Today I welcome sleep expert Tara Youngblood, who is the CEO of Chili Sleep, an international speaker, and author.
Tara is here to discuss temperature, and how it’s important to get deep restorative sleep. She will also sort out some common myths about sleep that we may all be familiar with. From night sweats and hot flashes to heart rate variability and hormone imbalances, to couples who simply like to sleep at different temps, Tara has a solution!
More about Tara Youngblood:
Tara Youngblood, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Chili Sleep and Author of Reprogram Your Sleep: The Sleep Recipe That Works is a highly regarded international speaker. Tara has extended her expertise to a wealth of high profile platforms including TEDx, Skookum Tech Talks, and National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep Show.
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Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve done a lot of shows on sleep; this one’s different. I think this one hits to the core problem if you have night sweats, if you have hot flashes, hormone imbalance. You’ve tried everything and you can’t budge your deep sleep and recovery. Look, sleep plays into everything, even the way our brain works, our thoughts, our attitudes. Sleep is at the core of it all, even our immune system. This topic I’ve never hit on, and yet, it’s at the core of the most important thing that we can adjust to get good REM and deep sleep, and therefore, all those other things change. Check out this episode of Cell TV.
Ashley Smith:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today, we welcome sleep expert Tara Youngblood who is the CEO of Chili Sleep. She’s an international speaker and author.
Tara is here to discuss temperature and how it’s important to get deep, restorative sleep. She will also sort out some of the common myths around sleep that we might all be familiar with. We always love the topic of sleep around here. Let’s get started and welcome Tara Youngblood, and of course, Dr. Pompa. Welcome both of you.
Tara Youngblood:
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, welcome. I appreciate you coming on Cellular Healing TV. Look, this is a topic that I’m very passionate about sleep. I also want to bust through a lot of the myths about sleep. We’ll do that.
Looking at sleep, let’s start with some of the basics, okay. I do this even though I’ve done other sleep shows. Okay, why am I so into sleep? Why are you so into sleep? Why should our viewers be into sleep? Why is it so important?
Tara Youngblood:
Sleep is really attached to everything when you start to make the list. Everyone’s like, well, give me things that sleep affects. It’s really hard to even limit it to five. It’s like, well, in what area? When you looked at everything from cognitive performance to physical performance to immune system, aging, recovery, just even down to your willpower is affected by whether or not you get enough sleep. If you want to make a change in your life, you want to improve yourself, sleep is just an integral part of everything.
I look at it as an amplifier. I’m a physicist, so the background of math always comes in. If you take a simple equation of just I’m going to start a diet or I’m going to do a diet with some fitness, sleep’s going to magnify those results. It’s going to make it better. It’s going to improve across the board your stress tolerance, your immune system. All those long-lasting heart impacts, brain impacts, they’re all attached, especially to deep sleep or the lack thereof, has been shown to be the start of a lot of problems that we have as we get older.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s so true. People just, they don’t get it. Okay, let’s start here, though, because I would think that most people watching this would say, well, I get good sleep, and not the case. I measure my sleep with an Oura Ring.
I can tell you that at one time, my son thought he was getting good sleep. He was sleeping, for goodness sakes, nine hours every night, and yet, when he put the Oura Ring on, he wasn’t getting deep sleep. He was disrupted all night. That’s happened more times than I can count. People think they’re getting a deep sleep, but maybe they’re not. What is a good sleep?
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, you mentioned myth-busting. I’m a big believer in busting this myth about eight hours being the ultimate [00:03:48].
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I was going to ask you about eight hours.
Tara Youngblood:
Actually, it’s fun. I’m all about useless facts. Fun, useless facts is eight hours only existed after the Industrialized Age when factory workers petitioned to get an eight-hour break from work. That’s when we created this standard of this has to be then and at this particular time. There are some bases in our circadian rhythm, but overall, the best metric is really about that deep sleep and REM sleep and finding a good balance in your sleep that’s going to ultimately give you the best recovery.
