167- Get the Best Sleep of Your Life with Devin Burke

[00:00:15] Bryan Carroll: You wake up groggy in the morning and do you recognize that your sleep quality isn't that great? Unfortunately, for the majority of the population, people are not getting enough sleep and they're not.

[00:00:27] Deep sleep. And this is having a lot of different issues on our overall health. And unfortunately as well, a lot of people will sacrifice their sleep in order to watch YouTube videos or do whatever it is because they feel like sleep isn't that important, or you can sleep when you're dead, but by having these attitudes towards sleep, are we setting ourselves up to have even more health issues later on in life?

[00:00:56] What's up everyone. I'm Bryan Carroll and I'm here to help people move more, eat well and be adventurous. And today I have Devin Burke on the show to teach us all about sleep quality and how to get the best sleep of our lives. Now, Devin, he is going to share with us a lot of different ways to enhance our sleep new and upcoming technology that helps us to.

[00:01:18] Get deeper into sleep and maintain a deeper sleep and have better sleep quality through the entire night and also different ways to. Enter into sleep without you know, tossing and turning at night and staying up super late. So Demond bark is an international and TEDx speaker. He's also the best-selling author of the sleep advantage and the founder of sleep science academy and is one of the top health and sleep coaches in the world.

[00:01:45] His books, keynotes programs and videos have inspired thousands of people to improve their sleep energy and life. And so this was a fantastic conversation and. I've said it in episodes before, and I keep saying it, we really need to start focusing more on our sleep quality. And once you do, you're going to notice significant changes in your overall life.

[00:02:07] You're at clarity of mind, your ability to. You know, deal with people and deal with work and different stresses in our lives. So sleep is one of the main foundations that we need to optimize for our own health routines, which, because it's so important, there will be different resources in the show [email protected] slash 1 6, 7, that you can go check out for different ways to enhance your sleep and different products that might help you to breathe better and whatnot at night as well.

[00:02:37] Now, if you are watching this on YouTube, there are some video quality issues, and that is all due to the AWS outage. That was a couple of weeks ago. And unfortunately that is one of the downfalls of utilizing different platforms to record stuff like the podcast that when they go down, we ended up having issues, but overall the audio quality is still there and all the information is still very important.

[00:03:04] So just recognize that. The video quality isn't top notch. But other than that, let's dive into my conversation with Devin Burke. Thank you, Devin, for coming onto the show. 

[00:03:15] Devin Burke: Thanks for having Bryan. I did the talk, sleep with you. 

[00:03:19] Bryan Carroll: Yeah. I'm excited to talk about it too. And I always want to know how do you even get into the realm of sleep studies?

[00:03:26] So can you tell us a little bit about your background and what got you so passionate about sleep? 

[00:03:31] Devin Burke: Yeah, I'll give you the quick version. So I was Ignorant to how important sleep actually is to our health or performance in our life. I had studied. I actually was on, I was studying to become a doctor physical therapy and long story short realized.

[00:03:46] Wasn't that passionate about, you know, PT, couldn't see myself doing that. Long-term searching for, you know, what am I going to do? How can I help people got into health code? Studied nutrition and then really got into psychology. I was working with a lot of high-performing entrepreneurs, someone I was working with had a sleep issue and asked me, Hey, do you know anything about sleep?

[00:04:08] You know, a lot about the body and nutrition and psychology and mindset, but you know, he's like I'm having this issue with sleep. And I was like, honestly, I don't. I thought it was a waste of time. So long story short, I started to look into, well, let me, let me look into it. Look into the science, started looking at what was available.

[00:04:26] I was like, oh my gosh, how could I have missed this? I mean, just my eyes were open to not only how important sleep was, but how little there was that was available for people that struggle with. So then that's that, that sent me down a rabbit hole of studying science asleep, and then also sort of looking at well, how can I take everything I learned over the last decade in health and wellness.

[00:04:50] I just call it mind, body technologies and, and really tailor specifically towards helping people have breakthroughs with. Pretty 

[00:04:58] Bryan Carroll: amazing. How a lot of people sit there and they, they don't recognize how important sleep is. Like you have a lot of people that live their lives going. I can sleep when I'm dead.

[00:05:08] And looking at like a lot of the youth now, a lot of kids are staying up till two, 3:00 AM playing on their phones and whatnot, and they're totally sacrificing their sleep. And then they're up at four, I don't know, six, seven o'clock. So sleep seems to be one of those things that we need to talk about more, but it's one of the things that we sacrifice first.

[00:05:30] So is that what you've seen in your experience as well? 

