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Sleep is critical to health and goes hand in hand with nutrition and exercise.  In this episode, I chat with Tara Youngblood, founder of Chilisleep, an innovative company with “science-based sleep products to inspire people to sleep better”.

Tara, as a self-described “Sleep Geek,” used her background in science to unlock the connection between temperature and sleep to solve her sleep problems. 

Tune in to this episode to discover:

• The phases of sleep and the importance of deep sleep
• How lack of sleep is like being drunk and what it looks like to your brain
• The link between sleep and athletic performance and learning
• How famous creatives use sleep in their work
• The impact of sleep on diet and exercise
• How to plan for good sleep
• Common sleep issues
• How wine and cannabis affect sleep quality
• The effects of Ambien on sleep
• How temperature affects sleep
• Sleep hacks from Tara and Diana

The ChiliPad has changed my life – literally. My sleep, and in turn, my health, has dramatically improved since using the Ooler sleep system.

I strongly encourage you to join Tara’s 5-Day Back to Sleep Challenge. In less than ONE week, you could feel blissfully rested, even on those mornings where you don’t have time for a full night of slumber. Join the FREE 5-Day Back to Sleep Challenge today.

And if you decide to try one of their products for yourself, use Chilipad20 for 20% off a full chiliPAD sleep system, OOLER15 for 15% off a full OOLER sleep system, or chiliBLANKET10 for 10% off a full chiliBLANKET sleep system!

Connect with Tara:

Websites: Chilisleep and The Sleep Geek

Social Media:

Instagram (@the_sleep_geek) 

LinkedIn

Facebook (The Sleep Geek) 

Twitter (@the_sleep_geek)

Episode Credits:

Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers, Lauren Manning, and James Connelly. Our producer is Meg Chatham, and our editor is Emily Soape. And of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.

This episode is sponsored by FOND Bone Broth, one of my favorite “better broth” companies. Their broths and elixirs are not only well-sourced, but they are delicious. Visit their website here and enter the code SUSTAINABLEDISH for 20% off your first order.

Transcript:

Diana Rodgers, RD  0:00  

Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Today I have with me Tara Youngblood. We are going to be talking about all things sleep. I’m a huge sleep nerd, as many of you probably know. I’m a huge fan of her products that she makes –  the chili pad and the chili blanket, among other things. And so I wanted to have Tara on so we can talk about because she, she knows so much about the benefits of sleep, what we what happens to our brains when we don’t get enough sleep. And so welcome, Tara. 

Tara Youngblood  0:31  

Thanks for having me. Thrilled to be here. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  0:31  

Yeah. So I always tell folks that, you know, nutrition is probably you know, what you’re eating is the biggest chunk of what you can be doing for your health. But next to that is making sure your sleep rhythms are working for you. And you’ve done a lot of work around sleep temperature, and all this kind of stuff. So let’s get into it. How did you become this Queen of Sleep? Let’s just dive right in.

Tara Youngblood  0:57  

Yeah, so I actually am not a good sleeper naturally. I’ve never been a good sleeper, and kind of battled with insomnia. And then unfortunately, about in 2007, we lost our youngest son, Benjamin, and the grief and depression took what sleep I was having totally away, I was basically a zombie. You know, at that point, that kind of sleep deprivation and it really doesn’t take a lot you figure even after 16 hours of sleep deprivation, that’s one night you’re already starting to be equivalent to a blood alcohol level sort of driving drunk and, you know, had an epiphany, actually at a at a tradeshow where we were selling the chilli pad, and I’m like, wait, I’m selling sleep products and I suck at this. This is terrible. How do I how do I fix this? And so, you know, my background is in physics and scientific research. So I kind of put that hat on and said there’s there’s got to be a solution out there. I spent a lot of time and, and all sorts of different methodologies. You know, I think there’s a neuroscience approach to sleep, there’s a psychological approach to sleep. Chinese traditional medicine has different approaches for sleep, Ayurvedic traditions also do. They’re sort of all these different approaches, all of them have different wins and different, you know, things you can take away from it. And so that’s sort of the crossroads of where I got to, and kind of partly because I like to bake and cook. But I kinda got to a spot where there’s got to be a recipe. And it turns out my recipe is different than your recipe that’s different from everyone. But once you know your recipe, it’s kind of like you can take something that’s a very complicated dish and break it down with the recipe, and almost anyone can make it. That’s kind of the idea with sleep is to get it broken down and easy for people. So many people have lost hope in sleep. I was. I was at the bottom of that, well, kind of having lost hope in it. And it’s it but it’s findable. You can find your way back. And once you have a recipe it is great armor, because even if you don’t do it every night, you can always go back to it.

Diana Rodgers, RD 2:57

So let’s talk a little bit more about sleep science. Let’s talk about the different phases of sleep to start with, and what’s happening in our brains when we’re in these different phases.

