How to Sleep for Peak Mental Performance with Dr. Shane Creado | Jim Kwik

okay quick brain we have a great episode for you today today we're gonna answer the question how do you sleep for peak performance especially when it comes to learning and we have a very special guest today we have dr shane creato he's a psychiatrist board certified a medical doctor really focusing in the area of sleep he's also the author of the best-selling book peak sleep performance for athletes the cutting edge sleep science that will guarantee a competitive advantage and there's a quote on the back here from our friend brain doctor daniel amen he says peak sleep performance for athletes is one of the best books on sleep i have ever read it is practical actionable and will help you perform at higher levels than ever before i highly recommend it my friend thanks for joining us thank you jim it's such a pleasure to be here with you today yeah so dr creato you've been um a real resource for for me with my sleep journey and uh and so i wanted to invite you to be on our show to share your insights and instructions with with our community for those of you watching on youtube now i just want to mention on youtube we always put the unedited longer version of our show so if you're listening on itunes or you subscribe on spotify also listen and subscribe to us on on youtube also as well i'm wearing this shirt and it says sleep mode i love it you know it has uh one of those things where it's a you know airplane mode it has that button that you swipe and it has the green there i have my sleep mode shirt on and this is actually my super outfit that i kind of go to sleep in but um thanks for joining us thank you jim and that's so right when you talk about sleep mode and our devices i always refer to sleep as our mini vacation every 24 hours and that's what i want people to take back have fun with with sleep the harder you try the more likely you are to fail because trying wakes the brain up while sleeping is the most vulnerable thing we do and allowing ourselves to enjoy the time leading up to sleep in a meaningful way as our mini vacation our sleep mode is a great way of going about it i love that any vacation that's some that's a great reframe on our perspective you know as human beings we get to decide what uh what to focus on and also what things mean and what a great meaning to put behind sleep you know because some people have they have anxiety around them you know they're struggling with insomnia you know it's been a challenging time of recent so some people have this you know higher levels of stress and they're waking up multiple times at night some people have um sleep conditions like like like i do uh with uh sleep apnea you know obstructive disorders where there there's a block in and and in air flow and so how does uh let's let's talk about the brain and then i'm going to get into the the tactics because you have some you have some wonderful tactics on how to help people not only sleep faster go to but also stay asleep and get higher quality sleep you know you you wrote this book uh all about performance how does let's talk about the relationship between sleep and performance whether it's physical or mental performance when somebody's not getting good night's sleep how are they performing when people are getting optimal sleep because it's different than just you know getting a good night's sleep and really optimizing sleep for performance you know with the kind of athletes and then and producers that you work with absolutely so that's a critical concept to understand is it's not just about how much sleep you're getting as people in doctor's offices will say how much sleep are you getting and that's it the quantity is important jim but also the quality of that sleep if you have sleep apnea pain anxiety disrupted sleep then it's not good quality sleep couldn't wake up feeling miserable and the third piece is the timing of sleep as well your circadian rhythms so some people want to catch up on the weekends we call it social jet lag but actually that's a terrible thing because every weekend essentially switching time zones then going back on monday which is catastrophic for brain health as well as whole body health so if you have less inadequate sleep or poor quality sleep or your timings are all over the place it's going to have a profound impact on your brain health and we see that as direct impact to sleep loss whether it's the quality or timing or quantity on our spect imaging at amen clinics so interestingly chronic sleep problems look very similar to concussed brains on spect imaging and very similar to chronic alcohol use on spect imaging so the areas involved are the frontal lobes the temporal lobes the top part of your brain or the parietal lobes primarily now what do those areas do the frontal lobes help you with your reaction times your planning concentration sustained attention executive functioning how do you manipulate the concepts you learn to apply them practically also rational thinking and suppressing impulsive thoughts so when they're not working properly then you're going to have slowed processing speeds slower learning slower retention you're going to have difficulty with executive functioning difficulties multitasking planning prioritizing organizing things to name a few yeah that could be pretty debilitating when you're trying to go to school or be a parent run a business exactly and and that goes to show in our population in the us sleep loss is a major major factor contributing to to all sorts of ailments also the top five causes of mortality in this country directly related to sleep and 69 of high school students do not get adequate sleep it's associated with lower gpas increased dropout rates as well and then the temporal lobes which are learning centers are also profoundly impacted by sleep loss and they help you with regulating your emotional pendulum but also new learnings as you well know new learnings language word