[00:05:34] Devin Burke: A hundred percent. And there's a lot of reasons for that in a socially we're conditioned to see it as a weakness. We're conditioned to believe that it's a waste of time. You know, you snooze you lose I'll sleep when I'm dead. You know, and, and now there's a lot of distractions that keep people from prioritizing and protecting sleep.

[00:05:54] Like you mentioned a couple, you know, gaming or for, for young kids. Netflix, I think the CEO of Netflix actually said his is his competition sleep, you know? So it's, we it's, it's a real, it's a real challenge with technology as well as social, a lot of social programming as well as just the structure of society with, you know, for instance, like you mentioned kids, you know, getting up for school really early, having to catch the bus.

[00:06:20] You know, and, and it's not really, there's not, they're not factoring in how important sleep is and that's changing now because people are realizing that it is important and how much it actually can help improve our longevity and performance and emotional health, but it's a slow shift. But now there are, it's kind of coming from like the.

[00:06:43] Athletes in the world that are really protecting, you know, prioritizing their health. And these are the top athletes. So, you know, society looks to the superstars and says, oh, I want to be like that. Right. So, okay, they're doing, it's all start to do it like Tom Brady or, you know, LeBron, James, people like that.

[00:07:00] As well as entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos. So now there are people that are kind of these heads of society that are starting. And talk about sleep and that's getting people interested in it, which is, yeah, it's 

[00:07:14] Bryan Carroll: kind of scary. If a Netflix is trying to compete against sleep in for a company that large, to be able to try and figure out how to keep you more focused on their product and their app.

[00:07:28] You focusing on your own health and actually getting asleep so that in the long run, I feel like that's a very bad idea just for society. And it's scary that we have businesses even thinking along those lines. 

[00:07:41] Devin Burke: I agree with you. I totally agree with you. It's not. Yeah, there's a reason why we sleep. And so if your business is to keep people from sleeping that your priorities need to be, be addressed, I hopefully he maybe listens to this and changes his mind.

[00:07:58] Bryan Carroll: Yeah. So when it comes to sleep, can you didn't tell us what, like one bad night of sleep, what's that gonna do for you? Are you able to recover pretty quickly from one bad night or is there actually a health implications that can happen from just one bad night of this? 

[00:08:12] Devin Burke: Yeah, well, there are actually, so in defining a bad night of sleep for one person that might be no sleep at all, or that could be, you know, less than your ideal, which is between seven to eight hours for, for adults.

[00:08:27] So, you know, let's just say you pulled an all nighter, you know, it's definitely gonna affect your hormones. It's gonna affect your insulin. You're going to create sugar and fat, like crazy. One night of sleep and people that are listening to this, and I'm sure we all had a night of sleep that we missed.

[00:08:43] Just think about how you felt the next day. You know, you're foggy. You're, you're just, you're exhausted. So it really is when we're talking about the trifecta of health, nutrition, exercise and sleep sleep is the foundation because the impact of literally just missing one night of sleep. Is, is that drastic versus missing a day of exercise or even not eating, you know, if you're fasting for 24 48 hours and that's beneficial to your health, but you miss a night asleep.

[00:09:13] Yeah. There's, there's drastic effects and not just physically, but mentally as well. You know, you see the, your pain perception goes up by 20%. You know, you're not able to emotionally regulate you misread people's emotions. So yeah, one night asleep. Missing one night of sleep does have pretty significant impacts on our health and our, in our all aspects of our health, mental, and physical.

[00:09:38] So if you 

[00:09:38] Bryan Carroll: miss one night of good sleep, how long would it take to recover from that? Is that like the next night you can put 10 hours and recover two hours or. 

[00:09:49] Devin Burke: Yeah, that's a great question. So there's a concept called sleep debt. And depending on who you're asking, there's different opinions on this. So some people are in the line of thinking that you can't recover.

[00:10:00] Like it's not a debt that can be repaid. And then there's other sleep scientists that are sort of in the group of, you know, that that's no longer, really true that you can, your body can sort of catch up on. I think that I'm somewhere in the middle. I think that it depends on there's a lot of factors. It depends on but ultimately if you have an a poor night of sleep yes, you want to make sure that you're prioritizing it either by taking a nap or doing something to offset it.

[00:10:29] But, you know, again, it's, there's two, two schools of thought on this. I kind of can see both sides of okay. You know, physiologically, you really can't go back in time and change things. So yes, you really can't repay that, that last time, but there are things, as far as, you know, mitigating stress on the body that you can do the next day, that helps accelerate sort of the damage, if you will done from, from a fortnight's.

[00:10:54] Bryan Carroll: So we're talking about like 1.9 asleep and the next day, really being able to notice a difference between how you would be if you got good sleep and versus how you are without good sleep. What about for the people that consistently have poor sleep? They're waking up in the middle of the night or they're light sleepers.