Tara Youngblood 3:09

Generally, there’s deep sleep, light sleep and REM sleep. Pretty fair descriptions of each one. REM sleep is rapid eye movement. Most people are familiar with that. It was the most studied form of sleep when we really started studying sleep. Light sleep is kind of the ribbon of sleep that goes through out there’s different parts of it –  the K complexes and spindles and things like that. There are things that happen during light sleep, but most of the focus right now is on deep sleep. We’ve really discovered that deep sleep is tied to any of those long term health outcomes. So if you like the term health span versus lifespan, for me, it’s less about living a really long time versus living really good quality life that whole time. And sleep is just got a big part of that specifically deep sleep. So REM sleep, you know is again, rapid eye movement, your brain looks a lot like you’re awake. Oftentimes, if you wake up from dreams and remember dreams that’s coming out of REM sleep. But deep sleep plays a role in that recovery. And it’s also when your memories are filed. So there’s a physical element of not long after you go into deep sleep, your body releases a hormone, stops you from using the restroom and puts you into a lower heart rate and really starts down pedaling. But your spinal fluid will come up over your brain and wash your brain of plaques and toxins. And a lot of that is what is it now attributed to Alzheimers, it’s those buildup of plaque there. And part of that is if it doesn’t get clean, it builds up. And so deep sleep has a role in keeping that clean. It does it very much for all of your systems of your body. So you do that same sort of methodology to your immune system to your response systems in almost every aspect. So cardiovascular disease, your breathing you know, it’s not one or the other. Even to memories, and we think of memories not as a physical manifestation, but we think of that as mental. But you know, what happens with your memories is you don’t file them during the day. And one of my sort of favorite visualizations, because I love a neat desk is, if you were to put all your files during the day on your desk, and you didn’t file them every night, so you never cleaned it off, you just kept piling it up and piling up. As you imagine, you’d overflow your office, and then you might overflow wherever else you’re going with that, and you wouldn’t be able to find stuff. And that is really what happens throughout our lifetime if we don’t have the time during sleep to file those and put them where they’re supposed to go. And really over the course of about two weeks, you file memories. So obviously, when you think about it, you don’t remember three weeks ago on Tuesday, what you had for lunch, but you might remember last Tuesday, what you had for lunch. And you may really remember Tuesday, if you had a big fight with someone that you care about, or there’s context around it, that would change that from being just a random Tuesday to being something you need to remember. And so that process of what sticks and what goes is something that happens during deep sleep. So it is it’s it’s you know, everything from growth hormones and healing, to memory filing, there’s a lot going on, even though it seems like nothing’s happening. 

Diana Rodgers, RD 6:20

Let’s talk a little bit more about the driving drunk thing, what happens, you know, we know that there’s more car accidents when the time changes. And so what’s happening in your brain? You know, if you were to put someone under a scan, does it look like they’re actually intoxicated?

Tara Youngblood 6:37

Yeah. So from a scan perspective, you know, it’s it’s not, it doesn’t show up in a scan, other than the sense of what’s happening in your prefrontal cortex. So, you know, there’s not the activity that happens normally in awake. And it’s really about like flow of organization. So if you figure all the things that are happening in your brain are like a busy day on a subway, and generally everyone knows where they’re going. But if you took away all the signs, and no one knew where they were going, and you took away that organization, then suddenly you have all these people, everyone’s trying to figure out something, they’re not on a mission, they’re not going from point A to point B and know where they’re going. But if they were suddenly all jumbled up and said, okay, find your train, but there’s no signs and every platform is different, it would be chaos. And that’s really what happens is that the organization and the methodology of what happens in your brain starts to break down when you lose that cognitive ability. And it’s not just about being drunk, you know, even just a little bit of sleep deprivation, they’ve done studies on day traders of like, just a little bit less sleep. They’ve done studies on you know, those test taking all those college students, we all did it, we cram all night. Turns out actually going to bed is way better than cramming all night, you’ll remember at least what you had in your brain beforehand. But the ability to find those files back to that filing, if it’s all cattywampus, you’re not going to be able to find what you need to in the end for that exam. So it’s, it’s pretty prolific. We see it with athletes, and one of the things that happens is they just have more injuries. So the injuries is a huge indicator when they’re tired. So beyond losing some of that length of career, you also have more injuries, and that, that’s just for high school students. It doesn’t mean you have to be some professional athlete. But if you’re a weekend warrior, and you’re running marathons or doing whatever you’re doing, keep in mind that those injuries are often tied to, again, that lack of sleep. Part of it’s a cognitive performance, but it’s also that physical side of you’re just not as coordinated, kind of like you’re drunk.

Diana Rodgers, RD 8:37

Yeah, and I know for learning, it’s so important to have adequate sleep and our kids really aren’t sleeping enough and they’re on their devices. And even the blue light from the devices is problematic for them. But I have heard that you’re going over scenarios over and over and over. And there have been many times that I’ve woken up with a solution to either something I was trying to write or articulate or a graphic I’ll dream very visually. So is there science behind that too, right?

