SHAWN STEVENSON: This time of year is all about connection, restoration, and creating magical moments. Today, I want to share with you one of the magical moments that changed my perspective about what was possible. And not only that, you're going to learn some huge insights about improving and mastering your sleep in the new year and beyond. This conversation was from an interview that I did with Ed Mylett on his number one ranked personal development show, and it was overlooking the ocean at his beach front home in Southern California. I never seen anything like it. I never seen anything like it. He interviewed me about how I transformed my health.

And we also dove into some of the most science backed strategies for improving your sleep quality, which is something that I want everyone to truly focus on investing in moving forward. But having someone as successful as Ed to reach out to me in the first place and going to his home changed my paradigm a few years back. And my wife came along with me and we just kept looking at each other throughout this experience, even walking to his door, just like, what are we doing here? You know, this was so different from where we come from, respectively. You know, her growing up in Kenya and me growing up in the inner city of st. Louis and just being there in that environment had just so many of our wheels turning about like wow, this is possible.

And during this interview you're gonna hear the ocean in the background and it got my wife and I dreaming, about what could be and it planted seeds that eventually led to us moving our family to Southern California ourselves and creating a new story for our family's history. And again, I just really didn't think about that being an option for me and coming from where I come from. And so I wanted this episode, since it's this time of year, that's about communication and connection, to spark some inspiration for you because Ed has continued to be a friend of mine. And just being able to spend time and to experience that connection and to understand how important it is to sit down and to spend time with your friends and family during this new year.

And also just moving forward, making it a priority and also just thinking about our potential, because as you're going to hear in my story, I came from the most unlikely of circumstances, especially when it comes to my seeming disadvantages with my health. And from there, being able to make a truly impactful change in the world of health and fitness. And I just still sometimes I know people talk about pinching themselves, but why would you pinch yourself? It kind of hurts. But I sometimes metaphorically pinch myself just like how did all of this happen? This is so amazing and I'm so grateful. And so I think you're really really gonna enjoy this before we get to our special interview. I want to share something with you one of my daily practices and it's I don't really have a choice to do it at This point to be honest.

I make my wife's coffee in the morning. She doesn't really want to talk about much until she gets the coffee. She's super nice in the morning. Well, Well, sometimes she's just like, let's get the coffee and then let's talk. But I make her coffee every morning and something that I add to her coffee every day for years is collagen. And collagen supports metabolic health, joint health, and most notably skin health to help to prevent fine lines and wrinkles. And unlike most collagen products, Organifi's collagen utilizes multiple forms of collagen. It's derived from the very best and most bioavailable sources and there really isn't any collagen like this in the world.

Hop over to Organifi.com/model and you're going to get 20 percent off of their incredible collagen. As a matter of fact, you're going to get 20 percent off their entire site, including their award winning green juice blend, their red juice blend and all of their other incredible science backed products. But I definitely want you to check out their amazing collagen because it's something that we use on a regular basis. So again, that's Organifi.com/model. That's O R G A N I F I.com/Model for 20 percent off. And now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week. 

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled "appreciation" by Monique moments. When I started listening to podcasts, the model health show was my favorite, and I still love the educational episodes. I think my favorite episode was about the fizzy drinks and their history. For some reason, that one stands out all the time. The amount of information about the human body for free is great. I've always taken an interest in the way my body works. Listening to the Model Health Show is a call to action to continue making good nutritional choices for a healthy lifestyle. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for leaving that review over on Apple Podcast. I truly do appreciate that. If you have yet to do so, please pop over to Apple Podcast. Leave a review for the Model Health Show. If you're listening on Spotify, you can rate and review the show. If you're wanting to feast your eyes and get some visuals, hop over to the YouTube channel, and of course, you can leave comments there for the YouTube versions of these episodes. By the way, for this episode, you could see where we're overlooking the ocean.

Freaking, it's like it's, it's majestic. Again, I just. Didn't think that that was possible for me to be in a place like that because I saw it on TV, maybe in a Tom Cruise movie or something, but it's like cliffs and that whole thing. And it's just very, very powerful. And Ed is a massively successful entrepreneur, best selling author, and again, a true leader in the personal development space and just been very insightful and a great friend in my life. And again, I'm very grateful to be able to share this powerful conversation. That I had with the one and only Ed Mylett on the Ed Mylett show. 

ED MYLETT: Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Mylett. We've got a wonderful program for you today with a guest that I've been chasing down here for a couple months. And I finally locked him in here at the house. And so this gentleman to my left hosts the number one podcast on all of iTunes in the health space called the Model Health Program. He's also a best selling author of this book called, that we're going to talk about a lot today called "Sleep Smarter", which is a topic that has an awful lot to do with your wellness overall, your fitness, your mental health. Your ability to perform in business is a topic that's understudied, underappreciated. And this is an expert here on all wellness, but particularly sleep as well. So, I have the great Shawn Stevenson with me here today. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Very nice to be here, Ed. 

ED MYLETT: Great to have you. Like, really, really excited about this. So, Shawn is, as I told you, he's not only written this book, And he's an expert on all areas, really health and wellness. He's a nutritionist, too, by trade, and he got into kind of the nutritional space. It's interesting how you ended up getting here, right? Like this theory I always tell everybody is life happens for us, not to us, right? And you had a really interesting situation happen to you. So when you were in college, this sort of got you into this space, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

ED MYLETT: Something happened to you in college where you ended up getting diagnosed, am I right about this? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

ED MYLETT: Tell them a little bit about what happened and how you ended up even getting into this space. What did you get diagnosed with? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, I was diagnosed with the so-called incurable spinal condition, degenerative disc disease and degenerative bone disease. And so, when I was 20, my physician at the time told me that I had the spine of an 80 year old man. 