[00:11:12] They have a hard time staying asleep and so they no longer. No, what it feels like to have that optimal energy and that optimal clarity in their brain, et cetera what's going on there and what can we do for those people? 

[00:11:27] Devin Burke: Yeah. And it's, there's a lot of those people, you know, about it. A third of the population kind of fit that, what you just said, believe it or not.

[00:11:35] So there's, there's a lot that can be done. The first thing is realizing it, you know, people have to understand. That becomes people's baseline and actually think it's normal. So they think, oh, I have low energy or I crave sugar and fat, like crazy, or, you know, I'm a little brain foggy and I can't think, or remember names that kind of becomes normal for some people.

[00:11:55] It's not, maybe it's the norm for a third of the population, but it's not normal. And there's a lot of things you can do. So I always say Bryan, that a great night of sleep starts as soon as you wait. So as soon as for, for everyone. So all the things that you do throughout your day dictate whether or not you're going to be able to get a restful night of sleep.

[00:12:13] And most people do much of the opposite of what they should be doing to optimize it sleep. So they start their day with coffee. They start their day in a stress state in a stress state already in our cortisol is highest in the morning. So most times people are just dumping like gasoline on that fire.

[00:12:32] And then they go throughout their day back, back to back with meetings or with kids, they don't take breaks. They don't hydrate move the body enough. So there's all the sort of the lifestyle things I think that people need to be aware of. And then most importantly, then we take those people, tend to take their days into their nights.

[00:12:50] And that's, that's really not a good thing because. You know, you're taking all of that stress, all of the, you know, the challenge that came along with what a day presents at us, and then you're bringing that into your, your bed and bedroom. And then that's usually what's creating this disruption and either the ability to fall asleep or the ability to stay asleep.

[00:13:10] Most people are eating too late at night. So there's a lot of behavioral change. I think that can give for, for this specific demographic that if they're willing to. They can make, that will make a massive difference. And it's also psychologically though. They need to understand, I think people have to prioritize and protect it and have a willingness to not just make behavior change, but also make these psychological changes that will allow their body to do what it's designed to do, which is sleep just like our heartbeats, our lungs breathe.

[00:13:41] Sleep is a natural biological process that happens when we allow it. 

[00:13:46] Bryan Carroll: Yeah, you made a lot of really good points there. The first one you were talking about messing with like your cortisol rhythms and all that type of stuff. Now, your blood sugar regulation throughout the day. So if you're not starting the day with a meal, that's adequate for your own body and you start going on a blood sugar rollercoaster ride for the rest of the day, then that can really screw up your You're a circadian rhythm in your sleep habits, but also the fact that you talked about a lot of people are taking on stress throughout the entire day, and then they're taking that to bed.

[00:14:14] It makes me think about a lot of people. One of their ways to de stress is you know, having a couple drinks of alcohol in the evenings, which that has implications on your ability to sleep adequately as well. 

[00:14:28] Devin Burke: Absolutely. So it's specifically, it might help you fall asleep faster. Cause you know, I've said it, but it also disturbed the quality of sleep specifically REM sleep, which is really important for emotional or when we're working out our emotional trauma of the day short term memory gets shuttled to long-term storage.

[00:14:46] So alcohol is a stressor on the body essentially. And we're, you know, it, the hydrates you, it's also a diarrhetic. So you lose already a leader of water a night just through sweat and breath. So you, you put a couple of drinks in your system. Now you're already going into the night in a dehydrated state.

[00:15:06] So you're usually going to have to wake up and urinate, and then your, your cortisol levels are also going to be higher because again, it's sort of initially offers that then there's a spike later on there's consequence to. And I've actually, we we've helped a lot of people that have become alcoholics.

[00:15:23] Believe it or not. As a result of using alcohol as a sleep aid, it's very common people start off with maybe just using it a little bit, like a glass of wine. One glass becomes two glasses and it becomes the whole bottle. And before you know it, now they're mixing in Andean and they're in a bad situation.

[00:15:41] So you know, alcohol again, alcohol, I have red wines. No once in a while at a nice tequila drink, you know it's, it's not like you don't have to never drink, but using it to help you sleep. Isn't isn't really a good idea. So 

[00:15:58] Bryan Carroll: you had mentioned the fluid loss through a sweat and breathing while sleeping.

[00:16:02] And it made me think about. Mouth breathers versus nose breathers as are sleeping. And I'm curious, is there a difference in a sleep quality based off of the way that you normally breathe? And for people like myself, I have, or I broke my nose at one point and it's very difficult to breathe through my nose.

