How What We Eat Affects Our Sleep (and Vice Versa)

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Transcript: How What We Eat Affects Our Sleep (and Vice Versa)

Season 9, Episode 10  | October 29, 2024

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Welcome to Life Time Talks, the podcast aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, editor in chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole life health and wellness magazine.

And I’m David Freeman, senior director of Alpha, one of Life Time’s signature group training programs. We’re all in different places on our health and fitness journeys, but no matter what we’re working toward, there are some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy and purpose-driven life.

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[MUSIC]

David Freeman

Welcome back to another episode of Life Time Talks. I’m David Freeman.

Jamie Martin

And I’m Jamie Martin.

David Freeman

And today we’re going to be hitting on the topic, the connection between nutrition and sleep. As we all know, sleep plays a powerful role in our overall well-being and is connected to so many aspects of health. And one of the many things that people forget about or not fully understand is nutrition. So in this episode, we’re going to be talking about how what we eat affects our sleep and vice versa. We’ve got a special guest that Jamie’s going to introduce now.

Jamie Martin

Absolutely. Back with us again, we have Samantha McKinney. Sam is a registered dietitian and the national program manager for nutrition, metabolism, and weight loss at Life Time. She’s been with Life Time for 13 years in multiple roles and is currently on the team that leads nutrition programs and supplements for Life Time members, helping them optimize their metabolism and results from the inside out. Sam, thanks for coming back with us again.

Sam McKinney

Always love being here. It’s a fun team to work with.

Jamie Martin

Yes. Well, this is one of those topics that we just want to dive right into — sleep. We all need sleep. We know that it’s such an important part of our health, yet it’s one of those things that we will skimp on or that we’ll sacrifice when life gets busy or gets it hectic. Let’s talk just kind of generally for a minute and then we’re going to dive in specifically to sleep and nutrition, but let’s talk about why sleep is still something that many of us aren’t prioritizing and why it matters so much for our health. Let’s just level set there.

Sam McKinney

I love that this is becoming a more important topic, truly, because I’ll find that in the almost 20 years that I’ve been coaching people now, dating myself a little bit. Exactly what you said, Jamie, there’s sort of is this pervasive like glorification of productivity and you know, I’ll sleep when I die, those types of things. And hey, like, let me work really hard on my nutrition. Let me work hard on my exercise. Let me skimp on sleep to try to get the results that I’m looking for, because I’ve got stuff to do and know, responsibilities to take care of. I see the tide kind of shifting lately. And I love that, because there is no replacement that you can possibly do with nutrition, supplements or exercise for your sleep. There just is no replacement for sleep, no matter what you do.

It impacts every single physiological system in your body. I have seen it be the issue with people that are stuck in their body composition and doing everything right. And they literally cannot get past it until they address their sleep. But gosh, the effects are so wide ranging. I mean, first of all, your entire health, your whole symphony of health, your hormones, everything depend on your circadian rhythm.

As you know, your sleep patterns are a huge part of that. Your blood sugar control, which you guys know I’ve passionately talked about on this podcast before, it relies on your sleep, right? If you’re not sleeping well, your blood sugars the next day literally look like you’re pre-diabetic, even if your nutrition and your exercise is kind of on point. Even your liver function, there’s a ton of different metabolites of your liver function. Those rely on your circadian rhythm. As we all know, a lot of your hormone balance, like testosterone, estrogen, sex hormones rely on your liver functioning well. Your appetite is largely, it’s very complex, but your appetite is largely regulated by your sleep as well. If you’re not sleeping, you have increases in the hormone ghrelin that make you feel hungry and decreases in the hormone leptin that make you feel full. You get more cravings when you’re not sleeping. I will say your emotional regulation and your mental health suffer.

So think about this for a minute. You know, we hear people say all the time when it comes to nutrition, I know what to do, but I just don’t do it. My question is how many people are sleep deprived? Because if you’re waking up in the morning and your blood sugar’s off so you have cravings, you have an increased appetite, you can’t get full, and your impulse control and your emotions aren’t tuned in, all tied to your sleep, you have like no chance of following all of the healthy nutrition habits that you know you should be doing, right? So what people don’t realize is this is really truly a discussion about physiology than it is about willpower, right? And that all kind of all falls back to your sleep. But you should spend a third of your life sleeping. So that should tell you how important it is, right.

David Freeman

Yep. Well, that stat in itself is huge. And then dropping all that knowledge on us. We always talk about like our pillars of health and at the foundation of that is sleep and a close cousin to that is nutrition. So understanding how sleep and nutrition are intertwined, I think will be super empowering for our listeners to know and understand how we should be utilizing both these elements as one.

