Man in the Arena with Craig Spear

A System for Better Sleep

• Craig Spear

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In this latest episode of Man in the Arena, I unveil the hidden potential that lies within optimizing sleep for men over 40. 

We all know that rest is crucial, but do we understand the full scope of its benefits? Join me as I share why seven solid hours of slumber is the unsung hero of health, mood stabilization, and hormonal balance. 

In this episode you're learn:

1. Why saying "I get enough sleep each night is a shitty mindset"
2. The deeper benefits of sleep
3. The four different stages of sleep and what they do
4. The three step system to optimze your circadian rhythm which leads to optimizing your REM and Deep Sleep.

We also dive into  the '3-2-1' rule that could revolutionize your pre-sleep ritual and discuss how sleep supplements like CBN and magnesium might fit into your regimen.

LET'S GO!

Did you find this episode helpful insightful or motivating? If so, let's connect! You can find me on....

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Hello and welcome back to man in the Arena. I'm your host, craig Spear. In case we haven't met, I'm a former Ironman and professional football player. I live in Canada and I'm a certified men's health coach, where I primarily work with guys over 40 to change the trajectory of their health so they can show up better, they can perform better and just have a really great life at the end of the day.

Speaker 1:

Now, last week, I introduced my system for goal setting, and today I want to offer to you my system for better sleep. When I say better sleep, I don't mean I just want you to sleep more. What I'm talking about is optimizing your sleep. I want you to squeeze every last drop out of it. Why, why do I want that for you?

Speaker 1:

Well, sleep is, without a doubt, one of the best investments you can make in your health. I call it a keystone habit, and that means that it creates the foundation of all the other habits related to your health. So exercise, stress management, healthy eating, hydration, so on and so on. Sleep is that integral to all of those other habits happening and really working out well for you. But sleep is more than that as well. Sleep is about physical and cognitive recovery and I know that that's not earth shattering information but it's also about mood stabilization and hormonal regulation. As we know, insufficient sleep leads to poor focus. It leads to reduced cognition, delayed reactions, mood swings and, of course, when you don't sleep well, you are at higher risk for mental and physical illness. And that if your goal is to make more money, to feel better, to look better, to lose weight, to grow your business, to have better relationships, then you have to make sleep a priority. Trust me, okay, if you focus on sleep and you really prioritize sleep, all of these areas in your life will improve. So, with that being said, if you find yourself saying, well, craig, I already get enough sleep, I can tell you that you're wrong and I'm sorry, but this is just a shitty mindset to have. I know I'm a good sleeper too, but I'm not settling there. I know that if I double down on improving and optimizing my sleep. My life, my career, my relationships, my health everything is just going to improve.

Speaker 1:

Now I want you to consider that it's not about the amount of sleep that you get. It's about quality and optimizing all the different cycles and stages that you go through when you sleep. Okay, so how much sleep are we talking about? Well, the minimum goal is seven hours of night. Now, that's seven hours of sleep, not seven hours of time in bed. So if you go to bed at 11 and you're getting up at six, that means you've probably only gotten about six hours of sleep, and I'll explain why that is in a minute. But what this often does is this leaves us sleep deprived and in a sleep debt, and what that means is there's just a gap between the amount of sleep we actually need and the amount of sleep we actually get. So we can't perform it our best if we're in this chronic state of sleep deprivation and sleep debt.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to also consider that there's four stages of sleep. There's the awake phase, which a lot of us. We're not actually awake, we're not conscious, but our body is up and our mind is still working, and so we actually spend about an hour to an hour and a half in this awake stage every night, okay, and of course we go through these cycles, so we don't just kind of go from the awake to the next stage, to the next stage, to the next stage. We go through these cycles anywhere between three or five times per night, depending on how much sleep we're getting and how much time we're spending in bed. So we have that awake stage, then we have the light sleep stage, which is where we spend most of the night.

Speaker 1:

Then we have the REM stage, which you've probably heard of before, which is your rapid eye movement, and this is where the REM stage is, where we get cognitive repair. So that's why it's really important you get cognitive repair in the REM stage. When your first REM stage lasts about 10 minutes, and if you get two, three, four cycles of the REM stage as you go through the night, then that actually increases and by the end of the night you're going to get upwards of 60 minutes in the REM stage. The last one, the last sleep stage, is your deep sleep, and this is the physical repair. This is why we need that deep sleep, we want that physical repair. So this is where our muscle tissue gets repaired. This is where the body repairs itself. The body replaces old cells with new cells, so it is imperative as well.

Speaker 1:

And when I'm talking about optimizing your sleep, what I'm really talking about is making sure you get better REM sleep and better deep sleep. That's what we want. In order to do that, we have to optimize your circadian rhythm. We have to make sure that your body is really aligned and your sleep cycles are really aligned, and so that's what this system is all about. This system that I'm about to explain to you is really simple and it just focuses on a few behaviors at a time, but ultimately, when you do that, then you get to a really good place and you're maximizing the amount of REM and deep sleep that you get.