[00:16:22] So my next go-to obviously is to breathe through my mouth. So people like me that might have a situation like that. How do you improve your sleep quality? When you're a mouth breather. 

[00:16:34] Devin Burke: Yeah. I mean, there's something called mouth taping and it sounds a bit extreme. There's there's a book called breathe by James nester.

[00:16:41] That's real for people that are really specifically interested in this topic about breathing and specifically breathing when you're sleeping. But ideally you are breathing through your nose and there's a couple of reasons why you want to breathe. Your nose is one it's filtrating. You know that your nose hairs act act as like a filter.

[00:16:57] You're also going to increase nitric oxide production, and there's a greater chance that you will not snore. You're breathing through your nose. So Mt. Training yourself to breathe through your nose is a great idea, and it will increase the quality of sleep. If you're a nose breathe versus mouth breathing, quality of sleep, meaning Delta sleep in.

[00:17:16] So Mel taping is great. You could also use there's these little expanders that you can put in your nostrils. There's a company called that you it's like this little plastic sort of piece that you put in your nostrils that act like opens up the nasal passages, or you could even use the classic breathe, right?

[00:17:31] Strips that go over underneath the nose that could open the nasal passages, if it's really bad. And you you're somebody like yourself that has, you know, a broken nose and you really want. Learn how to breathe through your nose. There's actually chiropractors that do this really unique procedure. I'm drawing a blank on the name specifically, but they put these balloons up your nose, blow up these balloons extremely painful, but it'll just reset, open up the, you know, all of the sinus cavities.

[00:18:00] So that's, I heard that's like one of the most painful things you could ever do. But if you're, if you're really concerned about being a mouth breather there, those are some options you have from easy to more extreme and challenges. 

[00:18:13] Bryan Carroll: Yeah. I've never heard of that one, but I think I'll wait to try that one until I try all the other options first.

[00:18:20] Yeah, 

[00:18:21] Devin Burke: I went to, I, it doesn't sound fun. It doesn't sound fun, but there, but you know, it's good for people to know that they're. Other options out there besides actually surgery. Cause that's there. That is another option. You have a deviated septum. If you have broken nose, you know, going in and getting some plastic surgery, which, which is an option.

[00:18:37] People, people do that. But I think there's some steps you can take before that point, as well as making sure that you're, you know, you don't have any allergies. Cause a lot of people have a lot of food allergies or not realizing that they have nasal congestion. You guess on top of maybe. Hey already sort of compromise structural issue.

[00:18:57] So making sure that you're, you know, eating foods that don't create mucus and don't have any food allergies is also a good thing to kind of find out if you have and she's 

[00:19:06] Bryan Carroll: breathing. So one thing I've always wondered when it comes to mouth taping is someone like yourself or myself. We both have facial hair.

[00:19:14] Can you do the mouth tape with, with facial hair or are you gonna rip some of that hair off? 

[00:19:21] Devin Burke: Yeah, that's a great, I love that question. Well, I do it and have done it for multiple nights in a row, and I still enable to have my facial hair. So, so far so good. They, they, they make these a company makes a specific melty called Sominex you don't Amazon.

[00:19:42] They kind of just, it doesn't, it's a little bit less intense. It has a little sort of piece in the middle that you can breed out. So you don't feel like you're suffocating if you have the medical tape on, but yeah, so, so far so good. I, I, you know, I still have my mustache and my goatee, so, so far it's but yeah, it's, it's not, you don't want to be putting too much of that tape on your mouth because it could be painful trying to pull it off.

[00:20:08] Bryan Carroll: Yeah. If it hurts, then I might as well just keep mouth breathing. Now when it comes to like the, the environment that you're in I know a lot of people might use like white noise machines as there's quite a few people that live in big cities and whatnot. So they have sirens going off. They have just a normal city noises all around them.

[00:20:28] What is like the ideal environment to be in, to get the most adequate sleep. 

[00:20:36] Devin Burke: Yeah. So. This is an important topic. Our environment absolutely makes a big difference in terms of quality sleep. And specifically when we're talking about sound optimization, so quiet is, is best, but some people don't have the opportunity to do that.

[00:20:53] Some people do, even if you have headphones in or you're using earplugs, or you're doing something you might live in a city, and even with all that stuff, you still hear a siren. So in that case then implementing some white noise or pink noise or just like natural sounds of even like water, like a fountain or something in your bedroom.

[00:21:15] That can be anything that's found in nature. As far as it's is usually a good place to like trickling water, the sound of the ocean can all be helpful for sleep, you know, but really if the quiet, quiet, you want your room, your bedroom cold. Dark and quiet, you know, cold, dark and quiet. You want to clean, you want to have fresh air.

