functions. Modern life has disconnected us from natural light-dark cycles, with the average person spending 90% of their time indoors since 2001. This disconnection disrupts our internal timekeeping system, leading to sleep difficulties that conventional medicine often fails to address properly. Most doctors receive less than two hours of sleep training, and an estimated 80% of people with sleep apnea remain undiagnosed despite serious health consequences.

Mollie unpacks the concept of "zeitgebers" or time-givers – environmental cues that help keep our internal clocks calibrated. These include light exposure (the most powerful signal), temperature fluctuations, meal timing, exercise patterns, and even thought cycles. Simple strategies like getting morning sunlight, limiting evening blue light, finishing meals earlier, and maintaining consistent sleep-wake schedules can dramatically strengthen your circadian rhythm and improve sleep quality.

Perhaps most fascinating is the brain's glymphatic system – a cleanup mechanism that activates primarily during deep sleep to wash away metabolic waste. When sleep is compromised, this maintenance process can't function properly, potentially contributing to conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia. By treating sleep as a skill rather than a fixed trait, we open ourselves to tremendous improvement potential that transforms not just our nights but our entire experience of life.

Ready to reclaim your sleep? Visit https://www.sleepisaskill.com/ to take a sleep assessment, sign up for the weekly newsletter, or explore personalized coaching options that combine technology, accountability, and behavioral change for lasting results! 

Connect with Mollie and her team:

Website: https://www.sleepisaskill.com/   
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollie-eastman-sleep-is-a-skill-82531825/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mollie.eastman
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sleepisaskill
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sleepisaskill/

Disclaimer: The Food and Drug Administration has not evaluated these statements. This podcast is not a medical service; the information provided is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. The Root Cause Solutions For You, its practitioners, and employees make no warranties, express or implied, concerning the contents. The information shared in this episode is the opinion of the speaker and should not be considered medical advice. You should never disregard medical advice or delay seeking it because of the contents of this episode.

Speaker 1:

We have Molly Isman and she is the creator of Sleep is a Skill. She's the host of the Sleep is a Skill podcast. Sleep is a Skill is a company that optimizes people's sleep through a unique blend of technology, accountability and behavioral change. After navigating insomnia while traveling internationally, she created what we Couldn't Find, which was a place to go to learn the skill set of sleep. With a background in behavioral change from the nonverbal group, she became fascinated with chronobiology, which we're going to talk about that and its practical application to sleep and an overall experience of life. So, knowing the difference between life with sleep and without, she's dedicated her life to sharing the forgotten skill set of sleep. In the spirit of that goal, she's created the number two sleep podcast, where she has interviewed over 200 sleep experts, written a popular weekly sleep newsletter for over six years, partnered with luxury hotels and lifestyle brands, and has also coached the world's top poker players and has appeared on over 150 podcasts. Oh my gosh, that is quite a bio. You got there that. I love that.

Speaker 2:

It all came from solving my own problem with sleep and insomnia nearly a decade ago and my whole life changed because of it. During when it happened, I thought there was no silver lining. So if anyone's listening and struggling with sleep actively right now definitely want to say that there are positive things that can come out of this, believe it or not. I would have laughed hearing that when I was dealing with it, but I really believe it's true and I've seen so many people have similar results where, in order to restore workability with their sleep especially when we're talking about things like insomnia that it takes really upending so many things in your life, in your mindset, but also even behaviorally, environmentally. So there's a lot that can go into it, but there can be a blessing on the other side. So if you're in the thick of it, in the messy middle, there's absolutely so much hope and possibility.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's awesome. What led you? You've struggled with sleep. You were traveling internationally and I think you were in Rome, right, but then probably your sleep weren't a little crazy. What a situation to be in, right? You're not home and then suddenly your sleep patterns decide to change. So tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So it was going through my own period of insomnia, like I said, almost a decade ago, and to your point, we were traveling internationally, my husband and I, and in the process I, night after night, started and then. So when I landed in Madrid and had, night after night, this inability to sleep, at first I thought maybe a temporary thing, and did everything now I know not to do so, like I would be sleeping into all hours to try to make up for that lost sleep. So I started going to bed at really wacky times and so it just got worse and worse. And then eventually, I went to the doctors in Croatia and left with a prescription for sleeping pills and part of the reason that this was so scary for me no one, of course, wants to not be sleeping and what have you but it was even more loaded of a topic because I come from a family with a lot of mental health issues, a lot of heavy pharmaceutical use. So there was this fear for me in the background of oh no, is this like the moment that now this is happening to me, am I going to be destined for a life of having to take loads of pills and then you reach some sort of tolerance and now you're going to take more and more and other types and whatever. So I was very, very scared that this was like a sign of something bigger. So I really had the motivation to dive down the rabbit hole and what I discovered completely changed the course of my life.

Speaker 2:

I truly became obsessed with sleep, for better or for worse. I could talk about that too, because you don't want to be too obsessed with sleep, but I did become obsessed with sleep and then, on the bright side, was able to restore my sleep. So that was miraculous in and of itself, but it took some time. We actually had to travel back to the United States. We'd had a one-way ticket. We thought we were going to travel indefinitely. Now, flash forward just as an aside we were successfully able to become true digital nomads for about three years, back and forth to Southeast Asia, and yet I did take that time going back, figuring out what was going on with my health, my sleep. I did have some other health issues like parasite and some other imbalances, but I share all that because, on the other side of this, what got created then was sleep is a skill, and I truly stand in this mission that sleep is a skill set. It's not about perfection we're all still going to have challenging nights, myself included, but it's about having tools and resources available to get ourselves back on track. And so today we have, like you, shared a top sleep podcast. We've interviewed over 250 experts in the area of sleep optimization and sleep support. We have a top sleep newsletter that's been going for almost seven years every Monday, so I'd love to have as many people on there.