Sam McKinney

Yeah. I mean, it’s all a symphony, right? I mean, I would almost like tie exercise into there because you almost can’t untangle that of those three pillars, right? But with nutrition, I will say there’s several common things I see, right? So number one, if somebody is having trouble sleeping, and I would actually like almost back up to say, hey, like as an adult, on average, you should be getting about seven to nine hours of sleep every night. Like me personally, I know that I’m not fully rested and kind of feeling adequate unless I hit at least nine. I’m like a high sleep needs person, right.

For higher-end athletes that demand a lot for their body, I have always said you only progress as hard as you recover with your exercise. So you have to earn your right to exercise hard, meaning that you have to balance it out with enough recovery, which obviously is sleep as well. So it’s first of all, knowing how much sleep should you be getting and like what’s optimal sleep even look like. And then I’ll tie this back to nutrition. As you know, David, sometimes I go roundabout and then I answer your question, but I want to kind of lay some foundations and context, right? I’ll get back to your question in a second, but if somebody’s wondering like, you know, I kind of feel like I’m sleeping fine. I’m getting six hours a night. Like I’m OK. I snooze a little bit in the morning, but then I sort of get going. There’s virtually almost no one that I’ve worked with that actually achieves optimal health on like six hours of sleep a night. And most people think that that’s like adequate. And really, you should be getting seven to nine hours per night. Of course, there’s fringe exceptions on either end of the bell curve, but those really are truly small exceptions. You should be sleeping throughout the night without waking up, you should wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go. You shouldn’t be dragging for like the first two hours either. And that’s kind of what optimal sleep looks like.

And any deviation from that’s going to impact your metabolism. It will impact your health eventually. This kind of chronic sleep debt that we’re in as a nation, you have to address, cause you can’t untwine it from nutrition, like you said, David.

So from the nutrition standpoint, I think the most obvious thing that I see is caffeine intake, timing and amount, alcohol intake. That’s the other one. And then also just stress induced from poor nutrition habits, people don’t realize it’s still a stress on your body and can disrupt the mechanisms and the different cycles of sleep that you go through. And so if you’re stressed out and you’re, it’s called your hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, your HPA axis, your body’s response to stress, if that’s activated for any reason, your sleep is going to suffer. And there’s about a million ways with nutrition that you could mess that up. But we can kind of talk about some of the main things that I see too.

David Freeman

In that course correction just now, I think a lot of people are under the interpretation that, OK, I only got four or five hours of sleep last night. I’ll make it up this next day. I’m going to end up taking maybe a nap in the middle of the day. I want to know, and if you could debunk this myth or if it’s accurate, can you really get caught up on sleep?

Sam McKinney

You can, but it’s still not going to be physiologically equal to having never gotten in sleep debt in the first place, right. So what I will say is that, yes, you, you might need extra sleep on days that your sleep is interrupted or maybe beyond your control. I mean, I’m sure there’s people listening and they have a newborn. They’re like, what am I going to do about my sleep, right? Like you sleep when you can. Making up sleep where you’re able to is still going to provide benefit rather than like, I’ll just start sleeping again in a year. You know what I mean? Like, so it’ll still help, but you’re obviously still going to get some health impacts from some of the acute lack of sleep that you’re experiencing, right?

But what I will say, David, and I think what you were hitting on is when people are intentionally doing it, right? When people are intentionally putting themselves in a sleep deficit, it’s something that’s not within their control. Like, hey, I’m just going to stay up and be more productive or answer a couple more emails or like, my gosh, I hope they’re not just staying up, know, binge watching their favorite show, right? And hey, I’ll make up for it the, you know, later. That’s if it’s something controllable.

At least to me and kind of the value system that I think a lot of people that I work with, it’s not worth sacrificing your health for that. It is worth sacrificing your health to care for a newborn who needs you. That’s just the example that I’m using. It might not be worth it to stay up and watch a show, right? So like you’ve got to make your own decision. I won’t judge if somebody makes that decision, but your health is your wealth, right? You can’t get it back once it’s gone. In that same vein, I think just reframing that question.

David Freeman

It’s more of those individuals that might be having these great workouts. They’re getting these workouts in and now they’re not in that optimal range that you just said. I’m saying have they missed that window, if you will, because now the body is supposed to be repairing and now that following day they’re trying to catch up on the sleep. Have they missed the window or can they still catch up is what I mean.

Sam McKinney

I see. Yes. I think what you’re hitting on too. Yeah. They can’t really catch up on that. I will say that mainly because, you know, there’s a three different kind of phases of sleep that your body cycles through in a night, right? There’s light sleep, there’s deep sleep, and there’s REM sleep. I say all the time too, and I educate people on this all the time, like sleeping midnight to 8 a.m., you might be getting eight hours, but it is physiologically different than sleeping nine to five. If you get to sleep earlier in the night, you do get by percentage a higher amount of deep sleep, and that is the type of sleep that is required for physical repair, right? You need that. And when that suffers, you’re not going to repair as well.

