034: How to Get Your Best Sleep with Matt Gallant

Sleep is absolutely critical to being healthy. But do you know how to get your best sleep? Answering that question and SO much more is my dear friend and business partner, Matt Gallant.

We start the show by talking about how he got interested in the topic of sleep. When he was in his mid-20s he wanted to do it all: he wanted to record an album, learn all about marketing, work out at the gym and he had a full-time job. So he decided he would cut back on sleep.

And he took the resistance training approach by doing it in small increments. He shaved off 15 minutes at a time and thought his body would adjust if he did this gradually. He eventually got down to 5 hours of sleep and experienced some side effects when he did: he had to be pristine with the food he was eating and keeping himself hydrated or his body would completely crash.

Matt also shares another story about his experiences with sleep that showed him it’s the quality of sleep we get more so than the quantity.

We explore that story, plus Matt’s best sleep hacks. At night, Matt recommends wearing glasses from True Dark or Swannies about 2 hours before bed to help your body block out any type of light that might keep you awake.

He also recommends using a program called f.lux on your computer, which lessens the amount of blue light emitted by your computer. Iris is a similar program that Matt likes best.

As far as actual sleep, you want to keep your bedroom cool at night (16-18 degrees C or 60-64 degrees Fahrenheit). But you also want to keep your mattress cool because otherwise your body heat gets trapped underneath you and you will sweat. The sweat will dehydrate you which leads to poorer sleep and waking up tired.

Matt gives us his specific tech recommendations for greater sleep on today’s show before we dive into which supplements can enhance your sleep, and how they work plus the reason 15 minutes of meditation before bed can help you fall asleep faster.

You’re going to hear those fascinating topics, and you’ll hear Matt explain why he’s not a fan of melatonin. Join us for this illuminating discussion on sleep.

Resources:

True Dark glasses 
Swannies glasses
f.lux 
Iris 
chili pad Tim Ferriss 
The Ooler sleep pad 
EMF shielding tech  
Faraday cage 
Oura ring 
Dreem headband
Delta sleeper
EarthPulse
Dream Tea from Anima Mundi
Magnesium Breakthrough

Read the Episode Transcript :

 Wade Lightheart: Good afternoon. Good morning and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart at the Awesome Health Podcast and I got my good friend, buddy, business partner and co experimenter Matty G. How's it going today at the biOptimizers extreme lab?

 Matt Gallant:           It's going great man. Always, you know, I always love talking about health with you and I think we're going to be sharing some more deep gold today.

 Wade Lightheart: So I'm excited about today's podcast because we're going to talk about something that we've been in I think a circuitous conversation for I think almost the entire time that we've known each other for around 20 years, certainly 15 very deep. And that is sleep. And for those who don't know the statistics and what's happening, sleep issues is one of the biggest issues in America today and is expanding worldwide. And there's a variety of reasons for that, why that is. We're gonna dive into that. If you're struggling for sleep, you definitely want to listen to this podcast because of all the people I've met in the health industry, I don't know anybody that has gone as deep in sleep is Matty G and we've had a lot of discussions about it's, I'm a guy that wants to sleep the the, you know, for years I was like, if I could just throw sleep away, I'd be, I'd be happy.

 Wade Lightheart: When we started out, Matt was like, no, you need us. Like he wanted to get as much sleep as possible. But now we've both come for circle on this where we're kind of in what is the optimal sleep amount? How do you get there? Why are we in trouble for sleeping? How important is sleep and where does sleep play as far as hormone optimization, brain functioning, recovery from training. What are the hacks? What are the tricks? What are the tips? And Matty G, if he doesn't know all of them, he knows everybody who does know all of them and he's probably tried more of them than anybody on the planet. So Matty G, Mr sleep, where are we going? What are we doing? How are we, what, what's happening today?

 Matt Gallant:            I will start with the story of how I really started to understand the need for sleep and the importance of it. So at the time I was 25 years old, maybe 24, I was living in Moncton were Wade and I are from, and you know, I had the same mentality that you have. I'm like, you know what, I, I want to work like a hundred hours a week. I want to record an album, I want to learn marketing, I want to work, you know, literally 80 hours in the gym. I don't really have time for sleep. So, so again, like little, I was working 80 hours at the gym at a four 40 hour job, plus 40 hours of personal training clients. I'm recording a hard rock album in the studio and then I'm spending about 15 to 20 hours learning about marketing. So I did the math. It was like a hundred to 105 hours plus I was training twice a day.

 Matt Gallant: So in order to do all of that, I'm like, okay, I got it. I started cutting sleep. At the time I was probably sleeping, you know, normal seven hours. I'm like, okay, here's the plan. I'm going to start cutting my sleep by the 15 minutes slices and keep going down. My body will adapt. I was thinking like like resistance training and all adapt to the, to the stress, so you know things were going decently. When I got to about five hours, there's an interesting oxide effects that started happening. One of them was my hypersensitivity to water and food, so literally that's how I really got into water because if I was dehydrated like a micro amount, like I had to literally like be drinking water all the time. If I dehydrated even like a little bit, I immediately just kind of crash. Right? Same thing with food, it's like any food that my body wasn't really happy with.

