What if Sleep Isn’t the Problem, but How You THINK About It is? | Spotlight Convo

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So what have I told you? That so much of how you feel, your state of mind, health, ability to focus, create, be present and kind or disconnected and cranky and feel energized or alert? It’s connected to a set of internal clocks that serve as these kind of master switches for nearly everything we feel and do innate rhythms pushing through your cells, a sort of natural cadence that could completely transform how you move through your days. And what if understanding these clocks and rhythms, the ones that keep us alert and awake and asleep and conscious and less unconscious? What if understanding them could give you back so much more agency and control and well-being? Today we’re joined by three trailblazing experts setting brilliant light into the mysteries of chronobiology, the study of our circadian clocks and internal timekeepers. First up is Doctor Chris Winter, a leading sleep scientist and neurologist who has helped elite athletes, military and corporate titans master the rhythm of rest and rejuvenation. My next guest is Lynne Peeples, an award winning science journalist who has spent years meticulously unraveling the profound impact of our circadian rhythms and how they affect our health, performance and longevity. And rounding out this powerhouse trio is Doctor Romie Mushtaq, a pioneer in integrative neurology. She has cracked the code on rewiring our brains to operate from a state of calm, focused presence by syncing with our natural biorhythms. And together, these world class experts will really upend much of what you thought you knew about sleep, energy management, and crafting the ideal daily routine. So get ready for a bit of a masterclass on how to decode your body’s unique time codes to achieve not just peak productivity, but creativity and total mind body alignment and just straight up better living.So whether you’re an elite athlete, chasing performance gains, an entrepreneurial visionary, demanding resilience, or simply someone yearning to feel and live more vibrantly, this conversation will provide you with a new lens for understanding yourself better. So excited to share the spotlight conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:07] First up is Doctor Chris Winter, a leading sleep medicine expert who has worked with nearly everyone from every walk of life, including professional athletes, to optimize sleep for peak performance. In his book, The Sleep Solution, he explores the disconnect between our perceptions of sleep and reality, and he reveals many struggle with sleep state misperception, thinking they’ve slept poorly when the data actually shows otherwise. And he delves into the complex links between anxiety, stress, and our ability to sleep well. Imagine approaching bedtime calmly free from worry. Chris really offers strategies to break the cycle of poor sleep and cultivate healthier rest. So whether you’re an athlete or someone simply seeking better slumber, this conversation provides actionable insights into the mysteries of sleep that affect us all. Here’s Chris.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:58] Take me deeper into this difference between the perception of how we’re actually sleeping there, because it sounds like what you’re probably describing is people reporting the perception that they’re really not sleeping well. But then is what you’re also arguing that if you put them into a lab and then you actually track their sleep, that oftentimes they are sleeping better than they think they are. And it’s.

Chris Winter: [00:03:19] Oh, absolutely. And that goes both ways too. There’s definitely people out there who feel like there are two hours of sleep they get between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. when they wake up and start looking at the stock markets, or the trauma surgeon who thinks that she’s doing okay with two hours of sleep, that that’s enough and that’s good. I mean, the range goes in both directions, but, you know, when it comes to anxiety and sleep. Absolutely. In fact, the first question I usually ask after somebody has had a sleep study and these are very objective. This is not a situation of sure, there’s always going to be error in any kind of medical tests. But this is one of those things where how did you sleep or how many hours did you sleep last night? And the patient might say, you know, I think I slept about 30 minutes. It took me until about 530 to go to sleep. And I woke up at six when the tech came in. That’s not at all what neither the, you know, the tracings and the the the electrical activities. We might. But here, I’ll show you the video if you’d like to see. So does this video I’m showing you match up with what you thought happened. And it’s really interesting to talk to people about these types of things. We even have a name for that. We’ve had many names for it over the years.

Chris Winter: [00:04:29] Twilight. Sleep. Sleep. State misperception. Paradoxical insomnia. So that’s kind of one piece of that puzzle. And a lot of times showing somebody, you know, here you actually slept almost six hours last night. It wasn’t 30 minutes, as you reported to me when I asked you what happened. And as they watched the video, there’s this little light bulb that goes on with somebody that, wow, You know, maybe my partner was right. You know, they’ve been telling me for years when I wake up and say I don’t sleep. That’s not really what they’re observing. And it’s an irrational human being. Pretty functional and successful, given the fact that I don’t think I’ve gotten any great sleep since the second Bush administration. Like, you know, just when you kind of just rationally think, do you think you’d be as successful and look as good as you are and healthy as you are if you were only getting one hour of sleep? Does that make sense to you? Does it make sense to you’re actually starving to death but gaining weight? Does that logically make sense to you? So. Yeah. I mean, we see this on a very frequent basis. And the concept of good sleep, bad sleep is really fascinating that people have actually done research about how people feel about their sleep, just their perception of it. Are you a good sleeper? I’ve been a bad sleeper all of my life, and that the way you feel about your sleep tends to influence your function during the day more than the way you actually sleep? So if you take that trauma surgeon example.

Chris Winter: [00:05:52] She only got two hours of sleep last night. She was literally in the emergency room or the trauma suite until 4 a.m.. She went to the call room. She lay down, and at 6 a.m., a nurse called her and she had to get up and deal with something that was going on in the ICU. So she got two hours of sleep, if not fewer hours. Yet if you talk to her, she’ll say, I feel great. I’m a great sleeper. And what’s really ironic is she might be considering herself a great sleeper because anywhere she goes with it, regardless of circumstances, if she closes her eyes and leans back, she can fall asleep. And in today’s world, that’s a great sleeper. The person who can sleep very quickly in any situation because, God forbid, we’re in bed in 20 minutes after we’ve turned the lights out, we’re still awake. Like that’s a problem. In fact, I was just talking to a reporter recently and she said, what are some tips for people who don’t fall asleep right away? I said, why are you making this into a problem that we need tips to solve? I don’t think that’s a problem Any more than you’ve eaten four pieces of pizza and you don’t want to eat a fifth. What are some tips and tricks for eating that fifth pizza? Pizza? Do we need those tips or tricks? To me it sounds like you’re full and you shouldn’t eat any more.