So David, you’re absolutely right there, especially for somebody that is pushing themselves, you know, with their workouts, pushing themselves in their program, trying to push their limits. They have to be prioritizing getting to bed early. And it’s not just getting eight hours. It’s not just quantity. It’s quality that matters because that circadian rhythm dictates everything. And there’s different levels of hormones throughout different parts of the night. In a male on average, you know, their testosterone is bottomed out around 8 p.m. and it’ll peak around 8 a.m., right? So it’s like if you start shifting with how you’re sleeping and when you’re sleeping, you can start to mess with your testosterone levels, for example. There’s sleeping as silly as it sounds, or I should actually say as simple as it sounds, sleeping when the sun’s down is ideal, right? You know, like we start to see in the winter time, our nights are obviously longer. We’re not going to go to bed at 4:30 or five o’clock, start here in Minnesota, but we should be going to bed earlier and kind of coming up when the sun comes up too. That’s ideal. But did that answer the question, David?

David Freeman

100 percent, 100 percent. I love that, love that.

Jamie Martin

Sam, you might have seen my eyebrows raise when you said nine hours. That’s your ideal. like, I think last night was the first night that I’ve gotten a true eight hours of sleep, probably in two months, which is something I know I need to work on. It’s something that’s coming. But it’s like, I keep hearing it. And again, it’s like, it’s the thing that’s easiest to skimp on because it’s happening. But that also brings me into this phase of like, OK, when I don’t sleep well, to your point, I eat differently the next day. All these other things happen. And then when I don’t eat well, potentially I don’t sleep well because these all have, they affect each other back and forth. It’s not just a one-way — sleep only affects nutrition, nutrition affects how you sleep. And if I’m not eating well before going to bed, if I’m having cravings, I’m doing that late night snack. I’m activating my digestive system when it should be shutting down for the night so I can do the rest and repair. My body can do its rest and repair, but then I’m not sleeping well because my body’s working in ways that it maybe shouldn’t be. It’s distracted from its primary goal when it’s supposed to be sleeping. I just went on that whole thing because I’m like, know all this and yet it’s still something that I will sacrifice in the name of work, entertainment, other things.

Sam McKinney

Well, the irony too is, the sleep cycles that I mentioned, your body by priority will prioritize kind of protecting your brain, right? And your, there’s light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep. And that’s rapid eye movement sleep. And that’s when our dreams happen. There’s certain hormonal things that happen when you’re sleeping too. I mean, we know we talk about physiology on this podcast a lot, but I’m just going to throw this out there. Men in the morning, you should have a morning erection. I’m just going to talk about that. That happens during REM sleep. And so whenever men have issues with that, it’s usually a testosterone issue or a REM sleep issue. Like this stuff is tied to hormones, right?

But what’s funny is your brain function is the priority for your sleep. So if your sleep overall is suffering, it’s going to try to preserve REM sleep. And by default, you’ll lose out on deep sleep. So what that means is what I had mentioned earlier to David’s question, deep sleep is needed for physical recovery and repair. So if you’re skimping on sleep, your physiological ability to recover from exercise is impaired. So you should not push yourself as hard, right? But as we know, your heart health relies on pushing yourself hard, right? The right intensity and the right recovery. So it’s this whole cascade of if you’re not sleeping well, it’s going to try to protect your brain health. It’s going to impact your ability to recover from exercise. Then you can’t really get the volume of exercise that you need to see the health change and longevity that we’re all looking for. So it’s gosh, like it’s just such an important topic.

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Sam McKinney

I do kind of want to dive in a little bit into like the actual food and nutrition piece of things that you were touching on, Jamie, too.

Jamie Martin

Absolutely. And let’s start with blood sugar. I know this is a topic you’re super passionate about. We actually have separate podcast episodes. link to them so people can deep dive into those. But like, let’s talk about blood sugar and sleep and how they’re connected and what we’re eating affects that, obviously.