retention so it's kind of like a double whammy with sleep loss you're processing concentration doesn't work your rational brain doesn't work your temporal lobe zone works you get quickly overwhelmed think emotional resilience but not the good kind of emotions you talk about when it comes to learning but the bad kind easily overwhelmed frustrated giving up more easily and then those centers can't work properly to retain information so matthew walker did a good study finding that people with even one night of sleep loss their learning centers in the temporal lobes drop by 40 percent wow and that's that's not that's not a little bit that that is a lot and so wherever people are with their wither sleep they could probably improve it or they know somebody who can improve it what is uh what would you what suggestions where where do you start with somebody when they're when they're struggling in some way first i want people to know that even if they're not struggling with a sleep problem they might not be getting that optimal sleep and even in elite athletes stanford university has done a lot of sleep extension studies where they extend an athlete sleep by 30 minutes and see what happens to their performance of course they don't want to sleep deprive athletes and say well you'll do terribly in this year's olympics but let's do this experiment on you that's not going to work but when we see 30 minutes of sleep extension in in stanford athletes basketball shooting accuracy increases by over nine percent tennis players have a 4.2 percent increase in hitting accuracy your sprint times improve your peak performance improves your reaction times improve as well they've done more studies on strategic mapping nasa has done a few studies as well napping has been shown to increase just a 26 minute nap can boost your alertness by 54 and your performance by 34 so there are certain people throughout history even leonardo da vinci who are very strategic nappers and it's all well and good to say well you need your siesta or you don't need it if your boss doesn't understand the value of good sleep but strategic napping involves being in sync with your total sleep need and your rhythms your natural circadian rhythms so the first thing i would say is jim is to know yourself know the difference between tiredness and sleepiness most people don't know that difference so tiredness is if you've run a marathon you're exhausted but you're not sleepy some of my nba guys who have a night game they're tired but they're not sleepy their endorphins are surging their adrenaline is going through the roof you're not going to be able to sleep unless you are sleepy the other thing is not to always trust those fitness trackers because they're not perfect no one is perfect but to know how much sleep you think you need in order to be refreshed in the morning that's better than any fitness tracker out there so assuming someone doesn't have a serious underlying sleep disorder or chronic pain that destroys their sleep or a very noisy snoring bed partner or a pet that constantly jumps up and down accounting for those factors counting how much sleep you need for your brain is something you can do starting today have a fixed wake-up time find when you're feeling sleepy then get into bed and in the morning estimate how much sleep you got now most people most adults need between six to nine hours of sleep my elite athletes they need closer to 10 and a half or 12 hours of sleep but teenagers generally need around nine hours of sleep and that window six to nine hours is variable so i say 90 minutes is one sleep cycle so seven and a half hours of sleep is five sleep cycles if you count your sleep in terms of sleep cycles figure out what works best for you lock in your waking time all days of the week and count backwards if my wake-up time is 7 30 in the morning and i need seven and a half hours then i know my sleeping time should begin at 12 a.m but at 11 p.m my winding down routine needs to begin because my brain isn't a light bulb and i cannot just switch it on and off so a calming routine a warm shower brush your teeth hopefully twice a day meditation writing down your to-do list so that you don't worry about that while you're in bed and when you notice that you're feeling sleepy that's when you get into bed i always tell people to wear dark glosses or dim the lights be romantic at home in the evening because it allows your natural melatonin levels to rise so quantity timing and quality and of course if you do have a serious tissue like snoring or stopping breathing or acting out your dreams or sleep talking or sleep walking it might need further investigation with a sleep doctor and that's what i do as well correcting sleep issues but then how can i boost your performance whether you're a ceo or an elite athlete to get you to the next level do you sleep as your performance enhancing tool in your book you say sleep optimization is the last frontier in the peak athletic performance and that that's this very rings true with a lot of uh with a lot of clients we we probably share also as well to have to be at their best want to feel their best they will look their best they want to perform their best so this calming routine is so you started about an hour before bedtime yes around an hour before bedtime some people say even one and a half hours it just depends on your availability and we need to be realistic about it as well but i always say irrespective of whether it's 30 minutes or 90 minutes before bed it needs to be a consistent routine because we essentially have to train our brains to know we're going into mini vacation sleep mode and when we wake up in the morning as well the last thing i want you to do is go to your phone check your emails get updated on on things give yourself another hour or 90 minutes to get up to speed shower brush your teeth have your breakfast drive to work and then start because if you start activating your brain as soon as you wake up you're forcing