Tara Youngblood 9:05

There is very amazing science. In fact, that’s one of like I you know, back to being a geek, one of my favorite, you know, sort of useless facts kind of thing about sleep, although it’s not entirely useless, but it is just sort of goofy. But a lot of actually famous people, problem solving and creativity. So you take like Vincent van Gogh all the way to Thomas Edison. They all used sleep to solve their dilemmas. Salvador Dali, some of those landscapes that look very dreamlike all played a role in doing this. And so there’s actually a first part of sleep the first five minutes in the last five minutes of sleep have a unique role in what we do for sleep and for problem solving. That’s pretty amazing. And Thomas Edison took advantage of this by once you fall asleep within that first five minutes as you go into light sleep. Your body relaxes and you lose muscle control. So he would you can Google it. It’s kind of fun online, but he would lay on his workbench with two steel balls in his hands and when he fell asleep the steel balls would fall out of his hands and wake him up. Because when you wake up out of this hypnagogic sleep, your brain is in a different spot. So kind of if you’re a matrix fan or you’re like sci fi in the sense of what does it look like if you take the rules of physics out and you could jump buildings. This is when you’re doing “Supermans”. This is when you’re, you know, able to leap tall buildings in a single leap kind of thing. Your brain, your prefrontal cortex has let go, and is letting you run rampant through your solutions or through your problems to find a solution. And so the power of that blue sky thinking, open mindedness. This is the most open minded blue sky time you’re going to get. And it’s pretty fabulous for solving problems. And so it’s actually really powerful to to sleep on it. It’s not just your grandma saying, you know, go ahead, sleep on it make a decision in the morning, it actually really works.

Diana Rodgers, RD 10:54

Yeah, and I’ve noticed napping can really help me too. If I’m really you know, spinning my wheels on something and just not feeling super productive. I’ll just take half an hour nap or so 45 minute nap. And it’s a complete reset, I’ll wake up a totally different person, almost like it’s a brand new day.

Tara Youngblood 11:14

Yeah, it is asleep the role of sleep for that. And I, I really look at an equation almost probably it is the mathematician me. But you know, we look at diet and exercise, you know, by themselves. And obviously, exercise helps diet, but you have heavier weighting on the diet. But if you combine those two things together, pretty powerful. But I would, I would put sleep as the magnifier. So if you want exponential change, if you want big change. If you want better willpower to make those decisions to eat, what you want to do to choose what exercises to be able to work out a little bit harder, sleep is is that amplificator of that it’s going to make it a bigger thing, even to the point of if you don’t sleep, well, you probably shouldn’t try to start a diet on the night day you didn’t sleep well. It’s just not going to go well, you’re actually going to be wanting to eat all of those bad calories. Your body is driven to want those easy carbs. That’s why like in college, those bad nights where you stayed up late. You’re like craving Waffle House or something nasty in the middle of the night. It’s a thing it really is your body craves that. And on average it eats 450 more calories and not awesome calories at that. So it definitely is a magnifier. If it’s bad sleep, it’s going to magnify all the bad stuff. But it’s also going to make the good stuff even better.

Diana Rodgers, RD 12:35

Yeah, I know that it’s really dangerous to be working out hard on poor sleep. But also I remind people that even when, from studies with glucose monitors, we know that people who have had a poor night’s sleep, they’re just not as insulin sensitive, and they’re going to crave carbs more. Like, that’s just what happens. You want those comfort foods more. Your decision making. I mean, even with some of the folks that I work with that, you know, really need to be very careful about what they eat. This is a trick from Overeaters Anonymous, actually. I sat through a bunch of meetings just trying to understand their methodology, which I think is really smart. But they have you decide what you’re going to eat that morning or even the day before when you’re kind of clearly thinking about everything. You write it all down, because as your day goes on, and we know this from wasn’t it, Obama only wore like three different things because you can only make a certain amount of decisions throughout the day. And was that him that? Yeah. So by the end of the day, you’re making bad decision. And if you put alcohol in it, you make all kinds of bad decisions, right? About lots of things, including food. And so, so having your plan clearly laid out. And I’ve even I, I tried to be incredibly organized as a person too. And so when you were mentioning the desk and the files and everything. I mean, my email is files and files. And when I look at someone’s phone, and I see like 23,000 unread emails, I want to have a panic attack. That’s just I need the order so much. And I know you’re the same way.

Tara Youngblood 14:13

I am and my husband is the opposite. And I’ll pick up his phone like, oh, send a text for me. And I’m like, but like, I don’t know, if I could do that. I’ll be really fast. I put it away because like, I can’t look at that. 

Diana Rodgers, RD 14:30

I know, I know. So when you’re using the analogy of the file cabinets or the file folders and everything going in its place. I know I always feel my best when I have my list at the end of the day before I shut down my computer. I know what I’m going to be doing the next day. I can shut that all down and relax in the evening, have a meal not too close to bedtime. Go to bed at a pretty early hour. And the next day I’ll just wake up feeling completely ready to start the day. And I’ve just like this is just a self organizational tactic that I’ve used on myself. But it sounds like there’s, there’s some good science behind all that.