Sam McKinney

Yes. I’ll say one of the most surprising benefits that people notice when they increase protein in their diet, they’re usually doing it for body composition or exercise recovery reasons, but what they don’t realize that it’s helping them, when you add protein to your diet, your blood sugar stabilizes quite a bit, right? One of the most surprising benefits people see is, gosh, I’m sleeping better just from increasing protein. It’s wild. And I’ve heard this time and time and time again. And the reason for that is if your blood sugar is more stable, it’s likely not having these dips and these drops overnight that so many of us struggle with. And so when it dips and drops overnight, your body looks at that as a stressor and actually almost micro doses and release this small amounts of adrenaline. And so you end up tossing and turning. So for people that fall asleep fine, but they can’t stay asleep and they find that they’re tossing and turning a lot. The first thing I usually do is increase their protein, dietary protein, because it helps with their blood sugar control and their stabilization. That’s probably the most important thing because if it’s dipping or erratic at all, and I think I’ve said in other podcasts, one out of three Americans have irregular blood sugar control, it’s not optimal, then you’re going to have a lack of quality sleep. And we start to see that with how many people are on sleep medications and all of that. And there’s a time and place for those, but I know that there’s a lot of people that are probably on them out there that with the right nutrition and lifestyle interventions might not need to be. So it of depends on the person. So that’s kind of the blood sugar side.

And then of course, this won’t surprise you at all what I’m going to tie in here, but magnesium, right? So many people, if anyone’s listened to any of my episodes before, I feel like I tie magnesium into every single episode that I do because it’s that important. There’s so many people that have suboptimal levels of magnesium. When that happens, your body does not regulate blood sugar well. And if your body doesn’t regulate blood sugar well, there goes the quality of your sleep too. So magnesium is one of the first micronutrients that I talk about when it comes to sleep, but then from a macronutrient calorie standpoint, it’s making sure that you’re getting enough protein. And those are both largely due to their positive impacts on blood sugar regulation.

Jamie Martin

Yeah. We talk about protein all the time at Life Time. So thinking about if we really do prioritize that, if we aim for those 30 grams per meal and aiming for whatever our personal goals are, what a difference that simple focus can make. It’s really focusing on one thing versus kind 10 things at a time, you know, like what we’re often thinking about. So yeah, I love that. And magnesium, of course, is one that we’ve talked in depth about as well. So we’ll make sure to link to that too.

Sam McKinney

From the magnesium standpoint too, we’ve talked about this on, you know, there’s different forms of magnesium and different things that work too. You know, there’s some of the most absorbable forms are called chelated forms. It means they’re wrapped in amino acids. Your body absorbs them a little bit better. Those can be wildly more beneficial for sleep than some of the cheaper forms of magnesium that most people might find. So it’s not all created equally.

One thing that I’m really excited about is coming up here in a couple of months, Life Time is through our LTH product line. We’re going to be releasing a product called Dream that you guys, this thing is a game changer. So we know that we have chelated forms of magnesium as a standalone supplement. We know we have it in our multivitamins, but this one is actually a blend of three different highly absorbable forms of magnesium. Plus it has some other sleep supportive things in there. So there’s ashwagandha for your stress response because stress has a huge negative impact on sleep. It has L-theanine, which is an amino acid that’s calming. And it’s really great for people that feel like they have more like anxious type feelings. It also has phosphatidylserine, which is kind of like, I call it a break on your stress response, right? It’s like a way to just apply the breaks at night. And it all comes in this really good berry flavored drink powder that you can have. So it can replace that evening nightcap. It can do all kinds of things and it tastes amazing.

And all of us in the team have tried it. And we noticed because we were kind of nerding out with this type of stuff on our sleep trackers, on our watches, know, our garments, et cetera. We all see changes in our sleep architecture for the positive from it. So I just want to throw that out there because that one there’s no other supplement out there like it that I’ve seen. And it’s my like three of my favorite forms of mag, plus all those other power ingredients coming to.

David Freeman

Hey Sam, something that stood out that you said earlier as far as like males waking up in the morning, how to know, you know, morning erection, but also how the hormones are being affected. Can you speak on the female side of things as far as what things we should probably be looking at from a sleep effectiveness of when they’re waking up? Is there certain things that the woman’s body is going through first thing in the morning?

Sam McKinney

Well, I think any perimenopausal woman will tell you sleep and hormones are dramatically impacted, right? They are. Those two are like BFFs, right? Trying to figure out how to of untwine that. So there’s nothing really as specific for women as that example I gave with the males. But what I will say is that women that struggle with, let’s say, PMS type symptoms, if they’re in the perimenopausal stage and they’re experiencing a lot of sleep interruptions and night sweats, those are probably the clearest, most obvious signs. But they don’t have a morning signal the way males do. If that makes sense.

David Freeman

Yeah, it was more of obviously if you’re saying you’re not having that then you could talk about how the REM sleep is being affected. So I was saying in my head, like as far as a female, they can have some type of alert if it is not quality sleep because of morning, know, sweats or whatever it may be. So I was more curious on that end. Yeah, that makes sense.

