The Importance of Sleep Consistency; The Best Sleep Position; Skipping Leg Day Could Kill You

In this Episode we discuss:

Dr. Michael Breus, The Sleep Doctor, and his emphasis on sleep CONSISTENCY for overall health. 

The best sleep position for brain detoxification 

The link between strong leg muscles and longevity. 

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:00):
Welcome to the podcast.

(00:00):
I'm John Tesh with Gib Gerard,and we're gonna talk about a few

(00:02):
things today Gib, and chiefamong them is a topic that we we
address this a lot ontransformation Tuesdays. We do
and if you are not a part oftransformation Tuesdays, let's
just do a quick commercial,because you can find it first of
[e-mail] that's our website,tesh.com you'll see
transformation Tuesdays on thepull down every week on Tuesday.
That's how that works. At 10o'clock Pacific Time, we get

(00:26):
together for a half hour, 45minutes, and we just riff about
all the all the curated piecesand all the information that we
find on the radio show and onthe podcast every single week.
And a lot of it is just how tomake you a better person. Our
wholething is getting you from the
place you are to the place youwant to be, and dealing with the
issues that keep us fromtransforming into that, into

(00:48):
that person that we all want tobe. And the nice thing that
we're doing with transformationTuesdays, and it's why it's
named, it's how on Tuesday, andit's about transforming you.
It's why we called it thatgenius. Um, the whole point is
that we figure out what, becauseyou tell us what will make you
get to that place, what it isthat's stopping you from getting
that place. So we interact withyou guys on Facebook. We have
conversations with the chat ontransformation Tuesdays. We draw

(01:11):
from our decades of experiencedoing intelligence for life, of
reading all of the latestresearch and reporting on it,
and we draw from that to helppeople break through the
blockades that they have intheir mind, in their life, in
their habits that are keepingthem from being as excellent as
they want to be. We've We'vejokingly called intelligence for
life, life coaching on theradio. This is a little bit.

(01:32):
This is less on the radio andmore on the life coaching
blockade. I like that. Yeah. Ijust think of it as getting
unstuck. Because when you're,you know, I'm of a certain age,
and when you start talking aboutblockade health issue, oh no. Oh
that, yes, yeah. Hey, let's,let's start off with a friend of

(01:52):
ours. His name is Dr Michael,Bruce, and he has, he has
trademarked to this phrase, thisdescriptor of him, because it's
true. He's known as the sleepdoctor, and we've talked many
times. You hear us talk moreabout it, to talk many times
about what are the best ways,first of all, how important a
good night's sleep is, whichwe'll we'll dig into with the
science of just a moment. Butalso, what is, what's, what's

(02:16):
the best way to be consistentabout your about your sleep. How
important is consistency? Here'sDr Bruce to talk about
that. Do you want to know thesecret to getting good sleep?
No, it's not your diet orcaffeine intake or even how much
you sleep. What's going to havethe biggest impact on sleep
quality is actually consistency.
So what does that mean? Meansgoing to bed and waking up at
about the same time every day,plus or minus about 10 minutes.

(02:38):
The reason for this is that yourbody is governed by these things
called circadian rhythms. Theyhelp control your body
temperature, your immunesystems, your hormones,
metabolism, cognitive functions,honestly, the list goes on and
on, and the more consistentthose rhythms are, the more
efficient they work in yourbody. So if you want to learn
more, click the link below. I'llclick the link below for you so

(02:59):
but, but for somebody like youwho has three kids under the age
of 13, how, how do you and Iguess we can sort of extrapolate
that into people who have crazyjobs and and who are even shift
workers, how do you maintainyour consistency? Right?
So I mean what he's talkingabout there, right? What's best

(03:20):
is a consistent sleep schedule.
What's best is that we go to bedat the same time every day, and
we wake up at the same timeevery day. And that is really
hard to do if your life is anymore complicated than that, of a
certain kind of banker, right?
If you're a shift worker at all,or if you have jobs and tasks
that require late nights andlike, talk about me having kids

(03:41):
and how that disrupts it. It canbe hard to do that every single
day. So one of the things that Ilean on, and especially as we
age, right? I try to wake up atthe same time every day. So I
wake up, you know, between 530and six every day, whether I can
sleep in or not, that doesn'tmean that I don't sleep in
sometimes, but I have sort ofgotten that habit whether you
have three kids in your bed,right? Okay, I got that habit

(04:02):
because, you know, we're justfinally out of the stage where
the kids are waking up, youknow, consistently in the middle
of the night, and where theywill actually sleep in if they
stay up late. So I just got usedto that, and it helps me get
tired at the right time. And ifI can anchor that wake up time,
it anchors my go to bed time,right? I get sleepy, all of my
rhythms align. And does thatmean that I never stay up past
midnight? No, of course, I stayup past midnight all the time.