Tara Youngblood 15:06

It really is from a behavioral psychology, you want to do what you want to do like to accomplish. put those goals out there. Actually, you get dopamine from checking things off and creating those lists. Some of us crave that more than others, which is why we want that order.  We want that checking off the list.  We crave that, because our brain receptors have said, okay, when you do that, you get dopamine, which is just that, that good feeling. And so sleep is very much that way. I think a lot of people, the first mistake they make is thinking that I’m going to try to solve something.  When we are going to go to sleep, you know, when you go to diet or fitness, who started out your morning, and you’re going to do your day’s worth of whatever you’re trying to change. For sleep, it’s really the worst time to say I’m going into bed and I’m tired, and I want to fix something. And so that is really where it needs, it needs even more planning, because you’re really not at your best when you’re going to start on a new mission of sleep. It really has to plan that first morning. If this is what I’m going to do differently. If you’re going to do a tea or a supplement, I recommend putting by your toothbrush. Again, BJ Fogg is fabulous about his tiny habits. The behavioral psychology of trying to change something is keep it small, but definitely anchor it to something you’re already doing. And doing that for sleep is critical, critical, critical. Because when you’re exhausted, and especially if you’re in that insomnia, you’re in sort of heavy, you know, almost drunk state, trying to solve something is not going to be successful. Most the time, you’re like, I don’t care, I’ll just figure it out tomorrow. And if you don’t figure it out tomorrow, then that’s when you get in this sort of rhythm of bad sleep. But trying to figure it out, when first thing, lay it all out, decide what you’re going to do. Anchor it to something you’re already doing. If you brush your teeth every night, hopefully you do. You know, something like that. Or even if it’s just put it right by the toilet. We all go to the restroom before we go to bed. Whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be complicated. But anchor, anchor what you’re doing. And plan the day before is the most important thing you do for sleep.

Diana Rodgers, RD 17:06

So let’s talk about different types of sleep issues. So some people have a hard time staying asleep, other people have a hard time falling asleep. I’ve heard that waking up too early can be sometimes an anxiety type of response where insomnia is slightly different. And there’s different tactics we can be using for these different sleep issues.

Tara Youngblood 17:28

Yeah, so I like to break up the night into basically three buckets. And I coach when in my TEDx talk was like buckets, why buckets. And I think part of it as I grew up, my grandmother had a dairy farm and I have four boys. And so like shoes have bins like everything is kind of like the only way I can keep chaos in order is to have buckets. So if all else fails, put it in the right bin. And I don’t care if the bins messy but at least it’s all tidy. But needs to be tidy. 

Diana Rodgers, RD 18:00

We are so similar in so many ways. 

Tara Youngblood 18:01

Because sleep is really messy, I talked about it in buckets. And so the first bucket is at bedtime.  So if you have a hard time falling asleep, there’s definitely things you can do that are sort of specific to this. You mentioned a weighted blanket. So a weighted blanket gives you a little burst of serotonin, it helps you to relax, it helps with that anxiety piece. You know, temperature is another key role. The Sleep Switch, which was not coined by me, it actually came from Clifford Saper, out of Harvard sort of discovered it and I think it was 2003. I can send you the link if you want. But it really is triggered by a change of temperature. And when we think about that, the key word there is change, because our temperatures right now today in our lives are pretty consistent. So even though it changes outside our environments that we’ve created, that are nice and comfortable, are all pretty much the same. So even at nighttime, you may drop it a couple degrees, but you’re not making a wild change. And your body’s evolved over time to live outside for the most part. So even though we had structures, the structure itself changed temperature throughout the day, just like it does outside. And so our bodies are used to that change. And so there’s a whole spectrum of what people can do with temperature to make that change. Some people it’s as simple as putting on socks and warming their feet, God bless them. They can, they can get triggered that way. And it doesn’t sound very significant. But it can be for some people.

Diana Rodgers, RD 19:24

I have this, yeah. I definitely have a little bit of a Raynaud’s reaction sometimes. And if I can’t, if my feet are freezing cold, there’s no chance that I’ll be able to fall asleep.

Tara Youngblood 19:32

Yep. So I would say socks are warming your feet actually, even if it’s just if you don’t like socks on your feet, you know, get one of those soak tubs for your feet or just stick them in the bathtub, warm them up. Other people will have to take a whole shower warm to do that. Take a nice warm shower or bath that will work. But then there’s also the people that are naturally hot blooded. That’s often not enough and so they have to go the cold route. That’s a little more extreme and then all the way to ice baths. So, Terry Wahls with MS is a big advocate of that. Obviously, with MS, there’s lots of different things going on in your body. Then you’re looking at it an ice bath, but an ice bath about an hour before you go to bed. If you can’t fall asleep, and this is whatever extreme you go to it, it will absolutely do it. So you don’t want to do it right before you want to go to sleep because you’d get a little bit of an endorphin buzz. And then when you come down off of that about an hour later, you will feel like you’ve gotten hit by an elephant tranquilizer. It will knock you out and you get really great deep sleep. We obviously have a product, we talked about thermal regulation. I’ve spent a lot of time with thermal regulation. Our product cools and heats your bed. So there’s a middle ground in there that you can use a device like that, where you’re going to be able to adjust the temperature and set that so you can use that to warm up or cool down. But the other methods of sort of using water in some form or another that works as well. Some people also just taking a walk outside, spending some time in the evening outside. We all want to spend our TV time in the evening, and I get it.  But if our outside time is outside, the environment will also trigger us to want to go to sleep when it starts to cool down back to the days when we were outside in the evening.

