Timing Your Meals, Exercise, Thoughts For Sleep with Mollie Eastman of Sleep is a Skill

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am joined by Mollie Eastman. In this episode, Mollie shares her journey into chronobiology, which started with her struggles as a bad sleeper. Through her platform, Sleep Is A Skill, Mollie now helps others optimize their sleep. We discuss strategies for sleep optimization, balancing social habits, and meal timing. We also delve into caffeine timing, exercise, and "thought timing," emphasizing the importance of managing evening stressors and utilizing wearable technology to obtain sleep data.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• What does it take to get great sleep?
• What is chronobiology?
• How does meal timing affect sleep?
• How can we have a consistent wake-up time?
• What is metabolic jet lag?
• If making changes, how long is it before you see results?
• When is the best time to exercise during the day to optimize your sleep?
• How to move the needle on your HRV data

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ABOUT GUEST: 
Mollie Eastman is the creator of Sleep Is A Skill, and the host of The Sleep Is A Skill Podcast. Sleep Is A Skill is a company that optimizes people’s sleep through a unique blend of technology, accountability, and behavioral change. After navigating insomnia while traveling internationally, she created what she couldn’t find - a place to go to learn the skill set of sleep. With a background in behavioral change from The Nonverbal Group, she became fascinated with chronobiology and its practical application to sleep and our overall experience of life. Knowing the difference between a life with sleep and without, she’s now dedicated her life to sharing the forgotten skill set of sleep. In the spirit of that goal, she has created the #2 sleep podcast, written a popular weekly sleep newsletter for over five years, partnered with luxury hotels & lifestyle brands, coached the world’s top poker players, and has appeared on over 150 podcasts. 

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.sleepisaskill.com/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mollie.eastman

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

• Over restriction is dead; if your practitioner is recommending this, they are stuck in 2010 and not evolving
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

EPISODE SPONSOR:
A special thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode. Get a discount on any of their products. Use the code lessstressed10

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Mollie Eastman: this is something that's important for us to be aware of and responsible for is that if you're waking up at 3 a. m. And having all of those, horrible thoughts about everything that could possibly go wrong in your life you want to be aware that these types of thoughts are.

[00:00:14] Mollie Eastman: Really designed in this way on our circadian rhythm to be very different than those daytime thoughts. 

[00:00:20] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:50] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:08] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. Today on the less stressed life, I have Molly Eastman, who is the creator of sleep is a skill and the host of the sleep is a skill. Podcast sleep is a skill is a company that optimizes people sleep through a unique blend of technology, accountability and behavioral change after navigating insomnia while traveling internationally.

[00:01:25] Christa Biegler, RD: She created what she couldn't find a place to go. Learn the skill set. Of sleep with a background in behavioral change from the nonverbal group. She became fascinated with chronobiology and it's practical application to sleep and our overall experience of life, knowing the difference between a life with sleep.

[00:01:43] Christa Biegler, RD: And without she's now dedicated her life to sharing the forgotten skill set of sleep, the spirit of that goal. She's created the number 2 sleep podcast, written a popular weekly sleep newsletter for 5 years and partnered with luxury hotels and lifestyle brands coached the world's top poker players and has appeared on over 150 podcasts.

[00:02:01] Christa Biegler, RD: Welcome to the show, Molly. 

[00:02:04] Mollie Eastman: Thank you so much for having me. I know before we even hit record, we had lots of things in common and, overlapping kind of interests and what have you. So really looking forward to this conversation. 

[00:02:13] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, for sure. I love reading. Just like funny little details about someone.

[00:02:18] Christa Biegler, RD: So I love the detail about poker players. And I think so we talk on and off about sleep here. And today we're going to talk a little bit about either myths or just interesting timing, trying to make sleep even more interesting. But before we jump into that, maybe tell us a little bit about your story with travel and how it totally messed up your sleep.

[00:02:37] Christa Biegler, RD: And then also talk to us about how you got into chronobiology. 

[00:02:42] Mollie Eastman: Yes, totally. One, thank you so much for having me too. I think the story hopefully can be useful for the listener to really illustrate that certainly how I had thought of myself and how I think of my life is really in a. Three part series, but it had to do with thinking of myself as really at its origin as a bad sleeper.

[00:03:02] Mollie Eastman: So if anyone can relate to different labels or narratives around their own sleep some of my labels had been things like I'm just not a great sleeper. I'm a short sleeper. Sleeper. I'm a night owl and narratives like I'll sleep when I'm dead, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just mind over matter, get through the day, power through hustle, culture, all the things, so for anyone that is listening and could potentially relate to that.

[00:03:26] Mollie Eastman: That was really how I lived so much of my life. And I really didn't think there was much to do about it. I thought that was just the cards that I was dealt. And that was that, and it wasn't until as the years progressed and my behaviors became more and more pronounced that I had a lot of these.

[00:03:41] Mollie Eastman: side effects. So I was seeing myself having increased anxiety, beginnings of an ulcer, shingles in my twenties, just a lot of signs that how is managing my health and wellbeing was not quite working out. And with that, I didn't connect the dots though, that my sleep had much to do with that fallout.