Chris Winter: [00:06:59] Like your body’s telling you, I don’t want to eat more pizza. Now we’ll listen to that message. This one wakes up at 3:00 in the morning and doesn’t feel like going back to sleep. We tend to ignore that and think our body is wrong. We need to go back to sleep. What can we do to get one more extra hour of sleep? Because we absolutely have to have it to be our healthiest self, and if we don’t have it, we’ll be dysfunctional the next day. Whatever story you’re telling yourself. So it’s a very interesting situation when it comes into the perceptions and realities of sleep need and how much people need to function and what we tell ourselves to believe to be true. So it’s not that we shouldn’t pay attention to insomnia. Insomnia is a problem in its own right. It’s just like you said, it gets such a big part of the pie when it comes to the landscape of media attention, that we do create a narrative that to some degree is false, that if you don’t fall asleep fast, if you wake up in the night and can’t go back to sleep, then you are in danger of some terrible things happening to you. You’re not in any kind of danger when we compare you to Jon.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:00] What I’m wondering here is, is there then this compound effect where it’s almost like a meta anxiety that that starts to kick in, that says, okay, so maybe there’s stuff going on during my day or during my life that’s causing me a lot of stress and it’s somehow seeping into my sleep. But then I wake up at 2 a.m. and I can’t get back to sleep. And then there’s this, this spin cycle that starts to happen in my head that says, this is awful. This is terrible. I’m never going to sleep for the rest of the night, and then I’m not going to sleep again. And then it’s going to have this trickle on effect and cause X, Y, and Z all sorts of awful stuff in my life. And that anxiety about your inability to sleep then makes it even harder to sleep. Do you see that in a meaningful way?

Chris Winter: [00:08:38] 100%. And generally, by the time somebody gets to see me because of their insomnia, that’s exactly what’s happening. And I even did a podcast episode about just that, and I called it The Trauma of Insomnia. I mean, some people have described what you’ve just outlined as being sort of a mini form of PTSD and that level of, you know, meta anxiety to borrow is necessary for the whole thing to work. You have to care for it to work. So it’s just like you said every night, you’re now going to bed with the weight of the world. I’ve got to sleep, or else terrible things will happen. Or I’m dreading going to sleep because for the past 20 nights, it’s taken me hours and hours to hours to fall asleep. I have no reason to think tonight will be any different. Somebody asked me one time in a sentence, what’s the secret to great sleep? And I said, it’s being equally happy in bed, awake as you are asleep, if you can truly get to that place. It doesn’t have any hold on you anymore.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:46] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I think on the other side of the spectrum, part of my curiosity is you describe that, that, uh, er, surgeon who goes and goes to the call room closes her eyes and within seconds she’s out and she’s got two hours and she opens up and she feels really good. And and maybe you have folks who take the mantra, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. You know, like, I’m just I’m going to go, go, go. I don’t need it. It’s fine. And basically, the importance of sleep in their lives. And I think a lot of folks may feel this when they’re younger also, and they’re sort of like new in their career and they’re trying to prove themselves and putting it a lot or maybe younger in their lives when they’re young parents and they’re working full time job or two full time jobs and have little kids or toddlers or babies at home. And they just kind of say, like, I’ll deal with this later. But when we get to that opposite side of the spectrum, when the pendulum swings all the way in that direction, when this is very real, talk to me about how this true lack of sleep that accumulates over time, that where the deficit actually doesn’t go away. How does this start to show up in our psychology and our physiology and the way that we live our lives?

Chris Winter: [00:10:56] Yeah, I mean, I think it’s it’s slowly devastating. It’s rust. I always think of it as rust. I mean, you could stay up all night tonight. Everybody’s pulled an all nighter at some point in their life, and life went on. You were pretty grumpy the next day. You may have, you know, fallen asleep watching jeopardy or something, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. In fact, maybe you were somebody who pulled the all nighter, and the next day really wasn’t that tough for you. I mean, for some people, it’s a bear. Other people, it’s like they pull an all nighter. And I remember in medical school, there were some people that could just. You were up all night with them on call, and you knew they were awake because they were standing right there next to you, you know, filling orders and doing procedures all night long. And the next day they’re they’re fresh as a daisy. And you’re like, you know, the professor keeps calling on you, Chris, what are the three signs of an aortic? You’re like, ah. What is an aorta? And, like, the next person? Oh, I got it. You know, Jennifer next to you knows all three of them, and she’s dead. She had found time to shower, and she actually looks okay, like, you know, how did you do that? And to some extent, that’s genetic. And it’s a very interesting sword. Double edged sword. In terms of our abilities to function with inadequate sleep, we can do it. And some people do it much better than others.

Chris Winter: [00:12:06] There’s some genetic factors that allow some people to thrive and others to not. And it is interesting that we tend to reward those people accidentally. You know, it’s funny you mentioned people who don’t value sleep. There is a weird middle ground of people who value it. They want to do the right thing. But like you said, their job doesn’t allow it. The law clerk, the intern. I valued sleep, but sometimes you’re like the idea of, hey, it’s 11:00 and I know the air is full, but I can’t stay up all night. That’s terrible for my health. I’m going to pay the consequence for this in my 60s. Like nobody cares about that. Like, everybody just kind of looks the other way in a weird way. So the number of ways it’s hurting us are just they’re not able to be counted. It really is. I don’t want to sound alarmist, but if you’re somebody who’s like, look, I get five, I go to bed at midnight, I get up at 5 a.m. and work out and go to the office. I don’t sleep anytime outside of that. I really don’t sleep in on much of the weekends. You know, if I feel sleepy when I’m reading, you know, financial reports during the day, I just stand up in my office and walk around and drink a ton of coffee. Like, I can do it. I can do it like, sure you can, but at what cost when you’re in your mid 50s?

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:22] Now that makes sense. So if you I mean we’ve talked about this, you know, the perception gap how getting really honest and actually maybe even getting some data to sort of show you actually, you know, things are maybe better than you think you are, maybe starts a process of reimagining and shifting your identity and maybe letting go of the anxiety. What are some of the more granular things, like the more basic things when you’re talking to somebody and says, okay, so have you tried this? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? Or like, here are the three, five, six, seven things that you want to get into the habit of doing either every day, every night that maybe no one of these is going to be a miracle cure. But if we start to do them on a repeated basis, they’ll have a cumulative effect. What are some of the core things that we should be thinking about along those lines?

Chris Winter: [00:14:06] Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I like things that are actionable. I think starting your day at the same time is really helpful. Our bodies just like that, we like nothing’s accidentally happening in our body. I didn’t just accidentally secrete a massive amount of testosterone into my bloodstream. It’s going to happen on some sort of. And that’s what’s so fascinating about the body, is that the timing of everything is just absolutely exquisite. And we can help our bodies do that by timing external things, and we call those external things sites or time cues. So if we look at a clock and we say, oh, it’s 6:00. That doesn’t really do much for our brain. But if we always eat our breakfast the first thing in the morning, that that stimulus of food going into our gut every day at the same time becomes a marker in time that we start to look at. And if you don’t believe me, eat your lunch and dinner and breakfast every day at the same time. And look and look and see when you start to feel hungry. I remember working at a summer camp one year, and we would always take the kids to the dining hall at this college at the same time every day, and I would find myself getting hungry on the walk over. In fact, it became a joke with the kids like, are you hungry yet, Chris? I’m like, no, not yet. It hasn’t hit me yet, but oh, there it went.