(04:24):
Does it mean that I never that Inever adjust this at all? I
never sleep in No, but I'mtrying to wake up at the same
time every day. It helps me keepthat circadian rhythm in line.
And by the way, like when I wasin my 20s, I'm thinking about
college, right? You think aboutcollege, your sleep schedule is
terrible. Some nights you're upall night. Some days you're
asleep until 1pm I mean, like Iused to sleep in. I would come
home from college on theweekends, and I would sleep in

(04:46):
until like 1231 o'clock. So whenyou're in your 20s, you can do
that. And as you age, you can'trecover as quickly well. I
think you know and my my secretweapon, and I've been told this
by so many of my friends, Ifinally figured out how to do.
It my secret weapon. If I do,I'm the same way my alarm got
clock goes off three timesbetween 530 and six, that's when

(05:07):
I have to get up. But if I if wehave a dinner party or something
like that, or even a concertthat we go to or it's one of
those things where I know that Ihave trained myself to I can
take a 20 minute nap. I know howto do it, and my body is used to
it. The trick for that, though,is not to take it too soon to
when you're gonna go to bed atnight, right? Because
then you can't then you can'tsleep. Yeah, but yeah again, so

(05:30):
more sleep is better if you'regetting between seven to nine
hours, even if you break it upand get naps, that's okay, but,
but the ideal thing for yourbody, for the way that you deal
with your hormones, the way thatyou digest food, the way that
you produce belly fat, right? Soif you can get in the same habit
when he talks about circadianrhythms, it's not just you
waking up and being tired. It'swhen your cortisol peaks. It's

(05:53):
when your different hormones,it's when your insulin peaks. So
all of your abilities to digestfood and exercise and regrow
muscle and and deal with theonslaught of high glycemic foods
that we eat and processed foods.
All of that, even your abilityto manage to deal with your mood
and and your ability to choosewhat food to eat is affected by

(06:15):
that circadian rhythm. So if youcan, if you can normalize that
as much as possible. And a lotof the healthiest people do the
same things every single day.
They wake up at the same time.
They have the same habits. Theyeat the same meals, and because
it aligns so well,yeah. And you know what? One of
our favorites, neuroscientist,Dr Andrew Huberman, always talks
about how important, and he'sjust he talked about

(06:36):
recapitulation. He talks overand over again about how
important it is to get asunlight into your retinas, not
to look directly into the sun,but to the left or the right of
the sun, to get sunlight morninglight into your retinas, just to
make sure you're telling yourbrain, okay, time to cast off
the melatonin and and startincrease the cortisol and then
your body. I've noticed thiswith I try to, I'm better now I

(06:59):
try to eat at the same time,yep, every day. And that way, my
digestive system knows when it'stime to go to the bathroom, you
know? And it tends to happen thesame time every day. Same thing
with your sleep is it? When youtrain your body to know, know
that it's going to wake up at acertain time? There's a thing
called exp, what's it soundslike? XP, alludious, but it's

(07:23):
not. It's that. Remember thatthing where it's like you you
wake up before the alarm clockgoes off, Phantom alarm
syndrome. Now it's not that, butit said, Well, I'm gonna look it
up. Okay, when that next timeyou're talking? Yeah, but it is
that thing where, where yourbody will. You won't even need
an alarm clock. Your body willjust wake up. As opposed to
the more you can regulateyourself like that, the more you