 Matt Gallant: I would crash so I had to eat like flawlessly and be drinking water all the time. It otherwise it just crash. Then I kept going and then I finally crashed and burned at around like I think four hours or three hours and 45 minutes. You know, I, I just pulled the plug on the experiment and then I read a book called power sleep, which, you know, started educating myself about the need of it and the power of it and then kind of went the other way. It took me about two months to recover, you know, it was like nervous. It was pretty deep nervous system burnout and I was sleeping eight, nine hours now. So for the longest of time I was the kinda guy that, you know, needed eight, nine hours and whatnot and I didn't understand the quality of sleep is really what matters, which is what we're going to be talking about today.

 Matt Gallant: Not, you know, everybody's heard you gotta sleep eight in a seven to nine hours, which may be true for some of you, but I think in my opinion, the quality's really the key. So another story four and a half years ago, I, I crashed in a different way. I went on a big European tour for business, came back my testosterone at crashed an all time low and my body fat was at the highest that I've recorded it on a DEXA. And I realized right then that my S and I, and I've got an oura ring. So it was kind of like this, this convergence of all these events. And on the oura ring I was getting zero to 15 minutes of deep sleep at night. Like I was basically having no deep sleep. So that's when I realized that my sleep was garbage.

 Matt Gallant: You know, typically I would wake up at that time in the morning, I'd be really tired and you know, dehydrated. And even though was sleeping like eight and a half, nine hours, I felt like I've slept for, and of course the oura ring validated the, the the data, the experience. So that was the turning point and I realized, you know what, in terms of up leveling me as a human being, probably the number one thing, like the one thing that would improve my body fat composition, improve my brain, improved my ability as a, as a businessman improve myself in relationships was sleep. Like I realized right then it was a huge kind of revelation that if I slept better like every part of my life would improve and it has. So for me sleep is, you know, very close. It's hard to say which one is number one, a number two, but I'm going to make this bold statement. The top two things in my opinion you can do to buy, to biologically optimize yourself as a human being is high quality sleep and resistance training. I think those two, you know, in terms of improving across the board are the top two things. I'm just a lot of other things you can do, but if you sleep well, do resistance training, I think your quality of life, your health span and probably your lifespan will, will have a big impact.

 Wade Lightheart: You know that you make a couple of interesting observations with that conclusion. If you look with the advent of electricity and the advent of technology, particularly computers, digital screens, television and blue light, and the shifting of circadian rhythms, which is plays a big point in that this is the one area of humanity where we've have, I'd say civilization has throttled the endocrine system or the normal patterns. It's not normal for all this light to be present at night and over, you know, literally billions of years. Every creature is, is running on a circadian rhythm that is related to a light cycle, which there's a hormone cascade, there's an energy cascade, there's an awareness cap, there's this, there's just so many things that are tied to that. And so all of a sudden with the civilization, we've accelerated that curve. And then the other part of that is over the last, particularly the last hundred years and even more so, maybe the last 50 with, I would say with the beginning of the remote control in cars, we really don't push our physicalities that much. I mean, if you'll think back to the great statues in history, the Greeks and the Romans have these, you know, really idealistic bodybuilder type bodies. It's obvious that people were walking around looking like that to be the

 Wade Lightheart: Inspiration for those artists to develop those Herculean like qualities. And if you look at the population today, Herculean qualities is something that's only reserved for Olympic athletes, for professional athletes and the general population is anything but so based on all that what have you learned? What are the big, what are the things that mess people up first? Let's start there. What are the big don'ts or the things that people might not think of that are really affecting their quality of sleep and their quality of their life?

 Matt Gallant: I'm going to get into that, but I just want to answer the why first. It was really quick. No, why is sleep so critical? So first of all, let's look at it from a physical level. So your growth hormone, all you're, you're this, there's a whole prolactin cycle. That's where your GH gets released. Thus when most of your testosterone gets produced prolactin.

 Matt Gallant: Yeah. So it's this whole cascade that starts with the melatonin and then it triggers your prolactin is another hormone in the body. So, but what matters is the healing hormones though, the fat burning hormones, the muscle building hormones all getting released in that cycle. So if you're having no deep sleep or not enough, you're basically not producing these really powerful anabolic healing, anti aging hormones that you know we want. It's critical. So that's the first piece. The second thing, which gets produced typically during REM sleep, which is the end of your sleep cycle, the bulk of it is your neurotransmitters. So that's what allows you to feel good, to be happy for your brain, to function, for you to think that's when that happens. Then there's also memory consolidation. You know, when you're moving things from short term memory to long term memory, a lot of that also happens during the, the light sleep cycles as well as during your REM.

 Matt Gallant: So basically, and then let's talk about weight gain. You know, let's and grill in, all of these things get thrown out. So if you have a bad night's sleep, your hunger is going to be typically out of control. So the odds that you're going to snack and cheat, you know, your blood glucose is going to go up. So like literally if you, if you want to gain fat, like if your goal is to gain fat as easily as possible, if you have bad sleep, that's the formula. So, and I really feel that, you know, the weight gain, the fat gain epidemic that we have in around the world, a lot of it is being driven by poor sleep. And, and that's just again, just, it's just a physiological reality. So if we just look at all of these and pretty much every part of your body gets negatively affected, even your DNA.

