Episode 567: Shawn Stevenson: The Science of Sleep, Stress, Weight Loss, and Longevity

Habits and Hustle

Tony Robbins interviews Shawn Stevenson on sleep science, stress, weight loss, and longevity, covering circadian rhythms, exercise timing, melatonin use, magnesium benefits, and smart supplementation.

Key takeaways

• Morning exercise boosts deep sleep and resets cortisol rhythm

Transcript preview

Hi guys it's Tony Robbins you're listening to habits and hustle. Crush it. We have the wonderful Sean Stevenson on and round how about podcast one part B does that make sense I love it we had some technical errors round one and we are gonna be doing a whole podcast on health fitness, sleep, wellness, longevity I mean you are you are a wealth of information. Sean has one of the top rated health podcasts called the model health show and now don't you have a deal with Spotify or someone am I supposed to say that or am I allowed? I mean you know we're doing some stuff we're doing some stuff okay but Sean is like amazing in terms of he's so researched and you have so many data points it's unbelievable so this is gonna be a very good podcast I know and what we do on this podcast my dear friend is we do these performance shots by magic mind have you ever done one of these before Magic Mind. Magic Mind. Okay. Yes, not Magic Mike. I wish. Maybe next time. I don't know. But this one's caffeine free. All right. Don't you want to do a little cheers? Do a little dabble? Here we go. Cheers, my dear. Do you like it? It's not bad. And the ingredient list is very, very good. It's all top of the line stuff. I feel my mind growing. Your focus clearing and also if it was magic mic Never mind okay. Let's move on I wish I went like yeah I know what you're gonna say But unfortunately it's just magic mine today, but Hopefully you're gonna be super locked in and super focused now with this pod not like you really need it I mean How many books do you have now by the way? Three? Three Yeah, you're three books and the first book sleep smarter Yeah, so that was the international bestseller first sleep wellness book to become an international bestseller? in 26 or 27 different languages or countries all separate foreign book deals so that really it changed everything and this way it came out 11 about 11 or 12 years ago wow it was before like sleep became the most trending talked about wellness hack basically yeah it really and also you know it was one of those things where especially in the book industry yeah Yes. And so publishers weren't trying to really look at a book like that, agents. And so it was something I really had to advocate for. And I'm grateful. Now it's just like, again, the conversation is just a big part. It's built in to the health conversation now. And so I'm grateful for that. What made you even think back then to write a book on sleep? I mean, I was working as working as a nutritionist. I was working as a you know we were seeing incredible results with people you know helping people to you know if they're on like licentopril and like met forming high blood pressure insulin resistance all this kind of stuff just helping to get their body to normalize a lot of these functions just through nutrition and exercise but there was always this percentage of people who wouldn't get the same results and that would really bother me ironically sometimes they would keep me up at night like what is right why can't we get this person get the weight off or get their blood pressure normalize So it just kind of hit me like a ton of bricks one day to ask people about their sleep and I was shocked. I was shocked. I mean some people like I was working with this guy from France and he shared with me that he only sleeps about four hours a night for and he said for years and when he said it was just like I see it I see it there's part of it kind of looked like a ghost a little bit like a little bit like a little bit like a little bit unsettled in his body you know and here's but they don't want to change that much to get it. That's right. And so I started to look into what are some science-backed ways that people can improve their sleep quality without changing a lot. And so I just I was blown away by all the data that existed that most people had no idea about. And so even one of those studies it was conducted by researchers at Appalachian State University looking at the timing of day that you do your exercise and the impact that it has on sleep at night. And so, and the researchers found that the researchers found that exercising in the morning. So they had exercises to work out in the morning. This was 7 a.m. 1 p.m. group and a 7 p.m. group. And morning exercises spent more time in anabolic stages of sleep. So like, you know, Delta Wave sleep. They had lower blood pressure in the evening and they had more efficient sleep cycles overall. And so not to say that the other times aren't like, quote, bad to exercise. Exercise is great just about any time. But of course, working out in the evening and then trying to go to bed and then trying to bed with can be problematic. But it was just pointing to the way that we evolved for most people just our genes are expecting us to be active in the morning. Yeah. And what that did was one of the things the researchers found and other studies as well, exercising in the morning helps to kind of set or reset or kind of sink up our cortisol rhythm. Our cortisol is supposed to spike in the morning and then gradually go down through