[00:03:59] Mollie Eastman: And it wasn't until I went through Completely no pun intended, woke me up and it was a complete game changer to how I was managing my health and well being. And at some of my lowest points, what that looked like was. I went to the doctors and left with sleeping pills, with the prescription to for benzodiazepines and in that moment really realized that.

[00:04:24] Mollie Eastman: If I need to figure this out, if I'm going to get to the source of this, I'm going to need to really dive underneath what is here. And that started this whole journey around sleep optimization. So today my labels and narratives look very different, but for anyone that might be listening and thinking, what is going on with their sleep?

[00:04:43] Mollie Eastman: And with that three part series of how I really think of my life during that period of that really sleep breakdown, leaving with sleeping pills and realizing that if I'm going to get up under this, it's going to be something I'm going to have to do myself. It completely transformed my relationship to my sleep because I went down the rabbit hole to discover.

[00:05:03] Mollie Eastman: What does it take to get great sleep? And what I found, and you mentioned chronobiology so really understanding the science of time and how time affects our biology completely changed how I related to my how I would structure my days to say the least. And we can get into more of how that really looks on the ground, but on the other side of all of that.

[00:05:24] Mollie Eastman: As I started to restore my relationship with my sleep, everything changed so much so that I couldn't stop talking about sleep. And so just organically what started emerging were these small groups. And from that place, sleep is a skill got created. And I mentioned poker players intentionally because there's such a great example.

[00:05:45] Mollie Eastman: We have a unique niche in high stakes poker, and they really illustrate for us how we can really live outside of these rhythms of nature. They're in casinos designed on purpose to confuse the circadian rhythm. And I think people might hear about them and think that they're just some, kind of foreign way of living, but I would actually argue that many of them myself included in my own story, we're living closer to those poker players than we might really realize.

[00:06:11] Mollie Eastman: Today, what sleep is a skill is really on a mission is to help put people back in the driver's seat around their sleep. So not only have we built this whole world around sleep optimization, but really understanding that we can use sleep as a barometer of the workability of our lives. And certainly when my sleep wasn't working, my life wasn't working.

[00:06:31] Mollie Eastman: If anyone can relate to that stay tuned. There's a lot more that we can do, but I share that story also to really illustrate that no matter how you might be thinking about your sleep if you think of yourself as maybe a fine sleeper or horrible sleeper, anywhere in between, there's absolutely things that we can do to take things to the next level.

[00:06:49] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. This is perfect to segue into timing. And at some point, I loved what you said about poker players and that artificial light in the casino be there to confuse you. Because as you said, if other people are dealing with that, the topic that comes up all the time is shift workers. And to be perfectly honest, people don't usually get very good answers.

[00:07:06] Christa Biegler, RD: I ask about shift workers a fair bit on the podcast. And the answers are like me. Not amazing. So we'll try to weave that in here as well. So I know there's a few different timings that come up that impact sleep, including exercise, drug, meal, etc. Let's start with how maybe meal timing might impact sleep.

[00:07:25] Mollie Eastman: Ah, so good. Yes. So this whole timing component, people might hear about timing for sleep and just think that, yeah, it's probably important. But maybe certainly if you were like me before I went through this whole journey with my sleep, I might've thought that was important, but could it really be such a big deal?

[00:07:43] Mollie Eastman: It turns out that it's a huge deal. And it's actually this exciting world for us to really understand that We are potentially doing things, engaging in certain behaviors surrounding ourselves in particular environments that can be telling the body something about what to be doing and when, because we are filled with all of these clocks, if you will, I've just as a quick aside, I've talked about potentially making some sort of children's book or something to illustrate just the many clocks that are Just to get that visual right clocks throughout our whole body.

[00:08:16] Mollie Eastman: And we are really kept on time by this super charismatic nucleus. And which even just geographically is right behind the eyes. And that is our central clock. That is aiming to help act as a kind of choreographer to these trillions of other peripheral clocks in every cell and organ in our body. And these clocks are looking to see.

[00:08:36] Mollie Eastman: Stay finely attuned and to keep that rhythm moving. And one of the things that it's looking for, or what are the cues to tell it something about what time it is now, there's a hierarchy of the most impactful things that. tell and set that timing. And I know you've spoken a lot on the podcast around things like light, dark, and that is unequivocally our most powerful Zeitgeiber or time giver for circadian rhythms.

[00:09:03] Mollie Eastman: So we can start there and then underneath that is temperature. And so You know, what are some of those changes to our bodily temperature throughout the course of the day? Because our body temperature is meant to be dynamic. And so we get into those things. There's a lot of things that influence that, but nestled underneath there is what you just pointed to, which is meal timing, and that is a huge one.

[00:09:26] Mollie Eastman: I actually just got back from sleep 2024, this conference that is The world's largest sleep conference. And essentially what they were looking at was lots of different things, of course, around sleep. But there was some rumbling around this excitement around understanding that meal timing can act as a real cue potentially for understanding how we can best navigate sleep.