 Matt Gallant: I read some recent research like a month ago where one night of bad sleep like four hours, you know, affected all of these epigenetics. So, eh, the, the consequences are extreme. Now let's the shift over to the fundamentals of how to maximize sleep quality. And it's really about eliminating the five sleep disturbances. If, if you just eliminate these disturbances, your sleep quality is going to transform. So the first one is light. You mentioned light. So let's just explain a little bit why light is so critical and there's so many components to light. We'll get deeper into it. But the big picture is as, as you said, that we're not programmed. Like I've got this massive light shining in my eye right now. Plus I've got two computer screens, plus I've got this other light. So I've got like four sources of blue light that are completely unnatural hitting my eyes.

 Matt Gallant: It's, and it's hitting my brain. So, and this is fine at this time of the day, but if I, let's say I had all of these things on and it's 11:00 PM, I'm going to be wired. And like I know I think a lot of night hours, you know, and, and I'm one of them right in the chronotype call them, call us wolves. We are hypersensitive I think to blue light more than other people cause I used to be able to like, you know, work on the computer till three, 4:00 AM and it's like I just wouldn't get tired. And I think this, the light is just stimulating my brain. So that is telling my brain that it's still daytime. Right. And like you were saying back in the day where it was candles or no, you know, just no light. As soon as it would get dark, our brains, it's like okay let's start shutting things down.

 Matt Gallant: Let's start priming the melatonin and then you'd get tired and go to bed, prolactin cycle, all of these things. So light is probably one of the biggest disturbances. Now let's talk about the basics, which is managing light during sleep. So you want your room like pitch, pitch black, dark as possible, you know, and if you're living in a city, it's even more important now for those of us. And I used to wear a sleep mask and then I found out that your skin has these photo receptors. In other words, when you're, when the light hits your skin, it will disrupt your melatonin production. So even having a mask, even those protecting your eyes and it does help, it's not going to be as good as a pitch black room. So that's light. Now that's not enough. We'll get back to light in a second and just want to cover the other four.

 Matt Gallant: So second is heat and this is very well researched. I mean I read that in power sleep back a long time ago. We sleep best in a cold room, especially our, it's important that our heads get. And then there can be heat disturbances where your is touching the mattress. And I'll talk about that in a second. The third one is blood flow restriction. That's another one. This is where a bad mattress comes to play because if you're lying on your side, like I'm a side sleeper. If you're a back sleeper, this is not as critical. But if you're a slide size sleeper and you have let's say wide shoulders and you don't have a good mattress, the blood flow gets trapped in your shoulder, in your arms, and then your body's going to toss and turn because your body knows, okay, there's not enough blood flow, it's time to move and you're going to move.

 Matt Gallant: So, and you can track that with a lot of these apps that'll tell you how many times you've tossed and turned. Fourth is noise, noise will disrupt your sleep. And you know, of course there's ways to mitigate that. And fifth is electrical magnetic disturbances. So wifi signal, cell phone signals, Bluetooth, all of these waves that are flying all over the place as we speak will disrupt your sleep. So what our goal is to, to use technology and tools to minimize the disturbances of those five things. The more we can do that, the better sleep gets.

 Wade Lightheart: You bring up something really important there about, I mean, there was really no way out of the technological advancement that's going in. Of course there's a lot of concerns with things like 5g being rolled out across the world and how that's going to have profound effects perhaps on our, on our biology. And there's a lot of people in the area that are concerned about it. Some people say it's unwarranted, some people say it's the worst thing for humanity coming. What are some of the things that you do specifically to mitigate these areas of your life? Like what, or like, okay, we've got the five main things. What can a person today go out and do in regards to that? And then we'll kind of get into some of the more advanced tax after that. So what are, what are the go-tos for, for Matty G.

 Matt Gallant: All right, so let's start with each one and I'll give you kind of my list of hacks. So let's start with light.

 Wade Lightheart: Get a pen and paper. Folks are gonna want it. You're going to want to write fast and furious cause Matt, by the way, Mat, how much money have you spent in total on your sleep systems?

 Matt Gallant: It's, it's around 30 grand. I mean, and I could add a couple of more devices on top of that movie, which would take people over 40 so, and you think it's one of the more valuable things that you've spent money on for sure. Right? Yeah. Like I, you know, if again, the way I look at it is if I'm 10% more effective, which, which I feel a more than 10%, but if I was 10% more effective, it's an incredible ROI. If my health span improves 10% or my lifespan improves. Like if I look at it from any of those three perspectives, it's a no brainer ROI. You know, people spend so much money on cars and these, these deep dish, the right appreciating assets where I think in this case it's like it's a compound health benefits. So your number one asset is health.

 Matt Gallant: And again, to me this and resistance training on the top two things. So speaking of lights, the first thing is let's talk when you wake up. Okay. So our bodies had these circadian rhythms. And one of the things that surprised me how effective it is is when you wake up, and this is a really huge travel tip to this, so we'll talk about how to reset your circadian rhythm when you travel. But this is the first thing that you do. So you wake up, you want to blast your eyes with blue light. Now you have two options. One, you can go outside and you know, go stare at the sun but get sun hitting your eyes. That's the natural organic way. And for those of us that live in, you know, one day or it's winter time and you don't want to do that.

 Matt Gallant: There's a device called re timer. It's not Australian company and he's these, it's kind of like these white glasses that literally blast your eyeballs with blue light. There's also the human charger, which are these EarPods like earbuds that blasts your brain with light. So the best time to use that is in the morning. Like, as soon as you wake up and let's say you want to start waking up earlier, if you wake up and okay, the first time's going to be tough, but if you wake up and blast yourself with light, like it's amazing how tired you get around, you know, 16 hours later. It's like, it tells your body this is the beginning of the day. So in terms of hacking your circadian rhythm, whether you're traveling or you want to just kind of start shifting your, your, your wake up time, I think it's incredible. It's very, very impactful.