Speaker 1:

So here's the benefits of this system. As I mentioned, it aligns your cycles and it greatly enhances your circadian rhythm. The next thing is it optimizes your REM and deep sleep, and what's great about that is this is obviously offering better physical and cognitive repair. This system also supports emotional regulation and mood improvement. It also supports better cognitive function and creativity. And the last one is this sleep system greatly improves the health of your immune system, and what's powerful about that is we know that there's a strong correlation between the number of illnesses you have throughout your lifespan and your longevity. So if you have a lot of illnesses, a lot of colds and flus and getting sick, then that has an impact on the amount of time that you're going to be on earth. So we want a really strong immune system.

Speaker 1:

So if you want to sleep better and I hope you do I want you to consider the three areas of focus that make this system up. So there's three areas of focus there's pre-bedtime, there's bedtime and then there's wake-up time. Okay, pre-bedtime is the time that we spend all day leading up to us going to bed. Bedtime is pretty obvious that's when we're in bed. And then wake-up time. I just define that as the first 30 to 60 minutes upon waking up. So that initial timeframe there.

Speaker 1:

So let's jump into the area of focus number one. So pre-bedtime, believe it or not, the quality of our sleep starts well before our head hits the pillow, and it's based on four things, in my opinion. And then there's four other things that you can do to maximize even more. Okay, so the amount of exercise you get and movement you get through the day is going to impact the quality of your sleep. That one's pretty obvious. How much caffeine we drink, how much alcohol we drink, and then the amount of stress you've had during the day these things are all going to impact the quality of your sleep and vice versa. There's this kind of positive virtuous cycle when you get better sleep, you move more, you move better, you don't need as much caffeine, you drink less alcohol because your mood is better stabilized, right. And then the same thing with stress as well. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So here's some general rules. I want you to aim to get at least 30 minutes of moderate activity a day, or 10 minutes of high intensity movement at some point in the day. That's going to help you sleep better. I want you to limit your caffeine, okay, to at least four cups at most. I should say four cups of coffee. So that's 250 milliliter cups of coffee, not like a big cup of coffee. So we want to keep our caffeine intake down to about 400 milligrams throughout the day. Right, we also want to drink our last coffee at about 12, or I want to say copy him. You can also tea and sodas, anything with caffeine in it. You want that to end at around 12 o'clock every day.

Speaker 1:

Now, alcohol the new guidelines that have come out say no more than two drinks a week, and I know that's pretty strict, but we just know how awful alcohol is for our health. So really try your best to reduce the amount of alcohol that you drink. And I use a tracker called whoop. And what's amazing about whoop is they take all this data from all the users millions of users and they sort of see the correlations between different behaviors that the users have and how that impacts sleep and recovery and all these sort of things. And by far, alcohol has the biggest impact on the quality of sleep okay, the quality of your sleep. So if you really want to optimize your sleep, then you know, really reduce your caffeine and alcohol intake each day.

Speaker 1:

The last one stress. So we know that stress leads to increased levels of adrenaline, norepinephrine, cortisol. These are hormones that are stress hormones that get released in our blood and they chronically and acutely affect our sleep. So I want you to start to take measures to reduce your stress in healthy ways journaling, meditation, breathing, exercise, okay, bringing to a partner or a colleague about what's going on these are all ways that you can greatly reduce your stress, okay, including finding hobbies and things that you're passionate about. So these pre-bedtime behaviors, they mainly focus on lifestyle. They're mainly lifestyle focused.

Speaker 1:

The next set of behaviors I want you to focus on are more related to closer to bedtime. So, for example, when the sun goes down and that's pretty early these days in North America, the Northern Hemisphere, especially where I live in Canada when the sun goes down, I want you to start to reduce the lighting in your home, okay, so just turn the lights down, turn on some lamps, turn off the overhead lights. That's going to really help you, your circadian rhythm align even better. The next one is eating, okay, and so I want you to stop eating three hours before bed. And then, in terms of hydration and fluid intake, I want you to stop drinking two hours before you go to bed. And then the last one is screen time, and I want you to stop using your screens, your computers, your phones, your TV, all those sort of things an hour before you go to bed. So that's the three to one rule Three hours, stop drinking. Two hours, stop drinking, sorry, three hours. Stop eating. Two hours, stop drinking. One hour, stop screen time.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the last part of this area of focus the pre-bedtime sort of timeframe. We could focus on supplements, and there's a ton of sleep aids. You know there's a ton of drugs out there which I don't advocate for, but there are a ton of sleep aids that you can start to use, including melatonin magnesium. I've been using CBN and CBD, which are the non-THC cannabinoids, and I got to tell you they have had a fantastic impact on the quality of sleep that I get and how long I spend in both the REM and the deep sleep stages of my sleep cycle. So I really like using those. But again, you know, consult the doctor, consult a physician or a naturopath, someone who knows your health history and then, you know, see how they impact your own sleep. I'm definitely not saying you have to do that, okay.