ED MYLETT: 80 years old? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, and not a healthy 80 year old, because there's some 80 year olds out there who are, like, killing it. Right. But, I wasn't one of them, you know. My spine was, you know, I had two ruptured discs, my L4 and L5 S1, and so that was causing the sciatic pain.

ED MYLETT: Do you know how you did it? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So I thought it was some kind of trauma, you know, just from, you know, school work, lifting weights, whatever. I didn't know, but it was because of the degeneration and instability of my spine because the tissue of my bones and my disc were so brittle, basically. 

ED MYLETT: So there was something technically genetic with it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's the thing. And so that's one of the things we want to talk about as well. You know, what we've been studying for the last, you know, something called epigenetics. And so this is looking at control above your genes. And so just because you have a genetic predisposition for something doesn't mean that it has to happen.

ED MYLETT: Okay. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: If you think about a genetic program like this, like I wasn't born with the condition, right? I wasn't, I didn't have degenerative spinal issues when I was five. 

ED MYLETT: Good point. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Something happened and turned it on, turned it on. Yes. And so for me, It actually started a little bit earlier than that. And this was at track practice, you know, for those who know about the NFL combine. When I was, you know, 15, 16 years old, I ran a four or five 40. 

ED MYLETT: Wow. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so things were looking good for me with college and. I just started having all these injuries and actually broke my hip at track practice just running because my bones were so brittle. But nobody stopped to ask how did this kid break his hip just from running? Yeah, it wasn't until four years later when I got that diagnosis. 

ED MYLETT: You're kidding me. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

ED MYLETT: And so was that were you thinking I might end up in a wheelchair? I may end up not being able to walk or. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's exactly, that's exactly it and I was terrified. You know to get and here's the thing man. A lot of people hear about the placebo effect, right. Where you believe that something is going to happen when you take a medication. For example, there are studies done where folks take a placebo of a cancer pill, like a chemotherapy drug, and they proceed to have their hair fall out simply by the strength of their belief, right? A lot of people don't realize that placebos are 33 percent effective in clinical trials across the board on average. So you'd have to account for the fact that the placebos are going to have an effect. 

ED MYLETT: Sure. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So what happened to me was the opposite of placebo is called a nocebo effect. 

ED MYLETT: Nocebo. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So this is where you get a negative injunction that something bad is going to happen. And you believe it and you begin to have those symptoms. And so I went from a nuisance of a pain to chronic debilitating pain after I got that diagnosis. And I asked my physician at the time, is there anything I can do about this? You know, like, and being an athlete, I'm like, let's go, like, how do we fix this? 

ED MYLETT: Right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And he literally was like, I'm sorry, son, there's nothing you can do about this. This is something you're just going to have to live with. 

ED MYLETT: My goodness. Yeah, like a lifelong death sentence. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Exactly, exactly. And so this really sent my world spiraling, you know, and it took about 2. 5 years. There's a good happy ending to this, you know, but 2. 5 years go by and I'm reserved to literally laying on my floor most of the day. I was embarrassed. I wore a back brace. I went to a nightclub with a back brace on it, you know, in college. 

ED MYLETT: Nobody wants to date the dude with a back brace. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I was like the, you know, I was the cool guy, you know? 

ED MYLETT: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so it just really messed with my identity. 

ED MYLETT: I'm sure. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And, I gained a lot of weight by being so docile. So I gained about 50 pounds. 

ED MYLETT: That's hard to picture now. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Yeah. You know.

ED MYLETT: This guy's abs are freakish, just so you know 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Even growing up, like, I was the, the, Skinny kid in my family. And so, but I, we all, there's that fat gene and it got turned on. 

ED MYLETT: The fat gene got turned on. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And so, you know, getting all this way definitely slipped into some depression and it wasn't until, and this is really important, but a lot of people miss this and I know you know how powerful this is. It wasn't until I really hit rock bottom and I realized like I have a choice to make. I'm just literally, I don't care about living anymore. 

ED MYLETT: Wow. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I wasn't like, thinking about taking my life, but I just didn't care. I just got to that point or I'm going to do something about it. And I decided to get well, you know, and most people never do that. It's more like wishful thinking. We'll see what happens. I'll give this a shot. I hope this works. I'll give this a try. I decided no matter what I'm going to get well. And so, and it wasn't like, you know, a uniform, a unicorn came out and the clouds parted. Like it wasn't that kind of a moment, but, I felt this renewed energy, like I'm going to figure this out.

And I'd actually gone to school initially pre med when I first went to college . But I hate, I actually hated science. And so I dropped out of that and it's because of a movie boomerang with eddie murphy. I remember that of course I got into marketing. And so like, I was like, this is what I'll do. But fate had other plans for me, brought me back to science. And so when I was in college, we were taught pharmacology, right? 

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: There's a problem. You take a pill. Like we were taught a lot about sickness. We weren't taught about health. Right. So I decided to learn. Everything that I could about health and I became just obsessed. And long story short, six weeks later, after making that decision, I'd lost 28 pounds. The pain I've been experiencing for two and a half years was gone. Nine months later, I went and got a scan done on my spine. I regenerated my tissue. My two ruptured discs had retracted on their own. 

ED MYLETT: Oh my gosh. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I got my life back. Not back. It was better than it ever was. 

ED MYLETT: It was better than prior. That's amazing because there's so many people I think that are watching this that they get to that point too where they just don't care. Yeah. You're at that point where you just don't care. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Learned helplessness. 

ED MYLETT: Exactly right. And that the power, like really, this is an oversaid thing and sort of the personal development world, but like the power of making an actual real decision. I mean a real one, which is what you did. Literally altered your life. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Done. 