Chris Winter: [00:15:21] I’m just got hungry, you know, because your brain’s like, okay, every day at this exact time versus when I was a college student, I never ate at the same time every day. And you talk to military people, they’ll tell you things like, I go to the bathroom at the same time every day because everything is so regimented and you don’t have to be militaristic about it, but starting your day off at the same time every day is really helpful, especially if you’re somebody who struggles with your sleep, because a lot of those people go through the thought process of, I had a bad night. It took me three hours to fall asleep, or I woke up at two in the morning and took me hours and hours to go back to sleep. Therefore, on Saturday I get to sleep in until noon. That way I’m ensuring myself, you know, getting the right amount of sleep when in fact that might be hurting you a little bit because now your brain’s not getting any sort of penalty for doing what it did in the night. So getting up at the same time every day and moving forward is a great way to kind of help to ensure your brain understands when sleep is supposed to happen. Because if you’re sleeping in until noon on Saturdays and Sundays, your brain’s kind of like, when do we get up? Sometimes we’re up at six, other times we’re up six hours later. What is the wake up time? If you’re messing with a wake up time, you’re in almost inevitably messing with the breakfast time.

Chris Winter: [00:16:31] Sometimes we eat breakfast at noon when the sun is directly above our head. Other times, we’re eating at 6:00 in the morning when the sun hasn’t come up yet. That’s very disruptive to a brain. I think the other thing that we can do is exercise. You know, listen, I think exercise should be like brushing your teeth. I don’t know that I’ve ever met somebody who says, look, I try to brush my teeth, but I’m pretty busy. Pretty busy guy here. Got a lot going on. So I get to brushing my teeth once every other week or so, if I’m lucky. No, I mean, everybody brushes her teeth probably twice a day. You might forget from time to time, but you didn’t choose to not brush your teeth because you were pushed for time. That doesn’t happen. And if you can brush your teeth for two minutes, you can walk on a treadmill for ten. Somebody says, look, every time the commercials come on. On my favorite show, I walk on a treadmill. Then you’re exercising. And I think we’ve got to get away from the idea. You know, for most people that exercising is optional. It should be right up there with brushing your teeth, especially if you’re struggling with your sleep, because it’s the exercise and that energy exertion that’s creating the drive to exercise. And the pro athletes that I work with, they can have a really radically different sleep schedules in and out of season, because when they’re in season as a soccer player running up and down the field, it creates a drive to sleep.

Chris Winter: [00:17:47] So if you’re somebody who’s struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep, exercise more, right? Chris already exercised 20 minutes every day. Exercise 40. It will help if you care. I think the other thing that we have to be careful of is we talk a lot about eight hours of sleep. That’s really a bell curve average of a distribution of a population. And a lot of people would say, you know, the average really isn’t eight. It’s seven. Seven is the number when you look at research, seems to be linked to the best health outcomes as you go higher than seven. Get into 8 or 9 or fewer than seven. You know, six, five. That’s where you start to see all the terrible things you talked about cognitive decline, heart disease, all that stuff start to go up. So, you know, I meet a lot of people who go to bed at 9:00 and their alarm set for six. I’ve got no problem with that. But you’re seeking nine hours and you’re here because it takes you an hour or two to fall asleep. Well, if it takes you two hours to fall asleep, you’re still getting seven hours of sleep. That might be what you need. And that this idea that you need nine or can get nine is actually the problem.

Jonathan Fields: [00:18:50] Where do you fall on, um, screen time in its proximity to whatever it is that you’re doing to get into bed or fall asleep? Because it seems like that’s become religion these days. You know, like you need to be off of computers, off of TVs, off of this, or put blue blockers on them and all this stuff. You know, one hour, two hours before you do this, or else it’s going to just profoundly disrupt your melatonin production or whatever. What’s your take on that?

Chris Winter: [00:19:16] Yeah. I mean, to me it’s Usain Bolt shoes. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like, it’s, you know, he’s getting ready to run a race and you’re like, well, you know, I got some better shoes. And those that you’re wearing will radically change the changed the way you’re going to run. No they’re not. I mean, you might shave a quarter of a second off here or there. And then the flip side is, if I wear his shoes in the race, it doesn’t change anything about if I’m trying to get my running to the level of his. The shoes are the last thing to. So to me, do these things make a difference? Yes. Are they making a big difference for the people who come to see me? Absolutely not. Oh, you know, Chris, I couldn’t. It took me six hours to fall asleep. I have struggled ever since I was a teenager to sleep. And I got these blue blocker glasses, and it’s all fine now. Said nobody. Ever. So that’s not to diminish their importance. It’s just that what are you looking to achieve? Chris I’m a pretty good sleeper. Sometimes I do struggle a little bit to fall asleep, but it’s not that big of a deal. But I have a job where I have to be on a screen pretty much late into the night, every night to get the game film ready for the coach the next day. Oh, okay.

Chris Winter: [00:20:22] Well, here, try these blue blockers that might help you initiate sleep a little bit faster. Great. So I think that’s where we have to kind of be with these things. I always, I always find this advice to some degree laughable. Like, okay, well, two hours before you go to bed. Screens need to be off. Great. Check screens off. What am I doing now for the next two hours, between 8 and 10:00 when I go to bed? Just going to sit here in the dark, look at my hands. Like, what? What are you. So the idea that we can’t sit down and watch a little TV before we go to bed, I think is absurd. Like, just dim the room, maybe not have a cup of coffee with it. But if you want to watch an episode of Yellowstone, see what ripping the guy’s in the barn house are up to before you go to bed, go right ahead. And if you’re doing that every night, it starts to become a marker of good sleep to me. I’m just waiting for the person who said I’ve had disastrous sleep all my life. But I stopped watching television in the hour before I went to bed. And now that’s all gone. Like, I think these are details. These are like little fine tunings that we do like. Hey, I’m Usain Bolt’s track coach. I’ve noticed that on your start, you’re hitching your left elbow.

Chris Winter: [00:21:33] I want you to bring that a little closer to your body, because I think that’s going to give you a little bit more thrust in your start and maybe shave an eighth of a second. That instruction is not for the person who shows up at the track and says, I’ve never run before. Teach me. Okay. Well, okay. You’re wearing work boots. Let’s start there and let’s stretch and we’ll do a very light workout. And tomorrow we’ll build upon that, and we’ll get you up to a place where that thing I just told Mr. Bolt will apply to you, but it doesn’t apply to you right now. It’s irrelevant to you because it’s just a it’s a and we spend so much time talking about these things in the media. Blue blocker glasses and dropping your temperature from 67 to 65. Meaningful, yes, but for the vast majority of people who are buying that magazine at the checkout line because they’re really struggling with their sleep. You’re not there yet. We need to unwind a lot more things before we start working on which blue blocker glasses are going to work best for you. These are not really solutions to problems. These are adjustments we make to people who are already sleeping pretty well, but want that score on their aura ring to go from a 93 to a 95. That’s what those people are. That’s what that stuff’s for, I think.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:56] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting to hear you say that because it’s what goes along with that is a certain amount of just forgiving your humanity, you know, and saying.