[00:09:46] Mollie Eastman: Jet lag. And so that was a big, breakthrough component. But for the average person, what we wanna understand is that the time that we eat tells the body something about what time it is. And so what we wanna look at is when is your first bite of food and when is your last bite of food?

[00:10:03] Mollie Eastman: And because at sleep is a skill, we have such a large database of or ring users, we get to look at the numbers of what really moves the needle for people with their sleep. One of the things that we see at. Really religiously time after time again and again is when people move that last bite of food later than they might.

[00:10:23] Mollie Eastman: And I would say too, when I say later we know that a lot of people listening, my, one of the things we hear is they say, oh, I'm not eating that late. It's not that big of a deal, but when we start peeling back the layers, one, two, three hours one of the things that we can often find is that there's so much.

[00:10:39] Mollie Eastman: such a impact on things like heart rate, how high your heart rate is while you're sleeping. We can see hits on things like HRV, heart rate variability, which is a great metric of recovery. How well are you able to recover second to second? So this meal timing one, I think is a really practical Arguably easy and yet in practicality because of societal norms, we see that there can be challenges to actually implementing it.

[00:11:05] Mollie Eastman: So it's the education on why it's so important that I think can make the difference to bring this into people's daily lives. 

[00:11:13] Christa Biegler, RD: I know. I think immediately about Europeans at 9 PM and even South Americans very European. Also eating at 9 p. m. the very normal. I actually have, like, all these thoughts going off about that.

[00:11:27] Christa Biegler, RD: And I've seen that from when I used to wear a norming and, it was very obvious when you would eat your it certainly, you saw the data issues. I always feel like the more significantly someone is impacted, the smaller, the little things add up to really be a big difference for them.

[00:11:44] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm not sure how you feel because it's like, there's a lot of things we could time. And people want to know. And then they're like, yep, not interested. Actually. I'd rather eat at 9 PM. With my friends. Or the other thing is I think maybe more important is coming up with that little bit of a striking a happy medium around, not stressing if you are sometimes eating late with a friend, right?

[00:12:04] Christa Biegler, RD: Yes. Or whatnot. I'm not sure how you see this playing out with your cohorts. 

[00:12:08] Mollie Eastman: Ah, so good. And because also it's this weird paradox with sleep optimization where we're both looking to be informed, educate around if we have this ethos that sleep is a skill and the argument that in our modern society, people have really gotten Disconnected from how to reliably get great sleep.

[00:12:30] Mollie Eastman: We want to both educate and have those tools in people's, kind of tool kits to get themselves back on track when they deviate or when life happens or they travel or they do go out the late night or whatever. But having those things at the ready to know what can I do for the rest of, the 80 20 component that seems to make a real difference for people.

[00:12:52] Mollie Eastman: But I think you're hitting on a really important thing to how to not have disordered relationship with sleep. So I think it's both discovering that for instance, we had a anthropologist on the podcast who used some interesting verbiage that I thought was really great where he talked about how can we create almost the sleep capital where we're basically devoting dividends or money into the imaginary piggy bank of our sleep consistently and taking care of that?

[00:13:18] Mollie Eastman: And that's happening. Reliably. How can we put money into that? But then. Religiously also realized that a social capital is really important as well. So every so often making sure that we are taking the time to have the late night, stay out, connect with the people that are important to us, because we do know that loneliness can really hit at our ability to feel mentally well and sound, and that plays a role in our sleep.

[00:13:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, for sure. This all kind of comes down to also the conversation around what time people go to sleep also, right? Because when we're out being social, sometimes then, if we're eating at 9 now, it's pushing our timeline back. I was on. 1 of your pages and someone was interviewing people.

[00:14:02] Christa Biegler, RD: About myths of sleep, and 1 person said, it's not necessarily about the time you go to bed, but that you wake up at the same time and I don't yes. I don't know where I feel on that, but what would you say about sleep wake time? Because for the longest time, they've said, Hey, you should really make that really consistent.

[00:14:20] Mollie Eastman: I love that you asked that question. And I think a couple of things here too. So that's one of the reasons I think the light dark piece is so powerful because you can use your environmental cues to help guide a level of consistency. So if you are aiming to set your bedtime and wake time up to align with those rhythms of nature a bit more than maybe the average person, you can use that environment to bring about some of that consistency.

[00:14:44] Mollie Eastman: But even aside from that, then How can we have a consistent wake time? Largely seven days a week is often where we like to begin. Why do we start with the wake time? We start with the wake time because that is a fantastic place that we have a say in our results where we actually have the ability to set that alarm or what have you and maybe over time, you won't need to have that alarm.

[00:15:08] Mollie Eastman: Maybe that is just something that in the beginning as you're working through some of your. Built in coping mechanisms because many people that I talked to, I actually just was on a call with a client earlier today who had some dramatic coping mechanisms that we see a ton where they're pretty consistent throughout the course of the week and then the weekends come and then they sleep in and they're trying to catch up because they're sleep deprived and so that's been a winning strategy for them to a certain extent, but it's hitting at their quality of their sleep and other problems are emerging.

