Want to improve your health and boost energy? Align your life with your chronotype and body type to better understand when to fast, exercise, and sleep. 

If we aren’t getting adequate sleep, a lot of physical and mental problems can follow from the obvious symptoms like fatigue and brain fog to more serious things like increased risk of dementia. What is an adequate amount of deep and REM sleep? What are the minimum and maximum amount of sleep we need each night? What should we do if we wake up in the middle of the night? What’s the deal with intermittent fasting and sleep? Should we take melatonin? We have had Dr. Michael Breus, The Sleep Doctor, on the SuperAge podcast twice and now he returns for a third time to answer these questions and more. 

What you will learn in this episode:
- How our body types and sleep chronotypes can inform what sleep schedule we would thrive on
- Why it is so important to have a consistent sleep and wake routine
- The minimum amount of hours we need to sleep each night to function properly
- How much sleep is too much sleep
- What to do if you wake up in the middle of the night
- Melatonin’s role in sleep
- The importance of vitamin D

“When you wake up in the morning at a consistent time, let’s say it’s 6:15, when the sunlight hits your eyeball, you have special cells in your eyeball called melanopsin cells. These turn off the melatonin faucet in your brain which allows you to kind of clear the brain fog and wake up. The more consistent you are with it, the more your body can expect when to turn off the melatonin faucet. When it turns off the faucet in your head, it sets a timer for roughly 15 hours later to start melatonin.” 

“You would actually be considered drunk behind the wheel if you get less than 5 1/2 hours just from a reaction time standpoint.”

“Sleep is a lot like love: the less you look for it, the more it shows up.” 

“If there are folks out there who do like to get up around daybreak, there’s actually data to suggest that watching the sunrise, is very healthy for your circadian rhythms and very good for your eyeballs.”

Thank you to our sponsor InsideTracker. Listeners get 20% off + FREE InnerAge here: http://InsideTracker.com/ageist

Listen to the SuperAge podcast wherever you get your pods. 

Connect with Dr. Michael Breus:
Website - https://thesleepdoctor.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesleepdoctor/
Dr. Breus’ book “Energize!: Go from Dragging Ass to Kicking It in 30 Days”:  https://www.amazon.com/Energize-Dragging-Ass-Kicking-Days/dp/0316707023 

Say hi to the AGEIST team!