Chris Winter: [00:23:03] Yeah, absolutely.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:04] I want to live in the real world. I want to like, grab this TV show with my partner lying on the couch with dim lights in the room.

Chris Winter: [00:23:10] And of course.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:11] That’s going to be okay. And that rather than focusing on these tiny little things that might be tweaks or optimizers, why don’t we start out with the bigger things?

Chris Winter: [00:23:21] 100%.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:22] And simultaneously forgive those little things and the fact that we’re not doing them. Because if we obsess on them, they’re actually going to become another stressor, which then causes piles onto the problem, of course.

Chris Winter: [00:23:33] Absolutely. And there’s nothing wrong with trying. I mean, if somebody out there is listening who’s like, nope, nope. I bought some blue blocker glasses from Swanwick and changed my life then. Great. I’m really happy for you. I just don’t think when I look at the population, that’s something that most people could bank on. Not to pick on them. I love Swanwick’s glasses. I think they’re great. I have no financial relationship with them. I’m just. But I don’t want to be disingenuous of like, oh my God, you’re years and years of sleep problems are going to be solved by this noise machine, that you’re going to sit next to your pillow like that, unless you’re years and years of problems because of a dog that sleeps next to you makes a lot of noise, I don’t think it’s going to do anything for you. Pink noise, purple noise. Green noise. Brown. It doesn’t matter. That’s these are just little tiny little adjustments here that we’re talking about. There. Not. Oh, it was because I was using a brown noise machine. I needed a pink noise machine. That was the reason why my sleep has been miserable for the last decade. Yeah. No, that’s not the way that works. Save your money.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:31] Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I love the fact that it was sort of like, you know, the end of the day. It’s like, let’s get back to the basics. Let’s focus on the fundamental. Like your basic lifestyle.

Chris Winter: [00:24:41] 100%.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:43] This feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. And I always wrap these conversations with the same question, which is in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.

Chris Winter: [00:24:54] To live a good life? Find time to rest. And if rest turns to sleep, good for you. Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:03] Thank you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Our next guest is Lynne Peeples, an award-winning author exploring the mysteries of our circadian rhythms in her book The Inner Clock, Peeples takes us on a journey into chronobiology, the study of our innate timekeepers. So imagine aligning your routines with your biological cycles, optimizing energy, focus, and well-being. Drawing from research and personal insights, Lynne reveals how simple adjustments like light exposure can profoundly impact your circadian rhythms, influencing sleep, metabolism, immunity, cognitive function, and more. So whether you’re an early bird or a night owl, this conversation promises practical strategies for living in harmony with your body’s natural rhythms and unlocking your full potential. Here’s Lynne.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:53] I’ve been fascinated with the notion of how we function, how our body regulates itself, how we get into dysregulation, and the whole idea of us having one or a collection of sort of internal body clocks. And I would imagine a lot of people have heard the phrase thrown out body clock or circadian rhythm, but really don’t know what it is or what it means or how it functions in the body. So I feel like maybe that’s a good starting point for us when we talk about a body clock or circadian rhythm, what are we actually talking about?

Lynne Peeples: [00:26:23] Yeah, we’re actually talking about a lot of clocks. So our bodies are filled with trillions of tiny timekeepers. Nearly every cell in your body has a clock. And these clocks are designed evolution created these clocks to work in coordination with each other so that, like all your body systems are doing the right things at the right times. That’s, you know, metabolize your food digest, metabolize your food. It’s when you sleep. It’s when your body should be most put up its defenses highest for invading pathogens, ultraviolet radiation when you’re strongest, fastest. So all these physiological ebbs and flows throughout the day are part of your circadian rhythm. And you have one. You have a master clock in the brain, master in quotes, because there’s some new evidence suggesting that our other clocks can can work on their own. But in general, that clock is coordinating this whole symphony. So it’s sort of the conductor of the symphony of clocks throughout the body.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:21] If we could go maybe one layer deeper. How does this actually work? I mean, it seems wildly complex. You know, you’ve got like, each cell has its own little mini clock, and then you’ve got this one thing sitting on top where it says, okay, like, like, like I am the ultimate time setter for everything. But like, my mind just goes how? Like, how does this all actually get coordinated inside?

Lynne Peeples: [00:27:42] Right. I mean, the scientists are still unraveling all these mysteries, but we’re we’ve got a pretty good picture, and it’s only within the last, you know, 2 or 3 decades that we’re really piecing this together. But those clocks, of course, is metaphorical. But it’s really these genes, you know, creating these proteins and these feedback loops that loop around 24 take about 24 hours a day to do their, their loop. And that circa in circadian actually references the fact. Well, circa means about or around. So these clocks do not tick at precisely 24 hours a day. We all tick differently. And our body is filled with these these clocks that may, you know, not tick exactly the same either. So this is why it is so critical for us to regularly calibrate those clocks to the 24 hour Earth Day by getting cues from nature, so primarily light and dark. That is why it’s well, one of the many reasons why we have thrown our rhythms out of whack in modern society by being indoors and such. But yeah, so we have the molecular details are still being fully elaborated on, but we have the basics. We know what main genes are involved here that create these feedback loops. And then we know in general that clock in the brain which receives input from the eyes from a photoreceptor that we’ve only recently discovered. So we learned about rods and cones in school, right? But now we know there’s this third photoreceptor that doesn’t have anything to do with what you see or the picture created by your rods and cones, but actually just takes input from the wavelengths and intensity of light and sends that to this master clock in the brain, which then deciphers that information to figure out the time of day and passes that that memo along to the clocks throughout the body.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:36] And we’re going to get into how light affects all these systems also a lot. But you mentioned genes, which makes me wonder, is sort of like the way that your clock is wound heritable. So like if my mom is a night owl or if, you know, like my like, grandfather or grandmother, like was somebody who, you know, like really came alive at 3 a.m. and like, you know, would work until 6 a.m. and that was just completely natural for them. Is this something that maybe can get passed down through genetics, through it can be inherited?

Lynne Peeples: [00:30:07] Yes it can. Absolutely. This is a genetic, predetermined biological feature that we are born with. However, it’s somewhat malleable. So it’s genes. I mean, you know, gene and environment are at play in a lot of aspects of our health. But the genes are are there. So yeah, if you have mother, father, grandparent with a certain predilection to be up late or wake up early, you’re more likely to have that. And then that can be influenced by your behavior and your exposures. So you can, you know, you can kind of exacerbate your illness based on how you interact with light and dark.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:43] Are you aware of research that looks at sort of like how much is genetic versus how much is changeable? I’m thinking immediately of the research on happiness over time, where I think it’s often commonly agreed now in the research that a certain amount, like there’s a kind of like a happiness set point that most people have that we tend to revert to no matter what we do. And about 50, 40, 50% of that from the research I’ve seen is sort of like says there’s a genetic element to this set point. It kind of like this is where your genes say you revert to. But on the one hand that’s a little bit fatalistic. It’s like, oh, it’s my genes. But on the other hand, there’s the other 50% that says, there’s a lot I can do in my life that actually can raise it. But it also means that maybe you need to keep doing it.