[00:15:40] Mollie Eastman: So what can we do to. Instantly give people that power around their sleep is to begin with the wake up times because one of the things that we see with the bedtimes and it's not like we're forgetting at the evenings, we want to still manage that accordingly. But forcing a bedtime often can be problematic for the average person we find.

[00:16:00] Mollie Eastman: So can we start at least with those wake up times and then one of the things that happens thanks to the power of sleep pressure is that over time, then that will start to even out that bedtime a bit more naturally if we're setting you up for success in the evenings. 

[00:16:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. How about, so we're thinking about meal timing, which by the way, you brought up the jet lag stuff.

[00:16:21] Christa Biegler, RD: I Actually, I had a flashback. I got into this. There was an author. I he's still alive Sydney Baker, and I think he wrote a book called circadian biology. And then he tipped me off to a book from 1983 about jet lag. And back then, Charles Barrett was talking. I don't know if it was like NASA.

[00:16:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Research, but there was some president they were putting on like different meal timing for jet lag. And we actually wrote up a protocol around it. Never have to really use it very often, but every once in a while we get clients traveling internationally that are again, it's the thing. And then I'm like, maybe I'll apply that when I, it depends on how much you travel.

[00:16:57] Mollie Eastman: Oh, this is a big one for me because So my husband and I lived internationally for about three years. So we would go back and forth to Southeast Asia, to New York. And we have very long flights, sometimes up to 40 hours. So what are the things that we would bring along for that would, oh, yikes. One of the things that really made a difference was the time shifter app. And that was actually developed out of using the same algorithm that NASA uses to keep its astronauts on time. Now they are really focused on light, dark, and then using certain other components, so light, dark sleep, awake scheduling and then caffeine and melatonin, if that's open for people to, if they're interested in using that.

[00:17:37] Mollie Eastman: However, one of the things, and the reason I mentioned that research out of sleep 2024, because it finally, after given what you're what you're underscoring, we've known that this makes such a difference in the management of the jet lag for so long, but sometimes it takes a long time for enough of a body of research for people to finally get on board.

[00:17:57] Mollie Eastman: And it was like, yay. Three years 

[00:17:59] Christa Biegler, RD: later, we're there. 

[00:18:01] Mollie Eastman: To your point back in the eighties, we had things that we could point to or what have you anyway. I think it's so important for us to realize that this is such a cool tool that we can use, and you can also see the components of this in our own lives often, right?

[00:18:16] Mollie Eastman: So I mentioned. A common thing that we see is that people sleep in on the weekends. That's known as social jet lag. The reason it's called that, even if you're not going anywhere or anything, but you might not have social obligations to have to wake up for the next day. And so because of that, you are sleeping in and that's the social jet lag piece.

[00:18:33] Mollie Eastman: You didn't get on a flight necessarily, but you're experiencing jet lag. Many people have experienced this and they sleep in on say a Saturday and then they're, what are they doing behaviorally thereafter, they're not hungry at their normal times, or maybe they slept through their normal breakfast times or what have you.

[00:18:48] Mollie Eastman: So now they're pushing out their hunger cues. So what we're experiencing there is known as metabolic jet lag. So this metabolic jet lag is important for us to also manage and be aware of because number is so commonly I'll have this pushback where people say that's nice, but I'm not hungry at the times that you're talking about.

[00:19:08] Mollie Eastman: So if we are suggesting front loading or caloric load on the front, First half of your day a bit more so that maybe you're having breakfast where people didn't have breakfast before. Maybe instead of, a later dinner, could we do almost like a linner, a lunch dinner? Could we move those things earlier?

[00:19:24] Mollie Eastman: And as many people say, but many people will hear this and then they'll be like I'm just, that does not work in my lifestyle. I'm not hungry at those times, not for me, but that's where it's so important to understand that. All of these things are trainable. That's why it's called circadian rhythm in train.

[00:19:41] Mollie Eastman: Men see, we can in train ourselves by virtue of just actually dosing that food timing accordingly. And if we couldn't do that would be a major bummer for travel, because as you go and hop to the exact opposite time zones, one of the cool things is that while you do, of course, feel very funky for.

[00:19:58] Mollie Eastman: Sometime over time, we give it a few days and then you're starting to sync up. You're eating your foods at the same time. Other people are eating their foods there. And then you're actually getting those same hunger cues. So it actually can be adjusted in a fairly short period of time. If it's concerted and, intentional.

[00:20:16] Christa Biegler, RD: What is the timeframe that often takes, this comes up a lot. I'll say to someone like, what is the timeframe? And it's almost always the same. So I'm dying to find out like Approximately. How long after someone makes a change do they see results? 

[00:20:29] Mollie Eastman: So true. Okay. So if we're talking about meal timing, that's one of the fastest things where we can see measurable changes.

[00:20:36] Mollie Eastman: And you mentioned this too with their wearables where I also, because I rarely drink nowadays, knowing what I know about some of its implications and the fallout on my sleep. But so now one of the closest things to getting the effects of the hit on my sleep on my stats or just how I feel is to eat a lot of food late.