Diana Rodgers, RD 21:13

You know, it’s funny because I when I first started seeing your products, they were marketed to me by a lot of men who were just so excited that they could finally have a cold bed and I was like why would I want a cold bed.  And I know the products called chilli, but when I got your product and so I did the bed thing, but first I did the blanket because I was most excited actually personally about the weighted blanket that you could heat up. And I was like, I cannot wait to just burrito myself on the couch and just see what this feels like. So, I did that at about eight o’clock one evening.  The day I got the product. And by about 8:15 I was hit by an elephant tranquilizer. That is exactly the feeling I had and I didn’t even know how I was going to make it till nine. I was so out and I was I had the biggest smile on my face. And I mean it just makes a huge difference. I think the weight plus the heat for me. So I guess it’s different for everybody. Some people need it cooler. But for me to fall asleep initially.  And I even, the chilli pad, the one that goes on my mattress. I also I crank it up all the way before I go to sleep. And in a cold New England winter, there is nothing better. Like, I’m running to my bed. I cannot wait. I’m up there going to bed before my teenagers just ready. And my teenagers have actually, my son has stolen my blanket for his van.  And he loves the feeling of just the weight on him not as much even the heat but just the weight of it.

Tara Youngblood 22:45

Yeah. And I will say that weighted blankets again, sleep and our psychology can be very complex, obviously. But there are some you know, the simplicity of a weighted blanket is utterly amazing to me. You know, as someone that has dealt with, you know, pretty severe mental challenges. Certainly after Benjamin. I was a pretty big mess. And so to just have weight on you be a really big release and talk to a lot of people that were super skeptical. My husband included, he’s like, I sleep great. I don’t know if I need it. And he’s like, one night he slept with it. Because I was out of town. And he’s like, that’s pretty amazing. Like, wow, I would have,  he’s like I totally thought you were crazy. And this was like you’re just faking it somehow. He’s like, it’s amazing. All of our kids sleep with it. We spend a lot of time seeding weighted blankets with veterans with PTSD. We’re doing a study right now that will start I think next month. And you know, a lot of college age students, college athletes. There’s a real need for those young people again. They’re, they’re not doing well sleep wise. And they really need that sense of anxiety to be squelched. And weighted blankets, it’s just it’s you know, no drugs. It’s it’s just simple, but it’s beautifully simple.

Diana Rodgers, RD 24:01

Yeah, and you know, meditation and deep breathing are so popular right now with people who are in the health space. But unfortunately, so many people just don’t know how to turn off that stress switch. And our bodies aren’t made to have this level of stress. This chronic low level stress. We’re meant to just, you know, have a chase by a predator and an immediate release because we’re safe again, and then a complete relaxation. And so all this extra cortisol needs to be dealt with in some way. And so this is just the perfect solution for people that maybe don’t have the ability to meditate, you know, the concentration levels or whatever. 

Tara Youngblood 24:47

Yeah. Or as a first step

Diana Rodgers, RD 24:48

As a first step, right. Just to kind of get into that and understand the power of just being able to shift your state from stress to no stress without a glass of wine or any of the other options out there.

Tara Youngblood 25:03

Yeah, cannabis is a really big one. I do talk to a lot of people about sort of cannabis like, Oh, I use that or a glass of wine.  Both of those a lot too. But I fall asleep great. And you’re like, unfortunately for both of those, there’s there are side effects to falling asleep great does not necessarily mean get great quality sleep

Diana Rodgers, RD 25:22

Yeah. So what are the impacts of things like wine and cannabis, I mean, a lot. Almost every adult I know uses either one of them, or the combination of the two. Right, to help them relax from the day and fall asleep. But what are the impacts? I mean, I know if I’ve had even a glass or two of wine, my sleep is terrible. What’s going on? Yeah.

Tara Youngblood 25:45

 In order to get the alcohol out of your system, your body will actually ramp up like it’s exercising. And so as you can imagine, if you were exercising, you wouldn’t be sleeping. And so even though you’re sort of more relaxed from that mental state, what’s happening inside is you’re not able to get deep sleep, because that deep sleep wants you cooler. And we kind of talked a little bit about, you know what temperature and we were getting there with, you know, you’d like to be warmer to fall asleep. But once you fall asleep, you really do want to be cooler if possible. And cooler than your core body temperature because people get stuck in thinking about ambient room temperature again. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be cooler than ambient temperature. It should be cooler than your core body temperature. And how much cooler depends on the person. Again, if you’re someone that overheats at all, then alcohol especially will be terrible for your sleep. And even when you people don’t it’s not great for your sleep. Cannabis is a whole other mess because there’s obviously THC and CBD and both have sort of different effects. THC can again help you really relax and can help with sleep. It tends to really hurt REM sleep way more than deep sleep. But the problem about cannabis use is if you use it every single night, what happens over time is your quality of sleep will continue to diminish. So it may be a short term, you know, solution again to maybe help you relax if you’re super stressed out. But I really discourage people from using it to sleep every single night because it what happens in about a week your sleep actually gets so poor you’re technically unconscious. But it looks a little bit more like Ambien where it’s a hypnotic and you’re knocked out but you’re actually not sleeping. You’re only basically hypnotized and so THC over time will act a little bit more Ambien-like. It’s not going to give you great deep sleep. It’s you basically think you’re sleeping but you’re still going to be really exhausted in the morning. 