ED MYLETT: And it was really interesting because if you look back in hindsight, always life happens for us, not to us. It's interesting because your whole wellness background and nutrition background and obviously this, this debilitating diagnosis prepares you for being the number one guy in this space now, right? This is the number one guy in the nutritional health wellness space and the entire internet and the entire world. Number one guy, right, but it's also interesting that the marketing thing helps you too because you got a program you got a market, right? So if you didn't take the marketing detour, maybe the podcast isn't as big. Maybe you haven't helped as many people as you've helped.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I like to say life qualifies you, right? Life doesn't call the qualified, life qualifies the called and so it wasn't my intention to do this work, but life was really qualifying me because not only. Once I had this experience of something so called incurable, no longer being a part of my life, when I would hear other people say, you know, cancers, diabetes, heart disease, that these things weren't curable. I could take a firm stand in knowing like whatever created you. To think that something's outside the power of actually being able to heal you from whatever this is It's just stupid to think that something is incurable. 

ED MYLETT: I want to tell everybody something about this because this man's obsessed with health. He's obsessed. He's also gifted because he's got this background and he's got a brain to be able to digest this stuff and process it. But this topic is fascinating to me where we're going now this book right here. It's called sleep smarter. And I want to tell you one thing about this. This book isn't 20 pages. It's a comfortable read.

I read it in a day. I read the entire book in a day. And the reason was I could not stop reading it because I'm fascinated with rest and recovery too. So like, we're both fit guys. We're both not 15 years old anymore either, right? And it's interesting because people will ask me often, how often do you train and I train my legs five days a week. And I always think when someone tells me that, like, do you not understand the recovery process? You don't understand resting. So I train hard when I train. But I think one of the reasons I'm relatively fit is that I rest and recover with my muscles too. I didn't think about it though through the prism of sleep.

And so there's a lot of information out there about nutrition. You can pick a diet. You can pick a workout. There's not a lot of information about sleep and how important it is to your health, your wellness, your productivity, clarity of thinking, longevity, energy, all of it. And so, and I want to talk now about some specifics. So first things first. Why does sleep matter? Like, what's the big deal about sleeping? And we talked about it being one of the three pillars of the change for you. But in general, for someone who's out there that thinks, I don't have a degenerative condition. So, I work hard, I want to kill it, I want to work, and I know that not more sleep is necessarily better than less sleep. It's how you sleep, I think. But tell me, why does sleep matter? Let them first understand that principle. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Let's talk about three specific categories. Number one, the very visceral connection of your body composition. University of Chicago did a study recently. Blew my mind. I hope you're ready to have your mind blown. This is crazy. So they took exercise. I'm sorry. They took dieters. 

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Conventional calorie restricted diet. What I was taught in a university setting to have patients do and they monitored their results. Now they tracked everything. And they allowed them at this phase of the study to get eight and a half hours of sleep. Another phase of the study, they take the same exact people, same exact diet, they're not exercising more, they're not cutting any more calories, but they sleep deprive them. 

ED MYLETT: They deprive them of sleep. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes. So now they take away three hours of sleep, they're getting five and a half hours. At the end of the study, they compiled all the data, and they found that when individuals were well rested, they lost 55 percent more body fat. Simply by getting more sleep. Right? Now, I'm telling you, we've mentioned this when we were talking, but my book is called Sleep Smarter, Not Sleep More. 

ED MYLETT: Not Sleep More. Right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's really, the longer people sleep, they're going to have a tendency to hit the sleep cycles accurately. You don't need to do that. There are people who are getting six hours of sleep that are crushing it, crushing people that are getting nine hours. But this is just an example of like how much sleep matters. The question is, it should be, how is that possible? Correct. Right? So here's why. Number one, I mentioned human growth hormone.

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is a very anabolic muscle sparing, energizing hormone. So human kids have a tremendous amount of, this is why they're running around crazy at all this energy. Right. And so when we get around 18 to 20, we have a pretty noticeable drop. You know, in the clinical research in HGH, my argument is not because you're 18, it's because we stopped abiding by a sleep schedule, right? We're out of the house, right? You can't tell me what to do anymore, and so we start to really mess with our sleep cycles. 

ED MYLETT: So it's behavioral, not necessarily age. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes. Now, age is a factor, but it's not, in my opinion, the biggest factor. You know, it should take some more time before that noticeable 

ED MYLETT: It falls off a cliff at that age, right? Which it should, and it should be.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, exactly. Okay. It was a pretty sharp decline. Here's another thing. And this should be pretty mind blowing for folks as well. You know about, of course, everybody knows about melatonin now, for in regards to sleep. It's also a really powerful fat burning hormone. So a journal of pineal research. Now this is really fascinating. Melatonin, it increases your body's mobilization of something called Brown adipose tissue. 

ED MYLETT: What's it called? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Brown adipose tissue. Or you can call it bat. All right. So this is Brown fat. Brown fat. Operates much like muscle and that it burns fat. So it's a type of fat that burns fat. So when we think about it, we want to burn fat, lose weight. 

What we're trying to get rid of is white adipose tissue. You know, that's the kind of gooey stuff that people are trying to target. Brown adipose tissue, naturally we don't carry that much on our frame. There's some by your sternum, a little bit on your back, your shoulders. But we don't really carry that much. It's activated via cold. That's one of the things, that's why cold thermogenesis is such a big thing. 

ED MYLETT: I'm big on it. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And also melatonin, right? This sleep hormone. And if you're not getting a dark cycle, you're not producing melatonin adequately. And so this is another reason why getting more optimized sleep, folks were losing more body fat. And by the way, in the study, I said they lost 55 percent more fat, not weight. 

ED MYLETT: Yeah, fat. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's the key. 

ED MYLETT: Okay, so let's talk about this for a minute. Let's talk about melatonin. Let's stay on that for a second. Should you be getting more sunlight in order to get melatonin? Does that affect your introduction of melatonin into your body, getting sunlight, are they not related?

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's a powerful question. Okay. Most people don't think about this, but this is why I said, a great night of sleep starts the moment you wake up in the morning. Sunlight starts the process. 