[00:20:56] Mollie Eastman: And so I can almost guarantee that the subsequent morning when I wake up with that, we'll see those impacts. The opposite seems to be true for people just as far as if we're talking about the time it takes to measurably see that change so in a relatively short period of time, so just like an overnight thing.

[00:21:11] Mollie Eastman: But as far as if we're also talking about how to in train these new kind of hunger signals there's different things thrown around. We've heard different reports of around 45 minutes to an hour of the ability over the course of a few days that you push back your meal timing. For example, if you're usually eating your last bit of food around 8 PM some of the suggestions and thinking has been, okay, we can move it back by around 45 minutes to an hour over a couple of days, you keep doing that and then you start pushing it progressively earlier thereafter.

[00:21:45] Mollie Eastman: So meaning that this is almost a kind of equivalent to what we might do with sleep wake scheduling, so we're moving, if we're looking to say, advance our sleep. So to phase advance and to fall asleep earlier we would creep back the time by which we would actually go to sleep progressively to not be such a big hit.

[00:22:05] Mollie Eastman: And that's one of the things that we can see with meal timing, but as far as the times of that meal time. Now this is where it does get a little murky, but we have a lot of research out of the Salk Institute with Dr. Sachin Panda. We did have him on our podcast last year. If anyone wants to go in more deeply on this, he wrote the book, the circadian code.

[00:22:24] Mollie Eastman: And so he has a large bulk of research and the bare minimum that we see out of his looks at meal timing on circadian health is between two to three hours before bed having your last meal. But a food. However I think what's exciting is that from, for instance, wearable data I had a conversation with the vice president performance sciences at whoop.

[00:22:45] Mollie Eastman: And they spoke to a study that they're going to be releasing showing four hours before bed, having your last bite of food being particularly impactful for improving a number aspects of sleep as compared to the two hour group. And so I think what we're going to start to see is as we move that a bit Earlier, more evidence supporting the possibilities of an earlier last bite of food timing.

[00:23:07] Mollie Eastman: We do have certain research, smaller looks at things like 2 PM cutoff timing. That is one kind of popular study that has been shown for early meal timing. We do still need to see more around this and what are the long term implications. I'm not saying that people need 

[00:23:24] Christa Biegler, RD: my work schedule.

[00:23:25] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm just kidding. I'm not awkward. 

[00:23:28] Mollie Eastman: Exactly. Exactly. So we play, and then of course there's the Brian Johnson's of the world. If people have heard of him with the 10 AM last bite of food, so there's a big range that people are playing with. I feel like 

[00:23:38] Christa Biegler, RD: You're straddling a line of like people who there's like sleep optimization is a bit of a biohacker category.

[00:23:45] Christa Biegler, RD: So we're going to bring this bromance to it a little bit where it's let me see what I can do around this. And so I'm a little bit more of a realist. 

[00:23:56] Mollie Eastman: And I think the most simple and natural nature driven approach, because really at its core, everything we're doing at sleep is a skill is using the blueprint of nature to inform our decision making because considering that for thousands of years, we evolved under just this very clear light, dark cycle where it just didn't allow for much eating into the evening.

[00:24:16] Mollie Eastman: So past when the sun would set, you really just couldn't eat that much. If there's no pantry, no refrigerator. Can't really go hunting and pitch black, right? 

[00:24:25] Christa Biegler, RD: And this is why Alaskans aren't allowed to sleep in the summer. 

[00:24:28] Mollie Eastman: Exactly. And then you rehearse all winter. I know we have a lot of people. Yes.

[00:24:35] Mollie Eastman: We've got our clients certainly out of Alaska, Sweden. We've had people over to the to Antarctica. We've got all kinds of things where we see extremes. And then, so that would be a bit of a separate conversation, but for the average person, what we can use is the environment to inform our behaviors.

[00:24:54] Mollie Eastman: And if we know that we're looking to cultivate a strong melatonin pulse in the evening. And one of the interesting things that Dr. Satchin Panda pointed to is that when the pancreas is turned on, if you will, by digesting, then that can be at odds with our ability to create melatonin in the same ways and surge that we would like to have happen.

[00:25:15] Mollie Eastman: And considering we see so many people supplementing with things like melatonin, we might want to behoove us to look at all of these behavioral and environmental elements that could. Naturally boost that for us, 

[00:25:28] Christa Biegler, RD: On the note of foods, but specifically caffeine, I think you dropped the comment about caffeine.

[00:25:34] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm going to loop caffeine under the whole drug timing conversation. I actually was just sharing a text with my sister in law yesterday. We have a little bit of a jab. Joke saying sometimes where it's like I'm having a shot of espresso. And so yesterday I can't remember, I picked up kids and I was like, how late is it?

[00:25:49] Christa Biegler, RD: Is it too late to have some espresso? She's not for you, but for me after four is not okay. And then I meant to pour myself one shot and mentally just made my like rote espresso and I was like, I'll be fine. I was like, this'll be fun. Yes. But there was a few things really disrupting my sleep last night.

[00:26:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Also, I regretted the 5 p. m. So let's talk about caffeine timing and, or drug timing, which caffeine is. 