your brain to your body to release more cortisol the stress from one which anyway peaks early in the morning and then you're potentiating it every time you wake up so now you have higher cortisol levels which may circulate a little earlier and earlier thereby causing you to wake up too early in the morning or in the middle of the night so we talked about your your evening routine um and again this is not about being perfect you know the goal is we you know because life is not perfect unless sometimes life and learning is messy and it happens to the best of us the goal is just to to advance right and to do what you can do with what you have and and it'll be enough um in the morning so we did your evening routine but in in the morning then you don't check your devices is that for you personally not for the first 30 minutes at least and i never have my work emails on my phone yeah we talk about that a lot um with regards to how can we train your brain for distraction and reaction um but that's it's interesting when you talk about cortisol levels also as well so in the evening time you're looking to go in that parasympathetic rest and digest you talked about taking a warm shower maybe a warm bath uh epsom salts with with the magnesium and when your core body temperature is cooling it kind of triggers your body it's it's time to to sleep so you have these triggers so that's temperature and then you mentioned light also as as well um deep what about um building out this sleep area or the sleep sanctuary you and i you you recommended um a weighted blanket is that something that you did you find as effective for individual yes yes weighted blankets are helpful for certain people especially light sleepers so the weight needs to be around 10 of your body weight and it needs to be hopefully hypoallergenic material because anything that increases your algae sensitivities will increase inflammation which will worsen your sleep so hypoallergenic 10 of your body weight and they're also cooling weighted blankets out there which might be good for certain people who get hot in the middle of the night women who are in that phase of perimenopause or menopause with hot flashes because typically the research shows jim that the temperature needs to be 66 to 69 degrees fahrenheit for optimal sleep okay and then people know that there's there's devices some people in our community they have devices like uh that that um reduces the temperature of you know other like a mattress pad or even these these weighted blankets could come in that form also also as well so you have light you have temperature you have no what about noise i mean you mentioned about a snoring bed partner or you know dogs maybe your pets that walk around do you uh do you recommend like a white noise machine or is that or earplugs or i would recommend your plugs if you have other things going on in the room if you're not sleeping alone and you are a lightsaber traditionally i'll say earplugs and even an eye mask or weighted eye mask unless you have blackout blinds and there's not even a of light from under the door or on your standby light on the tv some people are way more sensitive than others to to light to sounds to textures and so if we can kind of prevent any of that external stimulation then your brain will learn to sleep um there was a recent study looking at white noise machines and other noise it helps some people doesn't help others i wouldn't say that that's something we need to try first maybe 30 or 40 recommendations down the line and then maybe consider it sure so what would you uh what would their top five be then your top five recommendations and again everyone's individual just like you with diet some people they love kale but some people they just can't handle kale either the taste of it or maybe just doesn't agree with their digestive system um but just in general you having we're doing done this for so long working with clients especially whether it's remedial issues or it's performance issues right for optimization so you would say that if you're gonna bring it down to like five things that people can work with with their teams with their with their families so know yourself know how many hours of sleep cycles you need for 24 hours keep your wake-up time locked in all days of the week and have those root calming routines as your mini vacation and if you have to go out late at night with your friends you want to socialize everyone's been locked up for a really long time then if you're losing out on two hours of sleep that saturday night wake up at the same time sunday morning you've been doing the whole week but then make up for those hours of sleep you lost with a strategic nap at 1201 pm for that the amount of sleep that you lost and then wake up and continue your day and that way you're making up your total sleep time without pushing yourself into jet lag mode i also say your bedroom environment is key your bedroom is your cave it's not an extension of your living room and we need to train our brains to associate the bedroom and the bed only for sleep and sex with your partner like nothing else so you're not not for entertainment not for checking emails and doing work stuff not for studying but because it gets anchored your environment gets anchored to that activity for sure exactly and be process oriented rather than outcome oriented stop looking at the the clock or your watch all the time stop tracking your your sleep so obsessively that it sabotages your sleep follow the process be consistent and the outcomes will follow victor franco spoke about paradoxical intent where he said maybe if we stop trying so hard we'll be able to calm our nervous system down to function better he taught a patient with severe social anxiety he had pools of sweat in his hands to have fun with it and say let's see how much sweat i can generate a man's today before the party and eventually his anxiety subsided and he could he stop sweating through his bones and the same applies