Unfortunately, as we age, our sleep changes. Obviously, there’s metrics of having kids and getting up in the middle of the night. There’s also just this change that happens. A 20-year old is going to get about two hours of deep sleep and about two hours of REM sleep. By the time we’re 80, we may get only seven minutes of deep sleep or none at all. It really significantly changes throughout our lives.
Now, they’re attaching every single disease of the [00:04:43 amyloid] to the lack of deep sleep. One of the things that we can do that will help us stay healthy is to get more deep sleep. Unfortunately, it’s a little bit like a unicorn. If you’re not measuring it, if you’re not keeping track of it, or you’re not aware, it’s really easy to not be aware that you’re losing that deep sleep as you get older.
Dr. Pompa:
Here was my sleep last night; oh, crap, lost it. Oh, there it is. I had an hour and 31 minutes of deep. I had an hour and 35 minutes of REM. I slept seven hours and 23 minutes. Anyway, there it is. I got a 91 score, but I look at—I look beyond the score.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, the score thing is—especially for the type As that are used to getting 100%, that part can make you a little bit nuts. The biggest disclaimer I say about tracking your sleep is don’t track that big score; really look at the metrics because you may not ever get 100% otherwise. It depends on the app and the form you’re using.
Dr. Pompa:
My readiness looked good as well. Okay, then, what’s better, getting nine hours sleep or an hour and a half of deep? I guess you already answered that. Let me make the question a little harder. The deep sleep’s more important. Let me switch it. What if I only got six hours sleep, but still got an hour and a half of deep sleep. Is that a good night’s sleep?
Tara Youngblood:
I have this conversation. I had it in my TEDx Talk; I have it with military guys a lot. A lot of them don’t get eight hours in the rack. They are lucky if they get six. What really does matter is that metric. I don’t have my Oura Ring; it’s on the charger. Otherwise, I’d go through that as well.
Even in the TEDx Talk, at my age, I should have a really hard time if I follow the metrics of society and try to get those two hours. Even if I only get six hours of sleep because I’m traveling or whatever, I can still hit those two hours each. It really is about dialing in and retraining your body. Your body is highly trainable. Sleep is one of those skills, honestly. It needs to practice; it needs to be treated the right way. If you do, you can get great sleep in a pretty small amount of time and at any age.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, well, I’m 55. I still hit some two hour plus deep sleeps. It often doesn’t matter, a matter of fact, sometimes, when I’m getting shorter sleep because most of my deep sleep happens right when I go to bed. Even if I sleep four hours, if I got two hours deep sleep, I feel fine to your point.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, and you did hit on a key point that’s really important. We really do talk about chronotype and timing. Deep sleep really does love that first half of the night when your body is dipping down in temperature especially. It does make a difference if your chronotype or your timing is such that you should go to bed at 10:00 and you go to bed at midnight. It is way harder to still get those two hours of deep sleep. You do go through all the different cycles, but deep sleep is really focused on that zone of the first half of the night. REM sleep is going to be the opposite and be focused on the second half of your night.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, in your opinion, what do you think has the greatest impact on deep sleep and REM sleep if those are the most important? I know REM is where our brain rests and heals; deep sleep is where the body heals. What has the greatest impact on those because I’ve done shows on light, but I’ve played with it. It doesn’t have a big impact on me, meaning that, if I look at screens or if I’m watching TV, it doesn’t really—I’ve tested it. It doesn’t really affect my deep sleep. In your opinion, what’s the biggest thing?
Tara Youngblood:
I will say as a disclaimer, everything that you hear about sleep—and again, this is one of those myths. When people look up like Top Ten things to fix your sleep, and you’ll see caffeine, and you’ll see light. Unfortunately, there is a percentage of the population that is not going to be affected at all and the rest of us are in some sort of spectrum on that. There are general rules about lighting, and caffeine, and eating, and metabolism that are really helpful, but it’s also important to understand that whatever you do with sleep and anything else I think, diet or fitness, that you really think about it in terms of you. If it’s something that doesn’t work for you, then it’s okay to discount it. You should listen to your body first and foremost.