Speaker 2:

It's a real passion project for me. It's a time every week where I'm able to just go down the rabbit hole. I love being able to just investigate and research the latest things that are happening in this world of sleep, and so I've been sending that out. We have online courses. We do what we call audits, so we audit different wearables, particularly Aura and Whoop. We do have a very large scale Aura Ring database where we have a number of people that then we're able to look at their data from a sleep optimization perspective uniquely. And then we also have a niche in high stakes poker, so we work with a ton of high stakes poker players, and I share that because if we're able to make a difference with their sleep and they're in environments designed on purpose casinos to confuse the circadian rhythm.

Speaker 2:

So there's no clocks and windows. Tons of stimuli. Talk about blue light. Talk about stressors they might be up against losing or winning millions of dollars at any given point. So lots of stress, and we can support people like that.

Speaker 2:

We can absolutely support anyone that's listening to take things to the next level, and so I share all that, because I can tell you that when all this began, I just had a load of labels for myself of being a bad sleeper, a short sleeper, a night owl.

Speaker 2:

It's in my genes I'll sleep when I'm dead, like all of these ways to relating to my sleep as a fixed way of being, and I would love for us to, just in this time together, as people are listening, to try on this concept that it is actually a skill set. So, wherever you're starting, let's start at kind of sleep 101 and start building up this aptitude for the thing that we do. A third of our lives on average, 26 years, are spent asleep and yet, sadly, the average doctor, even out of Harvard Med, is getting less than about two hours of training. So if you've said, if I had something going on, my doctor would have caught it? Or red flags? Fortunately probably not, because, just systemically, unfortunately, we don't have proper structures in place for them to be able to catch some of these things. So right now, until the system changes, we have to be our own advocates and learn for ourselves. So that's what we can do today.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're 100% right. I was just traveling and it was a two hour difference. We were in Idaho and we were at a conference and I felt so disoriented I'm like I have no idea what day it is, what time it is. I felt like 1130 am was five o'clock and I was like wow, I just don't know like this. I just and that was temporary for me Like I'm back home now and I feel like I'm getting back into the groove, but I cannot imagine feeling like this all the time. With that time, disorientation, Technology has gotten us to the point where, yeah, we're probably more able to do some things that we weren't able to do when technology wasn't as advanced. But you're right, all the blue light, all the computers, the screens, like you even open your refrigerator and now you're in the middle of the night and you're hungry and you're like hey, what all this light?

Speaker 1:

I am a big fan of circadian and I did a it was a circadian rhythm summit a couple of months ago where I was like, wow, yeah, learning all about like cortisol and melatonin and really understanding like the different rhythm that there is and the body temperature and all that stuff. So I just, you're right, sleep is the skill, because we think that we're oh, we're just going to go to bed and sleep. But how many people are up thinking about things, can't shut their mind or wake up in the middle of the night or can't get back to sleep. So so many different factors that could contribute to that.

Speaker 2:

You nailed that 100%, yeah, and it's fantastic that you did that summit, because that was one of the things that completely changed the game for me was this concept of circadian rhythm entrainment, the fact that we can entrain and strengthen our circadian rhythm, the fact that it exists really on a spectrum, and, like any spectrum, you can be on the weak side of the circadian rhythm strength or pulse or the strong side, and certainly when all this happened for me, both my husband and I were certainly on the weak side, because we were really living like poker players we were going to bed super, super late, waking up super super late, we would put on the sunglasses and the whole thing, and so we were just so disconnected to these rhythms of nature.

Speaker 2:

We were just so disconnected to these rhythms of nature, but how dramatically our not only sleep shifted when we started living in alignment with these things and not from a woo perspective or be in touch with nature, which is fine but also from a biological hardwired stance, that it completely transforms your experience of both your sleep and your wake.

Speaker 2:

So while you're awake, because they live in tandem, our sleep-wake cycles, as diurnal creatures, were meant to be active by day and at rest at night. So both my husband and I were fundamentally upside down on that kind of approach and thinking there was no negative side effects. And unfortunately it turns out that when we are deviating from these rhythms we do start to measurably see problems arise for people with their health and sadly, and of course we have people that we rely on, so shift workers, to really help support our structure of our society. So we absolutely want to make sure that especially those groups really get this training because they really, really we all need it. But certainly if you're living and working kind of against the grain of some of these rhythms, you really want to know this cold so that you can support yourself across the board.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm thinking nurses, right? Police officers, first responders all these people who are circadian rhythms are all being interrupted. Most of us are familiar with circadian rhythm, but what is the natural process? What should we expect and different things that could be disrupting that pattern.