[00:26:13] Mollie Eastman: So good. Yes. And I love that you share like all of us, we have these moments where, it's calling us to indulge. Exactly. It seems like a bad idea. I'm 

[00:26:24] Christa Biegler, RD: going to do it anyway.

[00:26:25] Mollie Eastman: Yes. And at least I think there's a important piece around like informed consent, if you will, on the things that we're engaging in, because okay, that could have been at the source of what went on with my sleep and how I'm feeling today and what have you. Whereas there are a lot of people that just don't know some of these things, even with the caffeine piece where we might say, Oh, everyone knows that this Point.

[00:26:45] Mollie Eastman: I think one of the things we can sometimes see is these sort of odd, maybe paradoxical responses or surprising responses. So meaning we've got lots of clients that come our way that say, I can have a pot of coffee for dinner and still fall asleep. And it's true. They might still be able to fall asleep, but it doesn't mean that might not be impacting the quality of that sleep.

[00:27:03] Mollie Eastman: And so far. Yeah. And if we're looking at optimizing, I think previously, one of the things I see around the narratives around sleep is it had just been often around just sleeping, just make sure you're sleeping. So it was like, okay, do CBTI cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and just check.

[00:27:21] Mollie Eastman: Okay. I am sleeping good. And making sure, do I have sleep disorders or not? So you would test for sleep disorders and then, treat them if so, if you don't have them, okay, that's kind of it. But I hope that we're really going into a new domain around sleep where we're looking at optimizing our sleep.

[00:27:39] Mollie Eastman: It's not just about getting through it. It's. Is this really serving me in the way that it could be. And because so much of the things that are happening, I find are really about subtraction. So we're moving some of the things that we're doing in our modern society that just wouldn't have even been around previously.

[00:27:57] Mollie Eastman: And one of those things being things like stimulants and so stimulants. Super important for us to just really look at, are we having sufficient time available to work that out of our system? And we do see for many people that they might actually show up as slow or fast metabolizers. You can test this genetically, probably, come hit on some of these topics, but.

[00:28:22] Mollie Eastman: You want to get a sense for you and like your friend seemed to have this awareness that for some people, maybe there's heightened sensitivity for this, but also a dynamic relationship as far as even just our nervous system management. If you're dealing with, just some stressors going through some anxiety periods or a lot on your plate that could be a time for us to abstain from things that just might further tax your nervous system.

[00:28:44] Mollie Eastman: That's one of the cool things that are wearables. Particularly right now, aura and whoop are doing is showing you your daytime stress. And you can see if you're starting to really spike at certain times, or maybe having more stress than you maybe had in the past, and then you might want to proceed accordingly, like with caffeine.

[00:29:02] Mollie Eastman: So what we often see for people is how can we provide a clear, cut off window. So some of the things that we see commonly for people is around 12, at least for some of our slow metabolizers for some people, we do have that sensitivity where they're still being able to point to changes in their sleep even before that.

[00:29:22] Mollie Eastman: So some people are cutting off around 10. And granted, these are all relative based on what your sleep wake times are, but just as far as generalities and then you probably commonly heard about 2 PM being that last call, ideally. for most people for your caffeine intake. But it's also about volume as well.

[00:29:40] Mollie Eastman: And how strong are these things? Because these can all play a role in the impact on your sleep results. Lastly, I'll say that. One of the things I'm trying to get the message out of around is I think so many people are dealing with respiratory based sleep disorders and might not realize it.

[00:29:58] Mollie Eastman: And so because of that, one of the things that can further agitate that how you're breathing throughout the course of the night can be things like stimulants. So we want to just be aware that if that is at play, that one, ideally we're testing and treating for that. But two, that we're also taking all our behavioral stimulus.

[00:30:15] Mollie Eastman: steps and meal timing and caffeine, nicotine, certain things can all exacerbate some of those symptoms like sleep apnea. 

[00:30:25] Christa Biegler, RD: And in short, if I had someone with a wearable and they were waking up many times in the night, that would be an instant referral for a sleep study for me to do a sleep disorder.

[00:30:34] Christa Biegler, RD: And yeah. I will tell you that does get missed a lot. And that's where wearables are like, everything is, can be like a slight double edged sword sometimes. Cause sometimes you think it means something that's not what it means a little bit. So I just share that and I haven't even really gotten into, I saw you just did an episode about this last week on your podcast, but I have not even really.

[00:30:53] Christa Biegler, RD: Scratch the surface on my podcast yet fully about lip and tongue tie impact on airway health and sleep health. But I will get there eventually. Yes, 

[00:31:03] Mollie Eastman: exactly. Part two. Yes. 

[00:31:04] Christa Biegler, RD: So before I do want to circle back to some data you've seen in wearables, because I think what's so fun is that you have a unique position where you are looking at a lot of data, but before we go there, Less roundout timing, at least talking a little bit about exercise and thought timing.

[00:31:17] Christa Biegler, RD: Now, no one talks about thought timing, but people do sometimes ask about exercise timing. And so talk about exercise timing for optimal sleep. And then please share with us about thought timing. 

[00:31:27] Mollie Eastman: Sure. Yeah. 

