WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.120 This episode is sponsored by a company I've used 00:00:02.120 --> 00:00:06.000 for well over a decade, and that is 5 .11. I 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:08.320 wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California, 00:00:08.460 --> 00:00:11.300 and have used their products ever since. From 00:00:11.300 --> 00:00:14.560 their incredibly strong yet light footwear, to 00:00:14.560 --> 00:00:17.780 their cut uniforms for both male and female responders, 00:00:18.179 --> 00:00:21.399 I found them hands down the best workwear in 00:00:21.399 --> 00:00:23.870 all the departments that I've worked for. Outside 00:00:23.870 --> 00:00:26.309 of the fire service, I use their luggage for 00:00:26.309 --> 00:00:28.789 everything and I travel a lot. And they are also 00:00:28.789 --> 00:00:32.530 now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around 00:00:32.530 --> 00:00:35.450 the world on the human performance project. We 00:00:35.450 --> 00:00:38.329 have MRF coming up in May. And again, I bought 00:00:38.329 --> 00:00:41.049 their plate carrier. I ended up buying real ballistic 00:00:41.049 --> 00:00:44.140 plates rather than the fake weight plates. And 00:00:44.140 --> 00:00:46.240 that has been my ride or die through Murph the 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:49.079 last few years as well. But one area I want to 00:00:49.079 --> 00:00:51.060 talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship 00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:54.259 spots is their brick and mortar element. They 00:00:54.259 --> 00:00:56.460 were predominantly an online company up till 00:00:56.460 --> 00:00:59.000 more recently, but now they are approaching 100 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:02.799 stores all over the US. My local store is here 00:01:02.799 --> 00:01:04.939 in Gainesville, Florida, and I've been multiple 00:01:04.939 --> 00:01:08.019 times. And the discounts you see online are applied 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:11.340 also in the stores. So as I mentioned, 5 .11 00:01:11.340 --> 00:01:15.379 is offering you 15 % off every purchase that 00:01:15.379 --> 00:01:18.439 you make. But I do want to say, more often than 00:01:18.439 --> 00:01:20.980 not, they have an even deeper discount, especially 00:01:20.980 --> 00:01:24.060 around holiday times. In fact, if you're listening 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:27.459 to this in the months of April or May, 5 .11 00:01:27.459 --> 00:01:31.640 days is coming up. Between May 9th and May 16th, 00:01:31.640 --> 00:01:35.519 you will get 20 % off all gear and apparel. And 00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:39.099 that applies both online and in -store. But if 00:01:39.099 --> 00:01:42.959 you use the code SHIELD15, that's S -H -I -E 00:01:42.959 --> 00:01:47.340 -L -D -1 -5, you will get 15 % off your order 00:01:47.340 --> 00:01:49.959 or in the stores every time you make a purchase. 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:53.200 And if you want to hear more about 5 .11, who 00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:56.000 they stand for and who works with them, listen 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.680 to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:04.269 5 .11 regional director, Will Ayers. Welcome 00:02:04.269 --> 00:02:05.989 to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, 00:02:06.030 --> 00:02:07.849 my name is James Geering and this week it is 00:02:07.849 --> 00:02:10.590 my absolute honor to welcome on the show sleep 00:02:10.590 --> 00:02:15.090 expert Pat Byrne. Now Pat began his career journey 00:02:15.090 --> 00:02:17.849 working in the world of health and safety and 00:02:17.849 --> 00:02:20.229 it was a tragic accident that killed his young 00:02:20.229 --> 00:02:23.250 nephew that led him into researching the negative 00:02:23.250 --> 00:02:25.810 impacts of sleep deprivation in the workplace. 00:02:26.289 --> 00:02:29.949 So we discuss a host of topics from some of the 00:02:29.949 --> 00:02:32.710 asbestos related death cases that he worked on 00:02:33.050 --> 00:02:35.650 sleep deprivation in the first responder community, 00:02:36.030 --> 00:02:39.050 his work with high level athletes, including 00:02:39.050 --> 00:02:43.229 the NHL, optimizing sleep, the pros and cons 00:02:43.229 --> 00:02:47.110 of wearables, sleep meds, the incredible potential 00:02:47.110 --> 00:02:50.669 for AI in the medical community, and so much 00:02:50.669 --> 00:02:53.550 more. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, 00:02:53.789 --> 00:02:56.289 as I say every week, please just take a moment, 00:02:56.409 --> 00:02:59.349 go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe 00:02:59.349 --> 00:03:02.840 to the show. Leave feedback and leave a rating. 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:06.400 Every single five -star rating truly does elevate 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:09.020 this podcast, therefore making it easier for 00:03:09.020 --> 00:03:12.219 others to find. And this is a free library of 00:03:12.219 --> 00:03:17.120 well over 750 episodes now. So all I ask in return 00:03:17.120 --> 00:03:20.099 is that you help share these incredible men and 00:03:20.099 --> 00:03:23.240 women's stories so I can get them to every single 00:03:23.240 --> 00:03:25.680 person on planet Earth who needs to hear them. 00:03:30.769 --> 00:03:52.370 Burn. Enjoy. Well, Pat, I want to start by saying 00:03:52.370 --> 00:03:54.930 thank you so much for taking the time and coming 00:03:54.930 --> 00:03:57.969 on the Behind the Shield podcast today. My pleasure. 00:03:58.599 --> 00:04:00.659 So where on planet Earth are we finding you this 00:04:00.659 --> 00:04:03.879 morning? I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia. 00:04:04.680 --> 00:04:06.919 I said this morning, I just glanced at my clock 00:04:06.919 --> 00:04:09.759 because I realize it's my afternoon now, but 00:04:09.759 --> 00:04:12.439 it's your morning still. Yes, it is. It's all 00:04:12.439 --> 00:04:14.699 good. All right. Well, I would love to start 00:04:14.699 --> 00:04:16.540 at the very beginning of your timeline. You have 00:04:16.540 --> 00:04:18.660 an incredible journey. It's obviously very pertinent 00:04:18.660 --> 00:04:20.660 to a lot of people that are listening. But let's 00:04:20.660 --> 00:04:22.199 start at the very beginning. So tell me where 00:04:22.199 --> 00:04:24.120 you were born and tell me a little bit about 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:26.220 your family dynamic, what your parents did and 00:04:26.220 --> 00:04:29.870 how many siblings. Oh, wow. Well, I was actually 00:04:29.870 --> 00:04:33.170 born in a little farm community outside of Vancouver 00:04:33.170 --> 00:04:36.110 called Langley. And my father was a building 00:04:36.110 --> 00:04:38.949 contractor. He's a carpenter. So we moved all 00:04:38.949 --> 00:04:42.370 over. We moved to another town up north about 00:04:42.370 --> 00:04:45.350 four hour drive away called Kamloops. Lived there 00:04:45.350 --> 00:04:49.009 for a few years. And my parents moved to a town 00:04:49.009 --> 00:04:52.009 called Fort Nelson, which is in very northern 00:04:52.009 --> 00:04:54.209 British Columbia. It's about a thousand miles 00:04:54.209 --> 00:04:59.139 north of Vancouver. town of about 1500 people. 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:02.120 So I grew up there, never saw television and 00:05:02.120 --> 00:05:06.759 one radio station. You know, literally a three 00:05:06.759 --> 00:05:10.079 room school, elementary school with no running 00:05:10.079 --> 00:05:13.480 water, we had an outdoor toilet, those, those 00:05:13.480 --> 00:05:16.560 kinds of things. That was how I grew up. And 00:05:16.560 --> 00:05:19.279 then eventually, my parents moved back to Langley 00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:21.639 and worked for my parents business. And so I 00:05:21.639 --> 00:05:25.389 have a younger brother. an older sister and two 00:05:25.389 --> 00:05:28.250 younger sisters. So there are five of us spread 00:05:28.250 --> 00:05:32.370 all over the world these days. And then I, so 00:05:32.370 --> 00:05:34.370 I, after I graduated from high school, I worked 00:05:34.370 --> 00:05:39.170 in construction for a few years, fell off a roof, 00:05:39.529 --> 00:05:43.629 hurt my back and broke my hand, decided construction 00:05:43.629 --> 00:05:47.750 probably wasn't for me, went to university and 00:05:47.750 --> 00:05:52.480 studied chemistry and biology. And got undergraduate 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:54.759 degrees in both of those from Western Washington 00:05:54.759 --> 00:05:57.519 University. And then did a master's in biochem. 00:05:58.620 --> 00:06:01.779 And so I moved back to, that was in Washington 00:06:01.779 --> 00:06:05.639 State. And I moved back to Canada, into British 00:06:05.639 --> 00:06:09.800 Columbia, looking for work. And ended up at what's 00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:13.500 called the Workers' Comp Board, which is sort 00:06:13.500 --> 00:06:16.439 of a combination of OSHA and workers' compensation 00:06:16.439 --> 00:06:22.310 under one roof in British Columbia. Started there, 00:06:22.430 --> 00:06:24.509 actually started as a file clerk, but within 00:06:24.509 --> 00:06:27.170 a couple of months I was employed as an inspector. 00:06:27.550 --> 00:06:30.389 So I worked a lot in sort of what's called occupational 00:06:30.389 --> 00:06:33.870 hygiene, which is chemical safety. And I spent 00:06:33.870 --> 00:06:37.410 probably eight years traveling all over the province, 00:06:37.430 --> 00:06:40.290 inspecting everything from hospitals to pulp 00:06:40.290 --> 00:06:44.910 mills to oral refineries to factories, looking 00:06:44.910 --> 00:06:49.879 for chemical exposures. and enforcing the regulations. 00:06:50.420 --> 00:06:53.660 Then I got involved with, invited to be involved 00:06:53.660 --> 00:06:57.459 by our head general counsel to help run what's 00:06:57.459 --> 00:07:00.600 called asbestos litigation. So we were suing 00:07:00.600 --> 00:07:02.980 asbestos manufacturers for all the injuries that 00:07:02.980 --> 00:07:06.779 they had caused workers, including deaths and 00:07:06.779 --> 00:07:09.759 asbestosis and lung cancers. So I worked on that 00:07:09.759 --> 00:07:13.240 project for four years all over North America. 00:07:13.279 --> 00:07:15.279 A lot of the work was done in South Carolina. 00:07:16.040 --> 00:07:20.660 and in Texas. And then when that project was 00:07:20.660 --> 00:07:23.540 over, we got settlement mechanisms with the asbestos 00:07:23.540 --> 00:07:27.259 companies. I was appointed to what's called the 00:07:27.259 --> 00:07:30.220 Appeal Division, which is sort of in American 00:07:30.220 --> 00:07:33.639 terms is really, it's an administrative law court. 00:07:33.720 --> 00:07:36.620 So it was the senior appeal division of the administrative 00:07:36.620 --> 00:07:41.319 law courts, largely because they had a lot of 00:07:41.319 --> 00:07:45.040 occupational disease cases. And looking at causation 00:07:45.040 --> 00:07:47.420 factors, they had a factory, for example, that 00:07:47.420 --> 00:07:50.819 had 35 bladder cancer cases out of one factory. 00:07:51.839 --> 00:07:54.759 And so they needed somebody there to look at 00:07:54.759 --> 00:07:57.199 causation and what, you know, which ones are 00:07:57.199 --> 00:07:59.139 work related and which ones are not work related. 00:07:59.300 --> 00:08:00.879 So they needed somebody with a science background. 00:08:01.879 --> 00:08:05.800 Then I went to, they sent me to law school. I 00:08:05.800 --> 00:08:08.160 didn't graduate, but I took night school classes 00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:11.740 and, you know, enough to be able to talk to lawyers 00:08:11.740 --> 00:08:15.959 in my job. And I sat there on the bench for nine 00:08:15.959 --> 00:08:18.160 years hearing all of these occupational disease 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:22.339 cases. Then I decided I'd been there 21 years, 00:08:22.379 --> 00:08:25.139 decided to retire from that and got involved 00:08:25.139 --> 00:08:30.519 in occupational health consulting. But part of 00:08:30.519 --> 00:08:32.980 that just had before I had left the appeal division, 00:08:33.240 --> 00:08:37.990 I had a young nephew who. He was a local basketball 00:08:37.990 --> 00:08:42.250 star. In fact, his job or his challenge in high 00:08:42.250 --> 00:08:45.029 school was that he had to guard Steve Nash. That's 00:08:45.029 --> 00:08:48.929 no big deal. Yeah, no big deal. And so Steve 00:08:48.929 --> 00:08:51.210 went off to university and did a great NBA career. 00:08:51.450 --> 00:08:54.090 And my nephew went off and studied forestry. 00:08:54.789 --> 00:08:58.649 And within a few months after him starting work, 00:08:58.710 --> 00:09:01.950 he was working very long hours, 12, 14 -hour 00:09:01.950 --> 00:09:07.470 shifts, driving home one Friday night. Fell asleep, 00:09:07.610 --> 00:09:10.850 drove his car off a cliff and died. And that 00:09:10.850 --> 00:09:13.789 sort of really changed my emphasis around health 00:09:13.789 --> 00:09:16.629 and safety. I mean, at that time, I was the Canadian 00:09:16.629 --> 00:09:19.330 director of what's called the International Board. 00:09:19.490 --> 00:09:23.549 So it was an NGO, the World Health Organization. 00:09:24.490 --> 00:09:27.269 And I talked to my colleagues around the world 00:09:27.269 --> 00:09:30.789 and literally no one was dealing with fatigue 00:09:30.789 --> 00:09:34.710 as a health and safety issue. And so I just started 00:09:34.710 --> 00:09:36.649 that journey. I started looking around, realizing 00:09:36.649 --> 00:09:38.909 nobody was actually doing it. And I started contacting 00:09:38.909 --> 00:09:44.909 universities and military, made some contacts 00:09:44.909 --> 00:09:46.889 to the U .S. military, and particularly with 00:09:46.889 --> 00:09:48.950 a guy named Steve Hirsch at that time, who was 00:09:48.950 --> 00:09:51.769 a Pentagon medical officer who had done a lot 00:09:51.769 --> 00:09:54.470 of research in this area, and John Caldwell, 00:09:54.549 --> 00:09:57.710 who was the head of the U .S. Air Force Sleep 00:09:57.710 --> 00:10:02.980 and Fatigue Countermeasures Program. And so what 00:10:02.980 --> 00:10:06.820 I learned in occupational hygiene is that if 00:10:06.820 --> 00:10:08.559 you want to measure asbestos, you want to measure 00:10:08.559 --> 00:10:12.019 noise, or you want to mitigate the risk from 00:10:12.019 --> 00:10:14.659 those, you have to be able to measure it. And 00:10:14.659 --> 00:10:17.019 so there was no easy way to measure sleep and 00:10:17.019 --> 00:10:20.019 fatigue in the workplace. But what I did figure 00:10:20.019 --> 00:10:23.000 out was that you could take these old... sleep 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:25.320 watches they were using in research and you could 00:10:25.320 --> 00:10:28.139 take the software that they were using in the 00:10:28.139 --> 00:10:31.419 air force in the army to to measure fatigue in 00:10:31.419 --> 00:10:34.460 the and the pilots and in the army personnel 00:10:34.460 --> 00:10:37.820 and marry the two together and create a technology 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:41.039 where a wristwatch where you can actually measure 00:10:41.039 --> 00:10:45.220 fatigue and so i started a company called fatigue 00:10:45.220 --> 00:10:48.850 science we developed the very first fda approved 00:10:48.850 --> 00:10:51.450 sleep and fatigue watch way before Fitbit, way 00:10:51.450 --> 00:10:53.649 before all of these things. And it's still used. 00:10:53.710 --> 00:10:56.990 It's used mostly in military. It's very robust. 00:10:57.049 --> 00:10:59.529 You can run a tank over them almost and they 00:10:59.529 --> 00:11:01.769 run. But they weren't a consumer model and they're 00:11:01.769 --> 00:11:04.690 expensive to do that. I retired from there probably 00:11:04.690 --> 00:11:10.129 six years ago. And a lot of my work now is involved 00:11:10.129 --> 00:11:13.730 with sports first responders. I do a lot of education 00:11:13.730 --> 00:11:17.620 work around. trying to help organizations both 00:11:17.620 --> 00:11:20.620 structurally to deal with health and safety and 00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:24.320 fatigue and sleep issues, but certainly individuals 00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:27.879 as well. Work with a lot of individual professional 00:11:27.879 --> 00:11:33.019 sports athletes, both the NBA, baseball, right 00:11:33.019 --> 00:11:37.080 across the spectrum. The challenge for professional 00:11:37.080 --> 00:11:41.700 athletes is they don't want their team to know 00:11:41.700 --> 00:11:45.440 they have sleep issues. And because they don't 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:50.019 get played, I worked with a major league baseball 00:11:50.019 --> 00:11:52.980 player who was a first round draft pick. And 00:11:52.980 --> 00:11:56.120 the team sent him over to me because he had sleep 00:11:56.120 --> 00:11:59.379 issues. And we put him through a bunch of tests 00:11:59.379 --> 00:12:02.120 and did figure out he had sleep apnea. They traded 00:12:02.120 --> 00:12:06.519 him the next day. So that was a lesson to me 00:12:06.519 --> 00:12:09.139 saying I'm not going to deal with teams where 00:12:09.139 --> 00:12:11.500 they're going to mistreat people who have sleep 00:12:11.500 --> 00:12:15.019 disorders. So anyways, that's where I'm at now. 00:12:15.379 --> 00:12:19.580 And a few years ago, I wrote a book called Inconvenient 00:12:19.580 --> 00:12:23.500 Sleep, How Teams Win and Lose. So it's not a 00:12:23.500 --> 00:12:25.899 bad read. No, well, firstly, thank you for walking 00:12:25.899 --> 00:12:27.740 us through. I want to go way, way back and then 00:12:27.740 --> 00:12:29.720 walk through because there's so many areas that 00:12:29.720 --> 00:12:33.039 are so pertinent to what I've seen in my career 00:12:33.039 --> 00:12:35.220 in the fire service and what I'm seeing from 00:12:35.220 --> 00:12:37.639 the outside looking in now, speaking to experts, 00:12:37.820 --> 00:12:39.460 especially in the sleep medicine world like yourself. 