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah. So our circadian rhythm is around a 24-hour rhythm, set to the rising and the setting of the sun, and so one thing that's nice to keep things simplified is if we, the more we're getting ourselves outside and exposed to these rhythms, the more everything just works, sadly, since 2001, the EPA did a study and they found that the average person was spending around 90 percent of their days indoor, and so in the process of doing that, that is dividing our connection to these rhythms of nature. So the free, largely and available thing for all of us to do when this is occurring, when we're seeing like our sleep is not working, we're waking up at 3, 4 am, etc. Or having difficulty falling asleep, what we want to do is go back to the basics, and part of that is to align with that and strengthen that circadian rhythm. So part of that will just mainly be mimicking what's going on outside, inside and getting ourselves outside more frequently, because we do see that sleep as an industry really was an area of study didn't really come into fruition until the industrial revolution, when we started going more indoors, when we started being exposed to electric light at night and then the absence of bright natural light by day. So it's a two-part system here, and part of the reason because that can be confusing too, because people are like why does you know me getting bright sunlight outside at 7am? What does that have to do with when I'm trying to fall asleep at 10, 30, 11?

Speaker 2:

And it turns out that one of the discoveries that we have is melatonin, while we used to think of it simply as a hormone of darkness, which it is, and so that's from the brain-based production of melatonin with the presence of darkness, and that certainly happens. From the brain-based production of melatonin with the presence of darkness, and that certainly happens. But we've also discovered that the creation of mitochondrial-based melatonin is occurring from the presence of sunlight, and so we want to get and foster that presence of sunlight to create that mitochondrial-based melatonin and support overall melatonin production. Not only that, but also how you feel throughout the course of the day and making sure all those hormones are aligned, because part of that circadian health is ensuring that two key hormones that relate to sleep are functioning well, and those two happen to be cortisol.

Speaker 2:

So your cortisol pulse in the morning and your melatonin pulse in the evening, and if they are at odds, so a signature often of poor sleep, when people are struggling with their sleep, might be a delayed cortisol pulse, so it's delaying in the time that that is pulsing, if you will, and then can be at odds in your ability to create melatonin. So if you're stressed out at night, you've got all these bright blue lights on. You didn't see sunlight, so you're living upside down. You've been like in a really dim, dark environment by day and now you're flipping on all the lights at night. We are on all your screens, you're stimulated, all these things. Then your cortisol can be rising during a time when we don't want to be fostering that and that can be at odds of the times for you to create sufficient melatonin at night. So we want to get these things all synced up and that's part of that circadian rhythm, that 24-hour cycle.

Speaker 2:

But to even pan out even further, I want to just give you a framework to think of for circadian rhythm entrainment, and entrainment is simply the best way to think about. That could be when you're traveling and jet lag. If anyone's experienced long-haul travel and you spoke to how off you could feel, just with a couple hours you start to sync up. That's the process of entrainment and you've been entraining that because now you're living in alignment and accordance with the culture that you're now at and the time zone that you're at, and so that's what we're trying to do is mindfully learn what are these zeitgeivers or time givers? And these time givers help usher us into these proper times and keep all these clocks that are in every cell, virtually every cell and organ in our body on time, and they're all kept in alignment with that superchiasmatic nucleus, the SCN for short, and it's the proximity of that is right behind the eyes. So it makes a lot of sense that it's particularly entrained by light-dark, but it's not to say that's the only one we know, light-dark being one of the most impactful zeitgebers or time givers.

Speaker 2:

Then we go down the rung to other ones. So temperature timing is a big one, then meal timing and meal type. Then you go to exercise timing and type. You go to something that I call thought timing, which is really fascinating because our thoughts exist on our circadian rhythm as well. So we have research to support that. You are thinking very different types of thoughts at 3 am versus 3 pm, so when I get clear on all that. So that's really fascinating. And then chronopharmacology, the timing of our drugs and our drugs could be as basic as, like our coffee, our alcohol, but it can also extend to other things like pharmaceutical supplements, this whole gamut of things that might then be throwing us markedly off or supporting our rhythms. So that gives you a kind of overview, and I'm happy to go in more in depth with whatever one speaks to you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, that's fascinating. The more sleep dysregulated I am, inflammation, like my face just looks puffy. My eyes, I'm like. That's just not my eyes Like I, just my rings feel tighter. Like my socks feel tighter, I'm like, and then they have my ankles half marks, I'm like, and I, if I trace it back, most of the times it's because I was just didn't rest, what happened on the night? And looked at my phone. And if my phone is not set up to that, would you change the color of your screen to red? So if you do wake up in the middle of the night and you look at the time, you're not blasted with blue light? Yes, I just love that fact that everything is connected. We can't think of one system being up without thinking how that's going to impact the other ones. No one gland is an island. You have to have to think of everything together. What's?

Speaker 2:

the one thing that you can do to change your sleep and unfortunately it really doesn't work like that and maybe fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, but it's really more like a garden, and in a garden you couldn't just say it's just about the soil, it's just about the water, it's just about the seeds, it's the whole thing. I think that's where so much of our Western approach to health and well-being has been tremendous Like. I got in a really crazy car accident when I was 17, and I'm so grateful for Western medicine In that case. They were amazing. They got me into surgery, all the things. I think we're on the precipice of more importance or understanding of kind of this functional approach or precision medicine. As we get more data to that starts to really disrupt things. We're getting all these different pieces of information VO2 max, et cetera that helps us understand what is at play, what's working, what's not working and how that can be showing up in your sleep results.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Can you tell us about chronobiology? Tell us, what that is and how you use it.

Speaker 2:

Sure, chronobiology is really the science of time and how time affects our biology, and you think about it. It makes a lot of sense if you've ever had an experience when and maybe this might've happened to you with your travels, I'm not sure, but say, if you try to take a nap midday and maybe you take a longer nap than normal, and you wake up and it's, it's, the lighting's changed, it's what time is it.