Lynne Peeples: [00:31:25] Oh, absolutely. I think I mean, I don’t know what the exact percentage is. I don’t know that anybody does. But I do know that there’s, you know, there’s ample research now talking about how if you so chronotype refers to how your clocks are ticking kind of the the period or how long they tick and how they orient themselves with the sun. So kind of you’re, you’re sort of tethered to the sun is that, you know, are you oriented early or late compared to when the, when the light’s out. And that chronotype curve. So where you land on that, if you’re at the early bird and night owl and that’s been kind of spread out in modern society. So your genetic predisposition, you know, might be within a relatively narrow range. But the way, you know, we’ve we’ve disrupted our rhythms. We’ve really spread that out. So don’t know the exact percentage. But we there’s definitely a large component that we are influencing with our behavior and kind of the way society is pressuring our lives, our day to day lives, too, right?

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:26] On the one hand, if our genes can affect our that, that chronotype, that internal clock, you also right that the clock also exerts a certain amount of control over. I think you said something like 50% of our genes.

Lynne Peeples: [00:32:40] Yes. Getting out the idea of our physiology is very rhythmic. And I mean, this gets to why when we throw our circadian system out of whack, so many potential health repercussions can come. And scientists are linking more and more to circadian disruption. So yeah, metabolism, digestion, our immune system, our Ability to be alert. All these things are tied to our circadian clocks.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:10] And I would imagine also, I mean, I’ve heard things like the, you know, your body’s like a certain elements of nutrition. So like, like blood glucose, insulin that it’s you know, we tend to think about that. Well, okay. So there may be a genetic element if you’re actually sort of like heading towards type one diabetes, but there’s a huge behavioral and lifestyle element to it. You know, it’s about I have to really understand what goes into me. But you know, like it sounds like also when you think about, you know, how your body responds from a blood glucose, from an insulin level, from things like this. There may be like like a clock element to this as well.

Lynne Peeples: [00:33:44] Absolutely. So that gets into. Now it’s not only like what you put into your body, but when. So as far as food goes and medicine goes, your insulin levels there, they’re regulated to to be primed to handle sugar at certain times of day. And that is not at night. We, um, research shows that, you know, your your insulin is ready, you know, more middle of the day. So that points to that’s when we should be consuming the most carbohydrates calories that would that the insulin can take care of. So absolutely there’s a rhythm to the day. I actually wore a glucose monitor myself as part of one of my experiments. So I could kind of see how those responses actually work inside. And it’s it’s yeah, it’s definitely depending on the time of day, your organs, your body systems, your hormone levels, these various physiological adaptations to what is to be expected at different times of day in the body.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:39] One of the things you also sort of tied to the body clock, and you talk about the notion of of us having certain windows, you know, under the umbrella of sort of power hours. Right? And both in terms of cognitive performance and physical performance and how the body clock actually affects both of those. So take me into this a bit.

Lynne Peeples: [00:34:58] Yeah. This is fascinating. Your body again. Yeah. All these Holly systems, peaking at different hours of the day. And so research shows that your awareness is going to follow a circadian rhythm. There are certain hours of the day that your brain is primed to work faster. And similarly for your your muscles and the other elements that you know affect your speed and your strength and your endurance. And this depends on your personal body clocks. So again, that chronotype curve I was talking about, depending on where you fall on that, those hours of the day might be different. But on average research shows that, for example, athletic performance peaks in the late afternoon or early evening for most people on average. And that’s when, you know, world records are most likely to be broken and may give an edge to certain teams based on maybe their time zone if they’ve traveled across the country for a game. So interesting implications there. And similarly for our productivity, you know, maybe our work performance. You know, I kind of did a little experiment of trying to actually pay attention on days when I, you know, didn’t get up with an alarm clock, let myself just kind of go through my day and see when I felt more productive. Again, kind of over time. And I found my sweet spot is, you know, late morning is when I’m most on and most productive. So I started doing most of my writing, for example, during those hours. And then, you know, I would slump in the mid-afternoon, which is pretty common among a lot of us. We think about that post-lunch dip, which is not only a consequence of that meal settling in. It can be that’s part of it, but it’s also our circadian rhythm. So maybe there are certain times of day that, yeah, you do a lot to less rigorous activities or, you know, like emailing or doing the dishes, for example.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:40] Yeah, it’s so interesting. I’ll write from 2 to 5 or 2 to 6 in the afternoon, and I’m just I can drop into a zone and have really good work come out of me. But if I try and write sort of like early in the morning, it’s just like I’m banging my head against the wall. It’s just not really working. And I think it speaks to what you were saying. Also like the importance of start with the generalities, but you’ve really got to run your own experiments.

Lynne Peeples: [00:37:04] Absolutely. Yeah. And it’s it’s hard to do our own experiments for a lot of people. Right. Because society, families, schedules really regiment when you do what. And it’s hard to know what your body really wants to do. When we wake up with alarm clock and we, you know, got to get the kids to school crazy early hours, all these things kind of get in the way of really understanding where, where we fall. So yeah. Absolutely. It’s different for all.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:30] And this is something that’s research I’ve seen before and it’s something that you write about also. It’s this notion of even sort of like understanding. I’m fortunate I control my day to a large extent, but a lot of folks like work in organizations where they don’t like there’s a 9 to 5 or an 8 to 6 or whatever, whatever it is these days. And if you’re somebody where you kind of don’t click on, like, you know, at full steam until a little bit later, but the workday for you starts at 8 a.m.. Or if you’re a student and a lot of students are getting to class and like at like seven something in the morning now and your brains don’t work that way, that can be a brutal experience.

Lynne Peeples: [00:38:06] Absolutely. Yeah. The student that middle and high school students that still widely, like you said, are forced to get to school before 730 or 8. I mean, at that point in your life as an adolescent, your circadian rhythms are actually drifting later, like 2 or 3 hours. So even if you’re maybe genes are programmed to be somewhat night owl ish, you know, it’s probably still way too early. So very, very few of those students in class are at all ready to be learning or having gotten enough rest. And yeah, for the rest of us, you know, older in the working world. Absolutely. I feel like it’s well, the science suggests not just how I feel that we are both the employee and the employer are losing out because your employer is losing out on those productive hours that they could be getting from their employee, both because maybe they’re sleep deprived, but also they’re not working at their prime hours, or maybe during their prime hours, they’re forced to be in a meeting. So there are workplaces in, um, most most of the ones that I discovered writing my book or in Europe that have adopted more of a circadian rhythm, I guess respect for the employers and their chronotypes and trying to take that into account to, to maximize productivity for everyone.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:17] Yeah. Do you have a sense for, you know, the last four years of seeing, um, first, it was a really big pendulum swing to remote work, and now it’s kind of swinging back to return to office. And then people are kind of finding their middle ground, depending on who you are and where you’re working. But are you seeing that like sort of like whether you’re working in an office under fixed hours or working at home, kind of like affecting being affected by this as well?