the day. And not to say that cortisol is like an antithesis of melatonin, but if Cortes elevated definitely does kind of have a suppressive effect on melatonin and so for a lot of people we would see you know if we get a Dutch test done or whatever just to be able to like look at their cortisol rhythm through a 24 hour cycle we would see and call them tired and wired and so they wake up in the morning tired and then they would be wide awake in the evening right and they and I've I've been there I understand and so you know you were going to be like I can't bed at night, but then nighttime rolls around, it's because their cortisol was elevated in the evening and too low in the morning. And so exercise is one of those things, which seems kind of obvious, to help to get that cortisol rhythm reset. And what happens did you see, what was the data on people who worked out mid-morning or 1 p.m. Yeah. What did you see? Was it still, it was better but not great, basically. Yeah, I mean exercise, again, an afternoon, beneficial as far as influence on sleep, but not as the morning, the evening same thing but there was some issue with again cortisol and so you know what's so funny is that when I was writing the book I had this book that my son was he was 14 now so he was like like two and in the book it was like a nighttime book right and go to bed ritual book in the book so it was like the little characters a little animals like they had their evening routine like you know taking a bath and you know having their little warm milk or whatever it was But then part of the book was they exercise right next to their bed to basically tire themselves out. Yeah, yeah. And this was a belief that people had, you know, decades ago that we should tire yourself out when in reality there's a big difference between tiring yourself out and passing out versus actually going through your sleep cycles efficiently. And so, you know, I again another great example I had a person I was working with who did B.J. the you know, Brazilian Jiu Jijicic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And their class was like at 8 p.m. and they were like, I was struggling to get to bed at night. Yeah. I'm like, of course you are. You're wired. You're leaving there at nine and you're just like, you just got done fighting basically. And they're trying to get to bed at like 10 30, you know, I'm just like, listen, either and this sometimes it's just helping. A great coach or somebody just looks at your life from a different point of you. And you can see like, like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, Or don't be so hard in yourself to try to get to bed at 1030. Like it's okay to go to bed 11, 11. 30 if your schedule like allows for you to get up at 7 the next day. Like it's okay. You don't have to, so sometimes it's just like moving stuff around to optimize sleep. Do you back then when you wrote that book, I believe melatonin, taking melatonin was a big thing. And since then, it's now known that it's a hormone and whatever and that people shouldn't shouldn't be taking it now magnesium. Now magnesium. back then was that of course yeah I cited a study in the book melatonin just to be clear yeah it has its applications that are appropriate can you tell us what it is because I mean I feel like melatonin now has become kind of like the devil no one right like it's only you take magnesium glycinate and you want to fall asleep and not even the other types of magnesium can you kind of give me some clarification on this because I think there is a lot of confusion yeah for melatonin first of all is one of the most powerful hormone that we have. It's not just about sleep. That's really one of the biggest misconceptions. Right. It is part of our overall, it is a master clock regulator. So it's a big part of our circadian timing system, all right? And so what the hell is that? When I was in school, you know, again, my expensive university education, hearing about something like a biological clock sounds like soft science. We weren't really, it was like something like, something like two pages in a textbook. move on. But in reality it is quite possibly the most important thing for us to focus on when trying to optimize what our body is doing because these circadian clocks are determining when all of our other hormones and neurotransmitters, proteins are getting made, gene expression, these master clocks are controlling everything about us, right? And the question would be for me, what the hell are they? What are these biological clocks? genes. Right. So these clock genes are miss looking at stuff so don't take it personally. These clock genes are existing in our biological clocks or circadian clocks exist in almost all of our trillions of cells. There are certain cells that don't have them but these cells are glorified genes and proteins these clock we'll call them if you're hearing the term biological clock or circadian clock. There are genes and proteins that control all of our other genes and proteins that control all of our other genes and proteins. Okay, top tier importance. What is influencing these circadian clocks? Light exposure is the number one thing that's determining what these clocks are doing. And we can hypothetically break these clocks by having all of this abnormal exposure to artificial light at the wrong times and lack of exposure to natural lights. We evolved thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years with these inputs telling our