00:12:41.039 --> 00:12:43.320 Very first question going all the way back. I'm 00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:46.440 one of five. I grew up on a farm. So I wouldn't 00:12:46.440 --> 00:12:48.720 say I was having to use the bathroom outside 00:12:48.720 --> 00:12:51.360 like I heard you talking to Michael Gervais about. 00:12:53.279 --> 00:12:56.279 With that being your baseline, what did that 00:12:56.279 --> 00:12:58.399 do as far as the perspective that you had on 00:12:58.399 --> 00:13:00.539 the world as you moved back to, you know, one 00:13:00.539 --> 00:13:04.940 would argue more modern technologies again? I 00:13:04.940 --> 00:13:09.419 think, I mean, again, that was in the 60s. So 00:13:09.419 --> 00:13:11.980 there was tons of new technology, but certain 00:13:11.980 --> 00:13:15.139 in television. And you have, I think, a different 00:13:15.139 --> 00:13:19.539 perspective of how it's used. And you don't grow 00:13:19.539 --> 00:13:22.360 up, it's not part of your DNA. You look at it 00:13:22.360 --> 00:13:26.600 as sort of an inanimate object. My view of the 00:13:26.600 --> 00:13:29.240 world really was, particularly if you go in northern 00:13:29.240 --> 00:13:32.980 Canada in the wintertime, it's dark, except for 00:13:32.980 --> 00:13:35.720 maybe four hours of a little bit of brightness. 00:13:35.799 --> 00:13:38.399 But what you see are literally billions and billions 00:13:38.399 --> 00:13:42.559 and billions of stars. and you see how huge the 00:13:42.559 --> 00:13:45.419 universe really is. And so that was my view of 00:13:45.419 --> 00:13:47.500 the world, is that we were a really small part 00:13:47.500 --> 00:13:52.720 of this huge, huge universe. And so I tried to 00:13:52.720 --> 00:13:55.940 take a bigger view of technology rather than 00:13:55.940 --> 00:13:58.539 going down the rabbit hole and getting into the 00:13:58.539 --> 00:14:01.840 details of how it's used and worrying about those 00:14:01.840 --> 00:14:04.120 things. How does this fit into the bigger scheme 00:14:04.120 --> 00:14:07.019 of life? Well, I feel like we've done a polar 00:14:07.019 --> 00:14:09.629 opposite of your. upbringing now where we don't 00:14:09.629 --> 00:14:11.289 even look up from our phones anymore to even 00:14:11.289 --> 00:14:14.750 see maybe the few scars that are seen through 00:14:14.750 --> 00:14:16.809 the light pollution that we have in most of our 00:14:16.809 --> 00:14:19.970 suburban and urban areas. Oh, yeah, absolutely. 00:14:20.389 --> 00:14:22.169 And it's interesting you talk about light pollution. 00:14:22.210 --> 00:14:26.049 I did some work at Stanford a few years ago with 00:14:26.049 --> 00:14:29.490 Dr. Maurice Ohayan, who's created some incredible 00:14:29.490 --> 00:14:34.169 AI technology for diagnosing mental health and 00:14:34.169 --> 00:14:38.500 sleep disorders. But he did a study looking at 00:14:38.500 --> 00:14:44.679 illumination from satellites showing that in 00:14:44.679 --> 00:14:47.100 areas where they had high lights in the cities, 00:14:47.159 --> 00:14:50.320 it was like they had poor sleep. Yeah, and it 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:52.120 makes perfect sense. And that's the thing. I 00:14:52.120 --> 00:14:54.320 think of six and a half years of talking to experts, 00:14:54.620 --> 00:14:58.820 you can reverse engineer. If we lived as our 00:14:58.820 --> 00:15:01.500 great grandparents did, you would probably solve 00:15:01.500 --> 00:15:03.860 80 to 90 % of our mental and physical health 00:15:03.860 --> 00:15:07.960 problems. Oh, absolutely. We've evolved in the 00:15:07.960 --> 00:15:12.200 last 100 years from being not largely agrarian, 00:15:12.200 --> 00:15:15.919 but largely a daylight society to a 24 -hour 00:15:15.919 --> 00:15:20.580 society. And what happens is we end up fighting 00:15:20.580 --> 00:15:25.899 our biology. So we are what scientists like to 00:15:25.899 --> 00:15:29.559 call diurnal animals. So we're biologically programmed 00:15:29.559 --> 00:15:32.500 in our DNA to be awake in the daytime and to 00:15:32.500 --> 00:15:36.070 sleep at night. We're not like owls and raccoons 00:15:36.070 --> 00:15:39.649 that are nocturnal animals. And so people tend 00:15:39.649 --> 00:15:42.950 to forget that they're really fighting their 00:15:42.950 --> 00:15:45.190 biology when they're staying awake at night. 00:15:45.529 --> 00:15:48.090 And so what's happened, particularly with first 00:15:48.090 --> 00:15:50.490 responders, and now it's really grown into a 00:15:50.490 --> 00:15:54.169 whole lot of other professions as well, is that 00:15:54.169 --> 00:15:58.350 their employer forces them to fight their biology. 00:15:59.289 --> 00:16:01.909 Right. I mean, I did a lot of work in Western 00:16:01.909 --> 00:16:04.509 Australia and the outback and iron ore mines. 00:16:05.129 --> 00:16:09.450 And they work seven 12 hour days, followed by 00:16:09.450 --> 00:16:12.889 seven 12 hour nights. And then they get a week 00:16:12.889 --> 00:16:16.129 off. And the week off is they have to fly in 00:16:16.129 --> 00:16:18.070 and fly out. So there's two days of that are 00:16:18.070 --> 00:16:20.289 flying in, flying out and five days at home with 00:16:20.289 --> 00:16:22.669 their family trying to actually get some sleep. 00:16:23.559 --> 00:16:26.480 So obviously there are a lot of issues around 00:16:26.480 --> 00:16:28.639 that. But when we talked to the mine management, 00:16:28.840 --> 00:16:31.399 we said, well, we understand that there are certain 00:16:31.399 --> 00:16:36.860 occupations within the mine. It has to be run 00:16:36.860 --> 00:16:39.919 24 -7. You can't shut it down. But do you really 00:16:39.919 --> 00:16:43.159 need everybody in the entire mine to work 24 00:16:43.159 --> 00:16:47.399 -7 or to work night shift? You have engineers 00:16:47.399 --> 00:16:50.279 who are designing things at the mine. They don't 00:16:50.279 --> 00:16:52.740 need to work at night. Why would you do that? 00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:55.620 And their answer was, we want to be fair to everybody. 00:16:57.000 --> 00:16:59.200 So we don't want to have some people that get 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:01.279 sleep at night and some people have to work at 00:17:01.279 --> 00:17:03.139 night. And I said, you know, that's kind of, 00:17:03.139 --> 00:17:05.200 I said, from my health and safety background, 00:17:05.339 --> 00:17:07.940 that's kind of, don't be offended, but I said, 00:17:07.980 --> 00:17:11.480 that's a stupid approach. It's like saying some 00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:13.400 workers within our factory have to get exposed 00:17:13.400 --> 00:17:15.940 to asbestos. So let's just expose everybody to 00:17:15.940 --> 00:17:19.009 asbestos so that it'll be fair. Well, that's 00:17:19.009 --> 00:17:20.730 what happens in our fire stations. And this was 00:17:20.730 --> 00:17:23.569 maddening because my last place actually secured 00:17:23.569 --> 00:17:27.490 budget to redo their toning system. So the alert 00:17:27.490 --> 00:17:31.690 system. And I had seen a great device where you 00:17:31.690 --> 00:17:33.869 have these kind of cubicles where we all sleep. 00:17:33.910 --> 00:17:36.269 But this one was a little box and it had a speaker 00:17:36.269 --> 00:17:39.150 and an LED strip. And it would just wake you 00:17:39.150 --> 00:17:42.089 up. And so if you slept kind of roughly in the 00:17:42.089 --> 00:17:44.490 dorm where your vehicle was, so, you know, the 00:17:44.490 --> 00:17:46.569 two guys on the ambulance here, the four people 00:17:46.569 --> 00:17:50.190 on the engine, then after a few weeks you got 00:17:50.190 --> 00:17:51.910 used to it, you would wake up the next morning 00:17:51.910 --> 00:17:53.829 and be like, oh, we had a great sleep. And the 00:17:53.829 --> 00:17:55.130 people next to you were like, well, I'm glad 00:17:55.130 --> 00:17:57.349 you did. We were up four times. But that was 00:17:57.349 --> 00:17:59.250 the point is that you don't wake everyone up. 00:17:59.450 --> 00:18:03.349 And they went to the polar opposite. still alerted 00:18:03.349 --> 00:18:06.930 everyone and then put led strips in the the bunk 00:18:06.930 --> 00:18:08.970 that would illuminate the whole bunk saying this 00:18:08.970 --> 00:18:11.349 is where this one person's call is so it was 00:18:11.349 --> 00:18:13.230 exactly what you're talking about and i was pulling 00:18:13.230 --> 00:18:16.049 my hair out because the previous dispatch chief 00:18:16.049 --> 00:18:19.299 had agreed And that's a phenomenal idea. He ends 00:18:19.299 --> 00:18:21.380 up getting fired. And then, you know, I don't 00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:23.359 know if it was to spite him or what it was, but 00:18:23.359 --> 00:18:25.920 this is the thing that we face in the fire service. 00:18:26.259 --> 00:18:29.359 You're not that important to, you know, like 00:18:29.359 --> 00:18:31.279 the chiefs to monitor their radars. You don't 00:18:31.279 --> 00:18:33.480 need to be awake. Awake the big boys and girls 00:18:33.480 --> 00:18:35.579 that you've employed to do this job that need 00:18:35.579 --> 00:18:38.660 to go and let everyone else sleep. You know, 00:18:38.680 --> 00:18:41.819 you're absolutely right. And I think the foundational 00:18:41.819 --> 00:18:46.079 issue really is ignorance. And I see that across 00:18:46.079 --> 00:18:49.339 professional sports. I see it across industry. 00:18:49.440 --> 00:18:53.019 I see it in with first responders is that the 00:18:53.019 --> 00:18:55.240 senior people who are making decisions and this 00:18:55.240 --> 00:18:58.019 goes right down to, you know, to the guys with 00:18:58.019 --> 00:19:00.539 the boots on the ground. They don't are not given 00:19:00.539 --> 00:19:05.240 foundational sleep and fatigue training. And 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:09.680 so, I mean, I've dealt with, you know, some ownership 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:12.079 and very senior people in professional sports 00:19:12.079 --> 00:19:15.140 that are just. completely ignorant about the 00:19:15.140 --> 00:19:21.059 effects of sleep on performance. And one of the 00:19:21.059 --> 00:19:25.039 things I did, so I ended up working in the National 00:19:25.039 --> 00:19:26.819 Hockey League with the Vancouver Canucks. They 00:19:26.819 --> 00:19:28.740 brought me in. I worked there for seven seasons. 00:19:29.180 --> 00:19:32.400 And the very first thing that we did was we had 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:37.779 the ownership, all the front office, all of the 00:19:37.779 --> 00:19:40.160 coaches, all of the training staff and all of 00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:44.619 the players. in one room at the same time and 00:19:44.619 --> 00:19:46.900 I gave them an hour and a half lecture on sleep 00:19:46.900 --> 00:19:48.779 and fatigue and what we were going to do for 00:19:48.779 --> 00:19:52.160 the team so that everybody got the same training 00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:55.240 everybody could understand what's going on and 00:19:55.240 --> 00:19:59.140 it ran really smoothly and I've taken that approach 00:19:59.140 --> 00:20:01.960 to industry as well I won't go into an industry 00:20:01.960 --> 00:20:05.339 and train guys with boots on the ground about 00:20:05.769 --> 00:20:08.410 sleep and fatigue unless their bosses are there 00:20:08.410 --> 00:20:11.490 or their bosses get separate training so that 00:20:11.490 --> 00:20:15.170 they understand the issues. And the problem is, 00:20:15.190 --> 00:20:19.569 or the issue is that sleep and fatigue is fairly 00:20:19.569 --> 00:20:22.369 new with respect to science. Sleep science is 00:20:22.369 --> 00:20:26.269 new. And so people, even with medical doctors, 00:20:26.430 --> 00:20:29.390 most of the medical general practitioners get 00:20:29.390 --> 00:20:32.170 maybe three or four hours of sleep training in 00:20:32.170 --> 00:20:35.329 a four -year program. It's just evolved. And 00:20:35.329 --> 00:20:38.589 so you have a lot of ignorant people making ignorant 00:20:38.589 --> 00:20:40.990 decisions because they don't have basic training. 00:20:42.130 --> 00:20:44.349 And it's like trying to run an army without putting 00:20:44.349 --> 00:20:48.710 people through basic training. Nothing good is 00:20:48.710 --> 00:20:51.410 going to come of that. And so that's my emphasis 00:20:51.410 --> 00:20:54.569 now and certainly in my career is to try to educate 00:20:54.569 --> 00:20:57.650 organizations and try to educate workers and 00:20:57.650 --> 00:20:59.890 people like yourself so that everybody really 00:20:59.890 --> 00:21:01.769 understands. You don't have to go on Google and 00:21:01.769 --> 00:21:04.210 look all. try to figure out what's real and what's 00:21:04.210 --> 00:21:06.670 not real. And that's one of the reasons I wrote, 00:21:06.690 --> 00:21:10.529 wrote my book was, well, it's more sports emphasized 00:21:10.529 --> 00:21:14.390 is to show how much fake stuff there is out there 00:21:14.390 --> 00:21:18.369 and, and, and how to be discerning about what's, 00:21:18.369 --> 00:21:22.349 what research is real and what's not real. And 00:21:22.349 --> 00:21:24.529 so, but I, so I think that's sort of the, the, 00:21:24.529 --> 00:21:27.410 the fundamental issue as, as we learned about. 00:21:28.079 --> 00:21:30.019 sleep and fatigue. I mean, everything we now 00:21:30.019 --> 00:21:33.140 know about sports and sleep, we've learned in 00:21:33.140 --> 00:21:36.359 the last decade. Well, you talked about, you 00:21:36.359 --> 00:21:37.759 know, it may not be the same because it's sports. 00:21:37.859 --> 00:21:39.519 Well, this is the problem with the fire service. 00:21:39.539 --> 00:21:43.920 We have no research in sleep. So the very, I 00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:47.400 would say, arguably the most overworked, underslept 00:21:47.400 --> 00:21:50.339 profession on the planet. refuses to do research 00:21:50.339 --> 00:21:52.619 on the one thing that's the amplifier for their 00:21:52.619 --> 00:21:54.559 mental health problems for their cancer their 00:21:54.559 --> 00:21:56.759 obesity their i mean you name it the things that 00:21:56.759 --> 00:21:58.960 we all die from and there's they just refuse 00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:01.319 they'll they'll they'll do research on this nozzle 00:22:01.319 --> 00:22:04.440 or you know this kind of fan but the actual things 00:22:04.440 --> 00:22:06.880 that are behind so many of our funerals there 00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:08.940 isn't so we have to turn to the military and 00:22:08.940 --> 00:22:11.359 the sporting community to make parallels because 00:22:11.359 --> 00:22:13.000 i get told this all the time well where's the 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:16.369 research well firstly it's common sense But secondly, 00:22:16.470 --> 00:22:18.609 if you really need to prove that being awake 00:22:18.609 --> 00:22:20.849 every third day for 10, 20 or 30 years is not 00:22:20.849 --> 00:22:23.390 good for you, here's the Navy, the Air Force, 00:22:23.430 --> 00:22:26.309 et cetera, et cetera. So that's why these conversations 00:22:26.309 --> 00:22:30.029 are so important. Yeah. So a couple of points 00:22:30.029 --> 00:22:32.430 there. So one of the things I learned when I 00:22:32.430 --> 00:22:36.609 was in the asbestos litigation is, particularly 00:22:36.609 --> 00:22:38.509 with the asbestos companies, they would say, 00:22:38.730 --> 00:22:41.970 oh, yeah, we know asbestos causes cancer in minors. 00:22:42.519 --> 00:22:47.019 We don't know whether it causes cancer in carpenters 00:22:47.019 --> 00:22:50.920 or in welders because there's no research done 00:22:50.920 --> 00:22:53.799 on that. And then the research gets done and 00:22:53.799 --> 00:22:56.539 say, yeah, well, we know now that the carpenters 00:22:56.539 --> 00:22:59.160 are at risk from asbestos. They go, yeah, but 00:22:59.160 --> 00:23:01.039 you haven't really shown that it affects office 00:23:01.039 --> 00:23:04.140 workers with asbestos in it. And so that's really, 00:23:04.279 --> 00:23:07.259 quite frankly, again, a stupid argument because 00:23:07.259 --> 00:23:11.059 the fact is asbestos is a risk. And it causes 00:23:11.059 --> 00:23:13.819 cancer, much like smoking or anything else. And 00:23:13.819 --> 00:23:15.759 so it doesn't matter. The profession is irrelevant. 