Speaker 2:

It's like confusing and kind of like off-putting change. What time is it? It's like confusing and kind of like off-putting, and that's just a silly, small example. But the body really wants to know what time it is, because then it can predict what it needs to be doing and when. And when it's been thrown up, and not having proper signals time after time that are count-on-able and consistent, it starts to create an environment of chaos. And this environment of chaos is going to start showing up in your not only some reliable things like very clear one when you are doing long haul travel.

Speaker 2:

Again, she's at jet lag analogy. People often say oh my god, like what is happening. I'm going to the bathroom at very weird times. What is that exact? Other, we're upside down, and so those things can happen on an acute scale, but they can also happen. Just there's something known as social jet lag, and social jet lag is you didn't even get on a plane, but you are. You've shifted your schedule, so market, because you don't have anything on your calendar to have to wake up for, so you're sleeping in or whatever, and so that can give you all the experiences and the symptoms of jet lag, even even though you didn't go anywhere and that's just simply by sleeping in a little bit later, changing your bedtime, wake time, and yet many of us might be doing versions of that and that could look like, say, you have very inconsistent dark schedule. I mentioned the importance of that Very inconsistent wake up times, bedtimes, very inconsistent temperature timing, so meaning that our bodily temperature is dynamic and it's meant to be rising by day and then markedly dropping by night.

Speaker 2:

If you're giving counter cues to that, there's various ways that that might happen. Then things like your meal timing this is probably one of the more common ones that I see is when people are eating basically all hours of the day, including up until the hours before bed. And this can be a major mismatch signal because traditionally, if we think back to our hunter gatherer days, which is the vast majority of our time on this planet so this kind of weird settled way of living is very new in our history. So in the past, when the sun would set, it was sort of party over and beyond the advent of fire. For the most part, there's no pantries, there's no refrigerators, there's no way to then be snacking and eating post sunset and you couldn't go hunting because you're in pitch black, so you just were not eating, and we were really designed to follow that structure to the greater or lesser extent, or at least be tethered to that rhythm, and yet we have drifted off of that, so that meal timing can be a big one that can throw off this kind of workability of this aligned clocks and, by the way, for many people that also means when we're sleeping instead of focusing on a big discovery in 2012 with something called glymphatic drainage with a G versus lymphatic drainage with an L, it's got a lot of press because this happened on the first half of our night, and on the first half of our night what would occur is this washing of the brain and of the kind of built up toxins throughout the course of the night, and it appears that if we're not setting ourselves up properly to fulfill on that each night, what can happen? It looks like there can be connections with neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia. So this was big late breaking news because we used to not think there was much we could do. It turns out, if we support sleep, that could be something we could do decades in advance of the development of that. But if you are eating before bed, then you are very often digesting and splitting the resources of the body, so it's having to bring all this shuttle blood flow to the stomach and deal with all this homework that you just gave it, versus the processes of lymphatic drainage and the many other processes happening during sleep. So that's meal timing.

Speaker 2:

Exercise timing can throw off these clocks too If you're exercising too late into the evening. A big study just came out about this. I just wrote my newsletter, actually on this one, because we found that and it landed in nature tons of using loop bands, tons of nights of data and seeing that four hours, especially before bed, if you are exercising, you can throw off those clocks and throw off the timing of your sleep. But even for some people and some types of exercise, around six hours before bed could be part of that timeline and that could also throw you off if you're going too late. So it's for the exercise timing, thought timing.

Speaker 2:

If you're engaging in things that are excitatory at the wrong times, even if they're exciting, like happy things, planning a trip or something, or, sadly, maybe more common is the stressful things, or the emails or the text messages with the person that you're fighting with or whatever, all that stuff can activate a stress response for the brain and be more up regulatory, and that can throw off those clocks too and make it harder for you to fall asleep and or stay asleep.

Speaker 2:

And then also our drugs, so our drug timing can really be tethered to some of the types of drugs, the dosage of drugs and the timing of the drugs that you're taking. So these are all really important for us to be aware of. And when we think about things like chronobiology and the science of time and how time affects our biology has massive implications. So it goes out and ripples out to things like our judicial system, so like the when judges are making decisions that affect the entire course of people's lives, depending on how well rested they are and the time of day they're making these decisions. That is a function of circadian rhythm and they might be more cranky at certain times than they are at other times, and you want to make sure you're on the bright side of their crankiness level or whatever. And we see that with doctors and surgeries and malpractice lawsuits and just the list is endless of how much these rhythms affect our well-being and our lives.

Speaker 1:

Wow, yeah it's true, and I love that you talked about the glymphatic nervous system, or for that. It's so fascinating that the brain has its own sort of drainage pathway. Can you imagine, like all that cleanup that has to happen at night and that it only happens when you're asleep? So if you're not sleeping, then how are we then expected to not experience some of that brain fog or forgetting those words that we typically know, or people's names, because the cleanup crew just was not allowed to come in and clean up whatever was going on. So I love it. It's so fascinating, and I think it's things that we just take for granted, but all these different processes that occurred that we just are not aware of, and that's why I can see why you've discovered that sleep truly is a skill, because if you are exercising all these different things and making it a lifestyle, then you are most likely to have better nights than not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's what's so fascinating, because there are and I think we were chatting about this maybe before we hit record or something was there are certain things that are just but of course, like wind down, set your phone away, all these sort of things like obvious.