Dr. Pompa:
What does disrupt my deep sleep is alcohol, food too close to bed, if I eat three hours before I go to bed.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, and that’s just because of temperature.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that affects my deep sleep, crushes it. I can look at screens, but when I do that, bad news Sally.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, and the fun part about temperature—and I will say one of the things I get asked a lot is how did you come up with the idea. Did you know about all of this? Honestly, we were just going for comfort. Todd and I, my husband and co-founder, we sleep at different temperatures. We thought if you can get dual climate control in your car, I wanted dual climate control in our bed because he was always super hot. We had to create pillows to keep his heat on his side.
That was the invention, but the magical part about temperature really goes back to evolution. Jerry Seagull out of UCLA did a whole hunter-gather studies and did engrain temperature to those sleep timings. They didn’t go to bed at sunset; they actually stayed up and would sit by the fire. The temperature would still go down in the middle of the night. That really was what was their motivating factor for when they would fall asleep and when they would wake up.
You’ll see a similar deep in your core body temperature right after lunch, that siesta. All of those different times of the day that are temperature driven do exist in there. Actually, Clifford Saper out of Harvard coined something called the sleep switch, where your VLPO neurons in your brain are actually driven and triggered by temperature. You can Google his work. It’s really fascinating work.
That sleep switch is temperature driven. When that happens and those neurons are triggered, that’s when you get the release of melatonin. I get lots of people like, well, should I take melatonin. There are natural ways to do that. Obviously, you need to decide for yourself if melatonin’s a good idea. There’s certain limits to that. Your body does that naturally. Temperature is one of the ways you can trigger that release of melatonin and not be taking a supplement for it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, to your point, like okay, it was easy for me to recognize that eating too close to bed, drinking massively, looking at my Oura, my deep sleep was affected. You’re saying, hey, the bigger—what it’s doing is it’s affecting body temperature which is how it throws you off. For you then, body temperature becomes the biggest player.
Tara Youngblood:
It is a huge player. We discount it because temperatures become something that’s in the background in our modern society. We set our houses, our cars, our lives at a constant temperature. We don’t change throughout the day. Even in COVID, it’s more succinct because we’re in our houses more, we’re not going outside possibly as much as we should, we’re not switching to other locations.
We’re in this constant state environment. Our bodies are looking for triggers that they’re not finding. Then we get into our beds and the unnatural materials in our beds, those foams which feel really awesome, they actually absorb heat and reflect it back. We’re creating this ultimate environment for our body where we can’t throw off core body temperature.
When you think about throwing off two degrees of core body temperature, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s your heart and lungs. That’s all the way on the inside. Dropping two degrees is significant. You need a thermally neutral or cool environment in order to be able to allow your body to do what it wants to do. When it can’t do that, that’s when you don’t get deep sleep.
Dr. Pompa:
You brought up a good point because one of the things I said, well, I crack my window. I let cool air in. Obviously, that’s inconsistent. Obviously, you brought up another problem. That’s the heat that you generate between you and your bed. Even if your window is open, you still have this heat that’s reflecting back on you from the bed. That led to the system you developed for this, right? Am I right on that?
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, absolutely. It really works like—I like to think of our human body just like an engine in your car. Just like an engine in your car, it will overheat if there’s not a radiator. You can’t just drive it and hope that air going past it is going to be enough. You actually have to manage the heat put off of it. You really need to plan to do that for your body. That thermal exchange is necessary.
What our pad does is it basically is a radiator for your body where those coils go underneath you. We run water through it at whatever temperature you set it at. That’s basically to maintain that interchange. Heat sync is the fancy word for it, but your body wants that place to dissipate that heat. In essence, our pad becomes that place for that heat to go and get taken away.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and just to be clear, you developed Chili Bed. There’s a system, the OOLER, that I’m using, which is a pad for the bed, very simple.
Tara Youngblood:
Yep, they’re both pads, yep. They’re both pads for the bed, but one is just a little more sophisticated. The Chili Pad has got a remote. It’s like your thermostat that you maybe grew up with that you turn the dial and set it to one temperature and it stays there. OOLER is a programable thermostat and for people like me that aren’t one temperature.