Sam McKinney

And I would say the other signals that apply, you know, to both males and females are kind of the increased appetite, the lack of emotional regulation, right? Your memory, you kind of forget things a little bit more often, or you find that you’re just like, I don’t know how else to say it. You’re just a little like testy with everyone. You’re just irritable. You’re short. Or you find like, hey, I kind of overreacted to that a little bit, or maybe my reaction was stronger than the action there. Like, you know, I maybe could have done that better. Those are all signs that you might need to address sleep. Of course, those are all multifactorial. But I will say that if you’re lacking sleep, you’re setting yourself up to fail from like an appetite regulation standpoint, a portion control standpoint with food, and just your overall interaction with other people too. But I feel like there are things for nutrition and supplementation and lifestyle. There’s like structured things that you can do that hopefully we can dive into that will set you up for more success whenever it comes to your sleep.

David Freeman

Yeah. Once again, it made me think I was going to say around nutrition, around the hydration. I know that sometimes just hydration, making sure that we’re drinking enough water. But then what if we’re waking up in the middle of the night to use the restroom? That’s disrupting the sleep. So can you unpack that a little bit? Is that not a good thing?

Sam McKinney

Yes. OK. So let’s almost start with just like hydration and liquids that impact sleep in one way or another. Right? So yes, we all should be drinking plenty of water. We like to say half of your body weight in ounces of water per day. But when we say that we have this underlying assumption that it is healthy hydrating water. And what I mean by that is if you’re drinking — I will use the extreme example of distilled water or just you’re not using any electrolytes whatsoever. It’s kind of like, I don’t want to say over-filtered, but it’s not mineralized water. You don’t have things added to it. It’s a lot more likely it’s going to run through your body faster. So you’re going to wake up a lot at night. So it’s part of the reason we do recommend, hey, support your body with mineral rich electrolytes. So like the LTH Hydrate product, for example, it’s sourced from a brand called Real Salt. There’s

 

you know, a ton of different trace minerals in there as well, plus the electrolytes to help not just your body’s total water intake, but your body’s water balance. The other thing is just one sign. If you find that you’re peeing a lot during the day and you’re peeing a lot during the night and you’re not diabetic, that’s a sign of, you know, undiagnosed diabetes. But let’s say that’s not the issue. If you’re just are kind of peeing a lot more than you should be, that is usually a sign of chronic, unmanaged stress. Because what happens if you’re under chronic stress for a long time and you don’t address it, you start to lose a hormone called aldosterone, you know, sodium follows aldosterone and then water follows sodium. So you end up peeing out a little bit more water than you should, right. So that could be one thing from a hydration standpoint. So yeah, you got to be hydrated, but you don’t want to cram it all in, in the second half of the day. You know, you ideally want to have it spread throughout the day.

I will also say from just a hydration standpoint, and I kind of want to tie in caffeine. I love caffeine. I love coffee. I had coffee this morning. Sometimes I have matcha instead kind of depends on the mood I’m in, but caffeine, especially in caffeine sensitive individuals, it can take 10 to 12 hours to metabolize for some people. Some people are super fast caffeine metabolizers. Like my dad drinks an espresso and then goes to bed. That’s just how his genetics are wired, right? I can’t do that, right? And there are some people where if they’re struggling with sleep, I’m like, hey, I want you to count back 12 hours from when you want to be sleeping and ends your caffeine then. Then they do the math. They’re like, so I basically can just have my morning cup of coffee. I’m like, kinda, you know, shouldn’t be having your latte at noon or 2 p.m. if you want to set yourself up to go to sleep at 9 or 10 p.m, right. So there’s the caffeine standpoint. You got to let your body metabolize and kind of get rid of that because it’s so stimulating.

And then the other thing is alcohol. know, so people will drink alcohol. Not only is that dehydrating for your body, but people will erroneously do that in their minds to help them sleep because they drink alcohol and then they feel like even if you don’t drink to get drunk, right, let’s say you just have like a nightcap or two, they feel like, that helps me unwind. I kind of fall asleep. You’re actually kind of getting sedated. It’s not actually the physiology of sleep that’s happening well. And your deep sleep suffers pretty greatly with that. Anybody that wears any of the wearable sleep trackers at all will tell you when I have alcohol, especially at night in the evening, I see a complete change in my sleep architecture overnight. It’s obvious, it’s data, it shows, we know this. Eliminating evening alcohol and ideally alcohol altogether or minimizing it or kind of using it for reserved special occasions is also one of the top tactics nutrition wise that can really help. And I think people know that or they’ve heard it. They’re not surprised by that. But until you experience it, you don’t realize how incredibly powerful it is for your sleep and just give up alcohol for a week or two, right. And everybody’s like gosh, I’m sleeping so well. I thought I was sleeping well before, but this is like night and day for me. No pun intended. But I would say those three things from a hydration standpoint, caffeine and alcohol, that’s at least from the liquid side of nutrition. Those are kind of the main levers you can pull.