to sleep yeah some people have just like with their diet they get so um so much anxiety around it with men and everything that they that maybe it negates the benefits that could come from from eating that way same thing same thing with sleep that's interesting what about um our community of brainiacs you know they want to be limitless and they're you know they want to know about supplements do you recommend supplementation i mean again this is i i recommend everybody talk to their health practitioner you know obviously but are there certain supplements that are your go to yes yes i like now supplements in the right doses right for the right reasons for the right duration a lot of people take over the kind of sleep medications they can increase your risk of dementia because they block acetylcholine as well as their antihistaminics so they can worsen your restless leg syndrome and worsen the quality of your sleep some medications sleep can be addictive so all in all medications for sleep needs to be used short term your provider recommends it but i still want to go the underlying factors way the integrative functional approach to sleep find all the underlying factors like vitamin d deficiency so the first supplements i think of would be the things to correct any deficiencies so vitamin d needs to be over 60 to 80 not within so-called normal ranges 30 to 100 because the lower ranges you might have some profound adverse effects or not really good benefits so above 60 is where your vitamin d needs to be and if not you need to correct that with vitamin d3 and k2 for better absorption iron is needed to make dopamine in your brain and is also needed to make hemoglobin therefore thereby boosting dopamine so new learning concentration executive functioning but also oxygen delivery to the brain so if your iron levels are low if your ferritin levels are low those need to be corrected i like magnesium magnesium has been shown to promote deep sleep and in deep sleep gym we flush out toxins that build up during the day so think beta amyloid and alzheimer's disease through the g-lymphatic system a drainage system that was discovered just a few years ago and dream sleep is involving consolidation of our memories so we need both deep and dream sleep and some sleep medicines block one or the other and then it causes an imbalance that people feel terrible the next day so magnesium promotes deep sleep i like melatonin only to help people fall asleep as an adjunct or a helper to the winding down routine we already discussed and melatonin in very low doses 1.5 milligrams or 1 milligram gaba is a great supplement l-theanine lemon balm extract 5-htp 5-htp is a needed to make serotonin and melatonin go hand-in-hand those are some of my favorite sleep supplements i actually designed a sleep supplement for dr amen called put me to sleep where we have the magnesium and the low dose melatonin and the gaba and the b6 because b6 vitamin b6 and needed to make serotonin as well so those are my favorites there are other ones like uh cherry extract noble latin is one i've really been interested in lately which stabilizes our circadian rhythms there's a lot of good ones out there just be careful don't take too many at one time and be sensible about it just as you're with medications dosing timing regularity don't just take a supplement on some nights where you feel you're sleeping bad because then you've what struggled for one or two hours and then you take the supplement you're you're forcing your brain into jet lag there again yeah what about what about foods are there certain you know when we talk about brain nutrition i always prefer people to get it from their their whole foods but are there certain foods like uh or something people should be conscious of that dinner time in terms of what they're eating how they're eating when they're eating yes so what you do in your waking hours is as important as what you are doing while you're asleep so just as i said locking in a wake-up time and a winding down routine before bed i want people to lock in their exercise at least 30 minutes most days of the week at a fixed time and their meal times whether you're intimated fasting or doing three meals a day doesn't matter but those timings have to be locked in as well and preferably not eating at least three hours before your desired bedtime and i always say avoid the processed foods have more meat and greens and minimize carbs because carbs get converted to sugar which means more inflammation but there's one exception for my elite athletes before a major competition the average athlete may lose out on two hours of a night's sleep the day before big game or match so of nerves or because of nerves the cortisol is surging their adrenaline is going they're replaying what they've learned about their opponents they're preparing for the next day but it's going to sabotage their performance so in those instances i want to calm their frontal lobes down their prefrontal cortex and so i say have a nice carb rich meal have a slow carb have sweet potato fries have a nice pasta because it's going to calm their frontal lobes down it's going to allow them to fall asleep release that sugar throughout the night and thereby another reason why people may have high cortisol levels in the middle of the night and they wake up too early is if they go into low blood sugar levels in the middle of the night and then their brain says oh wait there's low blood sugar levels i know what will increase the cortisol the stress hormones will will release more sugar and then people can wake up so is that the carbs is that allowing them to have the sugars through the night or maybe having some yes unable tea or something like that absolutely so the carby carb rich food if they're not taking it every day it relaxes their frontal lobes helps them fall asleep a little easier but typically avoid any meals three hours before your desired bedtime because blood flow gets diverted there the gut produces 75 of