[00:21:39] You want to fresh sheets. You want to make it a sanctuary. The bedroom should be the space that you invest. The most amount of money. The bed is the most important piece of furniture that you purchase. A lot of times, I blows my mind away. I work with a lot of very extremely successful, wealthy people that have sleep issues.

[00:21:59] And I always blows my mind. They'll spend. Way too much money on it. The furniture in the living room and the kitchen. And then we talk about, you know, they're talking about, well, what kind of bed you have? Like, are you kidding me, bought that bed well high, like that's the most you're you're in, you're in your bed, a third of your life.

[00:22:21] That is an important piece of furniture. It should be, you know, should be very comfortable and it should support your spine. And you should invest in, you know, and get the best bed you possibly can, can afford for you. So yeah, so, so we're talking about the physical services. We're talking about the air quality.

[00:22:40] We're talking about the light quality. We're also talking about the sound quality, all of those factors, you know, all, all of the senses, essentially. You want to try to the best you can mitigate stresses so that you can, your body can really get into a decent. Yeah. I never really 

[00:22:58] Bryan Carroll: thought about that before until you started talking, but the bedroom is probably the one room in the house that you spend the most time compared to any other room in your living space.

[00:23:11] And yeah, if you don't actually set it up to be. Working for you and benefiting you, then that's a huge area of improvement that you can do to improve your overall health quality. One of the things you mentioned is light and are you talking about light from natural sources like windows and all that stuff you want to block those out or would like a little tiny light on something charging in your room also impact your sleep?

[00:23:41] Devin Burke: Yeah, ideally, you don't want any light, you, you, you know, so electronics should not be in the bedroom. That means your, your TV, your phone, your, you know, any, any little led lights. Like even when you travel, you bring some black electrical tape just to kind of put it over those little red lights in the hotel room you know, turn the.

[00:24:02] The clock, there's a clock in the hotel down. So that, that, that led light is not being shown. Also, if you do wake up, you don't want to know what time it is cause that's going to create anxiety for most people. So yeah, there, there was an interesting study that showed that even light that your eyes can't see, that's just on your skin affected the quality of sleep.

[00:24:22] So in a perfect optimized environment, just think about like a. Like, what is a cave? A cave is completely dark, it's cold, and it's quiet. So make your bedroom a cave, make your, your, your, your bedroom asleep cave. And you can do that either. They're using blackout shades, or if you don't want to, you know, if you're on a budget, get, I'm ask your plugs.

[00:24:47] You know, but it really, you can, you can really make minor changes over several months. And make, you know, they, they do make a difference. Like one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that easy hack for improving sleep quality is sleeping on an incline on a five degree incline, incline sleeping is absolutely something that I suggest everyone tries.

[00:25:09] You can get little bed risers to put on the front of your bed, or they do make these sort of. Inserts that gradually increase your mattress by about five, five degrees, five to seven degrees. And the reason for that is it helps activate the glimpse system, which is the lymph system in the brain. And during the night beta animal and all these, all these plaque that builds up all these toxins, essentially all that gets flushed out.

[00:25:35] The glimpse systems activated the brain, shrinks a little bit, cerebral, spinal fluid, kind of flushes all this stuff. And they found that when you're sleeping on an incline, actually it's easier for the body to have that process be activated. And if you're snore, if you have acid reflux, also being an inclined position is also going to be beneficial.

[00:25:54] So there's a lot of reasons why sleeping on a slate. Incline is a good idea. Do 

[00:25:59] Bryan Carroll: you run into any type of circulation issue if your sleeping at a slight incline like that, where maybe your feet or your legs aren't getting as much blood flow or maybe too much blood flow, maybe things are pulling up down there.

[00:26:12] Is that a concern at all? 

[00:26:14] Devin Burke: No. I mean, if you're, you know, again, you don't want to, we're not talking about like a extreme incline, so like a five degree incline. Isn't that extreme. It is a bit, but it actually helps with the circular. So, you know, if you look into nature, most animals actually do sleep on an incline.

[00:26:32] And so it's, it's, it's natural to sleep on an incline. It's I don't know with where the idea of sleeping flat came from, but inside sleeping is definitely a a biohack, if you will, or something that you can implement. I've noticed personally, in my own sleep specifically deep sleep it's, it's increased massively as a result of sleeping on an incline.

[00:26:52] So from personal experience, as well as, you know, there are some science out now that show that it can be beneficial, but at the end of the day, everyone's different. And if you have, you know, certain conditions you might want to experiment within, if you find that it's not helping, then, then obviously don't.

[00:27:09] And how 

[00:27:10] Bryan Carroll: about some of those sleep systems that they have like water flowing through them, or some type of heating and cooling system to try and regulate a body temperature or bed temperature while you're sleeping through the night. 