(07:46):
can regulate when you're eating,when you're sleeping, all of
that again, all of your bodyprocesses begin to align and do
better that way. And you'regoing back to what Dr Huberman
said, you know, you want thatcortisol, that melatonin, to go
away and that cortisol to peakat the right time. And we see
this in the unhealth of peoplewho work the third shift. Now,
sometimes that can't be avoided.
We need third shift workers, andwe appreciate it, but if you are
switching days and nights, youhave to be really proactive in

(08:09):
how you are exposing your bodyto the frequencies of light
associated with sunlight, andhow dark it is when you are
sleeping, because all of thosethings influence when your
cortisol spike is so at somepoint during the day, your
cortisol, your stress hormone,is going to spike. If you get
out of bed and you get indirectsunlight, or direct sunlight,

(08:29):
you know, you step outside, ifyou have a balcony, if you have
a backyard, whatever, you stepoutside and you get those first
rays of sun as you're trying towake up, that cortisol spike
will be at the ideal time, whichis the first couple of hours
that you're awake, and then youare easing your way for the rest
of the day into into sleep. Ifyou wake up in the morning and
you're in a dark room, and youget you go down into the garage,

(08:51):
and then you're in a dark it'sdark there. And then you drive
straight to an office, and youdon't actually ever get out into
the sunlight. And then you're inthe office all day, or in the
factory or wherever, and thenyou come out into the into the
evening sun, you never get linedup with the sun. Sun's influence
on your cortisol and yourcircadian rhythms, and that will
mess with you. So going to sleepat the same time every night,

(09:11):
waking up at the same time everyday, and making sure that you
get that direct sunlight is agreat way to regulate all of
your hormone systems.
That's awesome. Awesome. Ican't, I still can't find the
word. And I will eventually. Youactually did a piece on the TV
show about it. Oh no, and itsounds like XP, allidocious, but
it's, there's another word forus, because precision waking,
yeah, where your body becomesprecise about the time it wakes

(09:32):
up. Let's move on to to whathappens to your brain when you
sleep. Okay, you know. Andthere's, there's a lot of this
new information coming out nowabout people like, Oh no, you
remember, I guess it must havestarted, I don't know, maybe a
decade or so ago. And I used to,I fell for this where it was
like, people would say, youknow, how you doing? I'd say,
I'm exhausted. Why? Wow. Well, Iworked a 17 hour day, right? It

(09:56):
used to be a badge of courage,yep. And now we understand that
if. If you don't sleep, then,then you're not cleaning out
your brain. Yep, yeah,all of the metabolic byproducts
that of your neurons firingthroughout the day have to be,
have to be taken away. And thatis one of you know, as the as
people study sleep, sointentionally, it's one of
several of the benefits ofsleep, and it's one of the most

(10:18):
important ones, which is yourbrain cleaning out the
byproducts from cellularmetabolism.
There is a very specific waythat you can clean your brain
while you sleep. It's it's howyou sleep. And listen to this,
theway you sleep could be clogging
or cleaning your brain. Here'sthe science. Your brain has a
waste removal system called theglymphatic system that's most

(10:40):
active during sleep sidesleeping enhances this bleeding
process by up to 25% compared toother positions. This system
removes toxic proteins that canlead to neurodegeneration.
Proper sleep position canimprove memory consolidation by
20% and reduce braininflammation. It helps clear
proteins linked to Alzheimer'sand may speed recovery from

(11:01):
concussion. Your brain literallydetoxifies better in certain
positions. Isn't that strange?
Start sleeping on your rightside with your head slightly
elevated. Use a cervical pillowto maintain proper spine
alignment and avoid stomachsleeping, which restricts blood
flow to the brain. Ifeel, I feel like, I mean, I
have tried before to sleep on mystomach, yeah? And it's like,

(11:23):
it's suffocating. There are alot of people who can do it,
though, but it's dangerous.
Sometimes.
If I'm tossing and turningstomach, sleep is actually
really good. I don't know ifit's because it deprives me of
oxygen. I'm actually passingout, yeah, but I can sleep with
my stomach, but I after, afterdoing some of the research that
we've done, I have startedactively sleeping, falling
asleep on my right side, and itmakes a huge difference in how

(11:45):
and how awake and rested I feelthe next day.
You know, one of the things, aswe talked earlier about the
transformation Tuesday groupthat we're with, and it's, it's,
it's a tremendous half hour, 45minutes. And again, you can sign
up at Tech comm. TransformationTuesdays is, you know, when we
finish, when Gib and I finishteaching, we actually take some