Todd loves to sleep cold. As far as he’s concerned, he cranks that sucker down on a Chili Pad. He’s just fine; he’s going to stay at one temperature. I definitely need that—the different hill climb equivalent. I like to warm up to fall asleep. That’s my temperature change that I’m looking for.
You can have it be triggered either way. For me, I warm up as I go to bed. Then I cool down for that first part of the night. Then I do warm back up because we want to throw off that sleep switch and turn it off. Actually, heating up your body will—the reverse of the melatonin release that you get at the start of the night, you actually get a cortisol boost. It helps wake you up out of bed.
We have a warmer wake kind of alarm that you can use that will heat you up. It’s amazing the results. It really is like, wow, I’m awake. I can’t go back to sleep.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, look, my wife, it was great because we have two halves of our bed. She’s freezing the moment she gets in bed. She was able to heat hers up for the first 30 minutes and then drop the temperature down. That was good for her; for me, it doesn’t matter. I warm up right away. It’s nice like you side, driving in a car. When you have this person, we can adjust the temperature. That’s huge.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, there’s lots of difference between sleep partners, but temperature is one of the key ones. It doesn’t matter who you are. Sleep partners are almost always different temperatures.
Dr. Pompa:
What do you see? When people start using the system, what do you see right away? Obviously, it’s going to affect their deep sleep. You get a lot of obviously feedback. What do you hear?
Tara Youngblood:
We get people with everything from neurological conditions to cancer treatment, diabetes, or just professional athletes. A lot of what we see really will depend on how people are going into this and what our sleep looks like. Someone that says I slept really well—and we do give out a version to each of our employees. They’re like, oh, I sleep okay, but they actually don’t toss and turn as much. They’ll sleep through the night. Their sleep times are generally extended. If they’re a short sleeper to begin with, they’re able to stay in bed, sleep longer.
To that point of the metabolism of eating or drinking before you go to bed, anyone that’s a high-performer athlete, their metabolism means that they’re really hot. They tend to run hot. They’re not going to be able to sleep really well. Whether they’re an NFL lineman or just a tiny little CrossFit girl, they’re both going to have very high metabolisms, so they’re going to be really hot at night. It doesn’t matter who you are. That performance metric is going to change. It will retrain your body to be able to sleep better.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s interesting you said that about athletes because Luke Winters, he’s on the US Ski Team, he stays with us oftentimes parts of the year. We got him an Oura last year for Christmas or his birthday. He’s like, yeah, I’m constantly—it looks like he’s waking up, but he says I’m not waking up. The Oura Ring makes it look very unrested sleep. His deep sleep wasn’t what I thought it would be. I’m wondering if he’s just too hot.
Tara Youngblood:
He’s just too hot.
Dr. Pompa:
Because he’s an extremely high-trained athlete, very healthy.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, no, it’s really amazing. We were on a bunch of teams in the NBA bubble this year. Every single professional sport we have people sleeping on it. It really is a game-changer. You can look at Sky Christopherson did a whole thing on the women’s Olympic team, the cycle team in the London Games, and tracked using our product. That performance part is not a joke.
It’s easy to think you’re getting a good enough sleep because you’re—maybe because you’re young and you’re not registering that lack of deep sleep. As we talked about, sleep is an investment for your life. It will compound if you’re really not getting deep sleep. It compounds. Honestly, your stress measurement of what kind of headroom you have in order to reabsorb stress, absorb immune system challenges or things that come up, that ability to have headroom in your body of being able to handle whatever challenges that comes, deep sleep is a big part of having that headroom to be able to absorb whatever comes at you.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I would argue that your immune system is—the deep sleep is just a gauge. If you’re just constantly not getting enough deep sleep every night, it’s building up and your immune system is going this way. Everyone right now is fearing COVID when it’s like I don’t fear COVID because I know my immune system is fine; a matter of fact, I was trying to get it from Day One just to get the exposure. The point is that people don’t have a confidence in their immune system.