ED MYLETT: It does. Okay. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, it was Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience did a study, and they found that folks who were getting more, optimal sunlight during the day. Number one, they had reduced cortisol levels in the evening and cortisol is like the joker to melatonin is Batman. All right. So if cortisol is elevated, melatonin is suppressed and vice versa. So that's number one. So they found that cortisol levels were lower at night. 

ED MYLETT: Tell people what cortisol will do to you.

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is another reason that study was so profound is because of the impact of cortisol when they're getting more sleep. Cortisol has this really interesting ability to break down your valuable muscle tissue and turn it into energy turn into glucose. So you can work so hard to build this muscle and lose it because you're not getting adequate sleep, right? And so It's a process called gluconeogenesis. It's a stress response because when you're in, you know, cortisol is kind of a glorified stress hormone. It's not a bad guy. It's just when it's produced in the wrong amounts and at the wrong times. All right. So gluconeogenesis, that's glucose creation. Break down your muscle tissue and muscle is your body's fat burning machinery.

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's the thing. This is why people who carry more muscle in that frame naturally just burn more energy. They burn more calories. It's such a valuable commodity that you will lose. Or have to continuously work harder to maintain if you're not getting adequate sleep. And that's really the key. So cortisol. Now sunlight does another really interesting thing. So it increases your body's production of serotonin. And everybody's probably heard of serotonin now. It's kind of this feel good neurotransmitter. A serotonin is a precursor or opening act for melatonin. So it's converted in your body into melatonin. So if you produce adequate serotonin, you're gonna be doing pretty good in that melatonin department. 

ED MYLETT: So that's a big reason why we want to control our sleep. Now, let's get into the sleep. Actually, I don't want to get into the sleep environment. I want to go through one more thing. There is an effect that I've never thought of when it comes to wellness and even sleep and the melatonin factor, all that into one, which involves your gut.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

ED MYLETT: So can you just, and by the way, what I don't want to do, there's so much in this book. 

There's 21 essential strategies in here. We're going to touch on like three. You got to read the book to get the rest of them, right? But involving that talk a little bit about gut health. And how that affects all of this as well. I just want people, for me, it seems to me lately, the more I'm reading about all wellness, all health, more and more of it seems to start to get tied to the gut. More and more things seem to be messed up in that area in most people that cause disease in their body, so to speak. So can you speak to that just for a second?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh man, it's an absolute epidemic, you know.  Towards the end of my clinical practice, you know, we've seen so many cases of Crohn's and colitis and, you know, IBS. And, you know, it's really somewhere that I shifted my focus and my practice. Today, we're not going to be able to break down literally what's going on with the microbiome and how to fix that. But we're going to relate this to sleep. So your gut is actually, when we talked earlier about melatonin, right? A lot of people, I know, I was shocked to find this out. I had no, when I was taught this in school, you produce melatonin from your pineal gland. End of story. But it's just not true. Right., Which is in your brain. 

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You have 400 times more melatonin in your gut than you have in your brain, right? And, they did a study and they actually were doing pinealectomies. So taking the pineal gland out and the levels of melatonin still remain stable. Okay. So there's something missing in our communication about melatonin. So sleep in many ways. It starts in your gut. 

ED MYLETT: It does. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so, there are interchromophane cells that are in the gut that are producing kind of sleep related hormones, neurotransmitters, and so here's another way that this matters. This was a really interesting kind of curveball that I saw where we've got serotonin where I talked about earlier, which is the precursor to melatonin. So I don't want to lose people here. 

ED MYLETT: I'm with you. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So serotonin, the vast majority of your body, serotonin over 80 plus percent is located in your gut. 

ED MYLETT: In your gut as well. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So we've got this dance happening in your gut and it's related. And this was our research coming from UC Berkeley and also Caltech specifically. Looking at how certain bacteria in your gut communicate with cells that produce these sleep related hormones and neurotransmitters. So to put a bow on this, we have to take care of our gut microbiome, right? The bacteria, which some people get a little weirded out by that. I know I did. You have upwards of 10 times more bacteria cells than you have egg cells.

Most of them are in your gut. And it's supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. But for many of us, it's become like a parasitic situation. lower level funguses, bacteria, opportunistic bacterias running our ship and they're not producing those adequate hormones and neurotransmitters to make sure we get great sleep. So I want to leave people with this real, since we're on this topic, three quick strategies. 

ED MYLETT: Yeah. How do you do it? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so I call these good sleep. Nutrients, right? And so these are specific things you consume that impact your sleep. So one of them, this was public, I'm sorry, the public library of science, right? The PLOS journal, anything I say, people can triple check me by the way. And so what they found was vitamin C, funny enough, we know about this for the immune system. Folks who are deficient in vitamin C had a tendency towards being the people who had more interrupted sleep, so they woke up more frequently simply by nutrient deficiency.

So also magnesium, which is responsible for over 300 biochemical processes in the body. It's a huge component of sleep. And so when magnesium is deficient, which is the number one mineral deficiency in our country today. You're going to have interrupted sleep or lower quality sleep. And lastly, as far as taking care of the microbiome, we just have to, really, this is more about avoiding. Avoid the things that kill your gut bacteria. So processed sugar, for the most part. I'm not saying you can't have pancakes. 

ED MYLETT: Of course. Right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: At some point, but that needs to be in the exception, not the rule. Because you're feeding the opportunistic bacteria. Chlorine. You need to be mindful of that.

ED MYLETT: Right. What has chlorine in it? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Our water. Okay. You know, if it's tap water. Okay. Chlorinated water. It's uses it. And by the way, I would rather have chlorine in the water than drinking, you know, recycled sewage. Right? 

ED MYLETT: Sure. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so a lot of people don't realize like 40 million households across the U. S. were tested and they found not significant amounts, but trace amounts, but enough to freak you out of chemotherapy, drugs of antidepressants, of heart medications. The question is, why would this be in our drinking water? 