 Matt Gallant: Now let's shift to the end of the night. So before you go to bed, probably around two hours is probably optimal. So as you want to go to bed until 11 was around 9:00 PM, you would put on blue light blockers. I'm a fan of the, the probably the most intense ones. The best ones is true dark. The, the red ones. This is a company that Dave Asprey's invested in great glasses. I mean, they're the most intense. The only thing is you're going to watch TV. It's like if they're so intense, it's hard to read. The more stylish ones, I would probably start the Swannies from James, my friend James Swanwick. And those are really good for like going out and you know, the block most of the pool. So that makes a big difference. That is, especially if you're using technology like TV or computers or your phone or your iPad, those will have an impact.

 Matt Gallant: Now if you're using your phone or your computer, you know, I use something called the, it's called, there's flux, which is really good, but I use a nuts by the way, is a, is a computer program that will actually change the screen color so you're not getting as much blue light. Yep. Now there's another one called Iris, which I think is better. It's a little more, a little more control and a little more aggressive. He's got all, all kinds of options. So I use that. So either flux or Iris and, and on your phone there's also built in like it'll start shifting and you can hack your phone where I'll show you what it looks like. So you see my phone, if I triple click, it becomes red. So this is more aggressive and, and you know, you can search on how to create tense in your phone and then you can control it with the home button.

 Matt Gallant: So those are all the things I do to, to manage, mitigate light in my room. I had double blackout curtains cause one was still literally the light coming here and there. I just put two layers of 'em and it solved the problem. So that's the light equation. Second is heat. You know, obviously if you're living in, if it's winter time in Canada, you don't need to worry too much, you know, it's going to be pretty chilly. But for those of us that are in summer or in hot climates, I live in Panama. You know, AC is mandatory, but that's not enough because going back to when I used to wake up tired, I was, I was sleeping in AC, I was losing around four to five pounds of water from going to bed to wake up. Like I would weigh myself for bed and wake myself. That's a lot.

 Wade Lightheart: I think a lot of people don't realize how dehydrated they can become sleeping. It's not, I mean, I watched that fluctuation as a way to monitor my own health to see how much water I lose in a particular leaving. For me, it's somewhere between two and three pounds is generally where I'm at from breathing. But if you go beyond that, I know that I've got some, there's some, there's some challenges.

 Matt Gallant: Well, you're going to wake up dehydrated if you're dehydrated, you're tired. Right? I mean, you know, you know any top water experts in the planet, he knows, he knows. He knows this as much or more than anyone else. I mean, you know, your brain, everything drops. You're dehydrated. So the answer is the chilly pad and you know, God blessed Tim Ferriss for talking about this on think it was you know, eight or tools of Titans is in that book.

 Matt Gallant: You gotta love Timmy. Yeah. Tim. Tim delivers the chilly pad is this machine and then they got a new version called the OOLER that they just released. So it's this machine that you put distilled water in it and it cools the water and then pushes the water in this thin layer, a thin mattress that you put underneath your bed sheets. So all that heat that would typically get trapped because again, the room can be 16 degrees Celsius, which this is pretty much what I sleep in. But you're still sweating where your body's touching the mattress, your body's trapping the heat, the chilly pad or the OOLER solves that issue cause it's getting, you know, you can control the temperature, you put it where you're comfortable and it'll prevent the sweat from happening. So now I'm losing like one to one and a half pounds of water while I'm sleeping. So that's a big reason why I'm not as dehydrate.

 Wade Lightheart: Quick, quick question on the chilling effect and it's power. Cause I, I grew up in as we both did in freezing cold new Brunswick. And when I was a kid, there used to be frost on my bed sheets on certain mornings and, and, and, and I, I can recall that the total label being frozen, going to the bathroom. So extreme cold. Is there an optimal level of cold? Like have they done research on, on how cold is optimal? Like is there a point where there's a benefit and a point where there's a liability? Do we know what that is? Are people doing Wim Hof sleeping? What's the, what's the deal?

 Matt Gallant: Um yeah, it's between you want your room to be between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius. That's, that's optimal. Cause your head needs to be above one degree core than the rest of your body.

 Matt Gallant: And it'll, it'll do that. So here's a trick too. Like I go in my room, I turn on my AC about four hours before I go to bed. So I walk in my bedroom, it's just super cold. Cause if, you know, if I go to bed and I turn on my AC at that point, I mean it, you know what I mean? It's gotta be still warm for about another hour. So if you want to fall asleep faster, that's one of the things now and another, does that change?

 Wade Lightheart: Just a quick question on that, cause that's the thing is important, but you live in Panama, which your base temperature on any given day is in the, in the high 20s or you know, low 25 celcius here with, with, yeah. With high humidity though as well on top of that. So if you're living in a colder climate, does that variance differ for people? Do we know, uh, is there any cause, is it the, is it the absolute temperature that's important? Or is it the variance from kind of your waking state energy?