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[MUSIC]

Jamie Martin

Let’s keep going down that path of the nutrition strategies that we can take. So we’ve talked hydration. Let’s talk a little bit about some of the other strategies that we want to encourage for people if they’re really thinking about what I’m eating is affecting my sleep and vice versa. So let’s dive into the rest of those that you have for us.

Sam McKinney

Yeah. The other thing I’ll talk about is evening eating. There’s a lot of mixed opinions on this. And what I found is that this is actually largely individual. So for clients that I’ve had that they’re really trying to gain control of their blood sugar patterns, let’s say they’re like, acutely pre-diabetic or their blood sugar is kind of bouncing all over the place, sometimes we actually need to do like a protein-focused snack in the evening to help stabilize their blood sugar overnight. Now other people, especially when their blood sugar is a little bit more, I would say dialed in, their nutrition’s pretty good, etc., they actually find a pretty dramatic improvement in their sleep quality if they refrain from eating for about two to three hours before going to bed.

 

So that one is really individual. What I will say, this all kind of ties back, and this is anecdotally what I’ve seen from coaching a lot of different people, it kind of ties back to your overall caloric and protein sufficiency. So it goes back to what we had said originally about protein. If you’re getting enough protein throughout the day, you likely are not going to need a protein snack before you go to bed, right? And this kind of makes sense. If you’re getting enough protein throughout the day, your overall blood sugars are probably a little bit more stabilized too, right? Increasing protein, I don’t want to discount that. I know I mentioned that kind of at the top of the podcast, but it really can make a huge difference. The other thing is what I mentioned, any kind of nutrition induced stress. So when people start doing things like intermittent fasting, they start doing things like ketogenic diets. They’re not necessarily bad. There’s a time and place for all of them.

But what I found is if there’s a pretty drastic stress on your body from a pretty drastic nutrition change, sometimes sleep can get interrupted then too. And so like, let’s say generally speaking, if somebody’s eating really low carbohydrate all of the time and they’re having trouble sleeping, and this is where it’s all truly individualized, I’ve had people, I’m like, you know what, can you please throw in a sweet potato with your dinner? Let’s see what happens. And what’s — is some level of starchy carbohydrate, especially, you know, I mainly work with active people that, you know, they work out at Life Time, you know, all those different types of things. But for people that are active, they get their workouts in, throwing in that starch at dinnertime can actually help this process of supports your 5-HTP, it supports your serotonin and your melatonin levels, right? They end up being like, wow, my sleep is actually getting a little bit better just from throwing in some of that evening carbohydrate, which is the opposite of what most people think they should do because they think they should have carbs first thing in the morning to air quote, “burn them off” when really throwing in the carbohydrate in the evening and maybe keeping it lower carb in the morning tends to work really well for a lot of people. So that’s another one.

Jamie Martin

That makes sense.

David Martin

Yeah. It’s a term going out there called sleep hygiene. So I know that was one piece that we wanted to be able to dive in and kind of maybe you give us some different metrics of what that overall looks like when we speak to sleep hygiene. So can you dive into sleep hygiene and what that means?

Sam McKinney

Yes. OK. So sleep hygiene, I love it because it’s free and it’s different things that you can do that really impact how well you sleep. I will say kind of the number one determinant of your body’s circadian rhythm is your light exposure. What types of light you’re exposed to when, right? Gosh, I just had a girlfriend reach out to me, her daughter who’s seven was having trouble sleeping. And the very first question I asked her, is she getting morning sunlight? And she was like, for her sleep? Yes, is she getting morning sunlight? She’s like, what, like, how do you mean? Like, what do you mean?

Unless you’re getting morning sunlight exposure, again, your body doesn’t operate in one hour chunks. It’s all related to each other. So if you get that morning sunlight exposure, you’re kind of setting into cement, hopefully, your circadian rhythm, you’re sending a loud message. It’s morning. It’s morning time right now, which means in 12 hours, it’s nighttime, right? And so it’s getting that morning sun exposure and then conversely limiting anything in the evening that your body might be recognizing as sun, such as blue light from devices, right? Tablets, phones, computers, TVs, etc. So it’s not a trend, it’s not a biohacker thing. This is a very real approach that people can take to dramatically change their body’s circadian rhythm and their sleep hygiene. I would say that’s the first thing.