ED MYLETT: Yeah. Right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is literally coming through 40 million Americans tap water. And it's because people are right. The cycle. People are pissing in the water and it's eventually kind of making this way back to your house. So I want chlorine in the water, right? If we're doing the practice that we're doing now, which I think it could be improved, but bottom line chlorine is antibiotic. Okay. All right. It kills stuff. 

ED MYLETT: Yeah. So you need some in there.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Your microbiome, guess what? You know, these are bacteria. So, I'm not, I'm not saying you need some, I think that there's a better way we can go about treating our water. But, if you had to decide, you know, take the chlorine. Yeah. Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back. 

Our experience of energy in the human body is driven by the power plants of ourselves, AKA the mitochondria. That's what we hear about in our conventional education and in conventional science. But the story is far deeper. Every process in our bodies is running off of this really remarkable sodium potassium pump. It's the driving force of all movement and energy creation and processing in the body. And if you hear those two minerals very explicitly, sodium and potassium, these are key electrolytes that are enabling our bodies to do all of that.

All the cool things that the body can do. Now, what happens when you're deficient in these key electrolytes? Well, your body and your metabolism in your brain start to suffer. Researchers at McGill University found that when you're deficient in sodium, not only do we lose brain volume, we also increase the risk of neurodegenerative conditions. When we have long, continuous bouts of not getting in these key electrolytes, again, including sodium, sodium helps to protect our brain and enables our brain to maintain proper volume. Another key electrolyte has a powerful impact on our brain and also on our mood and our temperament. 

A 2016 study reported that magnesium is able to reduce the activity of your sympathetic fight or flight nervous system and turn on the activity of your parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system. And a study published in Pharmacological Report states that magnesium is able to interact with inhibitory GABA receptors and induce immune response anti anxiety effects. I can go on and on with the benefits of these key electrolytes. These are minerals that carry an electric charge that enable our bodies to do all the things that the body does. Number one, of course, we want to eat foods that are rich in these key electrolytes, but also the number one electrolyte supplement in the world is from the incredible team at LMNT.

Go to drinklmnt.com/model. And hook yourself up with the number one electrolyte that has no sugar, no artificial dyes, no nefarious ingredients, just the highest quality electrolytes that are in the right ratios based on hundreds of thousands of data points from real people to fuel your energy, to fuel your metabolism, and to fuel your cognitive. And by the way, with every electrolyte purchase, LMNT is going to hook you up with a free gift pack to sample all their different electrolyte flavors. And by the way, make sure to check out their brand new sparkling electrolyte beverage as well. It's something I keep in my refrigerator all the time. Not only is it a delicious, sparkling beverage, but it is a performance beverage as well. Again, go to drink LMNT.com/model, and now back to the show. 

ED MYLETT: Those of you that are listening, you're more simple. You got these onans, right? That are controlled in your gut. And one of the things, if you're having a hard time sleeping, is you need to check your gut health. And you need to read the chapter in his book on gut health, because it is directly related to your serotonin and your melatonin in your body. And helping you sleep at an optimal level. Let's continue to talk a little bit more about sleep. A couple of tips you have for sleep that I love is being cool. So what does that mean? Like I sleep with a thing called a chili pad. I actually have in my bed. Yeah. Are you recommend those?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. It's in the book. It's in the resources in the way. 

ED MYLETT: I know it is. I just want to make sure they know this, but I'm not pumping that or not, but how important is it to be like, let's talk about how do I sleep better so I can get my gut health together. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. 

ED MYLETT: I got, it starts when I wake up in the morning, take it in more sunlight, preparing through my day. But give me a few things, like I know you talk in the book about sleeping cool and also being cognizant of your caffeine intake and when you take it too, right? So talk about those two things real quick.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Absolutely. So, as far as being in a being cool, this is in relationship to something our bodies have a process called thermal regulation, thermal regulation. When I was in school again, this is like the miseducation of Shawn Stevenson. So in school we're taught, you know, optimal human body temperature is 98. 6 degrees, right? Yes. Your body temperature changes a lot through the day. Like if I was to track your metrics. You know, take your temperature, test your blood sugar after a great workout, like everything, like we can get you diagnosed with something. And all you did was just do a great training session, right. So your body temperature changes a lot. And during the evening, there's a natural drop in your core body temperature to facilitate sleep. There's a correlation of release of certain neurotransmitters and hormones related to that drop, right? So if your environment is too warm, your body has to work harder to try to cool itself, and it can basically throw a monkey wrench in that process.

ED MYLETT: Okay, so cool down. So how do you get cool? Use a chili pad or not have too many blankets over you? Is that... 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, you know, the basic thing is, you know, we live in an environment today where we're very fortunate. Where we can literally, we have a thermostat, right? And so, researchers conclude that it's approximately right between 62 and 68 degrees is optimal for sleep.

ED MYLETT: I gotta tell you, along those lines, at least for me, I think I did, I think I took caffeine in too late at night. The other thing for me is, when I bought this ChiliPad, I could not get over how much deeper and better rested. I felt that when I woke up, when I was cooler, when I said I couldn't, that one thing alone was almost everybody I know who uses one or at least is cognizant of temperature in the room, says that's a huge thing when it comes to rest.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It can be that one thing, that's game changing. So I'm gonna back this up by studies, right? So there was a really cool study that was done on insomniacs, all right? So these are people with chronic sleep issues. And what they did was they put them in these thermosuits to drop their skin surface temperature just one degree. At the end of the study, they compiled the data and these folks were falling asleep and staying asleep just about as long as folks who did not have insomnia. That's awesome. So you've got ambient? Yeah. Or you can cool your ass off, right? 

ED MYLETT: What about caffeine? Talk about caffeine. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Caffeine. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So. Full disclosure, I love caffeine. 

ED MYLETT: Me too. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I'm a fan. 