00:23:17.160 --> 00:23:19.839 It's the risk that you're looking at. And there's 00:23:19.839 --> 00:23:23.900 tons and tons and tons of research around risks 00:23:23.900 --> 00:23:26.940 to anybody who fights their biology when you're 00:23:26.940 --> 00:23:29.819 awake at night. One of the great researchers 00:23:29.819 --> 00:23:31.579 in this area is from Washington State University, 00:23:31.900 --> 00:23:36.240 Brian Vila, who's since now retired. He's written 00:23:36.240 --> 00:23:38.779 a number of books. One of the early ones was 00:23:38.779 --> 00:23:41.640 called A Tired Cop. So he's an ex -police officer, 00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:45.099 PhD, who's done a lot, a lot of research around 00:23:45.099 --> 00:23:49.259 the effects of sleep on police officers and decision 00:23:49.259 --> 00:23:54.940 making. And what he's shown is that when police 00:23:54.940 --> 00:23:57.619 officers are tired coming off 12 -hour shifts. 00:23:57.759 --> 00:24:01.019 At the end of those shifts, they make very poor 00:24:01.019 --> 00:24:08.000 decisions. Literally, they shoot babies. Or they 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:14.799 freeze and get themselves shot. And so the decision 00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:18.599 -making around sleep for police officers is very, 00:24:18.660 --> 00:24:22.589 very well studied. And they're humans. The only 00:24:22.589 --> 00:24:24.609 difference between police officers and other 00:24:24.609 --> 00:24:26.910 first responders is the uniform they put on. 00:24:27.609 --> 00:24:33.069 If a firefighter put on a pilot's outfit and 00:24:33.069 --> 00:24:35.269 worked the same shift, the planes would crash. 00:24:36.269 --> 00:24:38.069 Well, the other thing is the firefighters work 00:24:38.069 --> 00:24:40.390 a lot more sleepless days than a police officer 00:24:40.390 --> 00:24:42.710 does because usually a police officer's week 00:24:42.710 --> 00:24:44.869 is still going to be 40 hours. It's 12, which 00:24:44.869 --> 00:24:47.829 is horrendous. But an average firefighter in 00:24:47.829 --> 00:24:50.539 the U .S. is a 56 -hour work week. You add the 00:24:50.539 --> 00:24:52.220 mandatories because they're so understaffed. 00:24:52.220 --> 00:24:54.380 A lot of them, you know, not every single week, 00:24:54.380 --> 00:24:56.200 but a lot of weeks they'll work now 80 hours. 00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:59.160 So this is the thing. We've studied professions 00:24:59.160 --> 00:25:02.599 that work less than us, but we still won't even 00:25:02.599 --> 00:25:05.079 apply that, even though we work sometimes double 00:25:05.079 --> 00:25:07.920 what some of these professions work. Right. So 00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:12.779 my whole argument around that is not to sort 00:25:12.779 --> 00:25:15.359 of be isolated in the sense of, you know, treat 00:25:15.359 --> 00:25:18.799 firefighters, first responders as just humans. 00:25:19.590 --> 00:25:22.509 These are humans who are up against this risk. 00:25:22.769 --> 00:25:25.509 I mean, it doesn't matter if you fall off a 40 00:25:25.509 --> 00:25:27.109 -story building. It doesn't matter what uniform 00:25:27.109 --> 00:25:30.930 you're going to wear. Oh, yeah, look, the carpenters 00:25:30.930 --> 00:25:32.470 are dying. Yeah, but the firefighters, we don't 00:25:32.470 --> 00:25:33.950 know about the firefighters yet. Let's push some 00:25:33.950 --> 00:25:37.930 off and see what happens. It's the risk you need 00:25:37.930 --> 00:25:41.190 to deal with. It's not the uniform, right? Absolutely. 00:25:41.190 --> 00:25:43.849 Well, I want to get to some of the litigation 00:25:43.849 --> 00:25:46.049 side and then walk you through your journey from 00:25:46.049 --> 00:25:48.609 that tragedy through to your exposure to the 00:25:48.609 --> 00:25:52.470 sleep world. One of the epiphanies that I had 00:25:52.470 --> 00:25:55.789 recently was, and there was a guest on Joe Rogan's 00:25:55.789 --> 00:25:58.329 podcast called Sad Guru. And I forget what comment 00:25:58.329 --> 00:25:59.950 was made, but it was something like what Joe 00:25:59.950 --> 00:26:02.420 had said, well, you know. most people are good 00:26:02.420 --> 00:26:03.640 and they think he said you know something like 00:26:03.640 --> 00:26:06.220 oh the drug companies or whatever which there's 00:26:06.220 --> 00:26:08.380 an element of truth in some of the the things 00:26:08.380 --> 00:26:09.759 that they produce and the impact they've had 00:26:09.759 --> 00:26:13.019 on our country but he said well they're he said 00:26:13.019 --> 00:26:14.480 they're hurting too or something like that or 00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:17.799 they need kindness too and i realized that when 00:26:17.799 --> 00:26:20.799 we look at mental ill health we look at school 00:26:20.799 --> 00:26:22.759 shooters we look at the addiction process and 00:26:22.759 --> 00:26:24.799 you know prostitution and some of these areas 00:26:24.799 --> 00:26:29.140 that have led a preschool giggling child to some 00:26:29.140 --> 00:26:32.430 of these wayward paths But what we don't think 00:26:32.430 --> 00:26:35.329 about is some of these corrupt politicians, some 00:26:35.329 --> 00:26:38.069 of these heads of these tobacco companies, asbestos 00:26:38.069 --> 00:26:41.250 companies, how do they sleep at night? And my 00:26:41.250 --> 00:26:44.009 hypothesis is, well, maybe that's the mental 00:26:44.009 --> 00:26:47.029 ill health being projected in that greed. So 00:26:47.029 --> 00:26:49.710 with your exposure to some of these companies 00:26:49.710 --> 00:26:53.150 where clearly there was no argument, their products 00:26:53.150 --> 00:26:55.410 were killing a lot of people and they were making 00:26:55.410 --> 00:26:58.980 a lot of money from it. Did you... Have any kind 00:26:58.980 --> 00:27:01.420 of experiences to the kind of people? And was 00:27:01.420 --> 00:27:03.680 there almost like a mental ill health component 00:27:03.680 --> 00:27:06.420 to some of those individuals too? Or am I way 00:27:06.420 --> 00:27:09.539 off? That's a great question. I mean, I don't 00:27:09.539 --> 00:27:12.259 know the answer to that. I mean, when we sued 00:27:12.259 --> 00:27:14.200 these companies, we sued them as corporations. 00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:17.359 And of course, we had all their internal emails 00:27:17.359 --> 00:27:20.920 and things that went on. And they were just making 00:27:20.920 --> 00:27:26.140 decisions to make money. So it didn't matter. 00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:31.059 They knew, for example, they knew in the 20s 00:27:31.059 --> 00:27:34.359 and 30s that asbestos was causing huge amounts 00:27:34.359 --> 00:27:38.740 of injuries. And they just chose to ignore it, 00:27:38.759 --> 00:27:42.339 hoping it would go away. And so it was about 00:27:42.339 --> 00:27:46.559 solely business decisions to make money and to 00:27:46.559 --> 00:27:48.859 preserve their company. I mean, if you think 00:27:48.859 --> 00:27:51.420 about it, if you're an asbestos company and all 00:27:51.420 --> 00:27:54.339 you do is make asbestos products and all of a 00:27:54.339 --> 00:27:57.539 sudden people know. that it causes lung cancer 00:27:57.539 --> 00:27:59.880 and asbestosis and other things, your business 00:27:59.880 --> 00:28:03.680 is gone. Right. And so, you know, as a board 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:06.319 of directors, they're there to preserve the company. 00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:10.140 And so they're not there to look after the workers. 00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:16.700 That's the union's job. So what about the, when 00:28:16.700 --> 00:28:18.779 you look kind of reverse engineer, the creation 00:28:18.779 --> 00:28:20.910 of something was there. And I'll give you an 00:28:20.910 --> 00:28:22.970 example. I just had a rub the lot on probably 00:28:22.970 --> 00:28:25.809 about a year ago now. And he's the real lawyer 00:28:25.809 --> 00:28:28.789 from the film Dark Waters. So it was the DuPont 00:28:28.789 --> 00:28:31.210 chemicals that were poisoning the village. The 00:28:31.210 --> 00:28:33.109 same chemicals are actually in our firefighter 00:28:33.109 --> 00:28:36.410 gear and our firefighter foams. But, you know, 00:28:36.410 --> 00:28:39.410 it seems like a lot of times there is a knowledge 00:28:39.410 --> 00:28:41.910 early on, even almost in the research process, 00:28:42.150 --> 00:28:45.579 that these are harmful. And yet they still release 00:28:45.579 --> 00:28:47.119 them. So you're not even talking about protecting 00:28:47.119 --> 00:28:49.660 a well -established business by that point. You 00:28:49.660 --> 00:28:52.619 know, Oxycontin is another perfect example. So 00:28:52.619 --> 00:28:55.420 what were you seeing? Was there acknowledgement 00:28:55.420 --> 00:28:59.140 of these issues early, early on in the timeline 00:28:59.140 --> 00:29:01.700 of a lot of these companies? Oh, absolutely. 00:29:02.259 --> 00:29:08.420 And part of it is how the government, once the 00:29:08.420 --> 00:29:11.240 government sort of found out and regulators are 00:29:11.240 --> 00:29:14.549 always way, way behind the curve. And what they 00:29:14.549 --> 00:29:18.549 did with asbestos was to say, well, let's just 00:29:18.549 --> 00:29:21.009 limit the exposure to people. It's not like, 00:29:21.069 --> 00:29:24.230 let's get rid of this product. It's like, let's 00:29:24.230 --> 00:29:26.769 let people get exposed, but let's just tell them 00:29:26.769 --> 00:29:31.490 that a little bit won't hurt them. And asbestos 00:29:31.490 --> 00:29:35.670 went along. I mean, you can follow the regulatory 00:29:35.670 --> 00:29:38.450 schemes across North America about how they regulated 00:29:38.450 --> 00:29:41.170 asbestos. And then it was like, well, you can 00:29:41.170 --> 00:29:44.609 get exposed to... 5 million particles per square 00:29:44.609 --> 00:29:47.490 foot or whatever, right? And then went down and 00:29:47.490 --> 00:29:49.150 down and down and down and down. And now they 00:29:49.150 --> 00:29:52.609 realize, well, really no exposure is healthy. 00:29:53.470 --> 00:29:57.670 But it's this combination of industry trying 00:29:57.670 --> 00:30:00.569 to preserve their products and the government 00:30:00.569 --> 00:30:02.690 playing along a little bit because the research 00:30:02.690 --> 00:30:05.069 isn't there and saying, okay, well, you can still 00:30:05.069 --> 00:30:06.750 use these dangerous things, but we'll just limit 00:30:06.750 --> 00:30:10.099 how much people can get exposed to it. Yeah, 00:30:10.119 --> 00:30:13.519 I know my last place, they did a big asbestos 00:30:13.519 --> 00:30:16.259 mitigation. If I've got my story right, I don't 00:30:16.259 --> 00:30:17.599 want to say where it was because I want to make 00:30:17.599 --> 00:30:20.039 sure my facts are right. But there was a massive 00:30:20.039 --> 00:30:23.539 asbestos mitigation from this large theme park 00:30:23.539 --> 00:30:26.740 that was put into this area. I think that ended 00:30:26.740 --> 00:30:28.759 up catching fire. And this is way before I worked 00:30:28.759 --> 00:30:31.420 for them. And from what I understand, as one 00:30:31.420 --> 00:30:34.160 of my firefighter partners who... retired you 00:30:34.160 --> 00:30:36.140 know when i was there so that was the difference 00:30:36.140 --> 00:30:39.319 in our our time in that department he'd been 00:30:39.319 --> 00:30:42.099 hired on and i think all of his classmates were 00:30:42.099 --> 00:30:43.819 on that fire and i think there was only like 00:30:43.819 --> 00:30:45.960 two or three of them left from that class that 00:30:45.960 --> 00:30:48.160 survived and this was not a department that usually 00:30:48.160 --> 00:30:51.000 fought fire this was you know they're so well 00:30:51.000 --> 00:30:53.420 sprinkled and so safe that it was just a medical 00:30:53.420 --> 00:30:55.380 cause that went on which is why i think the sleep 00:30:55.380 --> 00:30:57.720 deprivation is another huge contributor because 00:30:57.720 --> 00:30:59.720 they weren't exposed to carcinogens normally 00:30:59.720 --> 00:31:03.490 but that one asbestos fire They always talked 00:31:03.490 --> 00:31:05.829 historically about how they thought that was 00:31:05.829 --> 00:31:07.609 the root of so many of the cancers that killed 00:31:07.609 --> 00:31:11.650 their friends. Right. Now, it's very interesting 00:31:11.650 --> 00:31:14.130 because when I worked in the Appeal Division 00:31:14.130 --> 00:31:16.690 where we saw these cases, so you would often 00:31:16.690 --> 00:31:20.029 have widows would coming who filed appeals have 00:31:20.029 --> 00:31:22.009 been in the system for a few years saying, I 00:31:22.009 --> 00:31:25.650 think my husband's or my wife or my partner's 00:31:25.650 --> 00:31:31.039 cancer was caused from their work. And so the 00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:34.220 insurance companies have found different ways, 00:31:34.420 --> 00:31:37.619 whether they're like in Canada, they're government 00:31:37.619 --> 00:31:40.180 regulated. So it's basically the workers' comp 00:31:40.180 --> 00:31:42.460 systems. They deal with it in different ways. 00:31:42.619 --> 00:31:46.019 And so part of how we dealt with it in British 00:31:46.019 --> 00:31:49.559 Columbia was we said, if you get mesothelioma, 00:31:49.640 --> 00:31:53.319 which is a particular kind of cancer in the lungs, 00:31:53.440 --> 00:31:56.319 and you've had any exposure to asbestos in your 00:31:56.319 --> 00:32:01.240 career, then it's caused from your work. But 00:32:01.240 --> 00:32:03.480 what's happened is where you have to litigate 00:32:03.480 --> 00:32:06.160 it, go to court, it's a whole different set of 00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:10.059 standards. And it forces widows and unions to 00:32:10.059 --> 00:32:12.980 try to prove that their exposure was caused from 00:32:12.980 --> 00:32:15.140 works. Very difficult, very difficult proposition. 00:32:16.319 --> 00:32:19.500 And so they end up doing, and what they did in 00:32:19.500 --> 00:32:22.880 the States was, and I worked with Ron Motley. 00:32:23.609 --> 00:32:26.630 And a huge firm out of South Carolina that really 00:32:26.630 --> 00:32:29.269 started all the asbestos litigation. And they 00:32:29.269 --> 00:32:32.609 looked at not just one individual, but they looked 00:32:32.609 --> 00:32:35.730 at thousands and thousands and thousands and 00:32:35.730 --> 00:32:37.950 thousands of workers and filed lawsuits with 00:32:37.950 --> 00:32:41.109 thousands of plaintiffs. So that the picture 00:32:41.109 --> 00:32:43.670 you could see, the clear picture that out of 00:32:43.670 --> 00:32:46.490 all of these thousands of people, look at all 00:32:46.490 --> 00:32:48.809 the disease that starts. Not just one guy fighting 00:32:48.809 --> 00:32:50.869 the companies, it's thousands and thousands and 00:32:50.869 --> 00:32:53.470 thousands of workers fighting together. And they 00:32:53.470 --> 00:32:58.049 were very successful in doing that. Well, I think 00:32:58.049 --> 00:32:59.950 this is the problem. Firstly, the American Fire 00:32:59.950 --> 00:33:01.990 Service is so fragmented. And I don't know if 00:33:01.990 --> 00:33:05.230 you've discovered that in your time down here 00:33:05.230 --> 00:33:08.589 or up there. But certainly down here, it's very 00:33:08.589 --> 00:33:10.930 fragmented. Counties and cities don't talk to 00:33:10.930 --> 00:33:13.730 each other sometimes, and it's ridiculous. But 00:33:13.730 --> 00:33:16.130 then you have the states as well. So some states 00:33:16.130 --> 00:33:18.589 will have a cancer presumption. But even for 00:33:18.589 --> 00:33:20.329 only certain things, like I just had a guest 00:33:20.329 --> 00:33:23.150 on who had breast cancer, career female firefighter. 00:33:23.289 --> 00:33:25.869 But because it was diagnosed when she hit 40, 00:33:26.089 --> 00:33:27.910 they were like, well, it doesn't fit the criteria 00:33:27.910 --> 00:33:30.809 now. Well, she hadn't slept every third day for, 00:33:30.829 --> 00:33:32.730 you know, whatever. She'd been exposed to all 00:33:32.730 --> 00:33:35.410 these things. And then I hear these horror stories 00:33:35.410 --> 00:33:38.829 and it's so nauseating of responders that actually, 00:33:38.849 --> 00:33:41.549 you know, are in a state that has presumption. 00:33:42.170 --> 00:33:44.250 And the insurance companies will just fight it. 00:33:44.329 --> 00:33:47.569 And it's been said from people within circles 00:33:47.569 --> 00:33:49.589 that they've heard people say, oh, no, we just 00:33:49.589 --> 00:33:51.230 keep fighting it because they'll die before they'll 00:33:51.230 --> 00:33:54.089 ever get a penny, which is nauseating. Yeah, 00:33:54.089 --> 00:33:56.650 it happens all the time. And then, yeah, no, 00:33:56.750 --> 00:34:00.130 it's sad. And I mean, part of it is this sort 00:34:00.130 --> 00:34:05.109 of acceleration of, we're talking about sleep 00:34:05.109 --> 00:34:08.159 and fatigue and those kinds of things. is more 00:34:08.159 --> 00:34:10.199 and more people are working longer and longer 00:34:10.199 --> 00:34:12.940 hours. And there's less and less research actually 00:34:12.940 --> 00:34:16.599 going on, being funded to look at those kinds 00:34:16.599 --> 00:34:19.679 of issues. And probably the biggest sleep and 00:34:19.679 --> 00:34:24.019 fatigue research lab in the world is in Washington 00:34:24.019 --> 00:34:27.619 State University. And they've got all these simulation 00:34:27.619 --> 00:34:30.179 labs. They do, quite frankly, really amazing 00:34:30.179 --> 00:34:32.679 work around there. But they're one small group. 