The next thing is making sure that your bedroom is cool and pitch black. So what a lot of people don’t realize is that we actually have light receptors in our skin. So even if your eyes are closed, if you have like a little light from a DVD player. Do people still have DVD players? It’s probably a bad example, but like a light from something in your room or your TV that will impact your sleep. And what’s funny is just like timing-wise, my dad is visiting Minnesota and him and his wife came in their RV and I stayed there two nights ago. And it’s a kind of decked out RV, which is nice, but they have all these lights in the area that I was sleeping. It was like a pullout couch and their RV. And I slept like total garbage, even though it was out in the wilderness and it’s quiet. It was just the like blue light from under their TV and then the blue light of the control board up front. I’m like, there’s just these tiny little lights, right? But that will impact your sleep. So try to make your bedroom pitch black.

Try to keep it cold. One of the phases of sleep, whenever you’re in it, your body actually can’t regulate temperature. So it’s important that you keep it cool. And I think we’ve all experienced that anecdotally when it’s hot and you’re kind of like, you know, sweaty and you’re kicking covers off, you don’t sleep well. But whenever you’re cold and bundled up, you sort of sleep a little bit better.

So I would say the coolness, pitch black, having some of that healthy carbohydrate before bedtime, that light exposure, like I said, the number one determinant of your circadian rhythm. Those are kind of the most important things.

And then from the nutrition side, like I mentioned, the protein, and I know I’m rattling through these, but kind of cutting your caffeine off about 10 to 12 hours before, limiting alcohol before. And then there’s a couple other nutrition strategies that you can take too, from like even a supplement standpoint, like the magnesium table stakes. But a lot of times people don’t realize like, hey, in the evening, you could perhaps use some collagen peptides. And people are like, what collagen? I’m like, it doesn’t make you sleepy, but collagen is really rich in an amino acid. A lot of us don’t get enough of called glycine and glycine is really relaxing. It can actually help lower your core body temperature to help with sleep. like one of the tricks I tell people, I’m like, make a hot herbal tea and scoop of the collagen peptides that we offer in there provides you enough glycine to make an impact, right? So just mix some collagen peptides in there. It’s a really nice kind of comforting drink to have at night. That’s another thing to do.

We have other supplement options like the LTH Relax supplement. That one is, I want to say that’s sleeper favorite. A lot of people don’t know that that one exists. And when they try it, they’re like hooked because it has that 5-HTP that I mentioned that supports natural serotonin and melatonin production. It has the L-theanine that’s calming and it’s got a blend of herbs like valerian root and chamomile that a lot of people have heard of that help with sleep. But it’s kind of like this primer, like it helps prime your body and set you up for a better night’s sleep too.

David Freeman

Hold on, Sam. We got to take the nightlights out of the kids room then?

Sam McKinney

Yes. Yes.

David Freeman

Alright. Alright.

Sam McKinney

I’ve got kids. I know I have one kid so far, but I know that that’s easier said than done. So if your kid’s scared and they’re screaming at night, you’re not going to be sleeping well. So you can find nightlights that are no blue light lights that have like a red tone, right? And if you find them, like, like find a no blue light, red toned nightlight. And that will make it more likely that it won’t disrupt their sleep.

Same thing goes for parents that are getting up at night to feed their babies, as an example. Sometimes it just happens they’re just trying to get back to sleep. You want to limit your exposure to blue light as much as possible. But definitely limit electronic light exposure. I can assure you those are full of blue light. Those are going to keep you up.

Jamie Martin

Yep. Those are harder to minimize, right? You can’t really — I mean, you can do blue light blockers, but that’s not 100 percent effective either. So, kind of really — Sam, one thing I wanted to ask was the timing with some of these things. Because should it be an hour before bed, half hour before bed that we’re starting to maybe take that cup of tea with the collagen peptides? What are you thinking timing-wise there to kind of really set yourself up for a good night’s sleep at the end of the day?

Sam McKinney

I always try to balance these recommendations with reasonable expectations of life, right? Because I know that we all have responsibilities and stuff. But ideally, I would say, if you can eliminate blue light for the last hour two of your day, that’s one of them. Dropping the temperature of your house about an hour before you go to bed so it has time to adjust, right? It’s not like you flip your thermostat and it changes a couple degrees that quickly. So just give it some time, maybe 30, 60 minutes before. As far as the tea, the supplementation, etc., if somebody is using the sleep prime, that LTH Relax. Again, that’s like the melatonin free option, although I’m not against melatonin. Melatonin does help you fall asleep. It just doesn’t help you stay asleep. But if someone’s taking Relax, that’s usually 30 to 60 minutes before bed. like having it almost seems like this hour before bed is like kind of the sweet spot whenever I drink, you know, either that Dream that I had mentioned or if I’m making like I’m into chamomile tea blended with collagen peptides. If I’m having that, it’s usually about an hour to 90 minutes before I like to read because just mentally for me, I like to try to go to the bathroom before I go to bed. I try to like, let me go see if I get clean before I go to sleep. And that just gives it a little bit of time too. Closer to directly before bed, like maybe 30 minutes before, that’s where I would recommend if somebody is using intermittent melatonin support or they’re doing something like they’re traveling or they have shift work and they need to add in melatonin, I would do that about 30 minutes prior.