ED MYLETT: Me too. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But it's how we use it in our culture and it's been used for thousands of years. Like it has a really interesting resonance with the human body. And so caffeine, so let me just first of all start with the study. So they took Individuals in this study to find out how caffeine specifically affects sleep. They gave them caffeine literally right before bed, three hours before bed or six hours before bed and track the results. Even six hours before bed was enough to cause some serious issues with their sleep cycles to the degree that folks, subjectively, they thought that they slept for eight hours, but they lost one full hour of sleep by having caffeine six hours before bed. Okay. And so what's going on there? Caffeine has a half life. It's called a half life of about eight hours on average. 

ED MYLETT: All right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So this means after eight hours, about a, you say if you have a 200 milligram cup of coffee, a hundred million milligrams, half after eight hours are still active in your system. And that can keep your nervous system pretty lit up for a lot of people. So, and it depends on your metabolism for it. Everybody's kind of unique. But in general, you know, I recommend if you're going to have caffeine, have it early in the day, early afternoon, especially in the morning. Give your body time to metabolize and process it. And some folks, that might be the thing that they need to avoid completely because they might not have an efficient metabolism. 

ED MYLETT: Okay, let's talk about two more things when it comes to sleep. This is wonderful, by the way, because even for me, like, my caffeine intake is too late in the day. It's too late in the day, it's affecting my sleep. I think I'm asleep and I'm not, right? I'm not getting deep sleep. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's the thing, yeah. 

ED MYLETT: Let's talk about color in the room. So how important is it for it to be dark to help you get into deep sleep compared to light in the room? Is there an impact of those two things? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes. To produce melatonin you need two requirements. One of them is darkness. Alright. The other thing is a cycle. Like it has to have a consistent cycle. So some folks that do night work, for example, but they can get their room totally dark, Yep. and they have a consistent night ritual, whether they're creating their own nighttime. 

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: They can produce melatonin. They need the darkness. And so just to back that up, Cornell University, this is a, Knock my socks off, but I geek out on this stuff. 

ED MYLETT: It's not geeked out. It's awesome. It's validation. People hear stuff, especially in the world. There's like, prove it. You prove it. Every time you make a point. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So they took, they took their test subject, they put them in an otherwise dark room and they took a light, the size of a quarter fiber optic cable and put it behind their knee. That small light was enough to disrupt their sleep cycle, all right. But this, we need to take a step back here because when people keep hearing me talk about sleep cycle and sleep, not sleeping more. It's really about optimizing those sleep cycles. So what does that mean? Sleep cycles are determined by changes in your brain waves.

Okay. And so there, there's more to this than this, but just to simplify, we've got gamma waves, which is sometimes happens during waking state. Most of us are hanging out in beta, then we move to alpha, then we move to theta, and then delta is deep anabolic, non REM sleep. We need to efficiently cycle through these, over and over, through the night. Most of those sleep cycles are about 75 to 120 minutes, depending on the person. And so what I recommend for people is a minimum of four complete sleep cycles, which is around six hours. 

ED MYLETT: Okay, good. That's what I get. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. But making sure that we're optimizing that. Okay. All right. And so how do we do this? That's all of these small things. 

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Being cool darkness. If you're, you know, if you're exposed to light in the evening, for example, it can throw specific. specifically throw off your sleep cycle, alcohol too close to bed can be an issue for some people. 

ED MYLETT: Can you believe in a couple things by the way, this is so good for me, I hope you're, you're driving in this, you're going, I wish I were writing all this down, you're gonna go replay this again, but I'm just curious, I haven't asked you this, what do you think about the blue light stuff?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, man. 

ED MYLETT: So if you don't know what I'm talking about right now, this is, this is powerful, I'm just curious of your opinion about it, what about blue light? So tell them what that is real quick, then we'll finish with a fun thing on sleep. But tell them what blue light means and how you feel about it. I don't know how you feel about it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, I've, I've been talking about this for, again, about five years. So a lot of folks have heard about this by now, you know.

ED MYLETT: But a lot haven't though, most haven't that are listening to this. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Again, I look to the research instead of just like, you know, this might be a problem, but so Harvard researchers confirm that blue light exposure from our favorite devices, you know, our smartphones, television, laptops does in fact elevate your cortisol at night, which they tested during the day. It doesn't impact you during the day. It's because your body's expecting a nighttime cycle. So it elevates cortisol and suppresses melatonin. Okay. And so according to their numbers, every hour you're on your device at night without some kind of a protection or strategy, it suppresses melatonin for 30 minutes.

ED MYLETT: Wow! 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so, you can go to sleep because you're exhausted, but your melatonin can still be suppressed. 

ED MYLETT: Got it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And you're not going to efficiently go through those sleep cycles that we talked about. 

ED MYLETT: So what do we do? Get off our phone or is there something else that we should do? There's a couple things. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So let's be real. Yeah. Tech's not slowing down. I'm not a Luddite. You know what I'm saying? I love my, I love my iPhone, you know. There are some, and the thing is, I don't, from my perspective, the research is not conclusive how effective it is. But I'm just going to throw this out there. Because for a lot of folks, anecdotally, they say it does help a lot. Which is using some kind of blue light suppressive device. So on all of their devices, for Apple, the iPads, iPhones, they have a tool called night shift, which pulls out the most troublesome spectrum of light, the blue light, this kind of white light, strong light, and kind of cools your screen off. 

ED MYLETT: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so you could just set that on, set it and forget it. You know, and then for your laptops, desktops, there's a tool called Flux, it's totally free. You just go to Dr. Google, type FLUX, and I've been using it for about five years. 