Speaker 1:

Area of focus number two this one's obvious. This is your bedtime, right, this is when you go to bed. Now, this one's largely focused on your sleep environment, but there's one essential rule that I want you to focus on and that is improving your sleep consistency. Improving your sleep consistency means going to bed at the same time each night, including weekends. Why? Because we go back to that circadian rhythm In order to optimize our REM and deep sleep. You got to train your brain and body to follow kind of a tight schedule, so it starts to know and understand when you're going to bed and when it's time to kick in to each of these cycles. Right? There's nothing more impactful than sleep consistency. So going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time is really, really important. In fact, this is my main health goal this year. I want to achieve a 90% or higher sleep consistency. Now I know I'm a really good sleeper. I usually get 100% of my sleep need each night, but I have room to improve in my sleep consistency. So my goal is to go to bed and wake up at the same time virtually every day.

Speaker 1:

With respect to your sleep environment, this is how you can really improve and optimize your sleep. Number one use a noise machine or use earplugs, so we want to moderate the sound in our sleeping environment. The ideal temperature for sleep is 68 degrees Fahrenheit, so if it's really hot in your room, try to reduce, close some of the vents in your room or turn on a fan or something along those lines to help you stay cool. Obviously, mattress, pillow, bedding those things matter. We want to reduce the light, so use blackout curtains. I mean, this time of year doesn't really matter, because the sun goes down pretty early and it doesn't come up until later, but in the summertime we want to use blackout curtains to really make a dark sleep environment.

Speaker 1:

If you are a mouth breather, okay, consider using this medical tape across your lips so that you really breathe through your nose, in and out through your nose. That's where we maximize the amount of oxygen we're getting into our lungs and into our body. When we breathe through our mouths, we're just not getting enough air into our lungs. And along those same lines, if you have sleep apnea or if someone's told you that you snore, maybe you want to get that checked out, because sleep apnea is obviously going to have a really big impact on your sleep, and this is something I plan to do future episodes on, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. Now.

Speaker 1:

The last area of focus, area of focus number three, is called wake time, and it comes down to two basic behaviors. The first one is focusing on your consistent wake time, just like your consistent bedtime. This is really important to maximize and align your circadian rhythm. Okay, so focus on consistent wake time. For me. I find this one a little bit easier than bedtime, because I try to get up early, get my workout in, get ahead of my day, and so I just have that purpose to get up and get going. So set alarm, wake up consistently, train your body and your brain to know that this is a part of your natural rhythm. So that's the focus number one. Focus number two is to expose your eyes to preferably natural light within 60 minutes of waking up. And if you're from an area of the world like Canada, where I'm from, you know the sun doesn't come up to around 730 this time of year, so if I'm up at five, that's not happening, I'm not getting natural light. So what I try to do is I try to get downstairs, turn on as many lights as I can and just brighten up my home. That will stimulate the optic nerve and what that does is just again, really helps align the circadian rhythm.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and the last part I want to offer to you as part of this system is tracking your sleep, and I say this with an asterisk because there's a lot of benefit to tracking your sleep right, whether it's using a aura ring or a whoop or an Apple watch or a Garmin. All of the data that these devices offer us is simply amazing. Right, you can track how long you sleep, your time in bed, your sleep debt, your HRV, your sleep consistency, how long you spend in each stage. So if you're really integrating this system, tracking your sleep is going to be really helpful to see improvement, to see progress. But there's also a downside. There's actually something called ortho-insomnia, and this is where people dive too deep into the data, they get too competitive with the data and it actually starts to negatively impact their sleep. So if you're someone like that, who gets too much into the weeds of the data and it really impacts the decisions you're making, impacts your mood and your anxiety or something along those lines, I want you to consider taking a break from tracking your sleep. Remember that the data we get from these devices is just neutral data and the purpose of that is to inform better decisions, but if it's negatively impacting us, then it's not worthwhile.

Speaker 1:

So here's the next step. Remember there's three areas of focus in this system there's pre-bedtime, there's bedtime and there's wake time. Each area has multiple behaviors that you can focus on, but I want you to choose just one behavior from each area of focus and then start to track that, start to see and look for improvement and start to see if you can optimize and maximize your circadian rhythm, which will then lead to optimized REM and deep sleep stages. Okay, it's all about baby steps, guys. So that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next week, keep showing up, keep doing the work so you can look better, feel better and do better. Now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to the spear methodcom and discover how I can help you get started on your path. Your health and weight loss.