bodies. have a bigger boost of testosterone or human growth hormone or estrogen or melatonin and suddenly all of this stuff is getting complete is chaos in our bodies right so melatonin is a master regulator of all these processes most attributed to nighttime stuff right melatonin is a very very powerful control or a regulator of our immune system function as well and so this is why we see higher rates one of the reasons and shift workers, for example. And so there's multiple studies on this as well. Yeah. And so melatonin is not just about sleep, it's about regulating our circadian timing system, which is, it's influencing everything about us. Again, I could just list off 20 things. Yeah. Immune system function, testosterone, estrogen production, cortisol, rhythms, all of it. With that being said, should you just go to CVS and buy some of that shit off the shelf? Yeah. You gotta be very very careful about that. Because why? Why is it dangerous? So what the data showed and what I shared in the book was the prevailing belief was that taking an exogenous melatonin supplement would suppress your body's own production of melatonin but that turned out to not be true. What the data showed was that you will still continue to produce the same amounts of melatonin but your sensitivity to it goes down. sites for melatonin, your natural receptor sites start to basically downregulate. And so melatonin won't work as well in your body. You keep producing it just fine, but it doesn't work as well. So there is an issue with that. That's a big issue. Of course, for sure, for sure. So now we know what the kind of culprit might be and why people continue to end up taking more and more to get the same effect. And people are giving it to their children. Yeah. To get them to fall to fall asleep. their kids should for a long time. I know, I was going to say this is not new. Whether it's like slipping some alcohol into the bottle or whatever case might be. Right, right, right to get them to go to sleep. You're right. So this is not like, it's obviously not a safe, would you say that parents should maybe not give their children melatonin before they go to sleep? Ideally, no, that's just not appropriate. But we got to look at the culture. We got to look like. we could definitely dig in on this but I want to make this point where I would possibly recommend or say it's okay for melatonin use. Small amounts like micro amounts especially shift like time zone changes can help to kind of get you sink back up get a little melatonin boost. I find it great for that. If you've had a couple of rough nights asleep in a row and just like I just need to kind of reset maybe that's another case but again you're to do instead, but that's another place. Or if somebody's using like again a micro amount over a longer amount of time that might be okay. We just don't want to get into higher doses, which is the vast majority. What it's recommended on the bottles or on the sprays or the supplements are pretty significant doses of melatonin that, you know, again, taking over a long period of time could cause some issues. So why can't people so because now I feel like it's all about taking magnesium at night. Is that. I feel like there has been a shift over the years. And does magnesium work better and why does it work better for sleep? Yeah, magnet. Again, another thing in my nutritional science class that I took in college, we were, like the teacher, the professor recommended everybody to take a multivitamin. If you work with people, tell them everybody to take a multivitamin. Right. What we didn't know at the time, and by the way, my first semester actually moved into my dorm in the summer of 1997. it which is crazy. So this was a while back for sure but even today. You don't look like a college kid by the way. Thank you. Yeah. Well even today though this is rare that you're going to have a professor who tells you that vitamin C on that multivitamin there are multiple forms of vitamin C. You have one synthetic version of it in that supplement. Yeah. Right. There are multiple forms of magnesium I was not taught that there are multiple forms. It's more. Most. forms of obviously the B vitamins but just about any vitamin that you can name minerals there are multiple forms of that thing and so when we're getting this kind of isolated supplement it can be helpful but some of it might not be what your body's actually looking for and so obviously there are all these different types of magnesium now I can't make a recommendation on which one is right which one is right for you so of course there's different companies that have like blends of different magnesium You know, but I think they can be incredibly valuable by the way, but I lean towards let's do what we can to get this in getting magnesium in in ways that we traditionally did through your diet Right, so you're not big on taking a supplement at all to try to fall asleep There are some but they're gonna be more time tested you know simple stuff and there's we can go into stronger stuff we could do basically like kamomile about sleep and if I... But magnesium by the way I'm not trying to... No, no, I want to know. We've got some data, some really strong data on magnesium, and I'm a big Y guy, so magnesium supplementation before bed helps essentially to shift over to that parasympathetic nervous system and supports the production of melatonin so it does have an impact, right? And so, but you got it, it's context, like if you're taking this