(12:05):
some questions. And a couple ofthe questions that came up a few
weeks ago were about, you know,how can you tell if you have a
sleep apnea, and how importantthat is? Yeah, one of the big
problems with with diagnosingSleep apnea is if you don't have
a partner in bed with you,right? And so then, now they do
have, you know, we have, we havethe Apple Watch, and we have the

(12:27):
aura ring, and there's actuallya device that you that you can
put next to you that will, thatwill record, you know, weird
Sleep Sounds, but sleep apnea isbasically, it's an obstruction,
right? And so in the middle ofthe night, and it happens to
people. It can happen even ifyou are a healthy person, but it
can happen mostly to people whoare overweight, who have a lot

(12:47):
of a lot of belly fat, or whohave high blood pressure. And
it's really a it's a paradox,because it's, it actually causes
high blood pressure, becausewhat's happening is you stop
breathing. And sometimes peoplestop breathing for, like, a
minute and a half, yeah, andthen, and they gasp, and start
to start breathing again, andyour heart has to work overtime
right order to compensate forthat lack of oxygen. So one

(13:07):
of the big symptoms, apparently,is if you're, if you're in bed
for eight hours, and you feellike you slept, and then you but
you wake up and you're exhaustedall day, that is a big symptom
of sleep after and it is theseCPAP machines, you know, they're
very small now there, andthere's other things you can do
there. There are other there's,there's other types of exercises

(13:28):
you can do that can, that canhelp you ameliorate this, but,
but if you, if you a lot ofpeople, I have two, two of my
friends who who passed away at ayoung age, who just, they had
symptoms, not of this, but ofother stuff, other stuff, heart
symptoms. And they just, theyjust didn't want to go to the
doctor, sure, but there areMichael, Bruce and and our
friend Christopher winter. Theyboth lead to sleep studies, or

(13:50):
many sleep studies in your town,if you feel like, or you feel
like your partner may be gaspingin the middle of the night, you
need to get checked out. Gottaget it will kill you.
It will, it will. And, like yousaid, it becomes this feedback
loop, right? So being a fewpounds overweight can exacerbate
symptoms of sleep apnea. Somaybe you have not had sleep
apnea, and you get into your30s, your 40s, your metabolism

(14:11):
starts to drop, and you'vegained a couple of pounds,
happens to literally everybody,and all of a sudden now your
sleep is messed up. And whenyour sleep is messed up, not
only are we not cleaning out allof the byproducts from from the
day, which will lead to earlydementia and lead to potentially
to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's,but we're also now messing with

(14:32):
the hormones that we weretalking about earlier in the
show, which means that we aregoing to be more likely to reach
for high glycemic foods, andwe've actually interviewed Dr
Bruce before. I don't have aclip for this show, but we've
interviewed Dr Bruce before, andhe's talked about how when you
are sleep deprived, and sleepapnea makes you sleep deprived,
you're going to reach for thehigh sugar foods, the cakes,
cookies, things like that, whereyour body because your body

(14:54):
wants the simple, the simpleenergy that comes from these
readily available energysources. In order to increase
the energy in your brain, it's apoor substitute for sleep, and
if you never make up for sleep,you will continue to crave
those, again, high glycemicfoods, foods that increase your
blood pressure or your bloodsugar very quickly, because your
brain thinks it needs theenergy. And as a result, you're

(15:16):
gonna you're gonna gain a littlebit more weight, which is gonna
make it harder to reduce thesleep apnea, and it becomes this
vicious cycle where it becomesreally hard to upset that apple
cart and you do need medicalintervention.
That's really, that's really,really good. We've that's it for
the sleep for now, if you havequestions, you can post them
here on the podcast, but we'realways going to be talking about

(15:38):
sleep off and on on thispodcast, and also all of your
health. It is because if youdon't get that right, then your
relationships fall apart. You'regoing to be lousy at work. You
know, you're going to gainweight around your middle you
know, all of that stuff. We cameacross an interesting interview
with with Simon Sinek, who talksabout something that, that we
preach all the time, and thatand that Gib works on every

(16:01):
single day in the in the gym.
I'm not as good about this, butI do know as a cancer survivor
how important it is to make surethat the large muscle groups in
your body are trained to makesure that they're strong. Also
at 72 years old, I've caught my15 inch sneaker foot on the side
of a stair before and taken acouple of nice falls.