Lynne Peeples: [00:39:38] Well, I know that. I mean, Covid seems to have opened up more possibility, right? It helped a lot of employers see that. I mean, maybe this isn’t across the board, but a lot saw that they could still get good productivity from their workers and perhaps even more and perhaps less, you know, fewer sick days because employees finally had a chance to really feel out their rhythms and kind of go with what their body actually wanted to do. And I think, yeah, we are seeing a bit more of that shift back to the office. But I think on the whole it seems to be more awareness for that. And I don’t know, I mean, this is I guess, part of why I get this message out. I mean, we have sort of a sweet spot here, a nice window of opportunity to try to take advantage of that societal trend. And hopefully it doesn’t swing completely back. Or maybe, you know, there’s everybody goes to the office, but it’s go, you know, during the window that’s for you. I mean, that’s another thing that some workplaces have taken into account is just yeah, some people swing into the office at 11 a.m., some are coming in at 6 a.m., have those important meetings in the middle of the day when people overlap?

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:43] Hmm. That’s really interesting. I hadn’t really heard that, but it’s it would actually make sense to say, hey, listen, like we’re going to have a return to office, like, you know, like, maybe there’s a mandate, you know, you got to be here three days a week. But if you do your best work or your life schedule makes it so that, you know, like, you function where you know, you’re here at 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. or something like that, and somebody else gets there at 1030 and works until seven. That’s okay. That’s really interesting. Like if we start to see that happen, sort of like and letting people accommodate both their lifestyles, but also their internal clocks and their ability to really be most engaged and have their brains working optimally.

Lynne Peeples: [00:41:20] Exactly. And the, you know, the results is, again, this is, you know, a relatively small sample size so far, but they’re finding workplace satisfaction, you know, jumped much higher productivity. I mean everybody seems pretty happy with the scheduling and flexibility.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:34] Yeah, it feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this conversation, uh, in Good Life Project., if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.

Lynne Peeples: [00:41:44] To live a good life, I would say, I mean, I’m, you know, I’m biased thinking about this right now, but She to reclaim your lost connection with nature? I mean, nature gave us this 24 hour day and the light in the dark, so trying to reinfuse those kind of lost cues back into our lives has profound potential to improve your health and your happiness and your productivity.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:10] Thank you.

Lynne Peeples: [00:42:11] Thank you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:12] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. And bringing us home. Our final contributor, Doctor Romie Mushtaq, a neurology expert pioneering integrative approaches. In her book The Busy Brain Cure, she offers a revolutionary way to rewire our brains and reclaim wellbeing. Imagine quieting mental chatter, banishing anxiety and experiencing restorative help. While drawing on decades of expertise. Doctor Romie explores root causes of the busy brain stemming from stress and neuroinflammation, and her eight-week brain shift protocol provides really powerful roadmap through small, sustainable habits. So whether you’re a busy professional or someone just yearning for more calm, these insights shed light on our brain’s power to heal and transform for peak performance and better living.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:03] You’ve used the phrase busy brain a number of times now. What do you mean when you use that phrase?

Romie Mushtaq: [00:43:07] Yeah, Jonathan, it was a term that I coined, an unofficial medical term, but something that I noticed about myself first before I hit the physical symptoms of burnout and ended up in life-saving surgery. I literally felt, Jonathan, that some days someone else had a remote control to my brain. Why was it that some days I was focused and executed? My days and other days my schedule was in control of me? Well, it turns out, as I started to research in the pandemic and post-pandemic world, the impact of chronic stress and burnout in working high-achieving professionals, that a few things stood true. There’s a particular pattern of neuroinflammation that happens when we’re under chronic stress that affects the hypothalamus, to be exact, the SCN nucleus and disrupts our circadian rhythm. Now, this pattern of neuroinflammation is not something new and groundbreaking. I entered neurology in the 1990s. We knew different patterns of neuroinflammation in different parts of the brain caused diseases like Ms. or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. But in the last seven years, cutting edge science with advanced neuroimaging showing us that this area in the hypothalamus is involved. To the layperson, I call it our airport traffic control tower. Well, when we are on a path to burnout, three symptoms occur. And I’m here so boldly to tell you, Jonathan, that we in the neurology psychiatry neuropsychology field got it wrong. Anxiety, adult onset ADHD, and insomnia in the traditional world of medicine are treated as three separate diseases, and treating one can often make the others worse.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:44:43] It actually turns out this pattern of neuroinflammation that you and I will unpack in a second. Leads to all three simultaneously happening. So it is something like, regardless of the 24 hour news cycle or how many emails are waiting in your inbox, you wake up and you’re low energy. Don’t get me started. My personality is not here without a stimulant like caffeine or Ritalin, and you need that to energize. And then you’re feeling low key, anxious or panicked all day. Multiple digital devices open in front of you and in your brain. This adult onset ADHD, or just maybe inability to focus. You try to go and unwind, and the skills that we all are taught to have some semblance of a of a pause in our workday and focus on a personal life and you can’t turn it off. You need a sedative like alcohol to take the edge off. And when you put your head down on the pillow, because we know how important sleep is, you’ve done so many podcasts on it, there’s 72 warring conversations going on in your brain, and the negative, most inconsequential thought is the loudest, and after that you wake up somewhere between 2 and 4 in the morning. You’re wide awake. You fooled yourself to think I don’t need the sleep. Let me wake up at 2:57 a.m., knock out a few emails and ding at 3:01 a.m. you’ve woken up everybody else on your team because you hit reply all. That is a busy brain.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:03] It’s interesting as you’re describing this, I’m thinking this has been me on and off, like and in the not too distant past. It’s funny how you know, you can hear so many of these things, how you can nod along and say, well, yes, this makes so much sense, right? And then you can tell yourself, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. I’m going to change. I’m going to say yes to these practices, skills, behaviors, tools. And then life happens.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:46:28] It does.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:28] And then you just start to say, oh, I’m back there again. You have some really interesting strategies and tools and a whole process to sort of like say like, let’s get underneath this and see if we can do some rewiring. Wiring. But fundamentally, the big building blocks that you talk about are summarized in this acronym Brain Shift. Like with the word shift being the first initial of the letters of these five different qualities. Let’s walk through each of these and unpack them a little bit. Yeah. You know we start out with that’s representing sleep. And you started talking about that. But and I think we’ve all become more attuned to how important sleep really is, just in terms of general health and wellbeing. The context that we’re talking about. Take me into its role.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:47:11] Yeah, I really want to unpack that. Thank you so much for asking. You know, how we came up with this is we took a validated neuropsychology test that has been in existence since the 1970s that measures the direct impact of stress on cognition, mood and physical health. And we relabeled it the Busy Brain test so I could take it into corporate America. 17,000 people took that in our 24 month research period. And that gave me an incredible insight into, well, what is stress in this modern day world and burn out doing to us. But also, let’s heal the root cause of burnout because these superficial tips to your point eat berries and breathe are no longer serving us. And a lot of outdated paradigms that talk about acute stress management. So as I was looking at the root cause, we broke it down into five key areas. S is sleep or your circadian rhythm. So as we alluded to it earlier here in the podcast is when that neuroinflammation happens, it actually surprisingly in chronic stress targets this hypothalamus in our circadian rhythm. We see increased inflammatory markers like IL one elevated. And with that a disruption of our circadian rhythm. So one of the most important or obvious functions of our circadian rhythm in an easy way to treat that is moderating our sleep wake cycle. Well, it’s a chicken and the egg phenomenon and the busy brain. Jonathan, isn’t it because we may be addicted on the stimulant sedative cycle, both of them are going to disrupt our circadian rhythm and our sleep patterns.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:48:39] So that’s an external behavior but internally inflammatory. Think of it as the airport traffic control tower is malfunctioning. The typical things of, you know, sleep when the lights and the sunlight go down and wake up as the sun is rising. Our brains are no longer in harmony with that, and we actually need to reset that. There are serious other ramifications of that’s or their circadian rhythm being off that affect other key areas that kind of build into the rest of the protocol, but they account for symptoms. To break it down into simple terms for the listeners is you could easily be listening to Jonathan and I and saying, look, Romy and Jonathan are easily admitting that they’ve had periods of busy brain or stress. So am I. You’re stressed. I’m stressed. Who isn’t? But then all of a sudden, you go to the primary care doctor’s office and they tell you you’ve got pretty severe hypertension, you’ve got type two diabetes. Your autoimmune disease is now in relapse. All of a sudden your menstrual cycles became irregular and you’re wondering, is it infertility or early menopause or PCOS disease? It has serious ramifications under that’s or the circadian rhythm. And so that is kind of the core starting point of everything else we’ll discuss.