supplement, but then you've got all got all the lights on the and all this stuff, are you going to get that same effect? No, you're not. It's like you got to stack the conditions. Right. And so magnesium can be great for some people sometimes. That being said, I would love to see a magnesium-rich diet. I would love to see a triptophan-rich diet. Triptophan is another really important good sleep nutrient. Trippophan is a precursor is a precursor to make melatonin. Give your body the raw materials to build this thing, but then get out of the way. the conditions that you need for your body to make melatonin is a consistent schedule because it's always looking to produce stuff at the same time in darkness right and so again if you're not abiding by those things you could take all the supplements you want you're not gonna get the effect you're looking for right and the trippedophan isn't that in turkey that yeah that's a turkey it is in turkey but it doesn't make you sleepy like that it doesn't we get tired on Thanksgiving because we eat a shit little food exactly so we call so we call But it's in it's in chicken as well. It's in a lot of plant foods too, you know. So yeah you could find trip to fan in a bunch of different sources, but this is just to lean back to okay if we're looking at something supplement wise quote supplement wise for supporting sleep. Camamile time tested for relaxation parasympathetic tone. We've got Kava kava. If we want to get a little bit stronger. Kava kava kava can really knock some more stronger. Kava can really knock. people out as well. It's traditional, been used for thousands of years, but my favorite, affirmed by data, biochemistry and pharmacology research, I believe that's the name of the journal. I know that it's a couple of parts of the name of the journal, but they did a controlled study with Rishi mushroom. Oh, yes. And Rishi was found to improve sleep latency, meaning you fall to sleep faster, increase overall sleep time, improved sleep. and improve energy the next day as well. So Rishi is really remarkable, but the sourcing matters too. Are you getting the extraction method? Right. Because you might be buying a supplement and it's not even what the researchers used. What do you recommend that? What's a good stuff? So there's hot water extracts and then there's alcohol extracts as well. It just depends on the purpose because with the alcohol extraction, the hot water extraction, of the mushroom. Like one method is going to get more the kind of hormonal compounds, triturpines, another method is going to get like the antioxidants and stuff like that. If you can, get both. And so this is why I like a it's called a dual extraction and so there are some companies out there that have both extraction methods in one T or one supplement. And that Rishi can help you stay asleep, fall asleep and have better quality than sleep. Yeah. And no negative side effects. biggest thing I want to point out about that study, if you put that up against some of these stronger medications or even some supplements like melatonin, we have these benefits with Rishi without negative side effects and it's immuno regulating and it's like attributed to supporting longevity, it's been used for thousands of years. It's something I personally use a couple of weeks a week. I'll have a cup of Rishi like 45 minutes before bed. especially like if I'm traveling and if I'm wanting to like get a reset I have some Rishi tea before bed and I'm blended with a little bit of fat as well just a little because again it kind of helps to bind with certain nutrients with the digestion so maybe this is like some gee you know really yeah just a little bit of gee maybe a little bit of some Stevie or something just to make it a little sweet but yeah but I mean it's it's earthy nobody said Rishi is delicious yeah I know what it's it's does work. Because I feel like it's not so much for people and myself. It's not about falling asleep, it's about staying asleep. Do you have any recommendations for how people could actually stay asleep? Because that's the biggest problem I feel that's happening, especially in middle age. Yes. So number one, we have to move away from adding so much morality to you sleep through the night. Like you're doing everything. right. We have sufficient documentation of people centuries ago waking up basically having two sleeps, you know, waking up after a certain amount of hours, maybe you know, having a little snack, maybe having sex, maybe whatever the case might be, and then they go to sleep again. But this is a time again, we didn't have artificial lights, so you're not getting on your phone. They're just, it's still dark and it's not safe to be out rummaging around. So you get the rest of you're sleep that your body might be looking for. So this doesn't have to be this black or white. Like the reason that we might wake up, which we wake up, we all of us wake up, but we're just unaware of it because we're going through our sleep cycles, right? Going through the different state, quote, stages of sleep, right? And so there are times when we have very light sleep, or we're kind of out, we can wake up. Maybe we move around, whatever, and then we just drift back into our sleep. pronounced waking up when moving through those stages. And today, unfortunately, we start doing shit. Maybe we look at our phone or we look at the clock and we're like, oh, shit, I have, oh, I have two hours left, like, oh my, and we start stressing about it. And