 Matt Gallant: It's the absolute temperature. Now the difference is your metabolic rate, you know, and I'll give you an example. So I do a massive reef eat on Sundays, on Sundays. My body temperature is one to one and a half degrees hotter than if I'm fasting. Fasting like my second day of fasting. Like my body's dropped one degree. So second, you know, at that point probably go like more like 17 degrees or 18 degrees and I'll adjust chilly pad versus on spike day it's 16 degrees and I dropped my chilly pad down to like 14 cause otherwise to counteract that thermic effect. Correct. And you know, like men typically run a little hotter. You know, if you have a really fast metabolism, the more food you eat, women tend to run a little cooler.

 Matt Gallant: So there, there is those adjustments and that's the cool thing with the chilly pad. You know, if you're, if you're a couple you can get a couple versions so you can control her side and your side so you can adjust the temperature accordingly. But as far as what the research has shown, it's 16 to 18 degrees in the room regardless of where you're at is optimal temperature. Got it. One more thing too that I experimented with. It was kind of an accident. So I had these, these ice best, okay. There's these cool fat burning vests. You know, we'd be, we do a whole episode on, you know, we're in fat loss hack, so I was using it for fat loss. And, and you know, this is a well researched thing where you lose body heat with, you know, eater cryo or ice baths, but use these vests that you could wear that have you put them in the freezer and you put them on and it's really cold.

 Matt Gallant: So you know, you lose some body temperature. So when I use those, and I have even this cryo helmet that you also put in the freezer and it was recommended by our friend Katrine and you put these on. So when I was wearing these my deep sleep went up a pretty significant amount. So when I do that, I don't do it every night just cause you know, it's a little bit of a hassle. But when I do do it, my deep sleep goes up. It's almost like it's priming my body. It's like the, the, the temperature drop before bed would probably kicked start the prolactin cycle again. I don't know the exact science. All I can tell you is that the ring the data said, yeah, it's improving your deep sleep.

 Wade Lightheart: So, so what a cheap hack would be to take some bags of frozen peas and strap them together, a duct tape and kind of create a little helmet. Would that be the cheap, would that be the cheap, the cheap pack versus the cryo helmet

 Matt Gallant: And then the cool vest? Yeah, and I've seen what's interesting too, I've seen recently they did a research where like a hot bath also improved. So it seems that you're kind of, and that's more of a relaxation thing. So I think it's hitting different mechanisms like the heat. It's probably relaxing your nervous system.

 Wade Lightheart: Well also if you're doing a hot bath with magnesium as a big fashion term, we'll get into magnesium in an upcoming podcast. Cause I know we're going to go deep on that. But maybe the most important mineral to mankind is magnesium. So let's, but anyways, I'm diverting of course.

 Matt Gallant: So yeah, so that's the heat components. Next is the blood flow restriction. So that's really the mattress. Now I, I spent like months doing research on mattresses and the conclusion is you want up, especially if you're a side sleeper, you really want a memory foam because you want even weight distribution. Let me explain. If you have a hard mattress and you're a side sleeper and like let's say you have like wide shoulders or you're a woman wide hips, what's going to happen first of all is you're going to sleep like this, right? Cause I'm not going to sink in enough and it's going to tilt my body. So you're gonna have a spine curve which you don't want. And second of all, it's gonna really trap the blood in my shoulder. So it's a multitude of issues. Plus some people say that Springs are creating other sets of problems because of the waves and it's hitting this praying.

 Matt Gallant: So anyways, I'm not going to get too deep in the spring problems, but the point is you want to kind of sink in and how perfect with distribution. Now the rule of thumb is if you're, if you're really tall and you're light, then you don't need to sink in that much. If the heavier you are the diff, the softer you want your phone, right? So there's a company called Essentia, Canadian company. They're available in the States as well and they make a memory foam mattress out of a tree sap. Now you know there's other mattress companies like Tempur-Pedic but they're using oil based materials to make the mattress. And there's pretty significant offgassing that happens for petroleum based products is what you're meaning is petroleum base oil base. So for the first six to 12 months there's a pretty significant offgassing that happens, which you know, I wasn't interested in.

 Matt Gallant: Plus they tend to trap heat a little more. So that's why I went with Essentia. Now send you has all these different grades of softness or you can get a custom made mattress, which I did cost about 10 grand. And what's cool with the custom made is, you know, my wife got her side optimized for her shape and weight and I got mine optimized. So you know, personally, certainly improved and minded as well. So that's the blood flow component. Next is noise. Now you kind of have two options here. Either you go with white noise, which is what I do, which is not the best, but you know, if you're sleeping in a city, for example, I'm in Panama, you know, we'd notice how noisy you can get here. You know, it's the only alternative. So I had the AC running, I have an air purifier running and I had the chilly pad running.

 Matt Gallant: So it kind of creates this ocean of white noise, you know, cause all three of them, I mean kind of produce level of white noise and there's white noise machines that you can buy as well. And they do a good job of kind of hiding background noise, I think optimal. And when I go back to my parents' house, it's like there's no noise. And I think that makes a big difference. Right? Does ignore cars, there's no nothing, no technology earplugs can help a lot. I think your plugs have another set of benefits where you're hearing your breath and when you hear your breath, it has this calming, hypnotizing, a brain swelling effect. And we know that from meditation, just, you know, classic meditation, just focus on your breath and we have earplugs like you're hearing yourself breathe. And I think that that has a big impact on latency, which is how fast you fall asleep as well as cutting off the noise.