(16:22):
Fortunately, I'm in pretty goodshape, and I didn't break too
many things. But if you don'thave some meat and some muscle
on your thighs and on your hips,it's true, your large muscle
groups, you're not going to liveas long. And so here's, and
that's a that's a prettystraightforward statement that's
also supported by Peter Attia,another one of our favorite

(16:43):
guys. Here's Simon Sinek, who isasked, What are your what are
the most important organs inyour body? Listen carefully.
What are the most importantorgans to keep strong for
longevity? Like we know thedata, right? So I'll tell you
what they are, right? Number oneheart, obviously, that makes

(17:03):
perfect sense, right? You gottahave a healthy heart if you want
to live a long time, right?
Second one lungs. Gotta havehealthy lungs to live a long
time, cardio and all the rest ofit, right? Don't smoke like we
know that makes perfect sense.
Do you know what the third mostimportant organ is? I didn't
know, I was gonna say the brain,but the thighs, thigh muscles

(17:26):
are the the so if you have ahealthy heart, healthy lungs and
healthy thighs, statistically,you're more likely to live
longer. I know I said the samething. Thighs. Do you want to
know why?
Yeah, we can. We can tell youwhy? Yeah, because a couple of
reasons. First of all, there arestudies on twins. And the twin
that lived the longest and thenhad the the healthiest life were

(17:47):
the ones with the large, largemuscle groups, and also those
muscles burned like, now, whatis it like? Glucose? Thank you.
Well, there's, what is the whatis glycogen that's, that's
what's stored in the muscles,right? Yeah, that
is, that is that is readilyavailable carbohydrates that
your muscles can draw upon onyour own. And why is that so
important? Okay, so thick thighssave lives, right? The thicker

(18:08):
you make that up. No, it's aninternet thing. Don't look it
up, but. But the point is thatthe thicker your thighs are, the
more likely you are to livelonger. And it's for it's for
two big reasons that we've hiton, and one is false, right?
You're going to be if you ifyour legs are strong, you're
going to be more stable youryour hip joint, which is, you
know, I watched this happen tomy grandmother. I watched her

(18:29):
break her hip and then declinein health all the way to her
death. And that is not uncommon.
Yes, yeah, so that's notuncommon. So if your leg muscles
are strong, you're less likelyto break your hip. That means
your femur is going to bestrong. You're less likely to
engage in that sort of lifeending or beginning of end of
life injury. So that's one weget that that makes sense. So

(18:50):
the stronger your legs, the morestable your base is, the less
like you are to fall, or whenyou do fall, the less likely you
are to be seriously injured. Theother one is what we've just
hinted at, which is big muscles.
Skeletal muscle in general, is agreat way to eat sugar in your
blood, right? And the bigger thebig muscle groups. And the thing

(19:11):
is that the thighs and theglutes, those are the biggest of
the big muscle groups. Thinkabout what your glutes are
compared to what your chest is,right? And chest is pretty big,
but it's nothing compared toyour glutes and thighs. So these
are big muscles, and they'reeasier to work and get bigger,
and when they are strong andthick, they will eat the sugar
in your bloodstream. So most ofus, we eat in the in the

(19:32):
standard Western diet, we'reeating a lot of high glycemic
processed foods. Try to cut someof that out. You know, that's
always going to be better, but,but even the rock has a cheat
day, where they where he eatshigh glycemic foods. And what
that does is it spikes yourblood sugar, right? It spikes
your blood sugar quickly. Andnormally what happens is your
pancreas then responds andreleases insulin to get your
blood sugar back down. Thatcreates that sugar crash. It's

(19:54):
not fun. It doesn't feel good.
But if you've got a lot ofskeletal muscle, and
particularly in your lower body,the skeletal muscle is. Actually
going to consume that sugar,because it's constantly needing
to eat, and that will actuallyreduce the amount of insulin
that you have to release. Itreduces your insulin
insensitivity, which is aprecursor to diabetes, and makes
you less likely to have themetabolic diseases that lead to
a shorter life. So metabolicdiseases being Alzheimer's,