Jonathan Fields: [00:49:53] Yeah. You know it’s interesting we start with sleep also because in my mind it feels like the one to a lot of people. And maybe I’m just raising my hand here that often feels least susceptible to really genuine change. And we’ve all heard sort of like the general guidelines about what to do in court, your basic sleep hygiene tools. And maybe some people have tried it, maybe some people haven’t. But at the end of the day, it feels to me like this is one of those things where we feel like we actually have the least amount of control.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:50:24] Thank you for that honesty.

Jonathan Fields: [00:50:25] I feel like it gets into this chicken and egg thing. Also, you describe like that person, you know, where you lay your head down, you know it’s 1130 at night and you feel tired, but your brain is saying nope. Not yet.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:50:36] Nope, nope. Tired and wired.

Jonathan Fields: [00:50:38] Right. And then it becomes this thing where when you’re still there, an hour later and you’re still up, then you’re starting to tell the story. You’re adding to the spin cycle. Will this ever stop? Will I ever fall asleep? What’s this doing to me? I’m causing all this harm, which then makes it even worse and almost ensures it will never happen. Yes. So it’s. You know, I feel like there are these layers when we talk about sleep in particular, where people feel really frustrated trying to actually wrap their head around it.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:51:06] We do. And yet, when I was practicing and still seeing patients in the integrative medicine clinic, that was my specialty. People that were coming and eating clean, doing ironmans, doing all the things right. And they were suffering from this. And I will backtrack to step one in the entire protocol, which is please get your busy brain test score. It’s this moment. It’s here in the United States. I know you have a global audience. We have something known as our credit score, our credit worthiness. If you’re in any phase of your life wanting a new business, credit card, opening a new business, getting a new car, another mortgage, whatever it may be, you need to know your credit score. Most people do. Yet we don’t know. Our brains score. We don’t pay attention. So sometimes I want to backtrack to this, Jonathan, which is this idea that if I now know my brain’s score and I have a self-realization, that some of the symptoms that are hindering me from living a good life, a life on purpose, is related to my brain performance. All of a sudden I have hope to fix the sleep. And so it’s dispelled. This woe is me and this negative wiring of nothing is going to help now.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:52:14] So step one is actually self-awareness and healing that self-judgment. Step two is let’s get practical. And that’s why in week seven of the protocol. But we actually send people right away. Jonathan, I actually check labs. I want to look for markers of inflammation. We recommend scientifically studied supplements that can actually, number one, help bring some calm to the neuroinflammation or the hyperactivity of the neuronal state that’s keeping us wired, despite us feeling physically tired and also really help to reset the circadian rhythm. And so between checking the labs and looking for imbalances that may be feeding into it. And number two, some supplements, when we ran over 1000 executives through this eight week protocol in our test period, people that said, I’ll never fall asleep. There’s too much going on at work. We run global teams, with the exception of new parents who had young children that wake up for feeding in the middle of the night, or if you’re a caregiver to elderly loved ones who have, you know, middle of the night arousal things you can’t control. People actually were falling asleep when we looked at our research data. Sleep was the one area that had the most improvement in performance, like a 40% improvement over baseline.

Jonathan Fields: [00:53:33] Now that makes so much sense. Take me into the protocol a little bit more. You’ve dropped seeds about it a little bit. But yeah, give me the the download on this protocol.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:53:41] I wanted to say I created this protocol because when I was in integrative medicine and we would do these 90 minute intakes and I would have this comprehensive plan, and I’m working with a high achieving professional. I remember overwhelming them with everything to your point that you needed to do. And then it creates this inertia of where to start or, you know, confusion and and this. So that was one thing. The second thing was was we’re busy, you know, a busy a term I don’t like productive, full schedules. I didn’t want this to disrupt your personal or professional life. I wanted it to feel so easy that you almost felt like, am I really doing anything that’s going to make impact? And the third thing we learned the hard way was read the book. Great, but get someone to do it. Cohort based learning community doing it in context with a loved one or teams where there’s competition. It was fascinating to watch the change of dynamics. So that was it. So we wanted to make it easy and do these micro habits that we call brain shift. So we’ve all read the best selling books and you’ve had them on your show talking about Tiny Habits, BJ Fogg or Atomic Habits James Clear.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:54:49] But I said I want to take it a step further. I’m going to pick the habits for you, and we’re going to research them for you before we go to manuscripts. So I’ve given you the menu to do. There’s no other questions asked and there’s nothing else you need to add. So we’re not going to disrupt your life. So that was it. Step one, week one was I want you to get your busy brain test score this replacing self-judgment with self-awareness. What’s my brain score? And I go back to that place of what is my intention? Jonathan? What is it that I hope for? For my brain and my body? Because if it is back to that original thing, how we opened in alignment with agency and goals. And I’m saying here’s the steps to get you to that goal so you have less back pain when you’re stressed or your blood sugar is under control for your diabetes, rekindle romance with your partner at home, then you’re more likely to be emotionally involved. That’s step one. That’s the hardest step, by the way. You get past that. Everything else is cake. Literally. Comfort food.