[00:27:24] Devin Burke: Yeah. So, so you're talking about, so there's, there's a company called And they make a technology called the chilly pad, which is a pad that goes between you and your mattress that regulates your body temperature through the use of pooling and heated water.

[00:27:38] I actually have their weighted blankets like Chile blanket, it's called, and it's a weighted blanket that has the same type of technology in it. It's great. The thing is, you know, when we're talking about increasing quality of sleep, temperature is really important to us. Because that definitely certain stages of sleep we need.

[00:27:57] If our bodies are in an optimal temperature, we'll get better, increased quality of sleep. So I'm a fan of it. I, you know, so I think that it it's, it's fantastic. There are a number of other products that are available, like the bed yet. There's another one called the sleep aid pod, but I've heard really good things about You know, I, for me personally, I sleep with bamboo sheets.

[00:28:22] I think bamboo sheets, it's like temperature, regulating sleep sheets are really important as well as you can do things, you know, keeping your, your thermostat at 68 degrees. Or if you live in a state like where you live, you can just open up your windows and get that nice, fresh air. But, yeah. So there, there are, for sure.

[00:28:40] There's there's technology that you can implement into the bedroom that can be beneficial for temperature regulation. I think there's going to be even more coming out in the years to come with this specific sort of bio-hack. Firstly, what 

[00:28:54] Bryan Carroll: about a head support? I'm sure you have some good ideas around pillows and whatnot.

[00:29:00] Can you talk about some of those options? Yeah. 

[00:29:04] Devin Burke: Yeah, I can. So yeah, support is important essentially, when you're sleeping, depending on the position you sleep in is going to dictate what type of head support you really should be using. So are, if you're a back sleeper, if you're a side sleeper, you're a stomach sleeper, really that's going to make a difference.

[00:29:19] But at the end of the day, what you're going for, no matter what position you sleep in, his spinal alignment and, and comfort, and there's all different types of pillows. I've tried a lot. Just in my own quest for improving sleep and to, you know, to be able to speak about it. And at the end of the day, you want to just have a pillow that support it's supportive to your neck and your sleeping position.

[00:29:43] So you want your neck aligned with your spine. So really your pillow should be filling this between the, this, your shoulder, to your neck, that area, if you're a side sleeper that should be filled and supported and if you're on your back, they do make these amazing pillows that sort of fill in the cervical area here.

[00:30:03] That still keep again, that spinal alignment stomach, if your stomach sleeper, that's not really ideal, to be honest. It's not a healthy position for. For your spine over a long period of time. So if you are a stomach sleeper, I would suggest trying to break that pattern. If, if you know, it, it really is an ideal.

[00:30:23] But again, having a pillow, a very thin pillow, then to keep, keep your head. Aligned with your, your cervical spine. That's really what you're looking for is cervical spinal support and alignment. And every body is different, literally. So depending on your, you know, your, your mattress too, that's another factor, you know, how, how, how thick or what is the surface of your mattress?

[00:30:47] You sleep on your matches or do you sleep in your mattress? So those are, there's two different sort of sleeping surfaces. Like a Tempur-Pedic would be somebody that sleeps in the mattress versus more of like a latex Bates mattress where you sleep on it. So there's, I don't want to like overwhelm people here with information but at the end of the day, just get a pillow that keeps your, your head in alignment and how you'll know if your head's in alignment as you can, you can literally it'll feel good.

[00:31:14] And you can have somebody look into say, Hey, it's my head. This does my head look like it's cricket or is it straight. And then just go from there. 

[00:31:24] Bryan Carroll: So earlier you had mentioned that your night of good sleep begins the morning before. So that leads me to questions when it comes to adequate ways of waking up in the morning.

[00:31:37] And I feel like right now we're all living with a very unnatural way of waking up, which is utilizing alarm clocks to scream at us until we get out of bed. So is there. Is there a better ways of waking up. And is there some ways that we can use these better ways without missing our start times for work or getting our kids to school or anything like that?

[00:32:03] Devin Burke: Yeah, so it isn't ideal to wake up to a blaring alarm for a lot of reasons. So, and again, everyone's situation is. So this, this is a bit of a challenging question to answer, but what stage of sleep that you wake up in absolutely makes a difference in a lot of times people's alarm box or pulling them out of the wrong stage of sleep, which is why they wake up groggy and sort of, you know, in a days.

[00:32:27] So if you do have to get up for a certain, you know, time, start time, they do make some great alarm clocks that actually bring in. So, and noise, and even sometimes vibration that it's way more the way I say way less stress inducing. So there's these, these nightlights. So if, for instance, for someone that has to be up that wants to use an alarm clock, get one of these nightlights that start slowly starts to bring light into the bedroom and has like a, a more relaxing sort of tone to, to wake up to if ideally though you wake up without a.