One of the first things you can do is Number One, how much deep sleep are you getting? Get an Oura Ring and track your deep sleep. Number Two, then figure out what’s affecting your deep sleep. What are your tips? You’ve studied this more than most. What would you say, okay, here’s the things I would absolutely focus on to increase your REM sleep and your deep sleep?
Tara Youngblood:
Deep sleep is to me I think the—for most people, and REM sleep can be difficult for certain types of people. Deep sleep is definitely the unicorn of sleep where it’s tough to get. You’re going to feel the benefits immediately. That’s always the first place I look to.
If you’re having a hard time, let’s see if we can get you some deep sleep. It’s often associated with if you get great deep sleep, you’re less tired. In the morning, if someone does a survey after that you haven’t had great deep sleep versus when you did, you’re going to wake up and say, oh, I feel amazing or I feel exhausted. Deep sleeps just a great place to focus.
As you mentioned, anything that increases your body temperature. Depending on what you’re sleeping on for a mattress, ambient room temperature, whether you get our system or not, temperature is a big impact on that. Tim Ferris and a few others have gone and they’ll do an ice bath before bed. That’s an alternative. Again, what you’re trying to do is reset that core body temperature and allow it to go down. If you’re one of those cold plungers, that’s definitely a way to enhance your deep sleep.
Definitely don’t eat for three hours before you go to bed. Deep sleep and alcohol, it’s a huge buzzkill. Talking to the younger athletes, they’re 20-something and just making all this money. The last thing you want to hear is, please don’t party and please don’t be up late and doing all that stuff. It is definitely a buzzkill, but that makes a big difference.
Then to the point of the sleep switch, if you even turn it off in the morning, if you can get—that is when sunlight I think makes the most difference is turning off sleep is really important. Don’t stay in your pajamas hugging your cup of coffee. Get dressed, get in a cold shower, do something that’s going to change your temperature, give you light, and get you outside because the moment your metabolism starts ramping up, your body is like, great, I’m done sleep. The clock starts ticking towards that next sleep cycle. Even though it’s daytime and it’s first thing in the morning, that has a big impact on what that bedtime time is going to look like.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so you’re not a fan of using alarm clocks obviously to get up. I haven’t used an alarm clock—I don’t even know when I last used an alarm clock.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, I have one in all honesty because if you get on a flight. I have it just because I’m like, okay, I have to get up early. I want to know that I’ve got that covered and I don’t have to think about it. It’s a check the box, but I haven’t woken up by it in a very long time because again if you’re getting good sleep, your body will get in a rhythm. It will match what’s happening.
That clock that exists for us is engrained to everything. I think people think of chronotype or sleep timing as being the only way that clock is used, but your body uses that same clock for your best cognitive time, which if you’re a morning person will be in the morning, but for an evening person may not, your best creative time. Again, I’m a morning person and late afternoon. Right around now, I’m peaking out at my creative window. Then your highest blood pressure, when you should be having a bowel movement is even all engrained to that clock. Those are all things we don’t want to talk about, but those are things that if they’re happening at the right time are all indicators that your clock and your system is working properly.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, which is a sign of health; obviously, a great sign of health. Yeah, what about the person who says, well, I’m a cold sleeper? I’m cold all the time. Chili Bed, that sounds worse. [00:23:15].
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, it’s really interesting because we literally think about temperature only in terms of this ambient temperature so much. I have the conversation all the time of our body is 98 degrees. It has nothing to do with our ambient temperature. If you’re thinking about your body or your engine, when it’s cold outside, you still need a radiator for your body—or for your car.
You still need this for your body because what may seem warm to ambient temperature—I honestly just had a conversation with someone who had arthritis. She’s like, I can’t sleep really cold. I’m like, don’t sleep really cold. Sleep at 80. Don’t sleep colder than the room temperature if you’re sleeping cold, but 80 is actually warmer than the room temperature, but it’s still keeping your body in that thermally neutral place.
For a lot of people, we go between 55 and 110. A lot of people find what that ideal temperature is for them. It may be right around core body temperature because it means that they’re able to do what they’re supposed to do. The regulation part of what we do is really not engrained to ambient temperature; it’s really about your core body and making sure it can do what it needs to do for sleep.