Diana Rodgers, RD 27:35

Oh, yeah. Let’s talk about Ambien a little bit. Do you know much about the impacts of Ambien? I mean, I know my brother was taking it for a while and was like writing emails and doing all kinds of things he had no memory of doing. And I haven’t looked deeply into it but I know so many people are really addicted to Ambien.

Tara Youngblood 27:53

Yeah. So it’s basically a hypnotic, you know, when you think about what does that mean, if you were hypnotized, we all here we all have that image of what hypnotism looks like. Any picture of someone clucking, like a chicken, yeah, on stage or, or doing these things, but they’re not consciously aware of it.  The level of consciousness has been dropped. And so technically, you’re considered asleep. But as we’ve seen, the hypnotism shows the person is not actually asleep, they’re just conscious not consciously there. The problem about that gets back to the quality. So Ambien can knock you out from believing you’re awake, and for a period of time, and it can if you’re like, on an airplane, or jet lagging, or, you know, there can be a short term solution. Or, frankly, you know, have just a huge trauma event. But all of those things are have to be very short term. And you need to understand that it’s actually not putting you to sleep, it’s a hypnotizing you. That’s the role of that drug in your system. And so it’s really not a sleep aid strictly in the sense that it’s going to give you deep sleep. No. REM sleep?  No. You’re going to be basically in this sort of weird ribbon of sort of light sleep. Obviously works better for some people than others, but they’re now attaching it to cancer with long term use. It’s it’s definitely was never meant to be a here’s a pill, go and do that. But most doctors, and this is really like was flabbergasting to me. So the amount of time in residency that was spent on sleep for your primary care physician is like no time. Basically, there is no solutions. And so when someone comes in and says, my sleep is broken, how can I get this fixed? They’re going to get some class of drug like Ambien, either a hypnotic, or they’re going to take sort of an antidepressant. They’re going to give them something to manage, basically anxiety about sleeping, or help you fall asleep. But it’s really not going to fix the problem. Unfortunately, sleep requires that sort of just like diet and exercise. You can, you can take those diet pills, whatever the latest thing that’s spinning you. It’s not a good long term solution. Could you drop 10 pounds in 10 days? Maybe. But you’re not going to get a long term solution unless you’re really kind of diligent with it. You follow a recipe and you do what you’re supposed to do. All those quick fixes just generally don’t work and Ambien falls in the quick fix category, but it’s not a good long term solution for anybody. 

Diana Rodgers, RD 28:18

Wow. Yeah, that was a great analogy that you used with the diet pill, because it’s definitely something that you need to really build into your lifestyle for sure. And when I do nutrition consults, we always discuss sleep. And I also tell them that like dieting is a stress on your body. And so I’ve noticed, especially when you’re dropping carbs, you’re sleepy or, and it’s partly because your metabolism is shifting into a more ketosis type state. But also, it’s just, it’s stressful for your body to process all the extra weight and to drop it. And so it’s okay to take a couple extra naps or to go to bed a little bit earlier and to feel tired the first couple of weeks, if you’re making like, a big diet change in your life.

Tara Youngblood 28:18

Yeah, it’s a pretty big shift. But yeah, we have to get past as a society, thinking that our wellness is attached to some random, you know, magic pill. And wellness, wellness is a long term play. It’s a health span, it’s not a quick fix. You know, our medical system is geared towards triage, and fixing. And so they’ve, they’ve found these chemicals that can give us these quick fixes. But in most of the time, those quick fixes, when it comes to wellness don’t really work long term. You’re still gonna have to face that problem at the end of it.

Diana Rodgers, RD 31:32

Alright, so we talked a little bit about falling asleep in the temperature shift with falling asleep. And some people want to, I don’t know why jump into a cold bed, I can’t I can’t relate to that. But then we want to lower our temperature. I have my thermostat set to 62 in the winter time. And I just get under a cozy blanket and that seems to work for me and my kids. But then let’s talk about the rest of the night and staying asleep. And what’s involved with that. 