 Matt Gallant: So when I travel and I don't have all my gadgets, I, I'll, I'll use earplugs. And by the way, as far as the earplugs, my favorite ones, they're like almost like a wax based thing. So you don't put it inside the canal. Yeah, put, it's like a put that you put on top and you just smash it in again. That was another Tim Ferris. Not with a hammer by the way. You just, with your thumb, your thumb, you just kind of press it in and it does the same effect without kind of, sometimes you'll push the wax in or whatever and I don't like those, those old school cheap foam ones. So yeah, those, that's the noise component. Now electromagnetic disturbances is the last one. That your only option if you're living in technology is a fair day cage, which I, which I have one. So there's a website called less emf.com and they sell EMF shielding materials.

 Matt Gallant: So they have one that looks like a mosquito net. It looks pretty cool. It was a little worried when I bought it. I'm like, is this going to look really bad? But it looks like those, you know, African mosquito nets and it blocks, you know, all the waves from hitting, you know, hitting your body cause they're gonna I'm in a penthouse, you know, if I pull up my phone I think there's like 15 wifi I can find on my phone. So all of these are hitting me, you know, plus all the other waves that you know, self waves. And that said you got 5g coming. So sleeping in a Faraday cage cage, probably a smart move. Now for those of you that live out in the countryside and you can shut all your technology down in your house, I mean that would be the ultimate, you know, or if you're building a house from scratch. And when I, when I do build, you know, my next house or build the house, you, you can actually put all the shielding in the walls so you can actually build like a Faraday cage, you know, in the walls themselves. It's just absorbing all of the waves. Uwhich would probably be the, the ultimate.

 Wade Lightheart: That's great. I think that's really important of course. If you're living in a city and so for example, I spent a few months last year in Venice, California, which is like just an electromagnetic crazy zone. I think the leveraging technology yeah. Is really, really important. Or if you're, you're in a city, I think also there's just a subjecting to light light and noise is usually pretty significant. So putting in some of these little even little things is, is really key. So one of the things I think is important to reveal to people is what are the key components, cause I know you're a real data component. I think one of your stains is data shapes destinies. And you've literally tested all of the sleep technology. What are you using for data collection? What do you think of the best data collection devices about monitoring your sleep so that you get out of the realm of out of the realm of opinions and theories as you like to say? And where does someone get that or what should they look for for S for these types of things?

 Matt Gallant: Yeah, so probably the most popular one is the oura ring, which I'm wearing right now. So it's, it's a, you know, three to 400 bucks depending on which model you get. That's the one I started this journey with around four years ago. I bought it as soon as it came out. And you know, it's really, it was really good data. Now, about a year ago I bought was called dream D R E M and we'll get all this stuff in the show notes. Yeah. It's a headband that is measuring the EEG. So I used to wear the zeal. Kendra was a predecessor, like a great product way back in the day, right? Even in a business or whatever. Right. So the dream is kind of new version of it. And the thing is with sleep, like the oura ring, and I think they've done as good a job as you can using what I would call secondary metrics. So the primary metric would sleep is your brain waves, right? That's how you directly measure your, your sleep. Now the oura is using heart rate, heart rate variability, motion, body temperature. So those, what I mean by secondary metrics, the primary metric is your brainwaves. The dream measures all of the secondary plus the primary. So you, you know the oura. As much as I like it, it cannot match the accuracy of a dream in terms of the precise sleep cycles. Here's what I can tell you. The oura. And I, and I've talked to other people that have compared the data and actually look at sleep labs as well.

 Matt Gallant: The oura ring will actually be accurate at tracking the overall deep and REM. So let's say your overall combination of the two is four hours. Now the, the oral might say, okay, you had two and a half hours of REM and 90 minutes of deep. Okay. Now on the dream is going to also give you a say four hours of the two, but typically the oura is under measuring deep sleep and over measuring rep versus the dream. It will be more accurate on, on the, on the deep sleep. Now the one thing I love about the aura that you don't get from the dream is your readiness score. So your readiness score is basically how fried you are, is giving you a really good, accurate measurement of your nervous system. And you know, it's really powerful. I'll give you an example. Like recently my heart rate went up like 10 to 15 beats.

 Matt Gallant: My heart rate variability crashed and I knew there was something going on. So, you know, I, I hired Katrine who's one of the people we've worked with for health. And you know, I, I had had an infection, so I had had an issue that I had to deal with. So it's really good for that. It's good for measuring. If you're over-trained, you know, and you know, classically the two measure over training, if your heart rate goes up 10 beats per minute over three days you're over-trained that was the classic tool. But now with their, where the oura ring, we can really see, you know, a lot faster when that happens. And you can adjust your training accordingly. You know, just maybe take it easy. It doesn't mean you don't train, but you might not go do squats and dead lifts and sprints that day.

 Matt Gallant: You'll, you'll do more of an active recovery type of workout. So those are the tools to, to measure sleep. And you know, all the things that I've done have improved. Now don't forget things compounds. So you might do one thing and improves your deep sleep like 20%. You do another thing that's another 20%. No, you had 44%, you do another 20%. Now you know, you're, you're at 70 ish percent. So keeps compounding. And that's how, you know, an average now went from like zero to 15 minutes of deep to probably like 75 to 90 minutes. And then my REM is usually like two to three hours. So that's what I've found. Now I'd like to shift over and talk about other techs to improve and, and hack your sleep. So the first one is the nano V. The nano V is a machine that you put distilled water in it and hits the water with a very precise signal.