Speaker 2:

But there's other things that are not as obvious and there's other things that I can assure you so many doctors are unfortunately missing and could be life-threatening. For instance, there are over 100 sleep-wake disorders and many people, so some of the stats are that over 80% of the people that we know, that we estimate that are running around in this country with sleep apnea, which can absolutely stave off many years of your life and experience of your life, et cetera, are undiagnosed. They're undiagnosed. These are things that are absolutely crucial that we start to be able to educate on, to get this information out, because this can change the course of people's lives. Also, you certainly don't want all those 80% of people that are undiagnosed, those people behind wheels and falling asleep at the wheel. All these things that can be happening are very real world problems, like.

Speaker 2:

I just had Emma Cooksey on the podcast, who she has run a podcast called Sleep Apnea Stories, and part of her discovery was exactly that she was behind a wheel and fell asleep and could have ended. Things could have been done, but it was such a literally no pun intended wake up call for her and so to look at more of this and so many doctors had missed all of the signs. And this is just an anecdotal story, but I'm trying to illustrate that these things are so important for us to understand and to get this training out to the masses, and so once you discard these things, it can be absolutely life-changing. And there's other disorders that people might be stepping over as well. So things like bruxism, so teeth grinding, things like restless leg, periodic limb movement disorder, upper airway resistance syndrome. So there is a lot of those that people just might have no clue that could absolutely shift their experience of life, because the sad thing is with sleep, you don't know what you don't know and so you don't know the difference. Like, for instance, I was able to just get something that was really cool. I share about a lot called by there and it's basically I didn't even realize that I had. I was running around for years with a partially deviated septum and because you don't know what you don't know, and so I just thought that's how you breathe and so by there, uses radio frequency so you're awake the whole time. It took 20 minutes and they just go into your nasal passageway, reshape that and I was able to markedly drop my respiratory rate on my wearables while sleeping but also be able to breathe better throughout the course of the day. That's one example. I also had gotten a tongue tie release that can markedly shift the quality of your sleep. So if people are familiar with tongue ties, it's when your tongue is basically tied down to tell you you're not able to have proper tongue posture on the roof of your mouth. This you know how our tongue is postured is huge for our sleep, same with our ability to breathe through our nose.

Speaker 2:

So there's a lot of things that when we start diving into this world and get some of this training, then your whole experience life can change. But it also doesn't have to be all consuming Like you can learn some of these things like like sign up for a little course or program or whatever, just deep dive, and then, once you make some of these changes, then that becomes just your new way of life. So, like my husband, I always talk about most of the time we're ending our meal timing incredibly early. So we'll do it like and I'm not saying everyone needs to do this, but we stop our meal timing usually around like 4 PM, 4 30, something like that, maybe sometimes 3 30, like very early, so it's breakfast, lunch, kind of this like linear timeline, and so I share that because we feel so much better the next day because you'll see, your heart rate will markedly drop, your HRV will markedly improve.

Speaker 2:

For most people, of course you want to bio individuality and see what works for you, but when we have to deviate from that we feel not as great. So it becomes something that you really want to support for yourself and then it just is like second nature, you don't have to think about it. So you learn on the front end. You set up your environment so you know the red lights go on or the incandescence or the Himalayan salt lamps or whatever. In the evening you set up your environment so that you get outside. In your mornings you become aware of these timings of things. You get your regular checkups. You see what's at play from a physiological standpoint, hormonal standpoint and, by the way, these seasons of life will keep shifting. Like I just turned 40. And in the lead up to that, this last year, I was having some hormonal shifts. So I had to tend to that Because you'll. So you'll keep making sure that you're staying abreast of these things, but when you have the tools and resources, then you can know better and do better.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely, and I think I grew up I was born and grew up in Mexico City and to me the timing of meals was like very difficult moving upstate New York, from Mexico City to upstate New York and I'm like when you have your breakfast and when you have your late dinner, and it was such an adjustment. And I'll tell you also like it was. I couldn't sleep for a month because New York, upstate New York, was too quiet, because I was so used to the craziness of Mexico City and if I didn't hear cars I couldn't sleep. So it took me a long time to actually get my patterns and that sleep and the eating schedules and everything that you were just saying.

Speaker 1:

But if anything, I find that the more sleep deprived we are and all these different stressors, the more metabolic unfit we are, and then we wonder why we can't lose weight or what our hormones are. You're doing and you're right. Fortunately, our medical system is just not designed to think this way of potential symptoms and root causes of different things. And I also find it fascinating that dentists, for example, can diagnose sleep apnea right. It's nowhere under scope of practice, even though they see it and it's right there and they could do something about it to help, and it's just fascinating how we just isolate different like body parts to different specialties and they're just not talking together.

Speaker 1:

And then here we are, suffering with all the symptoms.

Speaker 2:

Exactly Like why the siloing of these, especially since dentists have really become part of the front lines for catching some of these things for many people, because right away they can already spot, commonly certainly bruxism, jaw misalignments. They're often doing the full scans to see what's going on with your airway. So many dentists have been more pioneering than many other areas of health and certainly of other doctors, and so they've been so important but to your point, sadly often not covered our insurance or what have you in the.

Speaker 1:

United.

Speaker 2:

States anyway.

Speaker 1:

So you're right.