00:34:32.760 --> 00:34:37.420 The U .S. military does a lot of research. you 00:34:37.420 --> 00:34:39.480 know, the research out of that. And a lot of 00:34:39.480 --> 00:34:42.239 research around sleep and fatigue is scattered 00:34:42.239 --> 00:34:45.880 everywhere. And you find it in ergonomics journals, 00:34:45.960 --> 00:34:49.139 you find it in all kinds of things all over the 00:34:49.139 --> 00:34:51.059 world. And so it's really hard to kind of pull 00:34:51.059 --> 00:34:54.360 a lot of those pieces together. But you know, 00:34:54.420 --> 00:35:00.539 it's, it's one of the things that bothers me 00:35:00.539 --> 00:35:02.380 a little bit about all the discussion around 00:35:02.380 --> 00:35:06.610 sleep and fatigue is that people tend to, Treat 00:35:06.610 --> 00:35:11.510 poor sleep as a disease. And poor sleep is not 00:35:11.510 --> 00:35:15.469 a disease. Poor sleep is a symptom. And it's 00:35:15.469 --> 00:35:18.269 a symptom of many different things. It's a symptom 00:35:18.269 --> 00:35:21.750 of mental health issues. It's a symptom of work 00:35:21.750 --> 00:35:24.989 scheduling. It's a symptom of other biological 00:35:24.989 --> 00:35:29.769 diseases. And so lifestyle issues. And so what's 00:35:29.769 --> 00:35:33.409 happened is they don't really. It's very difficult 00:35:33.409 --> 00:35:37.610 when somebody has a sleep issue to be able to 00:35:37.610 --> 00:35:40.510 figure out what the cause of that is. Is it mental 00:35:40.510 --> 00:35:43.230 health or is it a combination of all of these 00:35:43.230 --> 00:35:45.730 things? I've worked with minors in Australia 00:35:45.730 --> 00:35:50.789 who are obese, who have sleep apnea, who work 00:35:50.789 --> 00:35:54.309 terrible, terrible work schedules, have terrible 00:35:54.309 --> 00:35:58.389 diets. And they're not sleeping and they're at 00:35:58.389 --> 00:36:01.030 high risk of having a heart attack. And so what's 00:36:01.030 --> 00:36:04.059 the cause of that? Well, everything. Yeah. Well, 00:36:04.099 --> 00:36:05.800 it's a vicious circle, isn't it? Because once 00:36:05.800 --> 00:36:09.880 your hormones start getting disrupted, now you're 00:36:09.880 --> 00:36:12.440 creating a less healthy human. And we're told, 00:36:12.519 --> 00:36:14.239 well, just sleep when your day is off. Well, 00:36:14.300 --> 00:36:17.760 as you just pointed out, when I was 21, I probably 00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:20.679 could. But now I'm 35 and I've been on shifts 00:36:20.679 --> 00:36:23.900 for 15 years. And like you said, I've gained 00:36:23.900 --> 00:36:26.579 weight. I now need a sleep app. My sleep quality 00:36:26.579 --> 00:36:29.739 is going to be so much worse because of the breakdown 00:36:29.739 --> 00:36:32.760 from my sleep deprivation. Right. And I think 00:36:32.760 --> 00:36:35.559 the missing component of all of this is education. 00:36:36.659 --> 00:36:41.599 Really educating early on firefighters, first 00:36:41.599 --> 00:36:44.159 responders about sleep and fatigue so they understand 00:36:44.159 --> 00:36:47.679 how their own body even works. When I deal with 00:36:47.679 --> 00:36:51.139 professional athletes on teams, I said the people 00:36:51.139 --> 00:36:54.539 you need to educate are the players in the junior 00:36:54.539 --> 00:36:57.099 teams because they need to be educated before 00:36:57.099 --> 00:37:00.510 they get here. For me, try to change the sleep 00:37:00.510 --> 00:37:02.869 habits of a guy that's making $10 million a year 00:37:02.869 --> 00:37:05.710 and got there doing what he was doing. He's not 00:37:05.710 --> 00:37:07.409 going to change very much. He's not going to 00:37:07.409 --> 00:37:09.969 listen to me. But it's the young guys and the 00:37:09.969 --> 00:37:12.750 young women who are coming up who really need 00:37:12.750 --> 00:37:15.230 to be taught that. It's not taught in schools. 00:37:15.489 --> 00:37:17.570 They teach nutrition in school. They teach visual 00:37:17.570 --> 00:37:19.909 education in school. They teach cooking in school. 00:37:20.070 --> 00:37:23.769 They don't teach anything about sleep. And so 00:37:23.769 --> 00:37:26.449 I think that there's a huge gap in our society 00:37:26.449 --> 00:37:29.199 around that issue. No, absolutely. I want to 00:37:29.199 --> 00:37:30.719 get into that because I think the front door 00:37:30.719 --> 00:37:34.699 is really where we force change. But you talked 00:37:34.699 --> 00:37:36.719 about the tragedy that really opened your eyes 00:37:36.719 --> 00:37:39.099 to the sleep deprivation element. I have had 00:37:39.099 --> 00:37:41.599 so many guests from the U .S. military when it 00:37:41.599 --> 00:37:43.519 comes to the sleep research side because that 00:37:43.519 --> 00:37:46.380 is a wealth of information that I can draw on 00:37:46.380 --> 00:37:49.360 because my own industry refuses to really put 00:37:49.360 --> 00:37:52.760 any money in that whatsoever. And Alison Brager 00:37:52.760 --> 00:37:56.710 is from the U .S. Army. told me that they were, 00:37:56.789 --> 00:37:58.530 I think it was, was it Fort Bragg? It was one 00:37:58.530 --> 00:38:00.289 of the forts anyway, where they were doing some 00:38:00.289 --> 00:38:02.070 of the, I believe it was a special forces selection. 00:38:02.429 --> 00:38:04.389 So obviously the candidates are staying up all 00:38:04.389 --> 00:38:07.050 night. Therefore, a lot of the cadre are up in 00:38:07.050 --> 00:38:09.329 these weird hours. And it was up in somewhere 00:38:09.329 --> 00:38:10.989 that was, I think it was North Carolina, so somewhat 00:38:10.989 --> 00:38:13.230 mountainous. And they were literally having people 00:38:13.230 --> 00:38:15.329 drive off the side of the mountain, the instructors, 00:38:15.469 --> 00:38:19.250 because they were so fatigued. So talk to me 00:38:19.250 --> 00:38:21.949 about... you know you the impact that losing 00:38:21.949 --> 00:38:24.150 your nephew had and then let's walk through your 00:38:24.150 --> 00:38:27.469 journey into you know really even the the front 00:38:27.469 --> 00:38:29.550 door of sleep research where it was when you 00:38:29.550 --> 00:38:32.929 entered and then where we are today sure and 00:38:32.929 --> 00:38:34.530 just to back up a little bit it's interesting 00:38:34.530 --> 00:38:37.110 you mentioned fort bragg i actually did a fair 00:38:37.110 --> 00:38:40.010 bit of uh teaching there around sleep and fatigue 00:38:40.010 --> 00:38:43.250 issues and also uh for dietrich with the the 00:38:43.250 --> 00:38:47.530 us army medical medical corps there and one of 00:38:47.530 --> 00:38:52.400 the things that they changed And was in special 00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:56.139 forces, they had this notion that you could actually 00:38:56.139 --> 00:38:59.719 sleep harden people so you can teach people to 00:38:59.719 --> 00:39:04.179 be awake long hours and survive. They finally 00:39:04.179 --> 00:39:08.239 realized you can't. And so they actually gave 00:39:08.239 --> 00:39:11.940 up on that, that whole concept and are now actually 00:39:11.940 --> 00:39:14.969 basically teaching people how to get. good sleep 00:39:14.969 --> 00:39:17.449 when they can. It's a completely different mindset. 00:39:17.650 --> 00:39:19.730 But the old mindset, we'll just harden these 00:39:19.730 --> 00:39:22.269 people, we'll teach them how to stay awake, doesn't 00:39:22.269 --> 00:39:28.590 work. So certainly in my journey with my nephew, 00:39:28.750 --> 00:39:33.489 and he was like 22 years old, and he didn't even 00:39:33.489 --> 00:39:35.690 drink coffee, didn't drink alcohol, didn't drink 00:39:35.690 --> 00:39:39.909 coffee, just a good kid, good basketball player. 00:39:40.190 --> 00:39:43.110 In fact, he had, when Steve Nash was a playing 00:39:43.110 --> 00:39:48.130 in the U .S., my nephew was, he created basketball 00:39:48.130 --> 00:39:50.869 programs in his community for little kids. And 00:39:50.869 --> 00:39:53.329 they actually named a sports court for him, which 00:39:53.329 --> 00:39:55.869 is still active today, basketball court for little 00:39:55.869 --> 00:39:57.750 kids, which is the first time they ever did it 00:39:57.750 --> 00:40:00.949 for a 22 -year -old kid. So he had a, you know, 00:40:00.969 --> 00:40:05.590 he had a, it was a great kid, had a, you know, 00:40:05.590 --> 00:40:07.409 had a lot of involvement in the community as 00:40:07.409 --> 00:40:11.500 well. And so, I mean, not only his uncle, but 00:40:11.500 --> 00:40:15.219 always his godfather as well. And so, he had 00:40:15.219 --> 00:40:18.360 this emotional feeling, obviously, when somebody 00:40:18.360 --> 00:40:20.739 dies too close, and shock for somebody young, 00:40:20.760 --> 00:40:24.159 not expected. But then you sit back and say, 00:40:24.340 --> 00:40:29.480 why was he awake for so long? And one of the 00:40:29.480 --> 00:40:31.599 things that I learned after a while is that falling 00:40:31.599 --> 00:40:36.019 asleep is actually fairly unusual around sleep 00:40:36.019 --> 00:40:41.969 issues. Because there's this huge period of time 00:40:41.969 --> 00:40:47.170 before you fall asleep where your faculties aren't 00:40:47.170 --> 00:40:51.389 up to par, right? Sleep's not an on -off switch. 00:40:51.630 --> 00:40:53.010 You're not awake, you're asleep. There's this 00:40:53.010 --> 00:40:55.250 huge period of time. And then even when you wake 00:40:55.250 --> 00:40:58.230 up and get sleep inertia. So we learned around 00:40:58.230 --> 00:41:02.510 those kinds of things. And one of the other sort 00:41:02.510 --> 00:41:05.070 of analogies I learned around this is we probably 00:41:05.070 --> 00:41:07.369 all played this little game. Kids sit around 00:41:07.369 --> 00:41:09.869 and all hold our breath. See who can hold their 00:41:09.869 --> 00:41:12.250 breath the longest. And finally, everybody starts 00:41:12.250 --> 00:41:15.369 breathing. What's happening there is your brain 00:41:15.369 --> 00:41:19.570 allows you to control your sleep or your breath, 00:41:19.929 --> 00:41:22.070 which is actually a good thing in sports and 00:41:22.070 --> 00:41:24.369 other things you can control. But your brain 00:41:24.369 --> 00:41:26.349 will only allow you to control it consciously 00:41:26.349 --> 00:41:29.769 for a period of time. And when you get to a point 00:41:29.769 --> 00:41:31.409 where there's not enough oxygen in your brain, 00:41:31.489 --> 00:41:33.190 your brain just takes over and say, sorry, you're 00:41:33.190 --> 00:41:34.769 being stupid. You need to breathe. And it'll 00:41:34.769 --> 00:41:37.599 force you to breathe. And sleep is exactly the 00:41:37.599 --> 00:41:40.400 same way. You know, your brain will allow you 00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:43.139 to stay awake. And some of that may be, you know, 00:41:43.159 --> 00:41:44.960 sort of a survival thing, but allow you to stay 00:41:44.960 --> 00:41:47.519 awake for even long periods of time. But you'll 00:41:47.519 --> 00:41:49.739 reach a point where your brain goes, sorry, I 00:41:49.739 --> 00:41:51.960 need to shut down. We need some repair work here. 00:41:52.039 --> 00:41:54.139 And it'll put you to sleep no matter what you're 00:41:54.139 --> 00:41:56.000 doing, whether you're watching television or 00:41:56.000 --> 00:41:59.199 flying a plane or whatever you're doing, it'll 00:41:59.199 --> 00:42:03.119 put you to sleep. And so we can control. certain 00:42:03.119 --> 00:42:07.599 aspects of our sleep, but you pay a price for 00:42:07.599 --> 00:42:10.820 it. Once you start fighting that, you pay a health 00:42:10.820 --> 00:42:13.179 price for it, you pay a safety price for it, 00:42:13.199 --> 00:42:16.019 and you pay a performance price for it. And all 00:42:16.019 --> 00:42:18.519 of those kinds of prices depend on what uniform 00:42:18.519 --> 00:42:22.300 you're wearing, right? If you're super sleep 00:42:22.300 --> 00:42:25.039 deprived and you're watching television, you 00:42:25.039 --> 00:42:26.780 fall asleep, there's probably not too much harm. 00:42:27.679 --> 00:42:31.179 But if you're having to make decisions about 00:42:31.179 --> 00:42:34.289 people's lives, or you're flying a plane or driving 00:42:34.289 --> 00:42:38.010 a train, there's big consequences. And so we 00:42:38.010 --> 00:42:42.690 tend to see the kind of things you see on the 00:42:42.690 --> 00:42:45.489 news are the big accidents. You don't see all 00:42:45.489 --> 00:42:50.849 the small accidents. And so because it doesn't 00:42:50.849 --> 00:42:53.030 involve a lot of people. And that's been a real 00:42:53.030 --> 00:42:57.809 challenge for accident investigators to look 00:42:57.809 --> 00:43:02.949 at how much. What component of an accident was 00:43:02.949 --> 00:43:06.949 actually associated with sleep? We had an accident 00:43:06.949 --> 00:43:10.670 here. Literally, I can walk down five minutes 00:43:10.670 --> 00:43:14.610 from my house where a small plane crashed trying 00:43:14.610 --> 00:43:17.809 to land at the airport. And it had taken off. 00:43:17.869 --> 00:43:21.829 It had flown out. And it was losing oil. And 00:43:21.829 --> 00:43:24.010 it tried to circle back and couldn't quite make 00:43:24.010 --> 00:43:25.929 it to the airport and crashed. And so they had 00:43:25.929 --> 00:43:28.269 this big investigation. And all of it was about... 00:43:28.599 --> 00:43:31.019 firefighting actually on the on the plane and 00:43:31.019 --> 00:43:34.380 fire suppression and the materials the real cause 00:43:34.380 --> 00:43:36.539 of the accident if you read the report was that 00:43:36.539 --> 00:43:40.019 the maintenance guy who changed the oil on the 00:43:40.019 --> 00:43:44.119 plane on night shift had cross -threaded the 00:43:44.119 --> 00:43:47.900 oil cap and his supervisor didn't even pick it 00:43:47.900 --> 00:43:50.539 up who's supposed to check on those things and 00:43:50.539 --> 00:43:52.400 it went off and of course the oil leaked off 00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:55.500 so what they should have been looking at was 00:43:56.359 --> 00:43:59.500 The sleep history of the guy who made the poor 00:43:59.500 --> 00:44:02.119 decision, the mechanic who made the poor decision, 00:44:02.239 --> 00:44:04.219 and they didn't do it. They didn't even look 00:44:04.219 --> 00:44:07.019 at it. They ignored it. And that's very true. 00:44:07.119 --> 00:44:09.800 I've seen that with police officers and car accidents 00:44:09.800 --> 00:44:12.519 and others, is unless you fall asleep, they don't 00:44:12.519 --> 00:44:16.000 want to know about it. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Just 00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:17.519 jump in because I wanted to ask you that. So 00:44:17.519 --> 00:44:20.239 we have what's called line of duty deaths. And 00:44:20.239 --> 00:44:23.519 a lot of times. Someone will fall from the aerial, 00:44:23.639 --> 00:44:27.059 a 110 -foot ladder, or there'll be very commonly 00:44:27.059 --> 00:44:29.659 an intersection crash. Someone will go through. 00:44:29.860 --> 00:44:32.460 And more recently, when I'm asking some of these 00:44:32.460 --> 00:44:35.369 sleep medicine experts, they talk about micro 00:44:35.369 --> 00:44:37.829 -sleeps. So every time this has been investigated, 00:44:38.050 --> 00:44:39.829 oh, they made a mistake, they should have stopped, 00:44:39.889 --> 00:44:41.789 or, you know, oh, they just fell, or they just 00:44:41.789 --> 00:44:44.250 got lost in the fire. The more I learn about 00:44:44.250 --> 00:44:46.750 this side, the more I question, and the same 00:44:46.750 --> 00:44:48.809 would be attached to the gray area of involved 00:44:48.809 --> 00:44:51.070 shootings. We have the ones where we completely 00:44:51.070 --> 00:44:53.309 screw up. That's, you know, that's not even in 00:44:53.309 --> 00:44:55.630 contention. We have the ones where it's a justified 00:44:55.630 --> 00:44:58.230 shoot, also not in contention. But the kid that 00:44:58.230 --> 00:44:59.849 reaches for his driver's license and he thinks 00:44:59.849 --> 00:45:02.289 he's going for a gun, you know, all these ones, 00:45:02.349 --> 00:45:05.110 all these mistakes. How often have we brought 00:45:05.110 --> 00:45:07.750 in sleep deprivation into this conversation? 