[00:31:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Probably one of the most underrated nutrients I use in practice is potassium. Low potassium can be a huge factor in energy, relapsing gut issues, thyroid function, and even regulating blood pressure. Now your blood test for potassium will look normal most of the time, otherwise you'd feel faint and maybe like you're going to pass out.

[00:31:47] Christa Biegler, RD: But your tissue levels of potassium will decline With an increase of the stress hormone, cortisol big picture. I find it's just really hard for humans to get enough food based potassium in their diet, unless they live in a tropical place. And I'm usually recommending my clients get at least 4, 000 milligrams of food based potassium per day.

[00:32:07] Christa Biegler, RD: That's why I really commonly recommend Jigsaw's Pickleball Cocktail to help my clients. It's one of the only electrolyte products on the market with a hefty dose of potassium at 800 mg per scoop, when most electrolyte products only have about 200 mg. Making it really hard to reach those high doses of food based potassium I recommend per day.

[00:32:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Plus, it's automatically the best choice if my client is dealing with swelling, which can be related to imbalances of sodium and potassium in the tissue. I'm a potassium evangelist, and Jigsaw's Pickleball Cocktail is one of my most used tools of the trade. You can get a discount on any of jigsaw's amazing products, including [email protected] with the code less stressed.

[00:32:53] Christa Biegler, RD: 10. That's three S's, less stressed, 10.

[00:32:57] Mollie Eastman: So exercise timing is an interesting one. And we do put that further down on our kind of totem pole, if you will, of the impactors, the real heavy hits to our circadian health exercise timing has a bit more flexibility than some of the others in a particular way.

[00:33:11] Mollie Eastman: Meaning that we do have research to support that it does appear that you can engage in some kind of light exercise in the evening, and it's not necessarily going to show up egregiously on your sleep in the same way, some of these other hits will. But that is with some nuance and some asterisks, because, of course, I think there's the common sense rules apply that may be a CrossFit class, at 8 p.

[00:33:35] Mollie Eastman: m. under blue light and all these other components that might go into and then often eating paired with this can be a slippery slope we can often see. But I would say it is surprising how One, it's so important that we're prioritizing exercise to get great sleep. So I never ever want to leave the feeling for people that we shouldn't be exercising or something.

[00:33:58] Mollie Eastman: So we want to certainly prioritize this, but just having it have a natural down regulation sort of curve in the evening is really what we're going after. That's part of our goal with exercise. And how can we keep that sort of aligned with these rhythms of nature so that most of our exercise is largely happening when sun is out.

[00:34:15] Mollie Eastman: And then when the sun has set a little bit less of that, we're using that as a cue to wind down asterisks to our Alaskan, Swedish, et cetera, friends that might have some extra components. But as far as the thought timing piece, this one's a fascinating one. And this is like a big topic, but just the awareness that our thoughts exist on their own form of circadian rhythm.

[00:34:36] Mollie Eastman: And we have research to support that. The thoughts that you're having at midnight appear to be very different than your noon thoughts, if you will, and we had some of the lead researchers on the study that they called actually the mind after midnight. And that study was really fascinating because what they unpacked was that there's actually a real world.

[00:34:58] Mollie Eastman: Fallout for the differences in these types of thoughts, meaning that suicidality rates appear to go up in those wee hours of the morning. And this is something that's important for us to be aware of and responsible for is that if you're waking up at 3 a. m. And having all of those, horrible thoughts about everything that could possibly go wrong in your life you want to be aware that these types of thoughts are.

[00:35:22] Mollie Eastman: Really designed in this way on our circadian rhythm to be very different than those daytime thoughts. So if you can almost create for yourself a bit of a contract of not honoring those same type of thoughts in the way that you might your daytime thoughts, I know that's much easier said than done.

[00:35:39] Mollie Eastman: But this can be something for us to be responsible for beyond that, just the practical applications too are. We have our clients really get aware of what are the types of thoughts that they're engaging in the evenings. So are they starting to go into the bills, taxes, conversations with their partner, stressful things about the kids, whatever.

[00:36:00] Mollie Eastman: And it can sound so obvious, but you might not realize it in the moment. It could be a blind spot. So being responsible for those and then regulating those thoughts that could be stressful to the day. 

[00:36:09] Christa Biegler, RD: That happens. I think that happens all the time, right? Is that people have revenge bedtime. We talk about it quite often.

[00:36:15] Christa Biegler, RD: I actually, this is why I don't get my paperwork done sometimes. Cause I'm like, I'm going to do that after I clean up all the supper dishes and all the things. And I know that I'm not really willing to open up a project that could stimulate cortisol and then not sleep. So I'm like, I always say to myself maybe I'll just wake up earlier in the sounds nicer.

[00:36:34] Christa Biegler, RD: And I truly it's, it is because I just, I'm not interested in, you get to that point, you learn, I don't know if it's a blessing or curse, you don't know what you don't know. And then you start to learn things. You're like I'm just not willing to do that. So here we are.