ED MYLETT: What a great tip. And I do want to say this to you. It's fantastic. Both those devices work. And the other thing is really. trying to get off that de before your sleep, not just factor for the deep sleep for quieting of the m last things you're doing sleep are worrisome. It's just much harder to get to sleep when you're doing that. So I try to give myself some runway before I sleep. And I know that you do too. Here's the good news. This is adult time, by the way, the next 90 seconds. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But before we get to that, since we're talking about the mind, I got to throw this in there for people because there are a lot of people listening to your show who want to be optimized in their performance , in their focus, their energy. And so, and I'm a nutritionist. I was like food is everything, but it's just not, your sleep matters more. 

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Then your nutrition and your exercise combine if you're not doing it properly. So I want to share this study. So this was published in the Lancet and they took physicians and they had them to complete a task. All right. Sleep deprived them, had them come back and do the same thing. Here's what happened. They made 20 percent more mistakes doing the same exact thing. And it took them 14 percent longer to do the same exact thing when they're sleep deprived. This is not uncommon in the world of physicians. And it's not uncommon in our world, right? So, there's a big difference between doing work and being effective. 

ED MYLETT: Sure. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And we're taking away so much of our effectiveness because we're sleep deprived. UC Berkeley did brain imaging scans, actually looking at what happens in our brain, when we're sleep deprived, just a short sleep debt of 24 hours, right? And so the first thing they saw was a cooling in the activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is a part of your brain responsible for decision making, social control, distinguishing between right and wrong. That part of the brain literally starts to turn off, right? And correlated with an activation in your amygdala, right. This is the more primitive part of your brain that's responsible basically for your fight or flight system. And it's concerned about survival of self, right?
 

ED MYLETT: Yes. Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is when you tend to say something you don't really need to say. You'll make decisions. You'll hook up with the person you weren't. You know, like a lot of decisions happen with your food choices. When you're sleep deprived, when you're tired, nobody, tell me if I'm wrong. I've never heard one person who's up at two o'clock in the morning, binge watching on, you know, game of thrones. 

ED MYLETT: Broiled chicken rice . 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Broccoli, right. I've just got it. This is when you go get the cookies and the ice cream, you know, like it never happens, you know. 

ED MYLETT: Thank you for sharing that, by the way. And that's an absolute fact that you're so right about that. By the way, that's just 24 hours of deprivation to write. That's not weeks or months of it. Like some of us are going through. And so we're gonna talk about this adult time. Here's the good news before you go to sleep at night. There is one thing you can do to help you sleep deeply that everybody would enjoy doing this for you adults out there. So tell them what that one thing is that can help you sleep. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So listen, you know, there's this term in culture, right? In the movies, right? Somebody's sleeping together. 

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. I was like, when I was a kid, I hear that. I was like, but you're not sleeping. Well, come to find out your sex life has a huge impact on your sleep life and vice versa. Your sleep has a huge impact on your sex. And so when you have an orgasm, you release a cocktail of chemicals that all improve sleep.

All right. And so oxytocin, for example, oxytocin. has a direct correlation to reducing cortisol. All right. So we talked about how cortisol can be a problem with your sleep. Oxytocin knocks that right out. Prolactin is another really interesting one. So there was a study I cited in sleep smart and this was done on laboratory animals.

And so they injected them with pro prolactin and they become sleepy immediately, right. So when you have an orgasm, you produce prolactin. Now here's a little fun fact. Males tested when they have an orgasm by themselves versus having an orgasm with their partner. You release four times more prolactin with a partner than you do by yourself. This is why I guess, you know, somebody masturbates and they're like, go eat a bowl of cereal and watch cartoons or whatever versus, you know, you're with your partner and they're like, you know, you're, you're sleepy all the time, you know, when you go, when you have an orgasm. So we've got that, we've got norepinephrine and on and on. Norepinephrine is a player in optimizing that sleep cycle we talked about. It's related to REM sleep, right? 

And REM sleep is where you get your dream on, but also REM sleep is responsible for something called memory processing. This is where your experiences, even from today, what people are learning about, it gets converted to your short term memory. And that's one of the places that really gets hit hard with sleep deprivation and also, you know, drinking too close to bed. By the way, I just got, I got to throw this in here. So alcohol does in fact help you fall asleep faster. Period. End of story. Bar none. The small issue is that it creates something called a REM rebound effect.

So this happens, since you're processing memories while you're sleeping, this is why you can have that experience. I know it's never happened to you. When you wake up, you don't really remember what you did. When you, when you might drink a little bit too much. Right. And this is because your REM sleep is disrupted. And so it also, this is why we have this concept of a hangover. It's not because you didn't sleep. It's because your REM sleep was so disrupted your sleep cycle period. Okay, right. And so what I recommend people to do is not to not drink. It's just like employ some simple strategies. Make sure you're getting hydrated.

ED MYLETT: Yes. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, the natural solution to pollution is dilution, right? So drinking some water to help dilute support your liver, maybe have a little bit of a curfew. You know Give yourself maybe, you know an hour or two before you go to bed, you know when you finish drinking. You know, just small things. There's several things you could do to not drink. Turn your life upside down, but still.

ED MYLETT: And the big thing is, the big thing is have a big O before you go to bed at night. And even better is do that with somebody else and you get four times the hit. Right. There you go. I love that. That's like, that's so, so good. Such good news for so many of you out there. I give you another reason to have that conversation with your partner. I know you have a headache, but. We want to sleep deep tonight. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So get off your phone. 30 minutes. 

ED MYLETT: Exactly. Hopefully all this stuff is related. The wine does help, but I get your point about the wine. So, okay. I'm with you on that. So this has been awesome. So what I want you to do. Number one, I want you to get sleep smarter. I want you to get the book. We've talked about this enough times. Here's how popular this thing is on audible. This is two years later. This book is still the number two seller on all of audible last month. So this is, that's a credit to you. It's such a powerful topic and you're such an expert on this, right?