Speaker 2:

It's ripe for disruption At last. Count. This might have hopefully gone up a little bit, but one of the last stats I had seen was that there was around 700 sleep professionals in the United States for millions of people, and we all sleep, presumably, so we got a real mismatch on the number of people with an expertise in this area.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's right. People who are reporting their symptoms, who are actually thinking, oh gosh, something is actually wrong. I have to go and see a specialist. And how many people are walking thinking, oh, that's just the way I am wired. I'm like my mom never slept, so I'm guess I'm genetically predisposed where we have to break that generational trauma and patterns right With things that we just think it's just the way that it is.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

There was a USA World News Report sleep survey so it's survey, but that just came out in 2025. And it was estimated that 89% of people are dealing with wake-ups, for example, and so waking up multiple times throughout the course of the night and struggling with that. So she's like one example of a sweeping number of people struggling with this and not necessarily getting the support and you might go to your doctors. I've seen many people come our way that I talked to my doctor and he said, oh, have you tried melatonin or worse? Yet we do have Ambien, Lunesta, Valium, Xanax, all these different things and not medical advice. But saying that we want to certainly understand that even at least bare minimum in the United States, if you are dealing with difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, the gold standard and the protocol is supposed to be for doctors to recommend CBTI cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. So if you are someone that has gone to your doctor and you weren't recommended this, that's kind of a break in how it's supposed to go. But unfortunately, I've seen and I was one of these people that I had gone through the process of CBTI cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and that didn't actually work for me. We do see a number of people. Unfortunately that is the case now. It's not to say that it has a very high efficacy rate and can be really effective for a number of people. So it's not to step over it. But also you want to know that there's other things too, and so, for instance, things like ACT acceptance, commitment therapy for insomnia, and so that one is kind of a slightly different approach. Sometimes it can be melded together. There can be other things that we might bring in, including more of this kind of functional precision medicine approach to see also, is there something going on physiologically? So, for instance, in my case, other things that were at play were methylation issues, so issues with my B vitamins, iron levels, so having an imbalance of between iron and ferritin, the vitamin D levels, like that's super common. We see very commonly very low vitamin D, especially like what you had shared.

Speaker 2:

Coming from Mexico City, a lower latitude location, then going to upstate New York, a higher latitude location, and I get it, I grew up in Maine, lived in Manhattan for many years. Get it, I grew up in Maine, lived in Manhattan for many years, and the winters are brutal and it's virtually impossible for us to be able to get at certain points throughout the year, proper vitamin D production naturally through the sun, especially depending on your Fitzpatrick scale. So where you fall on your Fitzpatrick scale is important for this light conversation, because if you are on the lighter side of your skin tone, that dictates how much time you need to be outside and the strength of the exposure of that sun. But if you are on the darker side of your skin tone, you need to be outside longer and we want to help support that. You're getting ideally stronger light sources.

Speaker 2:

So this is part of the reason I moved to Austin Texas was because lower latitude location, stronger light sources. So this is part of the reason I moved to Austin Texas was because lower latitude location, stronger light, more opportunity to be outside, Like right before I came in, only because our wifi was doing weird things, but usually I'm like outside, so if you can see, so like right now there's my friend over here, we're co-working together, so usually we can just be outside and getting that bright light exposure. I couldn't do that for half of the year or unless I wanted to freeze in like Maine or New York. And it's not to say you can't get healthy at any latitude. Of course there's things that you can do, but that also will involve the longer conversation that goes into kind of quantum biology, but that's the leveraging of cold therapy and cold exposure to offset your lack.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So regardless what where you fall, you still have to work harder to do something and be disciplined. You have to do something. You do with that information important.

Speaker 2:

So people are dealing with mood instability, depression, just not feeling what? When you talk about seasonal affective disorder, I think people act like, oh, some people deal with seasonal affective disorder. No, if you are a human being, I'm sorry, but if you are not getting proper sunlight, you are dealing with some form of seasonal affective disorder. You might just not be aware of it, or you might just think, oh, I'm a little down, or whatever disorder. You might just not be aware of it. Or you might just think, oh, I'm a little down, or like we are designed to be tethered to these rhythms, so the more aware we become of these things, the more we can support this. And if you are in a northern latitude location, something I would suggest checking out are some options. So one is there's two different light sources where you can create vitamin D from a lamp. So one is called Spurdy and that got a lot of press during COVID and it was like selling out all over the place, no affiliation, and but often they can even be covered under insurance if you are dealing with certain skin disorders, so like eczema, psoriasis. And then another one is called Chroma D, and Chroma D is going to be cut with more red light too, but it's going to. Also, you can literally get a tan like a burn from some of these lights if you're under them too long. So they're really heavy duty. But you can absolutely create vitamin D from from those light sources but like more of the. Why is that? When we have low vitamin D, which is huge swath of the population does, then it's part of that kind of cocktail where it's part of the creation of serotonin, which presumably most of us would want for well-being, but then also a precursor to melatonin. So that's again that conversation of getting that sunlight is going to set you up for success for that melatonin in the evening. Now if people are like, ok, fine, I hear it's sunlight, I guess it's important. So how long do I need to be outside?

Speaker 2:

We had Dr Sachin Panda on our podcast, who's out of tons of research, decades of research out of the Salk Institute and a foremost researcher in circadian health, and one of his recommendations was in about an hour each day in the sun to properly make melatonin. Now that's very much generalistic, so it depends certainly on that Fitzpatrick scale. I was mentioning the time of year, cloud coverage, all of these different things can affect the length of time, but that can be like a nice ballpark. And then you can also learn more about this with the my Circadian app, so that one is really helpful and has lots of tools and you can check the lux in your environment with that app and press a button and then measure the lux and see are you getting?