(20:16):
Parkinson's, cancer and type twodiabetes, so that it's all super
helpful in regulating your bloodsugar and keeping you on that
and that healthier plane of thehighs and lows of a high
glycemic diet. Now you can alsohelp yourself by eating a lower
glycemic diet, foods that arehigher in not in refined carbs,
but complex carbohydrates thathave more fiber in them, foods

(20:39):
that are higher in protein willall and healthy fats will all
help you avoid those, those bigsurges in blood sugar. Yeah,
that's really good. And youknow, it was funny. What why
you're describing that I saw onthe news. It was the during the
inauguration one of the balls,Mike Tyson and Jake Paul were

(21:01):
together at the one of theinauguration balls, and He
squatted with Tyson. Tyson wason his shoulders, right, yeah.
And Jake Paul squatted, yeah. Sothere's a guy with some thigh
muscles,yeah. Well, and by the way, you
know I coach, you know this, Icoach Little League Baseball. My
daughters play soccer, my sonplays soccer. And I spend a lot
of time coaching kids, and oneof the things that I spend a lot

(21:23):
of time teaching kids how to dois engage what I call the
kinetic chain, which is you canalways throw it. Pitchers will
tell you this at every level ofMajor League at every level of
baseball, that the stronger legsare, the stronger your arm is,
right, your arm gets tiredquickly. Your legs can pitch for
70 pitches, yeah. So the key isto engage your legs in how you
push the ball. Your kineticchain is the difference between

(21:46):
great athletes and people wholook uncomfortable when they're
throwing the ball. Dates, howmuch the
pitchers it comes from the from,oh, yeah. Hitting is that's like
when you watch, when you watchrowing, yeah, right, when you
watch, watch that it's all inthe legs. It's all in the legs.
Yeah, they're pulling withtheir legs. Yes, it is. It is a
it is a great way to increaseyour athleticism. But more than
that, it is a great way toincrease your longevity. I know

(22:08):
a lot of you are trying to makethe high school team right now,
so you're just trying to make itto next to next year, and this
is a great way to do it. Andif you're thinking right now, oh
my gosh, I gotta do somethingabout my about my butts and my
that's a strength in my largemuscle groups. You can start
with this, and you can Googleit. It's just a wall sits. Just
do a wall sit. Be careful, ifyou haven't done one before,

(22:29):
make sure you have a chair orsomething to hold on to, to get
out of it once you get into it.
But it's very, very easy. Putyour back up against the wall,
get into a 90 degree angle. Makesure you have nice foot wear on
or not socks, or maybe even barefeet, and see how long you can
hold that wall sit for.
So wall sits are great for acouple of reasons. One is that

(22:50):
it does it strengthens the lowermuscles, the lower body muscles,
but it also is isometric, whichmeans you don't move while
you're doing it, which which ishelpful for maintaining the
stability of your joints. So ifyou're like, Oh, my knees hurt
all this. It's what's greatabout that as you get into a
comfortable position and youhold it so it's less stress on
your knees than things likesquats, and if you have the

(23:10):
mobility for it, body weight,squats are a great way to get
started on increasing the amountof muscle mass in your
and you can do that, by the way,when you're waiting in line for
something. I mean, don't worryabout people thinking you're
nuts. People already think I'mnuts. They're going to die
before you Yeah, because you'redoing your squat, I
do body weight squats every timeI'm in line somewhere, and it
makes people uncomfortable.
Yeah, that's your job. Allright. Thank you guys for being

(23:32):
with us for the podcast. Thankyou Gib Gerard, and again, if
you'd like to hang out with uslive time, just check out
transformation Tuesdays. If yougo to tesh.com you'll see it
there. Also you can sign up onThursday. We basically do
spirit, soul and body. Spirit,mind, soul, I Thursday, yeah,
it's, it's a, it's a mind bodysoul, mind body soul, mind body

(23:55):
soul, spirit, mind and body.
Anyway, it's three of those.
It's all about how I got healedfrom from cancer using the word
of God. That's on Thursdays.
It's all [e-mail] andwe'll see you on the next
podcast. You.