We had a bunch of patients, younger patients that are in that nursing home environment. They couldn’t maintain a proper body temperature. This actually prevented them from going to the emergency room because their core body temperature would drop below where it was supposed to. The core body temperature is just really important to all your systems.
Dr. Pompa:
What you’re saying is that someone could be—their core body temperature could be dropping too much at night, affecting their sleep that way. Therefore then they would have to set their OOLER bed at a higher temperature. How do you know that? I’m tracking my deep sleep. What about the average person [00:25:09]?
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, a lot of it is if it—we know more about our bodies than we give ourselves credit for. I do try to break up the night into three different zones of thinking through what you need to do for sleep. Frist one is that bedtime window where you’re still awake. A lot of that is all about—or consciously, not unconsciously, consciously what feels good? What’s going to help you fall asleep?
If you go to bed and you’re freezing cold, please warm up. Please warm up to fall asleep. Your body is saying, I’m feeling chilly. I’d really like to warm up. A lot of women end up feeling that way. I think it’s a part of almost nesting that comes with that. There’s all sorts of anxiety and things that are soothed by being a little bit warmer. I use a weighted blanket to even amplify that more.
Then the next section is really about being thermally neutral. That doesn’t mean colder than your room; that means to the same temperature or below where your core body temperature is which is around 98 degrees. That second one may still be in the 90s, but it’s not going to be set really low if you’re cold. What it will do is it will actually help you maintain what you need to. You want to create that arc that matches what your body is doing. It goes from this top here and it goes down into the valley and comes back up when you wake up. You want to match that thermal experience in your bed. Our beds just don’t allow us to do that by themselves.
Dr. Pompa:
Help us set our beds. We’re going to put the link, folks, down below to order one of these systems for your bed. I buy one; how do I go about setting it?
Tara Youngblood:
It will walk you through this in the app a little bit of bedtime and waketime. Bedtime, you want to think about, well, how do I feel when I climb into my bed that’s currently ambient temperature, so whatever your house is at. On average, it’s 70 degrees. Is that 70 degrees in your bed, is that cool or is it feeling hot? Does it feel just right? That’s what you need to do in that first one. You’re going to have to possibly play with that gauge a little bit.
Usually, within three nights, people have it figured out. Because it is one-degree increments, you’re going to find that granularity. Everybody ends up coming in like, oh, I didn’t really think I’d come up with an exact number. It’s amazing that people will find whatever that exact number is. It may be 73 and that feels widely different than 76. It’s phenomenal, but it really is. We’re that dialed into temperature.
Dr. Pompa:
What is your settings and what is your husband’s settings?
Tara Youngblood:
Yes, mine I do—I warm up so I am at—right at core body temperature of 98 degrees when I climb into bed. I want to be warm. Then within a half-hour of going to sleep, I actually drop it all the way down. It goes all the way down to about 72, which is about the house temperature of what we are. It’s almost matching ambient temperature at that. I keep it at that temperature until about 3:30 in the morning.
I’ve played with that time. If I go to bed on weekends a little bit later, sometimes I’ll adjust a weekend schedule for that. In the summertime, it seems to be more succinct than in the wintertime because I don’t know why; it just is. Maybe it’s the light; I’m picking that a little bit.
Then I warm it back up. It’s actually about 82 for the second half of the night. Then I have the warm awake that will wake me up that will start from—when I set the wake-up time, I’m really setting when I want to get out of bed. That wake-up alarm will start within 15 minutes of when I want to wake up. It will warm me up to wake up.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, so you go like 98, down to 72, and then bring it up to 82 at 3:30 in the morning, and then you bring it back up even higher to like 98 right before you get up.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, because it is so powerful for deep sleep particularly. We find not as much for older people I think as we’re harder to get on the deep sleep, but if you take a younger person and you make them really cold, they may stay asleep, but actually, the deep sleep will start to carve out REM sleep. They’re getting three, four hours in a deep sleep and no REM. You really do need to try to make sure that you are adjusting that temperature. We do get that sometimes. People are getting phenomenal numbers on deep sleep and then they’re really low in REM. We really do want that balance.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, warming it up because you get most of your REM sleep towards the end after 3:30 in the morning to your point. You answered my question; that’s why you bring it up at 3:30 in the morning, okay.