[00:33:03] And in a perfect world, you wake up without an alarm and your body, you know, is, is a Saint to the natural rhythms of the earth. So when the sun starts to come up, usually that's when you should be starting to, to wake up. And so depending on your chronotype and your chronobiology there's, there's, there's a whole nother rabbit hole we can go into.

[00:33:24] So it's just. Try your best to wake up in a natural way. And if you have to use a device to wake you up, have something that uses light and starts to gradually wake you up. That's that's the best they now they do make mattresses and things that kind of have some really cool features. Now that literally will start to warm up to wake you up or vibrate.

[00:33:48] And again, now there's some really, there's some really cool technology that's coming out. That's going to make this. More advanced because they're tracking your sleep and stages asleep and then kind of waking you up in that ideal sleep. But for most people you just don't want to be waking up with crazy alarm clock or to your phone.

[00:34:05] That's, that's not really going to be the best way to try to find another way. So it's 

[00:34:09] Bryan Carroll: almost like I'm simulate, lading a sunrise and then that way that's what you up. 

[00:34:16] Devin Burke: That's right. Yeah. If you can bring what nature already does in outside into your home. That's great. Try to do that as much as possible.

[00:34:26] And that's really nature is perfect and has all the answers that has all the solutions. The further we get away from nature, the more disorder and disease we have. 

[00:34:36] Bryan Carroll: So another big question is. In accordance with bringing technology into the bedroom and just the EMS that they might put off and how that might impact us.

[00:34:46] Is that something that we should be paying attention to, or is there not enough information out there to show that that could impact sleep quality? 

[00:34:56] Devin Burke: Yeah. Well, it's, it's really interesting, Bryan, so there's, there's evidence that supports both. And so I think certain people are more hypersensitive that than other people.

[00:35:07] I think that it's probably a good idea to mitigate your exposure to EMS because why risk it? Like there's science that kind of says, oh, let's say there's science. It's definitely not safe. So it's one of those things. Like I would rather not find out later, like cigarettes doctors or, you know, giving people cigarettes, and then later on they're like, oh, by the way, cigarettes cause cancer and all this I'd rather be on the other side of that.

[00:35:35] So I, I, I tend to be more cautious when it comes to EMS and electromagnetic frequency. So some easy ways to mitigate that in your home is make sure that you have a tiny. Well, didn't your, your wifi system so that, you know, at a certain amount of time, you know, the, the timer goes off and there's no wifi in the home, in your home.

[00:35:56] So simple to do that. I'm not bringing devices into your bed and bedroom, or if you do make sure that they're on airplane mode really important. And you know, there, you can take it to the next level and, and sort of hard wire your house, and you could get EMF paint and go crazy with it, or get like a grounded.

[00:36:16] Matt for your bed or a grounding pad that you stand on it. Yeah. I mean, experiment with that. And some people swear by it. I'm a big believer in experimentation, but I would definitely be mindful of the amount of EMF exposure and try to mitigate that as much as possible in a way that you're comfortable with.

[00:36:37] That's my opinion. 

[00:36:39] Bryan Carroll: Perfect. And then my final question that I want to cover is when it comes to wearables like some of these sleep trackers or as one of them there's a lot of different watches that say these tracks sleep. Are these accurate at this point? Or is it just kind of random data that doesn't have a whole lot of backing to it?

[00:36:59] Devin Burke: Yeah. So the devices have come along. They're getting more accurate. Are they perfect? They're far from perfect. The one that we use and we've used and tested a lot of different devices. We, we decided to use the aura ring just because it shows the best data for sleep specifically. And I've tested, you know, the Amazon halo and the Fitbit, and there's all these other things that are out there, the bootstrap and, you know, the wedding, the witterings devices.

[00:37:30] The ordering does give consistent data there. Gen three ring is newer technology. So we, I do, I've been using the aura ring for almost four and a half, five years from their gen two ring to their now their, their gen three, which just launched this last month. But yeah, at the end of the day, I think it is important to measure because we manage what we mentioned.

[00:37:55] But also don't get hung up so much on the data because it isn't, it isn't a hundred percent perfect, but it's getting better and better. So that's exciting. And, and just for sleep specifically, if you are interested in tracking your sleep or ring, does they do a good job that the statistics on that and the, you know, the data at device gives is, is it's pretty good.

[00:38:19] Bryan Carroll: You see, there's a two minute difference between last night and the night before don't freak out over. 