00:45:08.869 --> 00:45:11.889 Rarely. And that's one of the things I like the 00:45:11.889 --> 00:45:15.190 research done that Brian Viola has done. I said 00:45:15.190 --> 00:45:16.929 at Washington State University, it's V -I -L 00:45:16.929 --> 00:45:21.190 -A. He's got some great books, some great research 00:45:21.190 --> 00:45:23.190 in that area. And it's still being continued 00:45:23.190 --> 00:45:25.769 even though he's retired. They don't because 00:45:25.769 --> 00:45:29.039 it's too hard. One of the things that... I've 00:45:29.039 --> 00:45:32.320 used in accident investigations is a U .S. Air 00:45:32.320 --> 00:45:36.239 Force and U .S. Army technology software where 00:45:36.239 --> 00:45:40.079 it's called, it's a couple different names. One's 00:45:40.079 --> 00:45:43.559 called SAFTE, which is our Fast Fatigue Avoidance 00:45:43.559 --> 00:45:46.639 Scheduling Tool. So what it is, it's you put 00:45:46.639 --> 00:45:49.820 in a sleep history of someone for the previous 00:45:49.820 --> 00:45:52.679 at least 72 hours, and it will tell you pretty 00:45:52.679 --> 00:45:56.480 accurately the range of that person's reaction 00:45:56.480 --> 00:46:01.230 time. And it's used now by virtually every airline 00:46:01.230 --> 00:46:03.389 in North America is built into their scheduling 00:46:03.389 --> 00:46:06.190 systems to try to make sure that the pilots are 00:46:06.190 --> 00:46:09.269 getting the sleep that they need. And if the 00:46:09.269 --> 00:46:12.489 schedules are too fatiguing, it'll kick them 00:46:12.489 --> 00:46:16.630 out. But I've used that technology a lot. So 00:46:16.630 --> 00:46:22.119 I can tell you, for example. If there's that 00:46:22.119 --> 00:46:23.579 kind of incident, for example, you're talking 00:46:23.579 --> 00:46:25.940 about when somebody gets shot, you go back and 00:46:25.940 --> 00:46:29.300 look at the 72 -hour or longer sleep history 00:46:29.300 --> 00:46:32.860 of that person. And I can tell you pretty accurately 00:46:32.860 --> 00:46:35.800 what range, how much change in their reaction 00:46:35.800 --> 00:46:40.239 time was there. So I can tell if they've lost 00:46:40.239 --> 00:46:42.780 50 % of their reaction time or 25 % of their 00:46:42.780 --> 00:46:47.320 reaction time. The Federal Railroad Administration 00:46:47.320 --> 00:46:49.840 has done some really, really good research showing 00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:55.199 with that software, showing at what point can 00:46:55.199 --> 00:47:00.639 you now attribute that to an accident. So the 00:47:00.639 --> 00:47:03.619 technology is there. It's just not widely used. 00:47:04.059 --> 00:47:06.960 So we have one of the shifts. I think we talked 00:47:06.960 --> 00:47:08.840 about it on the phone a while ago. So one of 00:47:08.840 --> 00:47:11.739 the things that's maddening to me is the 56 -hour 00:47:11.739 --> 00:47:15.380 workweek. play around with it so rather than 00:47:15.380 --> 00:47:18.420 do 24 48 which is you know we have three platoons 00:47:18.420 --> 00:47:21.079 three shifts a b and c so that means that i'm 00:47:21.079 --> 00:47:23.579 on then b is on then c is on then i come back 00:47:23.579 --> 00:47:26.659 again and so now they'll be like oh well actually 00:47:26.659 --> 00:47:31.000 let's do a 48 96 so now i work 48 hours without 00:47:31.000 --> 00:47:34.300 sleep but then i get four days off spinning the 00:47:34.300 --> 00:47:37.699 rubix cube but the rubix cube is never smaller 00:47:37.699 --> 00:47:40.219 and this is the problem is that there's no no 00:47:40.219 --> 00:47:42.780 conversation at all like why are we working our 00:47:42.780 --> 00:47:45.460 responders the amount of hours per week why are 00:47:45.460 --> 00:47:47.699 we not giving them more time off in between shifts 00:47:47.699 --> 00:47:51.159 to allow them to get as close to you know normal 00:47:51.159 --> 00:47:54.179 again as we can talk to me about you know i know 00:47:54.179 --> 00:47:56.860 i know we're kind of you know just spitballing 00:47:56.860 --> 00:48:01.070 a little bit but when we hear about sleep deprivation 00:48:01.070 --> 00:48:03.269 i hear the same statistic 24 hours without sleep 00:48:03.269 --> 00:48:06.369 is like blood alcohol 0 .1 which is a great stat 00:48:06.369 --> 00:48:08.530 but i'm assuming those people in those studies 00:48:08.530 --> 00:48:11.170 had slept well prior to that now they're talking 00:48:11.170 --> 00:48:13.550 about men and women that haven't slept for 20 00:48:13.550 --> 00:48:17.329 30 years what cognitively would be the decline 00:48:17.329 --> 00:48:19.190 if you happen to kind of punch in the numbers 00:48:19.190 --> 00:48:22.769 if someone had been on a 48 hour shift A lot 00:48:22.769 --> 00:48:24.750 of our emergent calls happen at night, whether 00:48:24.750 --> 00:48:28.369 it's bad car crashes, fires, etc. So let's say 00:48:28.369 --> 00:48:32.010 40 hours, 42 hours into a 48 -hour shift with 00:48:32.010 --> 00:48:35.869 no sleep. What would be the increase in likelihood 00:48:35.869 --> 00:48:39.130 for mistakes in the meds that we push? Huge. 00:48:40.190 --> 00:48:42.010 I'd have to put it through the software to give 00:48:42.010 --> 00:48:45.329 you the exact number, but the technology exists. 00:48:46.190 --> 00:48:50.119 And so what you do is you put in... And it's 00:48:50.119 --> 00:48:52.940 not just the sleep duration, but it's sleep quality. 00:48:53.340 --> 00:48:57.260 And often sleep quality is more important than 00:48:57.260 --> 00:49:01.619 sleep duration. And so one of the things we did 00:49:01.619 --> 00:49:04.980 with that sleep watch that I invented, created, 00:49:05.179 --> 00:49:08.539 was to import that software into the sleep. So 00:49:08.539 --> 00:49:11.000 you could wear a watch, much like a Fitbit or 00:49:11.000 --> 00:49:13.159 anything, but it also puts it through that software. 00:49:13.260 --> 00:49:15.980 And it'll give you a real -time fatigue score. 00:49:16.780 --> 00:49:19.300 And it'll tell you, you can look at the, they're 00:49:19.300 --> 00:49:21.559 available, commercially available today. You 00:49:21.559 --> 00:49:25.000 look at it and it'll tell you not only what your 00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:27.099 fatigue score is, but if you don't get any more 00:49:27.099 --> 00:49:29.340 sleep, it'll tell you where you hit the point 00:49:29.340 --> 00:49:32.980 where you're at a serious accident risk. The 00:49:32.980 --> 00:49:35.619 problem with industry using that technology is, 00:49:35.619 --> 00:49:37.960 particularly in your area, what do you do with 00:49:37.960 --> 00:49:41.599 somebody who's mid -shift and they're saying, 00:49:41.619 --> 00:49:44.059 you know, in two hours, you're just way too tired. 00:49:45.150 --> 00:49:47.889 to be doing anything. You're at a high risk of 00:49:47.889 --> 00:49:52.130 an accident. So I just, I've had a lot of discussions 00:49:52.130 --> 00:49:53.550 with Brian Vell over this. Him and I used to 00:49:53.550 --> 00:49:56.050 travel literally all over the world. We lectured 00:49:56.050 --> 00:49:58.889 together in Malaysia and all over North America. 00:49:59.630 --> 00:50:03.110 Is insurance liability. Employers don't want 00:50:03.110 --> 00:50:05.429 to know. Even though the technology exists to 00:50:05.429 --> 00:50:08.250 measure this in real time and to help people, 00:50:08.309 --> 00:50:10.449 they don't want to know. Because if they know, 00:50:10.610 --> 00:50:15.059 they have to take action. And they're short staffed 00:50:15.059 --> 00:50:16.539 and they don't want to take action. And it's 00:50:16.539 --> 00:50:18.599 one more thing on their plate. So they'd rather 00:50:18.599 --> 00:50:20.659 be like the monkeys with their hands over the 00:50:20.659 --> 00:50:24.760 eyes and ears and the mouth and do nothing and 00:50:24.760 --> 00:50:28.699 download all of the responsibility to the individuals. 00:50:29.340 --> 00:50:31.400 And that's one of the discussions we had around 00:50:31.400 --> 00:50:34.300 police officers, particularly in L .A. that Brian 00:50:34.300 --> 00:50:36.559 had worked with, is they saying, we don't mind 00:50:36.559 --> 00:50:38.679 if you use these watches, but it's your responsibility. 00:50:38.739 --> 00:50:42.920 We don't want to know what the results are. So 00:50:42.920 --> 00:50:47.440 I want to put something to you. A person, especially 00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:50.360 a person who spends certain days of the week 00:50:50.360 --> 00:50:53.539 in a religious building and then comes out with 00:50:53.539 --> 00:50:55.920 goodness in their heart, you would assume that 00:50:55.920 --> 00:50:59.039 they would be deeply invested in the well -being 00:50:59.039 --> 00:51:01.840 of their people. Let's say hypothetically that 00:51:01.840 --> 00:51:04.199 isn't enough in the world. It is for me, but 00:51:04.199 --> 00:51:06.579 a lot of people that I've met that run these 00:51:06.579 --> 00:51:08.820 organizations, that doesn't seem to be enough, 00:51:08.880 --> 00:51:13.119 which blows my mind. firefighter funerals is 00:51:13.119 --> 00:51:15.679 what made me start this podcast that's how horrendous 00:51:15.679 --> 00:51:18.739 i think that it is to lose someone so the other 00:51:18.739 --> 00:51:21.139 side is i keep hearing people well you got to 00:51:21.139 --> 00:51:24.539 show the financial savings you have such a unique 00:51:24.539 --> 00:51:28.840 perspective in all these litigations the shortcuts 00:51:28.840 --> 00:51:31.860 that were made at the expense of the health and 00:51:31.860 --> 00:51:35.079 even the lives of the employees talk to me about 00:51:35.079 --> 00:51:41.199 if is that a false economy And if so, is it actually 00:51:41.199 --> 00:51:43.980 better to invest in your people properly? Would 00:51:43.980 --> 00:51:46.559 that actually save the business a lot of money 00:51:46.559 --> 00:51:50.380 longitudinally as well? Oh, great question. I 00:51:50.380 --> 00:51:52.780 think you hit the nail on the head here, which 00:51:52.780 --> 00:51:57.139 is it actually does save money and it saves lives. 00:51:57.420 --> 00:52:00.500 In fact, the origin of that software I talked 00:52:00.500 --> 00:52:02.820 to you about that Steve Hirsch created when he 00:52:02.820 --> 00:52:08.039 was with the Pentagon was designed initially. 00:52:08.840 --> 00:52:12.599 as an economic tool to show the military that 00:52:12.599 --> 00:52:16.300 they can actually save money by reducing fatigue 00:52:16.300 --> 00:52:19.460 levels. It didn't come out back. It didn't come 00:52:19.460 --> 00:52:22.739 out. It wasn't invented initially as a risk mitigation 00:52:22.739 --> 00:52:25.900 tool. It was invented as an economic tool to 00:52:25.900 --> 00:52:29.320 show them they could save money. And so, yeah, 00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:33.559 that's the whole purpose of it. But a lot of 00:52:33.559 --> 00:52:35.949 it is just... quite frankly, flat out ignorance 00:52:35.949 --> 00:52:39.090 on the part of people who get to make these decisions. 00:52:39.269 --> 00:52:41.730 Because particularly in competitive industries, 00:52:41.929 --> 00:52:43.730 they look around, I don't want to do anything 00:52:43.730 --> 00:52:48.869 because my competitors aren't going to do it. 00:52:48.929 --> 00:52:52.210 And I'm just going to cost me money. And so I'm 00:52:52.210 --> 00:52:54.369 going to lose out. I see that in the trucking 00:52:54.369 --> 00:52:56.590 industry all the time. The trucking industry 00:52:56.590 --> 00:52:59.050 across North America works on very small margins. 00:52:59.510 --> 00:53:01.710 And one trucking company is not going to do very 00:53:01.710 --> 00:53:05.010 much around sleep and fatigue. because it costs 00:53:05.010 --> 00:53:06.829 them money and they have to compete with the 00:53:06.829 --> 00:53:09.889 guys that aren't doing it. And so you get regulators 00:53:09.889 --> 00:53:11.730 in there who are trying to regulate it. And quite 00:53:11.730 --> 00:53:13.869 frankly, they're doing a very poor job of it. 00:53:14.769 --> 00:53:18.489 As a regulator myself in the past, you try to 00:53:18.489 --> 00:53:20.909 make things easy for yourself. And so you create 00:53:20.909 --> 00:53:24.130 these hard, hard boundaries. It's like speed 00:53:24.130 --> 00:53:25.769 limits. You cross this boundary, you broke the 00:53:25.769 --> 00:53:28.739 law. And that just doesn't work very well for 00:53:28.739 --> 00:53:31.179 sleep and fatigue issues because a lot of it 00:53:31.179 --> 00:53:33.820 involves training. A lot of it involves personal 00:53:33.820 --> 00:53:36.659 medical issues for people. How do you do sleep 00:53:36.659 --> 00:53:38.039 screening? Do you do mental health screening? 00:53:38.579 --> 00:53:42.119 How do you help these people? It doesn't matter 00:53:42.119 --> 00:53:43.860 what schedules you put in. If somebody's got 00:53:43.860 --> 00:53:47.500 sleep apnea, even if they do work in day shift, 00:53:47.599 --> 00:53:51.619 they're at high risk. And so it really starts 00:53:51.619 --> 00:53:54.659 with dealing with individuals as human beings 00:53:54.659 --> 00:53:57.780 and saying, we're going to, put you through these 00:53:57.780 --> 00:54:00.840 stresses of working night shift, which is fighting 00:54:00.840 --> 00:54:04.199 against your biology. But let's get you in the 00:54:04.199 --> 00:54:06.139 best shape we can to do that. And let's minimize 00:54:06.139 --> 00:54:08.960 the risk as we go on. So let's do sleep screening. 00:54:09.059 --> 00:54:10.980 Let's give you education. Let's do mental health 00:54:10.980 --> 00:54:12.900 screening. Let's do some monitoring with you. 00:54:12.960 --> 00:54:15.059 Let's put some resources in there to help you. 00:54:15.519 --> 00:54:17.179 They just don't do that. They're not there yet. 00:54:17.500 --> 00:54:19.460 Yeah. And I think with the resources, it's just 00:54:19.460 --> 00:54:21.860 simply manpower, you know, or person power, whatever 00:54:21.860 --> 00:54:26.179 the term is these days. But it's money. Yeah, 00:54:26.260 --> 00:54:28.139 yeah. But that's the thing. So when you again, 00:54:28.320 --> 00:54:30.300 when I love that phrase, and I always butcher 00:54:30.300 --> 00:54:33.219 the term, but something like plant the seed of 00:54:33.219 --> 00:54:35.159 a tree under which the shade you'll never know. 00:54:35.320 --> 00:54:37.639 And the problem is what I see in the fire service, 00:54:37.659 --> 00:54:39.599 that's all I know, as far as you know, intimately, 00:54:39.739 --> 00:54:43.199 is that person, whether in the city or county 00:54:43.199 --> 00:54:45.280 council, whether they're in the chief position, 00:54:45.559 --> 00:54:47.719 they want to look good in that budget year, they 00:54:47.719 --> 00:54:49.679 want their Christmas bonus or whatever they're 00:54:49.679 --> 00:54:52.679 getting that no one else sees. And so they're 00:54:52.679 --> 00:54:56.340 not investing long term. Whereas if you simply 00:54:56.340 --> 00:54:59.239 just invested in your people up front, 10 years 00:54:59.239 --> 00:55:02.579 from now, people will be talking about you with 00:55:02.579 --> 00:55:05.539 folklore. Like, oh, you know, Jennifer or Steve, 00:55:05.800 --> 00:55:08.380 they revolutionized our department and it was 00:55:08.380 --> 00:55:10.400 a brave choice. And actually they were lauded 00:55:10.400 --> 00:55:13.800 for it at the time. But now everyone's loving 00:55:13.800 --> 00:55:16.550 it because not only... Are our people so much 00:55:16.550 --> 00:55:18.610 healthier and the mental health crisis come down 00:55:18.610 --> 00:55:20.909 and we've got to fit a workforce. But now we've 00:55:20.909 --> 00:55:23.750 got extra budgets to reopen fire stations and 00:55:23.750 --> 00:55:27.489 buy more engines. Yeah. And I think some of it 00:55:27.489 --> 00:55:31.750 is sort of one size doesn't fit all. So every, 00:55:31.869 --> 00:55:36.889 in my experience, fire stations are sort of like 00:55:36.889 --> 00:55:40.760 almost like different little companies. In British 00:55:40.760 --> 00:55:43.719 Columbia, and this is built into the law, and 00:55:43.719 --> 00:55:46.099 it's called the Fire Services Act, the employers 00:55:46.099 --> 00:55:49.420 can employ firefighters by working them two 10 00:55:49.420 --> 00:55:52.239 -hour days followed by two 14 -hour nights, which 00:55:52.239 --> 00:55:55.460 has always been the schedule here. The other 00:55:55.460 --> 00:55:58.079 alternative is they're allowed to rework 24 -hour 00:55:58.079 --> 00:56:02.380 shifts. And now they're starting to go to 24 00:56:02.380 --> 00:56:05.039 -hour shifts, which is being pushed by a lot 00:56:05.039 --> 00:56:08.039 of the firefighters. And in some fire halls, 00:56:08.199 --> 00:56:10.760 it's a great idea. And in some, it's a terrible 00:56:10.760 --> 00:56:16.420 idea. And so an example is I've done some work 00:56:16.420 --> 00:56:19.599 here at our airport here, the YVR airport here, 00:56:19.659 --> 00:56:21.219 and they have their own firefighting groups. 00:56:21.880 --> 00:56:24.579 They virtually don't get called out at night. 00:56:26.579 --> 00:56:29.260 There's virtually no calls at night. So working 00:56:29.260 --> 00:56:31.800 24 -hour shifts is great for them because they've 00:56:31.800 --> 00:56:35.099 got beds. They just sleep at night. It's like 00:56:35.099 --> 00:56:36.679 working day shift, but you're sleeping there 00:56:36.679 --> 00:56:38.820 instead of at home. It's a great idea rather 00:56:38.820 --> 00:56:40.780 than jerking them around with their circadian 00:56:40.780 --> 00:56:44.059 rhythms, working 10 -hour days here and 14 -hour 00:56:44.059 --> 00:56:47.400 nights. It's a way better system. But for other 00:56:47.400 --> 00:56:50.159 fire halls where they get called out a lot because 00:56:50.159 --> 00:56:52.079 a lot of them are first responders in downtown, 00:56:52.440 --> 00:56:55.880 it's a terrible idea. These guys are awake 24 00:56:55.880 --> 00:56:59.239 hours and not sleeping and driving home. And 00:56:59.239 --> 00:57:01.909 we know that they're a high risk. for accidents. 00:57:02.030 --> 00:57:03.750 In fact, in New Jersey, and if you know this, 00:57:03.849 --> 00:57:06.610 it's a criminal offense to be awake 24 hours 00:57:06.610 --> 00:57:09.949 and drive. Oh, really? Yeah. So how the hell 00:57:09.949 --> 00:57:12.349 do the firefighters get home? Yeah, good question. 00:57:12.449 --> 00:57:13.829 It's called Maggie's Law. No, no, absolutely. 