 Matt Gallant: You breathe that water in and it starts repairing your DNA. Okay. It's improving, scald the protein folding in your body. Now for sleep, what I've noticed is if I use it for like 90 minutes, my HRV will will go up significantly. It'll actually improve it by, you know, 15, 10 to 20 measurements on the HRV, which is pretty significant. So in terms of of restfulness and quality of sleep, it definitely makes an impact. Then I use what's called the Delta sleeper every night. You put this on your carotid artery, you can actually put it on your forehead as well, and it's sending the Delta pulse for like 20 minutes and it shuts off. So in terms of falling asleep or shifting you into Delta faster, it's a great little, you know, one else thing. And if you wake up during the night, you just hit the button and then you'll fall asleep faster.

 Matt Gallant: So I'm a big fan of the Delta sleeper. The next one is the earth pulse. So it's another PEMF device and you put these under your bed and you can control the, the frequency. So you gotta be careful. This thing is really potent, is very powerful. You know, when I first got it, like has like four built in programs and a level one program one and two completely wreck my sleep program. Three and four were great. So four is like just pure Delta and you know, three kind of brings you down and brings you back up and you gotta you know, you gotta control, you can control the, the strength of it, you know, for me, you know, I'm kind of a maximalist in nature and extremists. I started really high, but I found that, you know, dropping it to like 30 to 50% work better than like 80 to a hundred are going.

 Matt Gallant: It's a really strong, it creates a pretty strong field. So I like that. The vice, it's a good one. Then. what else do I use tech wise? That's pretty much it on the tech side. We can shift over to supplements unless you have any other thoughts. Let's, let's talk about supplements because I think you've kind of cracked the code on some powerful integrations around that. Okay. So first, you know, it's all about controlling brainwaves and your transmitters for the most part. So lavender oil pills are really powerful to increase alpha. So lavender oil and L-Theanine have been scientifically shown to increase alpha, which means that you're going to slow your brain waves down for those and listen to our other podcasts that when I just did around your nervous system. We talk a lot about this stuff and the issue is a lot of people are kind of stuck in beta and for the people that had a hard time falling asleep, that's what's going on. Your brain is just stuck in beta, which is a high fast brain wave and then it takes you a long time to shift it down.

 Wade Lightheart: For people are listening. That's like if you're the type of person that can't shut the brain off at night, the thoughts are still into this and that and the other thing, chances are that means you're, you're in a, in a, in a high beta state.

 Matt Gallant: Yeah. Your brain is kind of stuck there. Yeah. It's kind of like the beach ball of death that comes up on your computer just keeps spinning and spinning and you know, you can't get that, you know, that conversation in your head or that, that deadline that you have or that that conversation or relationship issue.

 Matt Gallant: Now you can hack that with meditation. I mean, which is a great pre bed ritual is you know, meditate for like 15-20 minutes, which slows your brain waves down. Then you go to bed. So that, that's a really good, good tip. But as far as supplements go, the lavender oil and the L-Theanine will both hack that and L-Theanine is probably one of my favorite supplements for sleep dosage wise. I would start at 200 milligrams and if, you know, I'll go up to like 600 sometimes. If I want a plane, I'll tell you about my plane stack. Right now it's 800 milligrams of L-Theanine and about 50 to a hundred milligrams of CBD. If it's legal where I am, I'll pass out like, you know, and you can dose a little bit of melatonin with that. I'll talk about melts on a second cause I'm not a huge fan of melatonin but that, you know, and I don't sleep easily on planes.

 Matt Gallant: I usually just pass out with that dose. Now typically though, it's more like two to 400 milligrams of both evening and around one or two Lavela oils. So if you're GABA deficient, GABA supplementation can be powerful. You can use, you know, GABA doesn't absorb that well, but it's an option. There is a Philippian route which also hits the GABA pathways. That is another option. And you know, I want to try injectable GABA so I'm, I'm the stream and the extreme optimizer here at BiOptimizers and I haven't tried it yet, but it is on my agenda to, to experiment with actually injecting GABA straight in. Cause when you take it orally, the absorption rate is really low.

 Wade Lightheart: I think for people just as a commentary,uif you're a coffee drinker, caffeine drinker, I think theming is a great, you're probably going to get even more benefits. It seems to be really works counter counter counter balances. The caffeine like L-Theanine is present in a lot of teas and not so much things like coffees or some of the more darker caffeinated and I'm a big tea fan. I'm going to get a topic about that one day. Umhe other thing is I think holy basil, if you're GABA deficient the L-Theanine, holy basil. Umhe Athenian holy basil combo is, is great to, to throw in there with, with your CBD. And a lot of people get a lot of power out of that.