Jamie Martin

Yep, that makes total sense. Thank you.

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Jamie Martin

OK, Sam, this has been rapid fire today. We could keep talking about this topic on and on. Any final thoughts before David dives you right into his, you the usual, you know this drill, the mic drop moment. So any final thoughts you want to make sure we get to?

Sam McKinney

No, what I will say is I know we rattled through a lot today, a lot of what we talked about was specific. Put your caffeine off 12 hours before. Try not to drink alcohol at night. Get morning sunlight exposure. You know, limit evening blue light exposure. Try some carbohydrates in the evening. Please take your magnesium, right? Take your magnesium. Doing some of the things like a tea and maybe adding in some collagen for the glycine at night or like an LTH Relax or Dream. Those all can work.

So again, I realize the desperation people hit when they have poor sleep. Of course there’s actually pathology that can exist around sleep. So please go see your doctor and talk to your doctor about all of that, but don’t discount the sleep hygiene and some of these strategies we’ve talked about because I have seen it with my own eyes, transform people’s sleep. And if you don’t have a sleep pathology problem, your problem probably is one of these things that we’re talking about or a combination of all of them. So the good news, and I would just say take heart, because if you have sleep issues, there’s a very strong chance that it’s highly addressable by you. So you’ve got a lot of power at your fingertips. So exercise it, use it, and you’ll probably be surprised. And of course, you can always reach out to us for help too.

David Freeman

Awesome. Alright. It’s mic drop moment time.

Sam McKinney

Let’s do it.

David Freeman

Alright. If you had to create an acronym for sleep, what would it be?

Sam McKinney

Man, you’re making me do this on the fly.

David Freeman

On the fly.

Sam McKinney

I’m so bad at this.

David Freeman

You got it.

Sam McKinney

I love wordsmithing. Everybody knows that, but I like doing it in my own time with some music on and creativity. Acronym for sleep. I would say. And I’m trying to make sure my acronym is not accidentally like inappropriate, like the letters, because I have a sentence in my head. Hold on. Let me write this down.

Jamie Martin

Gosh, look at her. She’s like, I got to prep this out. This is real time thinking.

Sam McKinney

Alright.

David Freeman

What you got?

Sam McKinney

1. I wrote it down. I would say, gosh, this doesn’t make a word. It’s alright. S Y C S E — Something You Can’t Skip Ever. That would be my, that’s your sleep acronym. Something you can’t put me on the spot, David. If you let me email you one in a couple of hours, I’ll get you something better.

David Freeman

Alright.

Sam McKinney

My gosh. Alright.

Jamie Martin

Technically, because you can’t say that as a word, it’s an initialism, which I think works just as well. So something to remember, right? Because you said it’s something you can’t skip ever.

Sam McKinney

I love your editorial brain, Jamie. It’s the best.

Jamie Martin

I know. I can’t help myself. We got it.

David Freeman

We got it there. Something you can’t skip ever.

Sam McKinney

Give me a few hours to email you guys and you can post it in the show notes. How’s that?

David Freeman

I love that. I love it.

Jamie Martin

Yes. That’s awesome.

Sam McKinney

Not my best work right there.

Jamie Martin

Sam, we love having you on. Thank you for that laugh right at the end there. We’re going to share that initialism with everybody. If people want to hear more from Sam, can of course go back and listen to podcasts that we’ve done with her. She’s got articles at experiencelife.com and then she is @coachsam.rd on Instagram. Sam, as always, you’re the best. Thanks so much.

Sam McKinney

Thanks for having me guys.

David Freeman

Thanks Sam. Be good.

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Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life. What works for you? Where do you run into challenges? Where do you need help?

And if you have topics for future episodes, you can share those with us too. Email us at lttalks@lt.life or reach out to us on Instagram @Lifetime.life, @jamiemartinel, or @freezy30 and use the hashtag #LifeTimeTalks.

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Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks.

Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time Healthy Way of Life. It takes an amazing team to pull together each episode, including executive producer, Molly Kopischke, audio engineer, Peter Perkins, audio and video editors, Kevin Dixon and Riley Lester. A big thanks to Coy Larson for sound and video consulting and George Norman for project management, as well as the rest of the team at Life Time Motion who supports and provides feedback for Life Time Talks.

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