00:57:14.230 --> 00:57:16.650 And it's because they know that if you're awake 00:57:16.650 --> 00:57:18.909 for 24 hours, you likely have the reaction time 00:57:18.909 --> 00:57:22.650 of somebody that's 0 .1 alcohol. So just to bring 00:57:22.650 --> 00:57:23.989 a solution, because this is the one thing that 00:57:23.989 --> 00:57:26.070 the sleep medicine world seems to agree with 00:57:26.070 --> 00:57:29.250 is We have beds in the station. As you said, 00:57:29.269 --> 00:57:31.869 the quality of sleep, very poor, because as I 00:57:31.869 --> 00:57:34.190 always give the analogy, imagine someone holding 00:57:34.190 --> 00:57:36.869 those orchestra cymbals above your head and then 00:57:36.869 --> 00:57:38.889 said, I'm going to smash them in your ear, or 00:57:38.889 --> 00:57:41.449 I might not, who knows. You're not going to get 00:57:41.449 --> 00:57:44.090 that deep quality. But if you had an extra 24 00:57:44.090 --> 00:57:47.190 hours in between your shifts, so the 24 hour, 00:57:47.289 --> 00:57:49.570 one day on, two days off, which is very poorly 00:57:49.570 --> 00:57:54.969 labeled, 2448, it would be a 2472. So my whole 00:57:54.969 --> 00:57:58.719 observation is, You're not bouncing around from 00:57:58.719 --> 00:58:00.420 day to night, day to night, which clearly seems 00:58:00.420 --> 00:58:02.219 to be horrendous because you can see the physical 00:58:02.219 --> 00:58:05.860 of our cops and nurses and doctors. But you give 00:58:05.860 --> 00:58:08.019 these responders one more day, which brings it 00:58:08.019 --> 00:58:10.119 down to a 42 hour work week. And that's what 00:58:10.119 --> 00:58:12.420 blows me away is the people in the offices making 00:58:12.420 --> 00:58:15.619 these decisions go home at 40 hours. But the 00:58:15.619 --> 00:58:18.340 people that they're telling to stay in the station, 00:58:18.460 --> 00:58:22.519 as we said, is 48, 56 and beyond. All economic 00:58:22.519 --> 00:58:25.559 decisions. Yeah. So again, investing in your 00:58:25.559 --> 00:58:29.179 people. Yeah, no, absolutely. And understanding 00:58:29.179 --> 00:58:31.960 that, you know, it's like saying, I don't want 00:58:31.960 --> 00:58:33.900 to spend any money to take the asbestos out of 00:58:33.900 --> 00:58:35.679 this building. I'll just let these guys work 00:58:35.679 --> 00:58:39.280 here. You don't want to deal, you don't understand 00:58:39.280 --> 00:58:42.639 the risk. Or if you do, you don't want to do 00:58:42.639 --> 00:58:46.920 anything about it. So I want to flip it around 00:58:46.920 --> 00:58:49.320 completely. We've talked about kind of deficits 00:58:49.320 --> 00:58:53.280 from sleep deprivation. You work in the sports 00:58:53.280 --> 00:58:55.860 world as well. Like you said, a lot of the main 00:58:55.860 --> 00:58:57.579 arenas that everyone's familiar with and all 00:58:57.579 --> 00:59:00.719 these different sports. Talk to me about what 00:59:00.719 --> 00:59:03.159 you bring to those athletes and what are you 00:59:03.159 --> 00:59:06.079 seeing as far as the correlation between sleep 00:59:06.079 --> 00:59:08.800 and then performance and also injury mitigation 00:59:08.800 --> 00:59:14.360 as well? Yeah, it's very interesting. The leagues 00:59:14.360 --> 00:59:16.179 are all different. So in the National Football 00:59:16.179 --> 00:59:19.840 League, they play now 17 games, not at night, 00:59:19.900 --> 00:59:23.860 once a week. But in the teams that I've worked 00:59:23.860 --> 00:59:27.019 with, I work for the Seahawks and work with some 00:59:27.019 --> 00:59:30.500 East Coast teams as well, is, again, it's education. 00:59:30.780 --> 00:59:33.099 So once you sit down the management and the players 00:59:33.099 --> 00:59:35.760 and the coaches and say, OK, here's how sleep 00:59:35.760 --> 00:59:38.539 is affecting your reaction time. When you get 00:59:38.539 --> 00:59:41.360 back after Monday night football. You fly back 00:59:41.360 --> 00:59:44.199 to Seattle or wherever you fly back to LA. Why 00:59:44.199 --> 00:59:45.659 are you getting them up at six in the morning 00:59:45.659 --> 00:59:49.019 for meetings? Oh, we've always done it that way. 00:59:49.039 --> 00:59:52.079 Well, don't do it that way. Like you have options. 00:59:52.179 --> 00:59:54.320 So it's, so some of those things are, are, are 00:59:54.320 --> 00:59:57.980 easier in the NBA and in national hockey league, 00:59:58.059 --> 01:00:01.039 they play 82 games, 41 in the road, 41 at home. 01:00:01.619 --> 01:00:03.380 And they play a lot of back -to -back games. 01:00:04.599 --> 01:00:06.820 And so we know the players are going to lose 01:00:06.820 --> 01:00:08.659 sleep, those back -to -back games. So there are, 01:00:09.379 --> 01:00:12.139 things that the team can do and the players can 01:00:12.139 --> 01:00:14.960 do to mitigate that. One of the things we did, 01:00:15.059 --> 01:00:17.599 we went through the schedule with the Canucks, 01:00:17.659 --> 01:00:21.539 for example, every year, and we figured out which 01:00:21.539 --> 01:00:24.059 of those back -to -back games where they had, 01:00:24.139 --> 01:00:26.559 we're not going to get much sleep because they 01:00:26.559 --> 01:00:29.420 had to finish one game at 10, 11 o 'clock at 01:00:29.420 --> 01:00:31.280 night. You have to load up, pack up all your 01:00:31.280 --> 01:00:33.079 stuff, get on a plane, fly to the next city, 01:00:33.139 --> 01:00:35.219 get to the hotel, get to sleep, get up and play 01:00:35.219 --> 01:00:37.730 a game the next day. So one of the things that 01:00:37.730 --> 01:00:39.670 we did was we worked with the entire team. We 01:00:39.670 --> 01:00:44.849 worked with the PR people. We worked with, because 01:00:44.849 --> 01:00:46.469 the players have to get press interviews after 01:00:46.469 --> 01:00:48.230 the game. We worked with the players. We worked 01:00:48.230 --> 01:00:51.969 with the equipment guys, which is the slow part, 01:00:52.090 --> 01:00:54.590 having to gather up all this equipment and get 01:00:54.590 --> 01:00:56.489 it on a plane, get it on a bus, get it to the 01:00:56.489 --> 01:00:58.889 plane and get it out. So coordinating all of 01:00:58.889 --> 01:01:00.650 those kinds of activities in the past, it would 01:01:00.650 --> 01:01:03.429 be after the game is over, it's often three hours 01:01:03.429 --> 01:01:06.920 before they're in the air. We got it down to 01:01:06.920 --> 01:01:10.219 an hour. So it gave the players two extra hours 01:01:10.219 --> 01:01:13.400 of sleep during, and it made a huge difference, 01:01:13.519 --> 01:01:15.519 huge difference in their performance. You could 01:01:15.519 --> 01:01:18.019 see it in the, even the management said, this 01:01:18.019 --> 01:01:21.760 gave us five extra wins a year to do that. So 01:01:21.760 --> 01:01:26.059 there are, NBA is a bit different. Although the 01:01:26.059 --> 01:01:30.599 schedules are the same, the NBA tends to play 01:01:30.599 --> 01:01:33.079 the same five, six, seven, eight players all 01:01:33.079 --> 01:01:39.969 game. Right. So physically, it's just a different 01:01:39.969 --> 01:01:42.829 game, but they have a lot of the same issues. 01:01:42.849 --> 01:01:44.409 These guys aren't getting to sleep till two or 01:01:44.409 --> 01:01:46.170 three o 'clock in the morning having to get up 01:01:46.170 --> 01:01:51.429 and play. The research around injuries is kind 01:01:51.429 --> 01:01:55.639 of interesting. There really isn't. I think intuitively 01:01:55.639 --> 01:01:58.920 people think that injury, that if you're sleep 01:01:58.920 --> 01:02:01.179 deprived as an NBA player or whatever, there's 01:02:01.179 --> 01:02:03.500 going to be increased injuries. The problem is 01:02:03.500 --> 01:02:08.719 we know that's true in industry, but we're not 01:02:08.719 --> 01:02:11.780 sure about sports yet. There's very little research 01:02:11.780 --> 01:02:15.420 because they just don't do that kind of research 01:02:15.420 --> 01:02:17.559 in professional sports. And so we don't really 01:02:17.559 --> 01:02:20.920 know. People say, yeah, we think there is, but 01:02:20.920 --> 01:02:24.179 we certainly know in industry. Higher fatigue, 01:02:24.599 --> 01:02:29.519 results in higher accident risks. There's great 01:02:29.519 --> 01:02:32.179 studies done by the railroad industry, airline 01:02:32.179 --> 01:02:35.800 industry, military to show that that's the case. 01:02:35.880 --> 01:02:38.519 Just not sure how that translates into sports 01:02:38.519 --> 01:02:40.460 yet because it's just certainly different activities. 01:02:42.400 --> 01:02:46.820 But yeah, the biggest selling point, I think, 01:02:46.820 --> 01:02:48.679 in professional sports is changing your reaction 01:02:48.679 --> 01:02:52.690 time. So we can tell, you know, if you're not 01:02:52.690 --> 01:02:55.469 sleeping well, you have poor reaction time. And 01:02:55.469 --> 01:02:58.869 we know, and my experience in professional sports 01:02:58.869 --> 01:03:04.190 is that the players that don't sleep well don't 01:03:04.190 --> 01:03:09.690 have very long careers. You know, and we see 01:03:09.690 --> 01:03:11.550 that a lot. And we also know that they don't 01:03:11.550 --> 01:03:15.780 perform very well. I've got, I studied all. 23 01:03:15.780 --> 01:03:19.059 players for seven years. Some players obviously 01:03:19.059 --> 01:03:21.460 rotated out, followed their sleep, looked at 01:03:21.460 --> 01:03:24.059 their reaction time fatigue. I can tell you that 01:03:24.059 --> 01:03:27.679 the 30 % worst sleepers on the team were the 01:03:27.679 --> 01:03:31.599 30 % worst players on the team. I think that's 01:03:31.599 --> 01:03:33.860 so important. Firstly, I think the injury... 01:03:34.170 --> 01:03:36.489 What I've seen in our professions is that chronic 01:03:36.489 --> 01:03:39.090 sleep deprivation, because when you are not only 01:03:39.090 --> 01:03:40.789 do you have the cognition side and making the 01:03:40.789 --> 01:03:43.010 mistakes as far as proprioception and where you're 01:03:43.010 --> 01:03:46.690 literally putting your limbs, but also you grow, 01:03:46.829 --> 01:03:48.989 you repair when you sleep. So you've got this 01:03:48.989 --> 01:03:51.150 chronic breakdown. So that makes perfect sense 01:03:51.150 --> 01:03:52.849 that you don't see as much in the sporting world. 01:03:54.119 --> 01:03:56.300 One thing that, again, there's a kind of resistance 01:03:56.300 --> 01:03:59.480 to accepting is that we are tactical athletes. 01:03:59.780 --> 01:04:01.940 We're not sporting athletes. We're not doing 01:04:01.940 --> 01:04:05.019 a certain group of movements to an extremely 01:04:05.019 --> 01:04:07.480 high level. But especially in the fire service 01:04:07.480 --> 01:04:09.480 with Jack of all trades, master of none. But 01:04:09.480 --> 01:04:12.019 with the law enforcement and you talk about reaction 01:04:12.019 --> 01:04:16.300 times, that could literally be shooting the right 01:04:16.300 --> 01:04:18.400 person, shooting the wrong person, getting your 01:04:18.400 --> 01:04:21.039 shot off before someone tries to kill you. So 01:04:21.039 --> 01:04:23.840 these are, you know, these are. parameters i 01:04:23.840 --> 01:04:25.980 think are extremely important to be discussed 01:04:25.980 --> 01:04:28.579 in the first responder professions absolutely 01:04:28.579 --> 01:04:30.940 that's why i'd encourage people to read brian 01:04:30.940 --> 01:04:34.420 bill's research it's really um really great stuff 01:04:34.420 --> 01:04:37.900 around around around that but but there's a big 01:04:37.900 --> 01:04:39.559 difference too between professional athletes 01:04:39.559 --> 01:04:42.900 and first responders and firefighters is recovery 01:04:42.900 --> 01:04:45.579 if you're a professional athlete i work i work 01:04:45.579 --> 01:04:47.559 with one guy makes 17 million dollars a year 01:04:48.570 --> 01:04:51.070 He doesn't have to do the things around the house 01:04:51.070 --> 01:04:54.989 that we do. He should come home. He has help. 01:04:55.590 --> 01:04:59.650 He gets the summers off. He gets lots of days 01:04:59.650 --> 01:05:03.150 off to recover, even though they do a lot of 01:05:03.150 --> 01:05:07.809 travel. They live a life of luxury. They have 01:05:07.809 --> 01:05:10.929 lots of time to recover. You're a firefighter 01:05:10.929 --> 01:05:13.250 and looking after a family. I've worked with 01:05:13.250 --> 01:05:15.809 firefighters who are single moms or single dads. 01:05:16.519 --> 01:05:19.000 and having to not only try to get to sleep or 01:05:19.000 --> 01:05:20.880 in profession, but, you know, juggling their 01:05:20.880 --> 01:05:23.699 kids back and forth between their acts and those 01:05:23.699 --> 01:05:27.019 kinds of things. So there's a lot, a lot of differences 01:05:27.019 --> 01:05:29.679 between, you know, the stresses put on by firefighters 01:05:29.679 --> 01:05:33.070 and then there is on professional athletes. Yeah, 01:05:33.070 --> 01:05:34.690 you were literally preaching to the choir because 01:05:34.690 --> 01:05:37.409 when I first went through my divorce, I was going 01:05:37.409 --> 01:05:39.329 through paramedic school as well. So I was doing 01:05:39.329 --> 01:05:42.170 a 24 -hour shift, getting off shift, going to 01:05:42.170 --> 01:05:44.489 sit in the classroom for eight hours, you know, 01:05:44.489 --> 01:05:47.050 again, getting my son, getting him off to school 01:05:47.050 --> 01:05:49.150 again, then going to do a clinical in a hospital 01:05:49.150 --> 01:05:51.670 or ride with the local fire department as a paramedic, 01:05:51.670 --> 01:05:55.590 rinse and repeat. So, I mean, the chance of recovery 01:05:55.590 --> 01:05:58.550 while still trying to be a good parent with the 01:05:58.550 --> 01:06:02.300 emotional trauma of a divorce. I would say was 01:06:02.300 --> 01:06:06.059 probably a little different than a sporting superstar. 01:06:06.760 --> 01:06:09.940 Right. And that's one of the things I talk about 01:06:09.940 --> 01:06:12.320 when we educate. whether it's firefighters or 01:06:12.320 --> 01:06:15.219 athletes or whoever is to understand that poor 01:06:15.219 --> 01:06:17.719 sleep is not a disease right it's a symptom and 01:06:17.719 --> 01:06:19.920 it could be a symptom of a lot of different things 01:06:19.920 --> 01:06:22.599 in your case there's you know stresses um you 01:06:22.599 --> 01:06:25.239 know and and you know um those things lead to 01:06:25.239 --> 01:06:27.039 mental health issues there's sleep disorders 01:06:27.039 --> 01:06:29.099 or for 100 different sleep disorders and people 01:06:29.099 --> 01:06:31.679 don't even screen for them so the biggest challenge 01:06:31.679 --> 01:06:33.559 i think around all of this is saying you know 01:06:33.559 --> 01:06:36.159 as an individual what are the stressors what 01:06:36.159 --> 01:06:37.920 is it if i'm not sleeping well what's causing 01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:42.019 it well i want to get I'm sorry, I didn't mean 01:06:42.019 --> 01:06:44.860 to step on you there. I want to get to what you're 01:06:44.860 --> 01:06:47.639 actually bringing to my community. But one thing 01:06:47.639 --> 01:06:49.619 I want to hit on because Michael Gervais brought 01:06:49.619 --> 01:06:52.440 it up and it was a great question. And it's something 01:06:52.440 --> 01:06:54.639 I've observed in myself. And I've been out the 01:06:54.639 --> 01:06:56.559 fire service now for four and a half years. And 01:06:56.559 --> 01:07:00.079 I just went on a round the world kind of research 01:07:00.079 --> 01:07:02.559 slash fundraising thing with a bunch of special 01:07:02.559 --> 01:07:06.469 operations people. And got to recreate what would 01:07:06.469 --> 01:07:09.309 be the emotional, physical stress and then the 01:07:09.309 --> 01:07:11.429 sleep deprivation, circadian rhythm changes that 01:07:11.429 --> 01:07:13.309 are exposed to a lot of our men and women in 01:07:13.309 --> 01:07:17.309 uniform. And it put me way back. And it really 01:07:17.309 --> 01:07:19.949 was very haunting as I was like, my God, that 01:07:19.949 --> 01:07:24.349 was such a great way of me seeing how much more 01:07:24.349 --> 01:07:27.820 acute that felt from a well -rested state. go 01:07:27.820 --> 01:07:30.940 to sleep every night to what i perceived i was 01:07:30.940 --> 01:07:33.880 then so michael asked you about baseline and 01:07:33.880 --> 01:07:36.820 can the brain trick you into thinking you're 01:07:36.820 --> 01:07:40.000 okay when you're actually way below par and so 01:07:40.000 --> 01:07:41.619 i want to revisit that question because that's 01:07:41.619 --> 01:07:44.380 pertinent to so many people listening that's 01:07:44.380 --> 01:07:46.380 actually a great question and the short answer 01:07:46.380 --> 01:07:49.880 is yes um there's a wonderful research um out 01:07:49.880 --> 01:07:52.300 of again washington state university bay hans 01:07:52.300 --> 01:07:54.579 van donaghan and others and there's some similar 01:07:54.579 --> 01:07:58.599 work done by blinky and others is, is to show 01:07:58.599 --> 01:08:00.360 that. So with basically what they did was put 01:08:00.360 --> 01:08:02.840 large groups of people into a sleep lab so they 01:08:02.840 --> 01:08:05.000 could monitor their sleep with, with polysomnography. 01:08:05.179 --> 01:08:07.300 So brainwave technology, you know exactly what's 01:08:07.300 --> 01:08:10.000 going on with these people. And every few hours 01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:11.960 they had to take what's called a reaction test, 01:08:12.000 --> 01:08:14.199 simple reaction tests. So it's called a PVTs 01:08:14.199 --> 01:08:16.619 psychomotor vigilant task. So a little light 01:08:16.619 --> 01:08:18.739 shows up and you hit a button. So it's, it's, 01:08:18.739 --> 01:08:21.859 it's, you can fake being. Bad, but you can't 01:08:21.859 --> 01:08:25.859 fake being good. It's a reaction. So they knew 01:08:25.859 --> 01:08:29.579 how long people slept and how well they slept. 