you percent of your neurotransmitters so if your gut is super busy your brain will be busy too it's going to be hard for you to fall asleep yeah well i wanted to ask you this kind of bonus question on naps because i'm fascinated by this because especially when i look at the research and just field testing this for the past few decades with learning and then taking some kind of you know non-sleep deep rest or nap afterwards tell people to consolidate the information but when people are taking a nap is there ideal you talked about the 90-minute cycle is should naps be 90 minutes or can people get benefit from a 20-minute nap or a 30-minute nap yes they can so there are studies that have looked at 20-25 minutes 26 minutes 30 minute naps with good benefit it depends on your sleep cycle so i always say if you need to make up for a sleep deficit that you're carrying then you need to do that chunk like i described to you if you are laid out on a saturday night but typically what i do with my athletes and some patients as well is a strategic nap just because you can boost your learning and your retention of information so in those cases a 25 or 30 minute nap is great now if you go into the 45 minute mark to the 60 minute mark you're actually forcing your brain to wake up wake up out of a deeper stage of sleep so you may feel a little groggy a little slow a little lethargic whereas if you get that 25 to 30 minute window some people even need 15 minutes if they have shorter sleep cycles but if you're waking up in their window then you're waking up out of a lighter stage of sleep so you've gotten the refreshing sleep that you needed and you're waking up alert and refreshed now in certain situations before major professional exams or competitions those who hopefully not drinking coffee every day we can do a caffeine nap and take the caffeine just before you get your nap set your alarm whether you're sleeping or not if it's a deep rest that's fine because you'll be waking up more alert your brain is recharged i look at sleep as a recovery tool as a recharging tool and then you'll be more alert and able to retain more information at a quicker pace than you normally would yeah our community is all about that every little advantage that they could get and so this is an amazing conversation about peak learning and peak performance by using modality that some of us we don't um we don't put our attention to which is that of our getting proper sleep but there's definitely a science and an art so um dr creator thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing you this wisdom i would recommend everybody take a screenshot of this i actually bought two copies of your book you're watching this on video and i would um i would love for everybody as i asked you to do this take a screenshot of this video or this uh audio that you're listening to and tag us both in it and what i want you to do is i want you to share your favorite sleep advice or one sleep tip because when you when you teach something it's called the explanation effect something you just learned you explain it to somebody else maybe online so your fans your followers your family your friends can benefit from it also as well and because we'll see it i will repost some of my favorites and i'll actually give two copies uh out to uh to those randomly who posts just as a thank you and dr crowder where can people find you on social media my instagram is peak sleep performance it's one word big sleep performance or my website shanecreato.com people want to engage me for conferences or workshops for sleep optimization or work with me and jim i'm so grateful for this opportunity and the community because sleep in a study a few months ago in out of new zealand when they compared quality sleep versus nutrition and exercise sleep came out on top yes because all those three things go hand in hand and the cool thing is sleep is free we're born with it it's completely modifiable it's completely within your control if you know how to use it as a performance enhancing tool yeah and it's a mini vacation yes it's convocation a good 30 times uh 30 times a month and uh so i encourage everybody you know sleep is uh it matters especially for especially for your gray matter so make sure you at night you turn on your your sleep mode uh dr creato thank you so much for being on our show everyone thank you for listening make sure you subscribe to our youtube channel so you can watch the entire conversation unedited uh latest ratings as you often do make sure you post tag us both in there we'll put the show notes with all of those great supplements also as well and links that dr creato talked about at jim quick.com forward slash notes and we'll see you in our next episode take care hi quick brain it's your brain coach i want to thank you so much for watching this video three things to do number one make sure you share this because when you teach something you get to learn it twice update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well number two make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing because if you miss a video you miss a lot and finally make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out we put out the latest and the greatest one extra thing if you want really close attention then text me here is my phone number three one zero two nine nine nine three 362. did you remember that number 310-299-9362 shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch ask me your burning question and i wish your days before lots of life lots of love lots of laughter and always lots of learning i'll see you in our next video

Channel: Jim Kwik

Views: 13,174

Rating: 4.9688473 out of 5

Keywords: kwik learning, Jim Kwik, Kwik Brain, Memory, brain, reading, speed reading, mind valley, jay shetty, focus, success, improvement, motivation, habit, method, mindset, limitless, book, memory

Id: fgsgNydC4go

Length: 33min 59sec (2039 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021