Tara Youngblood 31:58

Yeah, so we kind of started with bedtime bucket. And it really is bedtime is all about what feels good. A lot of it psychology wise is related to how you went to sleep as a little kid. If you were tucked in, if it was warm and snuggly. What feels good. So if in doubt, go back to well, what felt good when you were a kid and start there. But then if you again are overheating, and women will change throughout their lives. So, you may find this way. But then going through menopause, you may find a complete shift or being pregnant is another complete shift. Everything you thought was one way may completely shift a different way. So there’s, we get that we get those perks being female that there’s there’s that side of it. But then once you fall asleep, your first half of your night, deep sleep is kind of you go through all the cycles in approximately 90 minutes. But if you look at a sleep tracker, you’ll see that it’s little blippies all over the place. It’s not necessarily neat and tidy, like 90 minutes. And but, that first half of the night, you’re gonna see way more deep sleep time than in the second half of the night. And it likes it colder because your core body temperature is trying to drop two degrees.  Which doesn’t sound like a lot but when you think of two degrees and fever temperature, you’re like, Okay, at 100 101, I’m feeling pretty crappy. The equivalent has to happen on the downside to drop two degrees to get that deep sleep to get your core body to totally relax. That’s where you get really good low resting heart rate, get great HRV recovery. That’s all those filings and things we talked about earlier, all that happens. And then the second half of the night is the opposite is happening. Your body’s warming back up. And so what happens is sometimes people wake up in the middle of the night, because they’re too hot. And sometimes we find this on people that use our product, they think, Oh, I’m going to crank it down, I want it super cold. Sometimes they wake up too cold for that second half of the night. So there’s there’s both sides of that. So you kind of need to think about when you if you’re waking up in the middle of night, what is waking me up. Am I hot? And it’s not probably not just because you’re using the bathroom. So if you just say I don’t know if I was hot, but I have to wake up to use the restroom. Unless you have a bladder issue or an issue that is related to bladder symptoms of having to get up to use the restroom a lot. When you’re in deep sleep, you do release a hormone that prevents that. So it means you’re not in deep sleep. So I would suggest cooler is going to help you even if you don’t feel hot. Probably that’s what’s going on. But if you feel too cold because you’re using one of our products, I do recommend for people to warm up on the second half of that night. And it could be even if like you’re just in New England and you have your house set at 62 degrees and you’re cold that second half of the night. You’re going to wake up sooner you’re going to you know kind of feel and it won’t be a great wake up so it’s way better to wake up warmer. Again our bodies trying to warm up we get we want to turn off sleep to warmness not turn it off to coldness, if possible. And so we really want to think about like warming up to work like the sun’s coming up. Think of a sunrise. Sunrise should feel warm on your face and that’s what we want to have for waking us up and when we do that we get a little burst of good cortisol and it wakes us up in the morning. It’s a good sort of closing the night part

Diana Rodgers, RD 35:02

It might not be obvious to everybody so that this is the chili pad that we’re talking about. It has an app on your phone that you can, so it’s not like you set it at 100 degrees and you leave all night. You, you could actually program it. And you can even have different a weekend feature and a weekday feature or if you know you do one type of thing every Tuesday night, you go to bed a little bit later, you can have a Tuesday night feature. But you can set it to a bedtime time, you can set it to warming up or cooling down throughout and then that was the nicest thing is waking up to a warm.  In the wintertime, one of the things I noticed is that I’ll stay in my bed longer, because I don’t want to get out because it’s cold. But if I’m really warm from the chilli pad, then I want to throw the blankets off and I’m ready to jump up and start my day. It’s a really lovely feature of that.

Tara Youngblood 35:55

Yeah, and it’s crazy because you’re like, really, I don’t know, I like being warm and snuggly. At a certain temperature, your body literally flips a switch and is like, okay, now, now I need to get out. And in a good way. It really, if it does all the unconscious, you know, talk to that unconscious brain, which is what I love about temperature is that you don’t have to think about it, it just that temperature is talking to the part that’s managing your heart rate and breathing. And it just just does it. 

Diana Rodgers, RD 36:22

Mm hmm. I’m guessing there are many people use both together the way to blanket on top of the chilli pad, I keep my chili pad on the couch. When my son hasn’t stolen it in his van. It just for like a snuggly like kind of pre bed when I’m in the living room either watching a movie or reading in the evening. And then I have the chili pad on my bed. Let’s talk about some of the other hacks for sleeping. Like one thing I do as I carry black electrical tape with me whenever I travel for the hotel rooms, it makes a huge difference. I’m always waking up in the middle of the night. Oh, and I remember one time before we were chatting about hotel rooms. I was anxious to get a chili blanket only because I was worried that I would be so addicted to it that I wouldn’t be able to sleep any other way. But you mentioned you’re talking to hotels. So thank God, because so many hotels are just having a great bathroom or a funky decor or something. I just want a really awesome bed and I want it dark and I want it quiet. And they don’t get that

Tara Youngblood 37:29

No. Hotels, remarkably, because you’re basically renting a room with a bed, shouldn’t be all about sleep? But it really isn’t and how they sell you again. They’re more likely to sell you on the spa, which again, has nothing to do with sleep or what the other features of the hotel are. And so that is sort of, especially when we’ve been dealing with professional athletes. You know, they have really aggressive travel schedules, often dealing with jetlag being able to get great sleep when you travel really means you can function. And some of us travel obviously, for leisure where there’s a little more flex.  Still, you want to get up and do stuff. And if you travel for work, you certainly have to be able to function. So even like pilots unions and things like that are all sort of in a spot of like, wait, I don’t want to go to a hotel because of the spa. Well, that might be good. But I want a hotel because I want to be able to sleep. 