I want to finish up though with winning. So obviously this is such a huge thing because sleep is tied to all of it. But now I want to kind of finish with you, right? Because you're this expert. You're obviously incredibly articulate. You're doing something you're chasing in your life, your real passion. Like you're obsessed with wellness, you're obsessed with health. So I think that's one of the reasons you're just so incredibly successful, right? But there's more to it than that. So if you were talking to this audience, this is someone who's, built this incredible practice. It's not by mistake. You're the number one person in this space, right?

Like that's, that's not number 19, which would still be pretty damn impressive, right? But number one in this space. So you become the best in the world at something like, how have you done that? Like, how have Talk to someone of becoming elite, becoming an elite performer, getting to the top of something. Is it just that you've chased your passion or there are other things that are the way you think, the way you process information, your identity, like what would you tell someone? Listen, this has been the key. Some of the keys to you becoming you. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Wow. That's, that's powerful question. You know, the first thing is jumping to mind. You know, when we go to school, we're taught what to learn, right? We're not taught how to learn. And so I'm a big advocate and what I've done is finding a way to learn faster, right? Becoming a great, somebody who is able to assimilate information. And here's what, I'll just tell you how I do it.

ED MYLETT: I want to know, that's my next question. How do you do it? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So, whenever I'm reading a study, whenever I'm reading a book, I'm thinking about how can I teach this? Right? Okay. As I'm consuming the information, because it's not about me.

ED MYLETT: Wow. You know that I do that to keep going, but I do that too. I didn't know I did it, but I do. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You cannot do anything of great success if this is about you. And so my passion is not about learning and being great in this field. It's about helping people and changing that story. Like I want to make sure that. I mean it breaks my heart. 

ED MYLETT: Look at you. You're just right there. Just changed you. You're good. Keep going.

SHAWN STEVENSON: When I think about these kids, you know, who are in cancer treatment centers right now, you know, and how things can be better and our system is broken, you know. We've got some amazing physicians, and many of them are my friends, you know. And now they're shifting more to integrative medicine, functional medicine. Because the way that we've taught historically, you know, in conventional medicine in the last few decades, we're terrible at chronic illness. Everything has gone up. How? 

If we're so smart and good at what we do, you know, and the truth is if you take a really smart person, which these are the best of the best and you teach them the wrong thing, they become world class at doing the wrong thing. And so that's what really drives me, man, is. 

ED MYLETT: I could see it all over your face. Actually, it's coming down your face. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Is doing whatever we can do to help to facilitate the next generation. And I know that so many of our problems in society, you just as big dichotomy that we're experiencing right now, has to do with people don't do well because they don't feel well. And so, instead of me getting out and protesting, that's not my, that's not my path. My path is how can I get people healthier so we can have great conversations so we can meet each other and have more compassion. It's very difficult to have compassion when you're sleep deprived. It's very difficult to have compassion when you're when you're dying inside because your body's experiencing, you know, chronic illness you know, all of those things drive me to be the best possible. Yeah, and so I was not expecting. 

ED MYLETT: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I was not expecting it to say that. 

ED MYLETT: I'm glad that you got so I'm glad you show that because it's the real you. And I'd tell you the first time we talked to you inspired me. Look at you. You're still thinking about it, right? The first time we talked, brother, you inspired me. Like, I knew right when we talked, like, that we're kindred spirits. And, I want to thank you for today. But really not for today, I want to thank you for the last ten years of your life, the work you've done, and what you're going to do the next ten years. You're, by definition, brother, you're really a world changer.

Like, you change people's lives. Like, think about that. This guy starts out, he had a real interesting upbringing that we talked about a little bit where he was raised in a pretty good environment, then a really bad environment, then he gets this degenerative disease, and you turn this life altering. 

For some people it would be a life ruinous diagnosis into not only you turning around your own life, but then you've inspired and helped millions of other people get well and change their own lives. Like, and I just want, I hope that Shawn gives you hope and gives you inspiration that if you chase your passion in life, if you learn to learn faster, if you think about learning things in order to give to others, all these great keys he's given you, and you get that kind of emotion on your face about what you do in your life and the difference you make, you can be a world changer just like this man right here to my left.

And so I don't want the relationship with you to end today. Because I want folks to get well and healthy, and I know science changes, information changes, and you're gonna, if you're following him, you'll be on the cutting edge of wellness and health and energy for the next decade if you follow Shawn. And so, they can find you at your podcast.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's called The Model Health Show. 

ED MYLETT: The Model Health Show, and then on social media, how do they find you? Are you under Shawn Stephenson, are there any underscores or anything like that?

SHAWN STEVENSON:  Just type me in, you should find me, but I'm at Shawn Model, S H A W N Model. 

ED MYLETT: Shawn Model on social media. I mean, really, thank you. For today, like I, I told you read this book and in one full sitting. Without putting it down and then like today we could have gone three more hours because everything you say you back up with studies, back up with facts, but it comes from this heart man. It comes from this place of passion. So god bless you, brother. Thank all of you that listen.

Thank you so much. We really enjoyed it. Those of you that are listening always ask you I bring you the best people in the world at what they do. I just brought you the greatest in the world when it comes to health and wellness. And particularly in sleep in this endeavor go get his book and in my case If you're watching this on YouTube, make a like, give it a comment. And if it's on an audio podcast, please anywhere you are, give it a review. 

It hope it moves up the rankings. I sure would appreciate it. God bless you and max out everybody. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, you already know what to do. Share it, share it out, give the gift of inspiration. of great education and good health. We need it now more than ever. You can send this directly from the podcast app that you're listening on or of course you can share this out with your friends and family on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode and share it on Instagram.

I'm @ShawnModel on Instagram and I always love to see the sharing out there. And listen, please hear my voice. We've got some of the most incredible shows Lined up for you this year. You have no idea, I'm not playing. Alright, so make sure that you are ready. We've got some epic masterclasses, the most phenomenal guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned.

Take care. Have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the model health show.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome and I appreciate that so much and take care, I promise, to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.