Speaker 2:

You really want a high amplitude lux by day, very low amplitude lux by night. So on a hot like a warm, or not even warm, but on a bright summer day you can get up to a hundred thousand lux, whereas in the evening we want to get down to double single digits of lux, like candles. Candles are around like seven lux. So you want a huge discrepancy. Another app is the Circadian. Life app is one that you can also design. What time are you going to get your workouts in? What time are you going to have your meal timing? More education on all this, so you can really go down the rabbit hole there.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's pretty awesome. Tell us a little bit about lights, because I know that after sundown you're meant to be turning all your overhead lights off. Right, I have to invest in circadian rhythm glasses so I do wear during the day, because I'm in front of the computer a lot, and then at night I do wear my red glasses, I just clip them on. So I feel like it's made a huge difference sleep-wise and feeling more rested and waking up a little easier. But yeah, so don't have to digress, but tell us a little bit about that. The importance of really setting up your house for after dark. I love that. Kudos to you for getting those glasses.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Kudos to you for getting those glasses. And it is important to what type of glasses, because sadly, many of us and years back I was part of this unfortunate group that was falling prey to some of the press on clear lenses helping forth blue light you go to your doctors and optometrists and say, oh, you want the blue light blocking forth blue light. So you go to your doctors and optometrists and say, oh, you want the blue light blocking, and if it's clear, it's really not doing anything substantial, but certainly not for the night at all. So like we cannot have clear at night and think that those are blocking. Now, like you pointed to having more of the yellow hues by day, if you are exposed to a lot of that kind of straight blue light, that can be important. You can also use on your laptop or computer something called Iris Tech Duck, so that one you can set up to kind of like a health setting or different settings by day and then in the evening turn it on to like glow red at night. So that can be really, really helpful. Then in the evening, though, post sunset, you want to move over to orange lenses and then moving into red lenses, and we're trying to really mimic fire in a lot of ways, but this will. So you can think of those hues when you're looking at your lighting choices. But also these lenses are going to block out a portion of the blue light that you're exposed to and that blue light is going to be depleting of melatonin.

Speaker 2:

Now, ideally, you're setting up an environment in your space where you're not really exposed to too much blue light in general. But I can tell you I still deal with this with my husband, who's just not interested in getting rid of the TV at night, or there's. There is an extreme thing you can do if you really want to be super circadian but my husband is not game for this. But you can get some people can help you make entire covers over your TV. That will almost act like a big filter, so it can be like an orange red, but you're not making out a lot with that. Some people will do it. I would probably do it because I'm pretty extreme, but my husband was a no.

Speaker 2:

So then if we're watching something or whatever, I put the blue blockers on and then also try to sit away to some proximity, so it's not bathing yourself in all this light. But for the most part. Ideally you're creating an environment where this is not too much light that you're having to deal with. But those lenses can make such a difference when you are exposed to those and also going out and about. So one thing I do like about Austin is there's so many kind of health enthusiasts, so you're often not alone or looked at super, super weird when you bring out your blue blockers to some party or whatever, and often there'll be many other people that might be doing the same thing. So I'm looking forward to a future when that's just hopefully the norm, but then even more even better would be environments where the lighting is just circadian aligned already so you're not having to deal with that. It's a nice moody like incandescent candlelit vibes in the evening or kind of fireside experience so that all of our melatonin can properly rise together.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's an investment and just like anything. Right now we live in a very toxic world, a very technologically advanced world, where computers are on all the time, streetlights, everything, and it's going to cost us and that's the unfortunate side of it. But I think health is important and I think it's a smart thing to make that investment. Yeah, totally Sad. Couldn't agree more. I know we covered a bunch of stuff Behavioral change, I feel like accountability. So why do you approach accountability in your program?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, good question. And we do say that SIPP is this intersection of technology accountability? Good question, yeah, and we do say that SIP is this intersection of technology accountability. Behavioral change, because you will learn all these things, but then if you're not changing your behavior, then it's just like information overload and for the fun of it you're not going to make any real difference in your life. So I've found that for behavioral change paired with accountability seems to really help people take new action, and so what that can look like are a few things. One, we'll run different cohort groups, so you know, all of us together are learning these things, putting them into action.

Speaker 2:

We're also often utilizing kind of what's known as the Hawthorne effect or the observer effect, when people know that they're being watched to a certain degree.

Speaker 2:

So like their four ring stats are shared in and threaded through.

Speaker 2:

Suddenly they're often they stopped the ice cream earlier or whatever, or maybe the drink or THC, or maybe they're going to start exercising more, because you can see so many things on these wearables.

Speaker 2:

So I see how many steps people are taking, I see their activity load, I see their heart rate, I see their HRV, I see their respiratory rate, I see their body temperature, I see how many times they woke up throughout the course of the night, I see what time they went to bed, I see what time they woke up, like just there's a lot there that gives you a real good picture of what's going on for the individual. And so in group settings we have access to Oura Ring's Teams dashboard so we can have every person wearing an Oura Ring and we can see as a group kind of heuristic of what's happening with all of those individuals. Are we all kind of trending on a positive scale across many different metrics, or are we going in another direction that we need to course correct as a group? All of those things can bring about some real skin in the game to make that change.