Diana Rodgers, RD 38:19

Mm hmm. So, some other hacks to falling asleep. And these are just some please rattle off some too. I can give you the tips that I mentioned to my nutrition clients. But eating dinner early, so you’re not going to bed with a full stomach. So I try to tell most people, if they can just have that kitchen completely. I eat at like five or six. But at least having the kitchen closed by seven if you’re somebody that goes to bed at 9:30 or 10 is great. A tip I got from Gretchen Rubin was to put on your pajamas and brush your teeth and do your whole like nighttime ritual, before you actually sit down to relax with what you’re going to do for your evening so that when it’s time for bed, you just get up and walk to bed. And you’re not like having this sort of nighttime, you know, 15 minute ritual of washing your face and all the things you do looming over you because that can actually prevent you from just walking in and going to sleep. So what are some other tips you have? Are the blue blocking glasses.

Tara Youngblood 39:19

Yep, I do have blue blocking glasses. Yeah, it’s a little bit earlier today. But oftentimes after three o’clock, I’ll put on blue light blocking glasses on my computer so that I’m not managing that. I will say if if you one of the things that can help that time and it’s low blood sugar level can make you feel really fatigued in the morning. So if you’re waking up feeling really really fatigued and you’re getting decent quality sleep, just a little bit of a snack.  But keep it low glycemic can really help with some of that fatigue in the morning. Especially if you have issues where your blood sugar is a little more fluctuating than others. But I think the biggest tip is stress has such an immense role in your systems and especially for sleep. So when you look at your immune system. You look at your cardiovascular system, all of those are really suffer if we have stress, and we want to have the most recovery possible for sleep. So I really look at stress, I think you pointed it out. If I ever do presentations, I have a slide of this big lion. There are no lions in our lives, but we still are carrying around all this stress. And if we can manage it, it really does make a big difference. So in the morning, I talked about that cortisol is a friendly little monster. iIf you want to call it you wake up with. And if you keep the size of that monster, pretty manageable, you treat it with breathing and walks outside and, you know, taking care of yourself throughout the day. Then by the time you get into bed that monster’s really small and cute and friendly. But if he’s really big, that’s where we’re having a hard time falling asleep, our mind won’t stop spinning. Create to do lists as another way we kind of talked about that a little bit. You know, of what do I need to do tomorrow? What do I accomplish today? All of those are pretty simple tricks. Even oxytocin from just getting hugs. So, hugs with a pandemic, people weren’t touching each other as much, but whoever you’re around the touch is really important. Even if it’s just your pet. Whatever it is. But an exchange of that will actually help keep that stress monster down. And back to any habits help if you anchor them to something. So stress, every time you use the restroom is a good check in with yourself. Because obviously, your body’s forced you to say you need to take a break. And the physical act of having to take that break.  Take an extra minute to breathe, take a moment to express gratitude.  Take just an extra 30 to 60 seconds for yourself. And studies have shown breathing for even just a minute throughout the day, can wash the cortisol out of your system, gives you a reset, allow you to restart. You know maybe it’s a little bit bigger, maybe it’s taking a nap like you talked about to really reset. But whatever that is, the investment in resetting and managing your day is probably one of the biggest things you can do for your sleep. Sounds like broken because it’s not sleep stuff. But if you can keep your your day reasonable sleep happens way easier.

Diana Rodgers, RD 42:14

Yeah. It’s all about managing sleep and I love that you kept referring to health span and not life span, longevity. It’s driving me crazy. Everyone wants to live forever and if we don’t have a good quality of life or are enjoying our life. And are feeling happy throughout the day and are well rested and energized, then what’s the point, right?

Tara Youngblood 42:35

Absolutely. If you look at what you’re grateful for and for me, it is time with my family and my kids. I am really grateful for every moment of that. And to me, healthspan is spending more time with them. Not longer time but that great quality time. Clear head, not being drunk because of not sleeping or being uncomfortable or whatever those reasons are. But to really invest in that healthspan means good quality time and generally let’s me be grateful for them

Diana Rodgers, RD 43:03

Yes. That’s great. I highly recommend checking out the weighted blanket and the chilipad. And you know, we’re moving into the summer right now. And so keeping things cooler might be on your agenda. And it could be a great alternative to AC or someone that maybe has a warmer place but doesn’t have AC. So, I highly recommend that. So we have a little discount that we will have in our emails so you can check out the link in the show notes as well. And it was such a pleasure. I think you’re doing a great service with this amazing sleep stuff. And I can’t wait to see what other products and adventures you guys have coming in the future.

Tara Youngblood 43:43

Yeah. Yeah. There is a lot of fun stuff but I will say that if you want to find out more about me or the stuff we talked about, we do have a lot of great blogs on our site as well. And so even if you do click on that link at chilisleep.com and go to our blogs. You can find out more information or do a deep dive or find out your chronotype. We have a lot of great information there as well and it will show some of the studies we’ve done or some of the veterans groups that we’ve helped with. If you just want to find out more information, I highly recommend that. And then I am on all of the different social platforms as Sleep Geek. If you have a question and you just want to reach out and ask me that. I also love answering random questions for people too.

Diana Rodgers, RD 44:26

Yeah. So for those of you that came to me for sustainable eating or for nutrition information, once you guys get that under control, sleep is the next big one I challenge you to tackle. And so definitely check all of that out. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.