01:08:29.680 --> 01:08:31.640 And they knew exactly what their reaction time 01:08:31.640 --> 01:08:35.460 was while they're awake. And so they did a couple 01:08:35.460 --> 01:08:38.000 of things. One is they just changed how many 01:08:38.000 --> 01:08:39.880 hours they were allowed to sleep. And they could 01:08:39.880 --> 01:08:42.680 show them exactly that the difference between 01:08:42.680 --> 01:08:45.640 four, six and eight hours of sleep made a huge 01:08:45.640 --> 01:08:48.520 difference in their reaction time. But what they 01:08:48.520 --> 01:08:50.939 did as well is when they took the reaction time, 01:08:51.020 --> 01:08:53.439 it was a black box in the sense that the person 01:08:53.439 --> 01:08:55.079 who took the test didn't know what their score 01:08:55.079 --> 01:08:58.619 was. So they would ask them subjectively, how 01:08:58.619 --> 01:09:03.260 do you feel? And so for the first couple of days, 01:09:03.340 --> 01:09:05.640 particularly when they lowered the number of 01:09:05.640 --> 01:09:07.539 sleep hours, again, the first couple of days, 01:09:07.819 --> 01:09:10.779 the subjects would say, you know, yeah, I'm feeling 01:09:10.779 --> 01:09:12.939 a little bit under the weather, a little bit 01:09:12.939 --> 01:09:16.819 tired. But after a couple of days, At that level, 01:09:16.979 --> 01:09:20.479 they said, you know, I feel okay. I feel normal, 01:09:20.560 --> 01:09:26.939 right? And the term has been referred to as renorming. 01:09:27.060 --> 01:09:30.760 So your brain renorms and four or six hours sleep 01:09:30.760 --> 01:09:34.039 feels normal. And I get that all the time, professional 01:09:34.039 --> 01:09:36.640 athletes, but I feel good. I said, take a reaction 01:09:36.640 --> 01:09:40.319 test. You know, there's a difference between 01:09:40.319 --> 01:09:44.310 how you feel and how you can perform. And so, 01:09:44.310 --> 01:09:46.649 no, you're absolutely right, is your brain can 01:09:46.649 --> 01:09:49.409 trick you into thinking. And we hear that. I 01:09:49.409 --> 01:09:50.850 say that all the time. People with sleep apnea. 01:09:51.109 --> 01:09:52.970 So we know they're getting probably less than 01:09:52.970 --> 01:09:57.170 four hours sleep a night. And their brain's foggy. 01:09:57.189 --> 01:10:00.270 They don't even know it. And then they get a 01:10:00.270 --> 01:10:02.649 CPAP machine. And almost overnight, they're getting 01:10:02.649 --> 01:10:04.569 eight hours of sleep or seven or eight hours 01:10:04.569 --> 01:10:07.029 of sleep. And it's like this fog clears out of 01:10:07.029 --> 01:10:09.649 the brain the way they describe it. So it makes 01:10:09.649 --> 01:10:13.079 a huge difference in their lives. Kirk Parsley, 01:10:13.199 --> 01:10:15.760 who's a Navy SEAL turned physician, was talking 01:10:15.760 --> 01:10:19.859 about the sleep deprivation itself can cause 01:10:19.859 --> 01:10:25.699 almost like a lack of muscularity in the larynx 01:10:25.699 --> 01:10:29.920 that can then lead to sleep apnea. And so what 01:10:29.920 --> 01:10:32.079 I've seen in the fire service is, and I joke 01:10:32.079 --> 01:10:33.720 about this a lot, a lot of our dorms now look 01:10:33.720 --> 01:10:35.960 like the bar in Star Wars. There's so many hoses 01:10:35.960 --> 01:10:38.520 and masks around everywhere, which is great. 01:10:38.800 --> 01:10:42.180 But I still see that as... a band -aid not getting 01:10:42.180 --> 01:10:44.859 to the root of the problem so what are you seeing 01:10:44.859 --> 01:10:46.760 as far as because i mean cpaps are obviously 01:10:46.760 --> 01:10:50.760 huge now in americans is is that something that 01:10:50.760 --> 01:10:53.159 someone is doomed to have the rest of their life 01:10:53.159 --> 01:10:55.939 or can that improve sleep along with weight loss 01:10:55.939 --> 01:10:58.020 actually get to where they don't need that anymore 01:10:58.020 --> 01:11:05.079 right so first of all one of the things i like 01:11:05.079 --> 01:11:07.960 to say is that nothing good comes from poor sleep 01:11:10.880 --> 01:11:14.680 And sleep apnea is one of about 100 different 01:11:14.680 --> 01:11:17.659 sleep disorders. But it's kind of the poster 01:11:17.659 --> 01:11:19.779 child for it. And the reason it is, is because 01:11:19.779 --> 01:11:21.979 somebody invented a CPAP machine and they get 01:11:21.979 --> 01:11:24.659 to sell them like crazy. Sometimes they overprescribe 01:11:24.659 --> 01:11:26.600 them because they, quite frankly, and I talk 01:11:26.600 --> 01:11:28.899 about this in my book, they get kickbacks is 01:11:28.899 --> 01:11:33.399 the right word, but they get a benefit for prescribing 01:11:33.399 --> 01:11:36.840 it. And so sometimes that's overprescribed and 01:11:36.840 --> 01:11:38.699 I don't often follow the people. And so there 01:11:38.699 --> 01:11:41.800 are different causes of sleep apnea. And we're 01:11:41.800 --> 01:11:45.300 talking about, and so some of them are just jaw 01:11:45.300 --> 01:11:48.420 structure. I talked to the head of our sleep 01:11:48.420 --> 01:11:50.140 research here out at the University of British 01:11:50.140 --> 01:11:52.840 Columbia. And he told me that a lot of his patients 01:11:52.840 --> 01:11:55.699 now are actually middle -aged Asian women because 01:11:55.699 --> 01:11:58.020 of their jaw structure. And it's their jaw structure 01:11:58.020 --> 01:12:03.019 as they age that's causing sleep apnea. versus, 01:12:03.019 --> 01:12:04.840 which we see in the National Football League 01:12:04.840 --> 01:12:07.180 as well, obesity, which, again, it closes off 01:12:07.180 --> 01:12:11.000 your throat. Those things can be dealt with. 01:12:11.060 --> 01:12:12.979 And there are laser treatments that can be dealt 01:12:12.979 --> 01:12:16.579 with. So there are many causes of sleep apnea, 01:12:16.640 --> 01:12:19.539 and some of them are more curable than others, 01:12:19.619 --> 01:12:23.680 and they don't all need CPAP machines. So with 01:12:23.680 --> 01:12:26.479 that kind of... No, the vicious circle is the 01:12:26.479 --> 01:12:29.039 wrong way, but getting to the nucleus of an issue, 01:12:29.260 --> 01:12:31.979 what I'm seeing is it's kind of like the hypertension 01:12:31.979 --> 01:12:33.899 drugs. Well, you're going to be on this forever. 01:12:34.039 --> 01:12:35.840 Your psychiatric meds. Well, you know, you're 01:12:35.840 --> 01:12:38.260 stuck with Obutrin now. It is what it is. To 01:12:38.260 --> 01:12:41.800 me, if you are able to address someone's poor 01:12:41.800 --> 01:12:45.079 sleep, whatever, and the CPAP happens to work. 01:12:46.359 --> 01:12:48.300 I would hope there'll be a conversation just 01:12:48.300 --> 01:12:50.520 like with prescription medication. The goal is 01:12:50.520 --> 01:12:53.399 to get you off this in X amount of months, a 01:12:53.399 --> 01:12:56.460 year, whatever it is. So talk to me about the 01:12:56.460 --> 01:12:59.140 actual application. What are some of the things 01:12:59.140 --> 01:13:01.220 that people can do once they start sleeping better 01:13:01.220 --> 01:13:04.199 to improve the chances of not needing to be strapped 01:13:04.199 --> 01:13:07.020 to a machine when they go to bed anymore? Right. 01:13:07.100 --> 01:13:09.279 So that's having a clear understanding of why 01:13:09.279 --> 01:13:12.359 you're wearing it to begin with and what was 01:13:12.359 --> 01:13:16.479 causing your sleep apnea. And so you can go from 01:13:16.479 --> 01:13:20.880 there. Certainly, weight loss, anything that 01:13:20.880 --> 01:13:25.239 you can do to improve your health, proper diet, 01:13:25.300 --> 01:13:29.239 proper exercise. But I think you're right. Once 01:13:29.239 --> 01:13:32.760 people get on a regime, whether it's a CPAP machine 01:13:32.760 --> 01:13:34.979 or whatever it is, they tend not to move from 01:13:34.979 --> 01:13:39.840 it. And part of it is, at least in Canada as 01:13:39.840 --> 01:13:43.829 well, is we have very few sleep physicians. sleep 01:13:43.829 --> 01:13:46.909 specialists, very difficult to get to see them. 01:13:47.189 --> 01:13:49.470 And so once you're on a regime, you're basically 01:13:49.470 --> 01:13:52.590 left alone. Most general practitioners across 01:13:52.590 --> 01:13:55.729 North America have very little sleep experience 01:13:55.729 --> 01:13:59.090 or education. And so what they do is they give 01:13:59.090 --> 01:14:02.409 you a little pill to take, right, or prescribe 01:14:02.409 --> 01:14:05.270 a sleep CPAP machine or send you over to get 01:14:05.270 --> 01:14:11.199 a polysomnography done. Get some PSG to see what's 01:14:11.199 --> 01:14:13.500 causing that. And I've seen tons and tons of 01:14:13.500 --> 01:14:17.279 those reports. And a lot of these... And I talk 01:14:17.279 --> 01:14:19.640 about this in my book. So when sleep became a 01:14:19.640 --> 01:14:23.340 thing in the 60s and 70s, people said... So these 01:14:23.340 --> 01:14:25.260 sleep clinics popped up all over North America. 01:14:25.760 --> 01:14:28.739 And they weren't regulated. And so the pulmonologist 01:14:28.739 --> 01:14:31.100 jumped in there. And a lot of them, basically 01:14:31.100 --> 01:14:32.920 what they're prescribed is CPAP machines. All 01:14:32.920 --> 01:14:34.760 they're doing is looking for sleep apnea when 01:14:34.760 --> 01:14:36.659 there's like 90 other things, including mental 01:14:36.659 --> 01:14:40.479 health stuff. So it's very difficult to find 01:14:40.479 --> 01:14:44.279 physicians that are able to look more holistically 01:14:44.279 --> 01:14:47.159 at what's going on with your sleep. So you're 01:14:47.159 --> 01:14:49.100 right. Once you get on a regime, they go, oh, 01:14:49.140 --> 01:14:50.699 you've got sleep apnea. Here I have this machine. 01:14:51.600 --> 01:14:55.029 We see in 30 years. And so there really isn't 01:14:55.029 --> 01:14:56.869 that kind of follow -up that you do sometimes 01:14:56.869 --> 01:15:00.689 see with drugs. When we were talking and you 01:15:00.689 --> 01:15:02.949 were saying exactly that, what kept resonating 01:15:02.949 --> 01:15:06.130 in my mind is I haven't met a single person that 01:15:06.130 --> 01:15:08.189 came back from a sleep study that said anything 01:15:08.189 --> 01:15:10.170 other than, oh, they said I stopped breathing 01:15:10.170 --> 01:15:13.609 2 ,500 times. That was the problem. And you're 01:15:13.609 --> 01:15:15.569 looking at them going, well, Brian, you're also 01:15:15.569 --> 01:15:19.470 70 pounds overweight and you drink Mountain Dew 01:15:19.470 --> 01:15:21.850 17 times a day and you've got all these other 01:15:21.850 --> 01:15:24.579 things going on. I don't think that is the thing. 01:15:24.600 --> 01:15:27.079 If that was even truly what you were saying, 01:15:27.159 --> 01:15:29.880 because some of these apneic periods, I mean, 01:15:29.880 --> 01:15:32.300 did you breathe at all? Did you have one breath 01:15:32.300 --> 01:15:33.659 the whole hour? Because these numbers you're 01:15:33.659 --> 01:15:36.300 giving me are pretty crazy. So that's why I question, 01:15:36.479 --> 01:15:39.600 as you said, some of the science. Are they being 01:15:39.600 --> 01:15:41.659 given the holistic picture? And I heard you talk 01:15:41.659 --> 01:15:43.760 about this with Michael, and this is something 01:15:43.760 --> 01:15:46.939 I've observed with wellness in general. When 01:15:46.939 --> 01:15:49.640 I studied to be a paramedic when I was doing 01:15:49.640 --> 01:15:52.539 my exercise physiology in college, We broke down 01:15:52.539 --> 01:15:54.340 the body into the renal system, respiratory, 01:15:54.739 --> 01:15:57.760 cardiac, etc. And that's, I think, how we've 01:15:57.760 --> 01:16:00.739 devolved in medicine. We forget that we are part 01:16:00.739 --> 01:16:03.760 of this beautiful, interactive physiology and 01:16:03.760 --> 01:16:08.899 nothing is a standalone. Again, I talk about 01:16:08.899 --> 01:16:11.920 this in my book, is that what's happened in the 01:16:11.920 --> 01:16:13.840 evolution of medicine, particularly in the Western 01:16:13.840 --> 01:16:16.739 world, is it's become specialized. So there are 01:16:16.739 --> 01:16:18.779 eye doctors and ear doctors and heart doctors 01:16:18.779 --> 01:16:22.220 and feet doctors and hand doctors. But humans 01:16:22.220 --> 01:16:25.119 are not a bunch of jigsaw puzzles all taped together. 01:16:25.300 --> 01:16:28.020 We're an integrated system, and one part affects 01:16:28.020 --> 01:16:31.119 the other. So one of the reasons I'm a huge fan 01:16:31.119 --> 01:16:33.380 is one of the reasons I spent a few years working 01:16:33.380 --> 01:16:35.939 with Dr. Maurice Ohayan at Stanford. He runs 01:16:35.939 --> 01:16:39.159 the Stanford Sleep. epidemiology research center 01:16:39.159 --> 01:16:43.819 and he has artificial intelligence systems that 01:16:43.819 --> 01:16:48.539 um he he had this out you know 10 years before 01:16:48.539 --> 01:16:51.439 ai was even a thing and he's used and it's very 01:16:51.439 --> 01:16:54.060 i i just absolutely in love with the program 01:16:54.060 --> 01:16:56.840 you can talk you'll talk to this computer for 01:16:56.840 --> 01:17:00.539 half an hour 45 minutes and it can diagnose sleep 01:17:00.539 --> 01:17:03.119 disorders mental health issues organic diseases 01:17:03.119 --> 01:17:06.819 all based on symptomology So what he told me 01:17:06.819 --> 01:17:09.399 was when you go see your doctor, they're basically 01:17:09.399 --> 01:17:11.880 doing the same thing. So they're trying to figure 01:17:11.880 --> 01:17:13.560 out what your symptoms are. They pretty much 01:17:13.560 --> 01:17:15.319 know what's going on. They send you for tests 01:17:15.319 --> 01:17:19.239 to try to confirm it. This computer program is 01:17:19.239 --> 01:17:22.779 highly, highly accurate. And it's amazing because 01:17:22.779 --> 01:17:27.199 it says, you know, which I went through it. So 01:17:27.199 --> 01:17:29.340 I have what's called positional sleep apnea. 01:17:30.159 --> 01:17:33.739 So which means I can't sleep on my back. If I 01:17:33.739 --> 01:17:37.659 do, then I wake up with sleep apnea, so I have 01:17:37.659 --> 01:17:39.760 to sleep on my side. So there's those kinds of 01:17:39.760 --> 01:17:43.439 different forms. And it'll also diagnose depression, 01:17:44.000 --> 01:17:48.380 ADHD, whatever you have. Mental health, it gives 01:17:48.380 --> 01:17:51.960 you a picture of what's going on totally within 01:17:51.960 --> 01:17:54.659 your system. And he's used it for epidemiological 01:17:54.659 --> 01:17:59.840 studies all over the world. longtime professor 01:17:59.840 --> 01:18:02.539 at Stanford University. This guy is a medical 01:18:02.539 --> 01:18:07.199 doctor. He's a psychiatrist, neurologist, and 01:18:07.199 --> 01:18:09.699 he has PhDs in biology, mathematics, and computer 01:18:09.699 --> 01:18:12.000 science. Oh, so he struggled in school then. 01:18:12.220 --> 01:18:15.779 Yeah, he's a slow learner. But putting these 01:18:15.779 --> 01:18:18.359 things together, but again, you know, and I've 01:18:18.359 --> 01:18:21.560 talked to him. I said, why can't individuals? 01:18:21.960 --> 01:18:25.460 And he has allowed me to access this for athletes, 01:18:25.720 --> 01:18:30.100 individual athletes. which has been a great lifesaver 01:18:30.100 --> 01:18:32.159 for them because we can tell right away, like 01:18:32.159 --> 01:18:34.619 what's going on with, with some high level athletes 01:18:34.619 --> 01:18:38.060 is, is the medical profession are scared to death 01:18:38.060 --> 01:18:42.500 of him because on that system, because it takes 01:18:42.500 --> 01:18:44.619 away, it's essentially you can get on the computer 01:18:44.619 --> 01:18:48.520 and, and, and get diagnosed and you don't need 01:18:48.520 --> 01:18:51.600 to jump and see 10 different specialists. And 01:18:51.600 --> 01:18:55.680 so the technology is, is evolving. And our society 01:18:55.680 --> 01:19:00.279 will change. But my view of this is that a lot 01:19:00.279 --> 01:19:01.939 of these things, including the medical profession, 01:19:02.140 --> 01:19:10.979 are engaged in their businesses. And so they 01:19:10.979 --> 01:19:13.199 have huge economic interests and not changing 01:19:13.199 --> 01:19:16.800 very much. So you have these sleep labs that 01:19:16.800 --> 01:19:20.680 prescribe CPAP machines. They're not going to 01:19:20.680 --> 01:19:24.659 change. His system will diagnose your sleep apnea 01:19:24.659 --> 01:19:26.460 in 20 minutes talking to the computer, which 01:19:26.460 --> 01:19:28.859 is more accurate than the current systems are 01:19:28.859 --> 01:19:32.180 using for a few hundred dollars instead of a 01:19:32.180 --> 01:19:38.239 few thousand dollars. But again, it's all economics. 01:19:38.579 --> 01:19:40.500 And unfortunately, in the medical profession, 01:19:40.619 --> 01:19:44.399 it's really gotten entrenched into older technology. 01:19:45.720 --> 01:19:47.819 That's amazing because that's what we are really. 01:19:47.920 --> 01:19:50.659 We're trying to critically think by regurgitating. 01:19:51.260 --> 01:19:53.979 things that we've learned. But rather than being 01:19:53.979 --> 01:19:56.939 threatened by that, what an incredible tool that 01:19:56.939 --> 01:20:00.439 we could use alongside the human diagnosis and 01:20:00.439 --> 01:20:03.399 actually allow us to, for example, the physicians, 01:20:03.600 --> 01:20:05.659 to actually spend the time with the patient. 01:20:05.800 --> 01:20:07.560 Because this is the problem I see. I mean, we 01:20:07.560 --> 01:20:10.300 demonize medicine a little bit. And obviously, 01:20:10.380 --> 01:20:12.699 there's elements of medicine that is incredibly 01:20:12.699 --> 01:20:16.199 successful in trauma surgery and pre -hospital 01:20:16.199 --> 01:20:18.460 medicine. And there's drugs that work phenomenally 01:20:18.460 --> 01:20:21.020 well to save lives every single day. but our 01:20:21.020 --> 01:20:23.880 doctors get this minute window with these people, 01:20:23.939 --> 01:20:25.680 so they end up being this kind of prescription 01:20:25.680 --> 01:20:29.399 pad. So imagine if we could combine the factual 01:20:29.399 --> 01:20:33.020 critical thinking element through AI with the 01:20:33.020 --> 01:20:37.140 human bedside manner element of the doctors of 01:20:37.140 --> 01:20:40.319 yesteryear again, we could maybe kind of revolutionize 01:20:40.319 --> 01:20:43.220 medicine rather than be threatened by it. Absolutely. 