Speaker 2:

And also, I'm particularly interested in this kind of behavioral change piece because often we find that sometimes it can sound so basic, but sometimes it's as simple but challenging. It could be simple of what the problem source can be, but sometimes it's as simple but challenging. It could be simple what the problem source can be, but the actual change can take real, upending of kind of our identity and what have you. So, for instance, I work I mentioned poker players and also a lot of entrepreneurs. So one thing and I deal with this myself as an entrepreneur is that sense of should still be working or there's always more to do or whatever, and so things as simple as like time management can be part of what can fall into play, be part of the systemic reason that we might now we're staying up too late because we're still doing the emails and doing the whatever and then. So now we're going to bed too late and then we're waking up too late and then that falls off and then you stop working out because you couldn't get up at time, and this snowball effect, and that could sound so silly and so basic, but when we start to pull back the layers and address some of these things, then we can really get to the heart of what's going on.

Speaker 2:

But that might be the case for one person.

Speaker 2:

For the next person it might be that they're living in a super moldy environment.

Speaker 2:

The next person that they're dealing with kids and sleep training which, by the way, I really focus on adults and sleep, so I do call that out. But there are certainly wonderful people for kids and sleep, and so there might be different things going on for other people. Or some people now have been on, sadly, sleeping pills for decades and now we got to deal and address that. So there's a lot of things that can take that kind of human touch and I'll also say I think can also be aided by things like AI, and I think we're going to see a lot in the future with that too, from a sleep coaching perspective, utilizing AI, but also having that kind of human approach as a what. The group dynamics and group dynamics are really fascinating to study and how much we can change. When we see that Roger is improving his sleep and Louise is doing great and or vice or whatever, then we can start to change their behavior, our behavior when we see ourselves in them can start to change their behavior, our behavior when we see ourselves in them.

Speaker 1:

That's true, and I think once people have changed something, maybe they're like oh gosh, I didn't even realize that I'm not doing that anymore, because now I've changed what I'm doing and it's just normal. And I think that's the beauty of it, where you're really getting people to be aware, when you increase your awareness and you can take more responsibility for the different things that you have to do. And I find that when I work with clients, it's about here's the information, Now you have it. You can't unlearn it. When we look at our labs or we're looking to see how your CGM is responding to your favorite cookie, even if it's gluten-free or grain-free, you're still going to have a response. But when you really see that, you're like oh gosh, I feel like all these different things that you're doing is even more, more worth it and work better. I don't know. That's my opinion.

Speaker 2:

Totally Couldn't agree more, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about to describe your program. But how would someone go about finding you, finding your team, so that they can get some help with their sleep?

Speaker 2:

Sure, sleepisaskillcom can act as a bucket for a lot of things. So you go to sleepisaskillcom One, you can take our sleep assessment and then get targeted information back right away on whatever you're dealing with with your sleep. To just get you moving, get you resources books, podcasts, things that can help you with whatever you're dealing with with your sleep. To just get you moving, get you resources books, podcasts, things that can help you with whatever you're dealing with. Then, if you are still if you're just sleep curious, you can sign up for our newsletter, and I shared that's been going on for over seven years. We'd love to have as many people as possible on that newsletter. I love doing that and still respond to every single email, at least as of right now, and it can take some time, but we do get back on all of those. I would love to have some dialogues going there.

Speaker 2:

Then, if you are struggling and looking for additional support, I mentioned we do have or ring and whoop band audits so we can audit your data, even if it's been eight years of data or whatever. We can go through all of that and help support you. And then, lastly, we have one-on-one options, too, where we go really in deep with people so there you can take a sleep test, get different lab reports done, all kinds of information to get in deeper on this and also go through our sleep training course. But also have that one-on-one bespoke experience so that we're getting up under everything, seeing the air quality in your space, like what the lighting is looking, what your kind of access to your light environment, darkness, environment, movement, just everything under the sun. No pun intended.

Speaker 1:

I love it.

Speaker 2:

So that's the one-on-ones. And then for years we were doing cohorts. Now we're going to be shifting this up and playing with more of these self-paced models, but then have regular calls too, so that you'll be able to just hop on those calls at any point throughout the program and then just ongoingly have those available for yourself. So that's new developments as well. So we're trying to hit just about every price point. So then there's something for everyone is the goal.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, incredibly accessible, from just simple tools to working one on one, so I love it. That's a very cool setup. We covered a ton and I so much appreciate your time and your knowledge. Is there anything that you would like to leave our listeners with?

Speaker 2:

I would just like to leave them. I know we started with this idea of trying on this concept that sleep is a skill, and I'd like to close with this concept of continuing to test this throughout the rest of your night, week, month, whatever Because then I hope that this can change the framework so that, instead of this case of oh, I'm dealing with insomnia, difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, I'm stuck like this that instead we can shift to this stance that this is all learnable, trainable and actually has a gift available within it. I think that's a big shift for so many people too, to realize, when you're struggling with sleep, that something that is available for you is this opportunity to transform this area and really, by virtue of that, it's almost like this Trojan horse effect, because in order to improve your sleep, we're often having to improve so many other aspects of your health and well-being that we went into today. So that's all available and so that can act as this catalyst for real change.

Speaker 1:

I love it Awesome. Thank you so much, molly, for taking the time to educate us on what you're doing. I find your content and your education fascinating.

Speaker 2:

Thank, you and thank you for making this platform available to be able to speak about. Certainly, in my case, this topic of sleep, I believe, is so paramount, so crucial, so I appreciate the work you're doing and excited for more.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. All right, thank you everybody, and we'll see you at the next episode.