[00:38:25] Devin Burke: Exactly. You know, there's, there's a whole, there's actually a hole. It's an orthorexia, it's a people become, have become obsessed with their sleep data. And there's like, it's a psychological term now because people just start getting like hyper obsessed with, you know, the quest for the perfect night of sleep and, and don't get hung up on the data.

[00:38:42] But also I think data is important. It's useful. Just like, you'd go and get a blood test and it say, okay, I have high cholesterol. Now we know, can we change the diet? We can put you on medication, you have an options. So we sleep. It's the same. It's the same thing. You, you, you really, because you're in and out of consciousness, measuring it is helpful because unless you're measuring it, you're not going to really know the impact of implementing some of the things that we talked about on this podcast.

[00:39:09] Bryan Carroll: Awesome. Well, are there any final things Devin that you want to make sure we cover when it comes to sleep and how to improve our overall. 

[00:39:18] Devin Burke: Yeah, I would just say that sleep is not something that you can force or control people often get it's sleeps. The one thing that the harder you try at the worst you get at, so, you know, you gotta be careful that you don't become obsessed with trying to solve your sleep.

[00:39:35] If you're not sleeping well. It's probably because there is something that is out of balance in your life that needs to be looked at. And, you know, remember that sleep is a natural biological process that happens when we allow it to happen. They're getting in trying to control your sleep or being hyper vigilant about your sleep hygiene.

[00:39:58] That that's, that's not really the way to improve sleep accepting that where you are. How bad your sleep is. And knowing that there's also a path to improve it is, is really getting support to improve. It is what I would recommend that people do that are, that are struggling with their sleep. 

[00:40:18] Bryan Carroll: And then my final question for you is what is your vision of what healthy looks like and what are three things you do daily to reach that vision?

[00:40:25] Devin Burke: So my vision for what healthy looks like is freedom. Freedom in your, in your mind, freedom in your, in your body. And freedom to really surround yourself with people that you care about that inspire you. So time, freedom is, is, is a part of that. So three, three things that I do on a daily basis to support my vision of, of healthy life and lifestyle is I, I meditate every single morning.

[00:40:53] I have a practice mindfulness practice that is, is become part of my life. I take walks. And, and I, and I try to get outside as much as possible. So my goal now is five hours a day outside. That's, that's my goal. And I, I, I'm lucky enough to live in south Florida. So, you know, for most of the year I, I can, you know, be outside on my laptop and and it works.

[00:41:16] So yeah, just getting outside and it's and having a practice that brings you back to the center of yourself is. Oh, has it has great, great benefits and has yielded a great opportunity for, for me to experience more freedom. So, 

[00:41:34] Bryan Carroll: excellent. Yeah. You told me that it's 75 degrees down there right now in Florida, which is like, you know, 40 degrees more than it is back here in Washington.

[00:41:44] So yeah. Being able to sit outside and work on your laptop, and that sounds amazing down there. Not. 

[00:41:52] Devin Burke: Yeah. It's I mean, it's, you know, if that's not available to you, it's, it's you know, I think you can always just visit Florida. You know, it's not, it's only a plane ride away, so you know, keep that in mind.

[00:42:06] Well, 

[00:42:06] Bryan Carroll: people can find out more about you [email protected] You're also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and you have a book as well. The sleep advantage. Can you tell us what's in that. 

[00:42:19] Devin Burke: Yeah. So the sleep event is really is a step-by-step guide for better sleep. So essentially it's, it gives people a framework and actionable strategies and techniques to go from, you know, either sleeping well it's then to sleeping really well or somebody that's not sleeping well at all.

[00:42:37] How do you, how do you really have a system around improving your sleep in a way that makes sense? That's not overwhelming. That's really what's in the sleep event. Awesome 

[00:42:47] Bryan Carroll: Nevin. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and teaching us about sleep. Like I said, it's super important topic and I think people forget just how important sleep is and they're willing to sacrifice it a little bit too much.

[00:42:59] So thanks for coming on the show. 

[00:43:02] Devin Burke: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's a great conversation. 

[00:43:05] Bryan Carroll: Wow. We covered a lot of information in this episode. And like I mentioned before, there will be a lot of [email protected] slash 1 6 7. So you can just head on over to the show notes so you can see the transcripts and a lot of the resources right there, and to learn more about Devin head on over to sleep science academy.com.

[00:43:24] And hopefully the information from this episode will help you to get some of the best sleep of your. And you will start to notice some significant changes in your health in overall performance by getting better sleep. Now, this is the second to last episode of 2021. And the next episode will be the recap of 2021.

[00:43:44] And it'll be over the top five episodes from the year. So just be on the lookout for that. That's going to come out after Christmas and right before the new year. And other than that, keep climbing to the peak of your health.