Jonathan Fields: [00:55:48] No, I love it. What I really enjoyed about the protocol also is that you’re taking people as they are. You’re not saying you need to actually change before you even start this. You’re saying, okay, let’s acknowledge the state of your life. There’s a lot going on, and maybe there’s a lot going on that you don’t necessarily want to say no to, because maybe you’re working towards something that you really do want to make happen, or it’s enjoyable, but at the same time, there is harm that is probably being caused as a part of the way that you’re sort of functioning now. So let’s find ways that are accessible, that are doable, that you can bring into your day, that don’t feel like a burden, don’t feel like another thing that you have to add to your schedule to make it that much more brittle, but you can kind of just nod along and say, well, sure. And I love the, you know, the what you said, which is that it feels like such a small lift that you’re like, you’re almost asking, could this really make a difference? Like, how could this actually be effective?

Romie Mushtaq: [00:56:38] It is the one thing we heard over. And it does, it does. Hair was the best part. So week two we start the seven day sleep challenge and we loved doing it it with teams. Every company and organization we went to was highly competitive. We gamified it. We gave them points for various cognitive behavioral therapy. We will tell you, most of the people who found success, they partook in the supplement recommendations we gave, right. It was fascinating because while people were coming back week three to the call, like who won? Who had the most points and I didn’t need alcohol, or I gave up my sleeping pill. The phone call I was getting was from the CEO and the crows. What’s going on in that brain shift protocol? People are happier. Doctor Romy, you know, these two executives or this team that was infighting, and we were going to have to bring in a mediator. They’re all getting along. All of a sudden, the person that was ready to quit is fine now. It was that simple. And that’s how transformational it was. And so by the time you get to week three, that’s the time we add in step three. Digital detox 30 to 60 minutes and backtrack. And many people were like, give me the next step. They were kind of bored already. But we did it because that was one of the harder weeks. Jonathan as well, because the first 2 or 3 days there literally is like a drug withdrawal from your phone or your iPad or whatever you have. And so we really had to work with people and our coaches had to work with them one on one, like, let’s make an actual list of what are different things. You can see, touch, smell, hear, taste, do that are processing through your senses that will keep you busy.

Romie Mushtaq: [00:58:14] So I wash my dirty dishes and I take my senior dog out for a last walk at night, so it’ll keep me away from my digital devices. So that was the example we used. And then week four or step four, I had to find a at addition to traditional medicine. Jonathan a meditation. I’m sorry. Look, I’ve been meditating and I talk about in my Ted talk. It’s made all the difference in my life. But people with the busy brain will say my anxiety or focus is worse when I sit down to meditate. And so step four, we introduced sound healing as a modality and really went into the data of music therapy and the binaural beats. And if you could put this on before you sleep, or if you need to focus on a task during the day for just 20 minutes, the difference it could make. And that’s the first four weeks. And most people had honestly like it sounds unscientific, but I just feel so thankful for the over 1000 executives that went through this for our research period. Like, I and my team were moved for the stories that they were coming back and telling us. And I give thanks to the nine executives that gave us their actual names for the book. They’re like, Doctor Romy, Ronny. Please put my story with this brain shift so that if someone else is a doubter, they will do it. And I just sit here and pause. I too have been in this go go, go mode with this book launch in my new role and kind of having a pinch me moment of like the impact. And it was so joyful, like it really worked.

Jonathan Fields: [00:59:39] Yeah. It’s amazing. As we start to wrap our conversation, you shared this notion of the stress success cycle, how oftentimes we have this thing called the busy brain, what it does to us, even though we sometimes think that it’s actually doing something for us, deconstructing all the different elements that go into what’s going on inside of us and how we start to. What are the critical building blocks of how we do some using, as you describe in layperson’s terms, rewiring. And then the protocol will certainly, you know, for those who are really curious about the details of the protocol, by all means take a look at the book. I think it’s it’s laid out beautifully and it’s doable, which is what I so appreciate. Like this is not something that says you need to make big disruptions in your life all at once, it says. Let’s take a step by step. And the scaffold, it’s like you lay down the scaffolding in a way where behaviorally, the thing that you needed to be in place for, the thing that comes next, you’ve just done so that it makes it so that you’re not fighting against yourself and your own sense of willpower and self-regulation the whole time, which is unusual because we tend to just rush past all that stuff and say, yeah, of course that matters, but let me just get the real stuff that will make a difference. And then it fails. It pretty much always comes crashing down. And so the intelligence, the thoughtfulness behind the progressiveness of the protocol, I just find really compelling.

Romie Mushtaq: [01:00:55] And honor coming from you. Thank you so much. It is received. I want to take a moment and receive that, because this is years and years of research and thoughtfulness, and thank you for that.

Jonathan Fields: [01:01:06] It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So as I always ask at the end of every conversation here in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, What comes up?

Romie Mushtaq: [01:01:18] Um, two weeks before the date we recorded this podcast, I turned 50. And when I was in my early 30s, sitting in the surgeon’s office, and they were telling me, do you have disability insurance, Jonathan? I didn’t know what that meant. The rug had been lifted out from underneath my entire life, and hope departed my soul. And today, by living through this suffering and understanding what worked for me and researching a protocol and service to others who don’t feel hope in their lives at this moment because of a busy brain and burnout, I’m cognitively sharper today than I was at 25 when I graduated from medical school. And so when you ask me what is a good life? It is humbly to have been in that dark place, devoid of hope and knowing that there were people that held hope for me when I didn’t have it. And so now, coming and being that hope holder for others and me particularly, having hope for all the other busy brains that are out there to say I will hold hope for you and your healing and your best version of dreams of success for yourself as you brain shift. That is what’s living a good life is to be that hope holders for others.

Jonathan Fields: [01:02:38] Thank you. So what a mind expanding exploration into the profound power of our inner rhythms. From Lynne’s vivid insights into how our circadian cycles influence every aspect of our lives, to Doctor Romie’s practical strategies for rewiring our brains through chronobiology and Chris’s wisdom on optimizing sleep for peak performance, this conversation was a true eye-opener for me. I hope it’s inspired you to tune into the natural cadences pulsing through your cells, and start crafting a life in exquisite harmony with your body’s innate biorhythms. And before you leave, if you love this episode, be sure to catch the full conversation with today’s guests. You can find a link to those episodes in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.