 Matt Gallant: Yeah. yeah, I have not tried to obey as well. I'll, I'll add that to my experimentalists. Now. CBD works well the, for most people will disrupt your sleep. So, you know, personally 
 Wade Lightheart: It'll make you dopey in a lot of cases, but not improve your sleep. And there's a difference there. It's kind of like if you're, and that, I think that's a difference between pharmaceutical sleeping, pharmaceutically enhanced sleeping, which you pass out and go out. But the quality of that sleep is often countering. And of course we w in on the extreme cases, I think it's Roseanne Barr, and when she kind of went on that crazy street, she was on a heavy tranquilizer called Ambien, which a lot of people use for sleeping, which has all sorts of serious negative consequences about what happens when you don't sleep properly. So I think that's the difference between chemicalized nation asleep, which is just looking at the sleep as an overall result as opposed to optimization sleep, which is what you're into by using elements that are natural and indigenous to our bodies and using those in a constructive optimized way.
 Matt Gallant: Yeah. Now I'm really excited about CBG and CBN. I actually ordered some, and this should be arriving any day cause for sleep. They're supposed to be even way more effective than CBD. So you know, we'll, we'll talk about in a future podcast. Haven't tried it, read the research. I'm excited we're come back. Some other things ashwagandha, a gram of that can work really well. One to two grams of reishi can work really well, but one of my favorites and you know, we are really excited and pumped to be releasing this product is two to four caps of Magnesium Breakthrough. So one to two grams of a blend of magnesium. So like the glycinate is a great one to help trigger sleep and improve sleep. The L-Threonate will actually be really good for your brain. So we have this seven magnesium blend that releasing very, very soon in the next couple of weeks. And you know, we've been experimenting with it. So two to four caps of that should move the needle on your sleep.
 Wade Lightheart: Especially well, especially if you're deficient. So you know, it's the most common mineral deficiency in the world and magnesium's responsible for 350 different known chemical reactions and it's one of the things that they put Epson salts for example, or actually magnesium salts in are used to calm and tone and magnesium is essential for relaxing muscle tissue both stride at muscle and smooth muscle has a very powerful effect. And if you're deficient in it and almost every North American is because it's a ratio between calcium and magnesium, magnesium is the control on a two to one ratio. You have two parts, calcium, one part magnesium. And we have a very high calcium, a component in her diet. And it's interesting, it's like when you have high calcium in your diet, it actually creates bone loss. It creates muscle cramping. It creates dis balances in the chemical processes.
 Wade Lightheart: And I've seen literally dozens and dozens of my clients who had trouble sleeping. We just add magnesium to their diet and that's it. All of a sudden, or people who suffer from cramping. And that's other big issues, particularly people get older in combination with dehydration. They cramp at night time. They wake up, they're very stiff because they're not only dehydrated but their D, magnesium and magnesium. And I used to use the word, so you want to not just, you don't want to be de magged, you want to be defragged. So the bottom line is, is a magnesium is super, super powerful for people. It's one of the reasons we've done so much research on. I mean, there's like 30 different types of magnesiums. We found the seven best, which we'll talk about in another podcast as you said. So I carry on with this 
 Matt Gallant: Yes, we're ready. We're here the last 90 seconds. I'm gonna go rapid fire. There's a great tea called Dream Tea from a company called Anima Mundi. It's a blend of herbs, really big fan of that. Put your pajamas on. Ah, let me talk about melatonin really fast. Melatonin is a hormone folks like to me, I look at melatonin as seriously as I do testosterone, you know, and like in Canada for an example, like you can't, you can't buy that. And, and that's true for a lot of countries. So melatonin, I only use it when I travel. If I want to reset my circadian rhythm, that's the only time. And when you do you want to microdose like people will wreck their melatonin production by just going to crazy dosages. And what we found is that microdosing melatonin, if you go to use melatonin, like 0.3 milligrams is all you need is kinda like a little kickstart.
 Matt Gallant: And again, I'm not a fan of it. I only use it when I travel or when I want to reset my circadian rhythm. Otherwise I strongly recommend you stay away from it. Next thing is five HTP that hits the serotonin pathway that can have a positive impact on sleep. Some people. And the last thing I will share is a human growth hormone product or secretagogue you want to use before sleep. I have not experimented with these yet, but a lot of people report much improved deep sleep. I am planning on experimenting with a growth hormone, secretagogue very soon. Wade and I at BiOptimizers several years ago we did have a growth hormone releasing supplement. And I mean the, the dream, like it was affecting sleep. I didn't have the tools to measure it back then. But man, the visibility boost is a great product. It's insane. They shut the labs down. Unfortunately we couldn't find the sources of the, of the ingredients, so we had to stop it. But that, that was powerful. It was very interesting, very interesting product. So anyways, so I think that summarizes all the sleep things and again, you know, he, brain physiology is very unique and you need to experiment and find what works for you. And that's where the data comes in with the dream or the aura. So you know, you've got to try things one at a time and see what works.

 Wade Lightheart: So what we're going to do, folks is we're going to actually put this all together in a little book for you at the BiOptimizers sleep optimization handbook, which will be put together with all of these components, these hacks, we will be upgrading it, but you're going to be able to get a copy of that in the very near future. If we don't have it right here on the show notes, you'll be able to go to the BiOptimizers site. Check that out, download it as part of your biological optimization program. I want to thank you for joining us. Check out the show notes. Come back to the podcast, hit your comments, hit the likes. We love to hear that it helps us get the message out about biological optimization. I want to thank our guest today, the radical edge biological optimization maximization experimenter himself, fresh in the labs and Panama, Matty G. Thanks for being here and I'm delighted that you're coming onto the show more often because you're very knowledgeable in a course. A, if it's bleeding and it's the edge, you're there

 Matt Gallant: Awesome. A great, great fun. We'll be back soon talking about some more great stuff. So have a great day. Everybody.