[00:36:45] Mollie Eastman: Exactly. So 

[00:36:47] Christa Biegler, RD: actually, 

[00:36:48] Mollie Eastman: right. And the more you can have people in your environment, with that language can be helpful. So like my husband will often be like, is that good thought timing right now? Talking about like the most stressful thing I could possibly bring up and 

[00:36:59] Christa Biegler, RD: what a guy 

[00:37:00] Mollie Eastman: out there.

[00:37:01] Mollie Eastman: Yeah. So even if we can create a culture where we don't really do that in those particular hours, or we know that, yes, this is a good time for us to tackle that the next morning, or however you like you pointed to setting that up in your day. 

[00:37:16] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. So let's talk about this cool little thing you have, which is the database of wearables.

[00:37:21] Christa Biegler, RD: Now, some people say that. If your sleep sucks, you should not necessarily be looking at your wearable data all the time, but if you are, you're objectively looking at that data, doing things about it, et cetera. And so you said, you've got some really good data on what moves the needle for sleep.

[00:37:35] Christa Biegler, RD: And some I've had a, a couple of people, a couple of clients come to me where they're like pretty concerned about their chronically low HRV on their aura ring. So let's talk about things that move that you are seeing moving the needle for HRV and or sleep from your wearable data.

[00:37:51] Mollie Eastman: Absolutely. Yes. So we see a lot of things on our wearable data for sure. So one around HRV, I think it's so important for people to realize that of all the data on our wearables, there's different data that is less accurate and more accurate. So one thing sleep stage classifications are particularly have lower accuracy levels Then some other data.

[00:38:16] Mollie Eastman: So being aware so that we're not making, wild decisions based off of some of these things that could still be a work in progress, but things like HRV can be really fascinating because they're a metric of recovery. How well are you able to recover second to second? And so the general rules of thumb here are aimed to not compare with other people aim to establish your own personal baseline of your HRV and then start to notice.

[00:38:38] Mollie Eastman: Deviations be a pattern spotter for deviations over time. And when it deviates, then we can get a sense of I was just on a call with a client who we were seeing and just started up. And we looked at the history of their stats and their HRV, and they've been on this progressive downward slope with their HRV and now they've been below about, 30 percent or so below on their baseline for quite some time for a few months now.

[00:39:04] Mollie Eastman: And so our goal there is to uncover what has changed so that we can start to restore some of that old workability that was there that we saw that was present for them previously and start to bring that back. So using this as a diary of a workability of your life and course correcting accordingly.

[00:39:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Excellent. It sounds like you use multiple wearables. So I'm curious how you have landed on that. I've been like, dying for aura ring to end up with a better competitor over the past few years. 

[00:39:36] Mollie Eastman: Totally. 100%. Now I hear you and I think, this is 2024. So things very well and could be changing in the near future.

[00:39:44] Mollie Eastman: We've seen lots of rumblings of different tech kind of on the horizon, but right now we are we're Particularly using aura ring, but we do also bring in whoop band as well, which has some really exciting things that they're bringing into their tech and they do have a subscription model and as a result in a higher price point subscription model.

[00:40:04] Mollie Eastman: So they do have. Quite the reserves on tap to invest in innovation. And one of the things that we are seeing is their use of AI in, as it's thread into the data. So you can have a sleep coach on there, almost akin to like your chat GPT, but using your personal data, which is pretty cool. And then to also make sense of the data that's coming back and noting, Oh, look, you were 12 times more stressed on this Friday than last couple of Fridays or something, things of that nature that's unique to you, which is exciting.

[00:40:36] Christa Biegler, RD: All right.

[00:40:36] Christa Biegler, RD: So we covered various types of timing from. Meal timing to potentially caffeine timing to wearables. Molly, is there anything that you want to leave people with when you think about if there's 1 thing I should know for my sleep? What would it be? Okay. 

[00:40:52] Mollie Eastman: So good. I want people to know that they have agency with their sleep.

[00:40:57] Mollie Eastman: The amount of people that I've just, it breaks my heart seeing them going down the path of thinking that there's nothing else left for them, but pharmaceuticals or being beholden to needing to take something, being reliant on a supplement stack of, pharmaceuticals, et cetera. And it does not have to be that way.

[00:41:17] Mollie Eastman: And I think that this is so important. That's the reason that I do the work that I do is to help support people and getting back in the driver's seat. So if you can start to take on this concept that sleep is a skill, then like any skill, maybe you're just starting out on your awareness of it.

[00:41:32] Mollie Eastman: Maybe your intermediary, maybe we can move to advance, but as any skill, you can improve this area of your life. It is absolutely possible. It's not just, I'm a good or bad. 

[00:41:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Where can people find you online? 

[00:41:46] Mollie Eastman: Sleepoftheskill. com can serve as a great place to do a lot of things on there. You can take a sleep assessment, you can sign up for our sleep newsletter listen to our podcast, follow us on social but anywhere that you're at with your sleep that you, whether you just want to get more information, we've got that available.

[00:42:05] Mollie Eastman: Or if you want further support, we have online cohorts cohorts that you can join, one on ones and beyond. Sleepoftheskill. com. 

[00:42:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Thanks so much for coming on today, Molly. 

[00:42:14] Mollie Eastman: Thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate it.