Tara Youngblood:
It is; it’s to maintain that balance. I will say that when I’m—I feel like I’m coming down with something, or I feel like I want to recover, or maybe I took a really long hike, or I pushed myself, whether physically or mentally, I will switch that. I will allow myself longer in deep sleep to do that. It becomes such a powerful trigger to your unconscious mind that you’re able to start playing with what do I need more of tonight.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s fascinating just that temperature has such a strong effect on those parameters that are so important: REM sleep and deep sleep. Yeah, that’s [00:30:31].
Tara Youngblood:
It’s crazy. The fun part for me is it’s your unconscious brain. When people say, well, what can you do to hack your sleep, it is really tough because you’re asleep. It’s either the behaviors that you do during the day, but then once you’re asleep, you’re baked. You’re like, okay, well, I’m doing what I’m doing. The way to impact that unconsciously is through temperature because that temperature is talking; it’s in your hypothalamus, it’s down there like your heartbeats, and your breathing happens. That’s where this exchange of information is happening and those cues to your body that you’re unconscious and you’re not really aware of what’s happening at all.
Dr. Pompa:
For people who are light-sensitive, that they notice that light affects them, can you offset that with the temperature?
Tara Youngblood:
I will say that you can use temperature. We do this with our athletes a lot, especially—well, not as much this year, but in the past, when there was a lot of travel for the basketball teams, for example. When you look at jet lag, obviously, light can have an impact on that, but temperature is going to be much better at resetting your circadian rhythm, keeping your body on track having those metrics. If someone’s really sensitive, it’s going to be an enhancement. I have yet to come across someone that is not responsive to temperature at all.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right, where some people, they don’t notice the light, but temperature affects everybody. Last question, the night sweats. First of all, what is the causative factor and how does an older bed play into it?
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, night sweats are like so many conditions attributed to a bunch of different things without having one clear winner that’s the definitive reason. I talk about my TEDx Talk and even my book about Susan. We’ve become really good friends. We met at a trade show. The interesting part is she after the birth of her second child started having night sweats every single night.
She went through hormonal measurements and trying to figure it out. OB/GYN, all those people said I don’t know what’s going on. She changed diets; she did all sorts of things. At the end of the day, on the very first night she slept on it, the night sweats stopped. To this day, she even has some trainability in the fact that she has about two or three nights before they start coming back if she’s not sleeping on it because she’s on vacation.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow, yeah, she needs to travel with it obviously because that’s a big deal. I could sell units just from that right there because that’s a big deal. It’s amazing. I would argue, of course, the deep sleep, the REM sleep, the circadian rhythm, and the body temperature, that is—that can regulate your hormones because some people would argue, well, it’s my hormones. Yes, it is, but what’s helping regulate your hormones? They play into it.
Tara Youngblood:
It’s bidirectional for sure; it’s not a one-way street. You see that in the release of melatonin and the other serotonin and those things that are triggered again as that change in temperature happens.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, great. Wow, great product. I know that people are going to buy them. They’re going to love them.
Tara Youngblood:
Yeah, and I will say on that one last hormonal note, we have great results from menopausal women that hot flashes for them. This is the power of sleep that if they can sleep through the night, if they don’t have hot flashes because it’s managed during the night, when they wake up the next day, they have less hot flashes by 50%. By sleeping well, again, it speaks to all of those systems. If you can sleep well, it is absolutely worth everything to all of those other symptoms.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s such an incredible device, so simple, works so well. It’s trackable and reproducible. That’s what I love about it. Thank you for developing it, honestly. I think a lot of others are going to thank you as well.
Thanks for being on Cell TV. You’ve busted a lot of myths about sleep. We’re closer to the truth, that’s for sure. Thanks, Tara.
Tara Youngblood:
You’re welcome. It was a thrill to be here.
Ashley Smith:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern.
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