01:20:43.579 --> 01:20:45.420 So what happens when you go to see your GP, they 01:20:45.420 --> 01:20:48.010 have to... not only figure out what's going on 01:20:48.010 --> 01:20:50.229 with you, diagnose you, and then prescribe some 01:20:50.229 --> 01:20:52.569 treatment. But one of the things we experimented 01:20:52.569 --> 01:20:55.729 with a bit at Stanford was where doctors would 01:20:55.729 --> 01:20:58.390 ask their patients to go online, give them some, 01:20:58.390 --> 01:21:00.430 we gave them some codes. They could go on, they'd 01:21:00.430 --> 01:21:02.869 go through that system. So when they showed up 01:21:02.869 --> 01:21:04.489 at the doctor, the doctor already knew what was 01:21:04.489 --> 01:21:07.090 wrong with the guy or woman, right? They already 01:21:07.090 --> 01:21:10.149 knew the diagnosis and say, would ask a few questions 01:21:10.149 --> 01:21:11.810 to confirm it, but then they could spend their 01:21:11.810 --> 01:21:16.750 time on treatment. Love it. Yeah, I've just been 01:21:16.750 --> 01:21:18.729 exposed to I've been told literally, James, if 01:21:18.729 --> 01:21:21.510 you don't get into AI right now, a year from 01:21:21.510 --> 01:21:23.090 now, you're going to be left in the dust. So 01:21:23.090 --> 01:21:26.289 I just bought a program to do to help with this 01:21:26.289 --> 01:21:28.130 side, you know, but that is the future. And obviously, 01:21:28.210 --> 01:21:30.810 when we hear of AI, we see creepy robots and 01:21:30.810 --> 01:21:33.649 all that kind of stuff. But there's so many applications 01:21:33.649 --> 01:21:36.670 where it can collate all the wisdom, hopefully 01:21:36.670 --> 01:21:39.970 ancient wisdom as well, and be an adjunct to 01:21:39.970 --> 01:21:42.729 the human side, not a replacement for it. Right. 01:21:42.789 --> 01:21:44.710 And part of it is breaking down the longtime 01:21:44.710 --> 01:21:47.350 barriers between the medical profession about 01:21:47.350 --> 01:21:50.329 who can do what. Right. And so we're starting 01:21:50.329 --> 01:21:53.069 to see because of, you know, certainly in Canada, 01:21:53.109 --> 01:21:56.989 we have we don't have enough physicians. And 01:21:56.989 --> 01:22:00.069 so they're getting nurses to do some of the work 01:22:00.069 --> 01:22:02.550 that doctors used to do where they're doing. 01:22:02.569 --> 01:22:07.270 We're getting pharmacists to do some of the work 01:22:07.270 --> 01:22:09.909 that doctors used to do. So they're slowly starting 01:22:09.909 --> 01:22:12.729 to break down some of these. these, you know, 01:22:12.750 --> 01:22:14.689 artificial barriers where everybody, you know, 01:22:14.750 --> 01:22:16.550 and they're within their profession, they can 01:22:16.550 --> 01:22:19.869 only do certain things. So now in certainly in 01:22:19.869 --> 01:22:23.310 British Columbia, pharmacists can prescribe certain 01:22:23.310 --> 01:22:26.609 drugs by themselves. You don't have to go see 01:22:26.609 --> 01:22:28.890 a doctor because you can't find doctor either. 01:22:28.970 --> 01:22:32.189 So it's, it's, it's coming. It's, it's slow. 01:22:32.789 --> 01:22:35.489 And part of it is, and one of the fear in the 01:22:35.489 --> 01:22:37.109 medical profession, and I have a little bit of 01:22:37.109 --> 01:22:39.050 this fear as well, people who self -diagnose. 01:22:39.560 --> 01:22:42.600 without getting sort of an outside opinion. And 01:22:42.600 --> 01:22:44.319 that's one of the things that I think the folks 01:22:44.319 --> 01:22:46.399 at Stanford were worried about too. You don't 01:22:46.399 --> 01:22:47.880 want to go through the system and have a computer 01:22:47.880 --> 01:22:53.659 tell you you're bipolar. You need some counseling. 01:22:53.680 --> 01:22:57.279 You need some guidance. So if you have sort of 01:22:57.279 --> 01:22:59.600 self -diagnosis without treatment, it can be 01:22:59.600 --> 01:23:02.079 a disaster. Yeah, we see that as paramedics. 01:23:02.079 --> 01:23:05.600 It's called WebMD. People tell us they're dying 01:23:05.600 --> 01:23:09.659 from goodness, whatever. All right. Well, then 01:23:09.659 --> 01:23:12.220 you talked about, you know, the presentation 01:23:12.220 --> 01:23:14.859 and the knowledge that you bring to the first 01:23:14.859 --> 01:23:16.899 responder profession. So talk to me about what 01:23:16.899 --> 01:23:18.840 people can find in the book, Inconvenient Sleep. 01:23:19.000 --> 01:23:21.279 And then what are some of the pillars that you 01:23:21.279 --> 01:23:26.500 discuss to the men and women in uniform? Well, 01:23:26.600 --> 01:23:30.319 the book itself was really written out of my 01:23:30.319 --> 01:23:32.779 frustration. And I co -wrote it with my daughter, 01:23:32.840 --> 01:23:37.050 who's a sports lawyer and former athlete. is 01:23:37.050 --> 01:23:40.430 really out of frustration trying to give some 01:23:40.430 --> 01:23:44.310 baseline data and some understanding to coaches 01:23:44.310 --> 01:23:48.170 and to athletes. We see people quoting all kinds 01:23:48.170 --> 01:23:51.750 of research and they have no idea that the research 01:23:51.750 --> 01:23:54.699 is just complete crap. Right. You know, it was 01:23:54.699 --> 01:23:56.899 we should use these cold water baths. Well, you 01:23:56.899 --> 01:23:59.199 know, it was done on, you know, five rugby players 01:23:59.199 --> 01:24:03.439 in Brazil 20 years ago. I mean, it's that kind 01:24:03.439 --> 01:24:06.340 of thing that that sleep research has exploded 01:24:06.340 --> 01:24:08.739 and it's not all of it is good. So we try to 01:24:08.739 --> 01:24:12.300 give them some guidelines around how to interpret 01:24:12.300 --> 01:24:14.800 research and how to, you know, and what works 01:24:14.800 --> 01:24:17.800 and what and what hasn't worked, you know, in 01:24:17.800 --> 01:24:21.670 our experience. And again, education. In education 01:24:21.670 --> 01:24:26.789 by itself, one of the analogies that we use with 01:24:26.789 --> 01:24:31.130 professional athletes is I can go in and talk 01:24:31.130 --> 01:24:32.930 to you about sleep, but that's like me going 01:24:32.930 --> 01:24:36.350 in and talk to you about getting into shape and 01:24:36.350 --> 01:24:38.130 then walking away. So here's all the great things 01:24:38.130 --> 01:24:40.710 you need to get. It doesn't work with athletes, 01:24:40.949 --> 01:24:42.789 right? You need to provide equipment. You need 01:24:42.789 --> 01:24:45.600 to provide. hands -on training you need to provide 01:24:45.600 --> 01:24:49.140 um some goals you need to help them monitor it 01:24:49.140 --> 01:24:50.760 right if you want to get into shape you can do 01:24:50.760 --> 01:24:53.680 that but with sleep basically walk in and say 01:24:53.680 --> 01:24:55.420 yeah you need to get more sleep here so you do 01:24:55.420 --> 01:24:57.880 it and you walk away right so i try to say you 01:24:57.880 --> 01:25:00.500 need to start treating sleep like you treat physical 01:25:00.500 --> 01:25:05.979 education right getting into shape and and and 01:25:05.979 --> 01:25:08.899 you know that goes to the same thing about habits 01:25:08.899 --> 01:25:11.100 so if you're a professional athlete you work 01:25:11.100 --> 01:25:15.720 out for the most part year round Right. And we 01:25:15.720 --> 01:25:18.079 see, we see, they don't get, we see that they 01:25:18.079 --> 01:25:20.579 don't always get into the same kind of good sleep 01:25:20.579 --> 01:25:24.079 lifestyle habits year round. Right. So we're 01:25:24.079 --> 01:25:25.600 trying to say, you know, you want to make yourself 01:25:25.600 --> 01:25:30.260 a good athlete and a sustainable career is you 01:25:30.260 --> 01:25:33.159 need to treat your sleep habits exactly like 01:25:33.159 --> 01:25:34.699 you treat your physical conditioning habits. 01:25:36.119 --> 01:25:37.979 So that part of it, I'm sorry, I've forgotten 01:25:37.979 --> 01:25:40.420 the second part of your question around the pillars 01:25:40.420 --> 01:25:44.039 around, around First responders in the military. 01:25:44.359 --> 01:25:46.720 And it really comes down to exactly the same 01:25:46.720 --> 01:25:51.460 thing. It's treating sleep not as an adjunct 01:25:51.460 --> 01:25:59.359 thing, but as a primary component of our health, 01:25:59.460 --> 01:26:04.319 safety, and mental health. And to get into the 01:26:04.319 --> 01:26:06.239 kinds of habits, I call it sleep resilience. 01:26:07.520 --> 01:26:09.439 I have this argument all the time with other 01:26:09.439 --> 01:26:11.539 people who do what I do in the profession, and 01:26:11.539 --> 01:26:13.420 they call what's called sleep banking. So they 01:26:13.420 --> 01:26:15.699 say to professional athletes and Olympic athletes, 01:26:15.800 --> 01:26:18.039 you need to, before a big event, you need to 01:26:18.039 --> 01:26:22.090 bank sleep. Well, you can't bank sleep. We're 01:26:22.090 --> 01:26:23.949 all operating on a deficit anyway, so we ain't 01:26:23.949 --> 01:26:25.449 banking anything. We're still trying to catch 01:26:25.449 --> 01:26:28.970 up. No, no, but that's exactly right. So they 01:26:28.970 --> 01:26:31.310 start with the premise that you don't get enough 01:26:31.310 --> 01:26:32.989 sleep and they're saying, we're going to accept 01:26:32.989 --> 01:26:34.670 that. We're not going to try to encourage you 01:26:34.670 --> 01:26:36.829 to constantly get good sleep. We're just going 01:26:36.829 --> 01:26:38.590 to accept your lifestyle or whatever's going 01:26:38.590 --> 01:26:42.590 on. And so you need to just really focus in on 01:26:42.590 --> 01:26:44.449 trying to get up, you know, catching up on your 01:26:44.449 --> 01:26:47.409 sleep a week before an event. My argument is 01:26:47.409 --> 01:26:50.260 you're tackling the problem the wrong way. You 01:26:50.260 --> 01:26:52.560 need to start treating sleep, you know, if you 01:26:52.560 --> 01:26:55.159 want sleep resilience so that, you know, even 01:26:55.159 --> 01:26:57.420 if you're anxious the night before a game or 01:26:57.420 --> 01:26:59.500 you miss some sleep, it's not going to overly 01:26:59.500 --> 01:27:02.220 affect your performance. It's much like if you're 01:27:02.220 --> 01:27:05.119 a professional athlete and you have to fly to 01:27:05.119 --> 01:27:07.579 a game and you miss a workout, it's not going 01:27:07.579 --> 01:27:10.659 to hurt your career that much, right? And so 01:27:10.659 --> 01:27:13.100 we need to start treating sleep as exactly the 01:27:13.100 --> 01:27:17.399 same way as a really important component of our... 01:27:18.090 --> 01:27:20.310 Health, you know, health, safety and well -being. 01:27:20.409 --> 01:27:22.670 And it's just not getting there yet. There's 01:27:22.670 --> 01:27:25.050 all of these barriers, whether they're economic 01:27:25.050 --> 01:27:28.369 barriers or historical barriers. I mean, all 01:27:28.369 --> 01:27:30.050 of the schedule, particularly for firefighters 01:27:30.050 --> 01:27:32.329 and police officers, all of that grew up way 01:27:32.329 --> 01:27:37.930 before sleep research came up. So it's for me, 01:27:37.989 --> 01:27:41.670 it's about education, getting people on the same 01:27:41.670 --> 01:27:43.390 page and getting them to understand the issues. 01:27:44.130 --> 01:27:46.890 So speaking of that, the term sleep hygiene obviously 01:27:46.890 --> 01:27:50.199 comes up a lot. Talk to me about light, sound, 01:27:50.340 --> 01:27:53.800 and temperature and any other areas that an individual 01:27:53.800 --> 01:27:57.699 can control as well as hopefully being part of 01:27:57.699 --> 01:27:59.560 the fight to improve their work week, which is 01:27:59.560 --> 01:28:01.000 the other side. So you've got the environment 01:28:01.000 --> 01:28:02.880 they can't control at the moment. What can they 01:28:02.880 --> 01:28:05.420 control in their fire station and when they get 01:28:05.420 --> 01:28:09.600 home? Right. Yeah, you can Google sleep hygiene. 01:28:09.760 --> 01:28:11.579 There's a million things it tells you to do. 01:28:11.640 --> 01:28:14.060 Most of them, I think, are a little questionable, 01:28:14.300 --> 01:28:16.579 are certainly not based on science or based on 01:28:16.579 --> 01:28:19.840 theory. One thing that is based on science is 01:28:19.840 --> 01:28:25.659 controlling noise and controlling light and comfort, 01:28:25.800 --> 01:28:29.739 comfortable bed. For me, my experience is, and 01:28:29.739 --> 01:28:34.420 Dr. Caldwell from the US Air Force does the same 01:28:34.420 --> 01:28:37.090 thing, it's about darkness. Because if you're 01:28:37.090 --> 01:28:39.909 trying to sleep anywhere, because we're diurnal 01:28:39.909 --> 01:28:41.869 animals, we're supposed to be sleeping while 01:28:41.869 --> 01:28:46.409 it's dark out. And so managing darkness is probably 01:28:46.409 --> 01:28:48.170 the most important thing you can do. So if you 01:28:48.170 --> 01:28:50.510 wake up in the night, it's dark and go back to 01:28:50.510 --> 01:28:52.229 sleep. You're not getting focused in on other 01:28:52.229 --> 01:28:54.930 light issues. And so I said to him, what do you 01:28:54.930 --> 01:28:58.069 mean by dark? Like how dark should dark be? He 01:28:58.069 --> 01:29:00.210 says, if you can hold your hand a foot away from 01:29:00.210 --> 01:29:02.989 your face and you can still see your hand, it's 01:29:02.989 --> 01:29:06.810 not dark enough. So for me, it's made a huge 01:29:06.810 --> 01:29:09.369 difference. Getting blackout blinds into my bedroom 01:29:09.369 --> 01:29:14.789 is huge. So for me, sleep hygiene is managing 01:29:14.789 --> 01:29:16.949 your lifestyle. So you give yourself the opportunity 01:29:16.949 --> 01:29:19.729 to get the sleep you need. It's like scheduling 01:29:19.729 --> 01:29:21.470 anything in your life, whether it's holidays, 01:29:21.710 --> 01:29:25.970 schedule your sleep and have a comfortable environment 01:29:25.970 --> 01:29:29.770 and a very dark and quiet environment. So when 01:29:29.770 --> 01:29:31.770 I was listening to you talk about this with Michael, 01:29:31.869 --> 01:29:34.010 again, the first thought is, well, what about? 01:29:34.279 --> 01:29:37.359 stars moon etc so talk to me about the different 01:29:37.359 --> 01:29:39.600 types of light because when we reverse engineer 01:29:39.600 --> 01:29:43.260 to us a few hundred years ago there probably 01:29:43.260 --> 01:29:45.199 would have been light coming in but it's a different 01:29:45.199 --> 01:29:48.619 kind of light i'm assuming yeah i'm not sure 01:29:48.619 --> 01:29:51.960 i don't think they even know i i mean humans 01:29:51.960 --> 01:29:56.000 got into caves and shelters pretty early to sleep 01:29:56.000 --> 01:30:00.310 out under the stars um But it is definitely artificial 01:30:00.310 --> 01:30:04.550 light now is different. And certainly we know 01:30:04.550 --> 01:30:06.409 now in a different spectrum of light that it's 01:30:06.409 --> 01:30:10.409 actually the blue light. And the reason you want 01:30:10.409 --> 01:30:13.449 to avoid light, part of it is not just that it 01:30:13.449 --> 01:30:16.949 wakes your brain up, is that it has to do with 01:30:16.949 --> 01:30:20.029 the production of melatonin. So when it's dark 01:30:20.029 --> 01:30:23.479 out, your brain... produces melatonin that helps 01:30:23.479 --> 01:30:25.859 you fall asleep and stay asleep and when it's 01:30:25.859 --> 01:30:29.220 light out it it's it um reduces the amount of 01:30:29.220 --> 01:30:32.119 melatonin that's being produced so there's you 01:30:32.119 --> 01:30:36.100 know there's the kind of a awareness of you know 01:30:36.100 --> 01:30:37.619 if you wake up and it's light and you're kind 01:30:37.619 --> 01:30:39.840 of trying to wake up and see what's going on 01:30:39.840 --> 01:30:42.060 kind of thing but it's also the hormonal thing 01:30:42.060 --> 01:30:45.939 with with melatonin so you talked about sound 01:30:45.939 --> 01:30:47.819 he talks about light and i've i've got like tape 01:30:47.819 --> 01:30:51.489 over my fire you know smoke detector on the roof 01:30:51.489 --> 01:30:53.750 and actually I'm going to buy blackout blinds 01:30:53.750 --> 01:30:55.829 but I want to get the ones there's actually a 01:30:55.829 --> 01:30:57.810 curtain rail that you can automate because I 01:30:57.810 --> 01:30:59.789 want to wake up with a natural light so I don't 01:30:59.789 --> 01:31:02.189 want to be you know oversleeping and groggy as 01:31:02.189 --> 01:31:04.930 hell but the one other thing that I hear a lot 01:31:04.930 --> 01:31:07.050 is a temperature and you know they say about 01:31:07.050 --> 01:31:12.539 67 each side which observationally i feel is 01:31:12.539 --> 01:31:15.079 is also a factor for me personally because if 01:31:15.079 --> 01:31:17.439 it's any warmer than that i start to feel warm 01:31:17.439 --> 01:31:20.460 in my bed and not sleep as well yeah i think 01:31:20.460 --> 01:31:22.520 you had it at the nail on the head there as well 01:31:22.520 --> 01:31:27.079 is is that sleep is very personalized right and 01:31:27.079 --> 01:31:29.439 so you know all of these sort of temperature 01:31:29.439 --> 01:31:31.439 and comfort ranges and things around sleep are 01:31:31.439 --> 01:31:34.840 very very personalized And, you know, some people 01:31:34.840 --> 01:31:36.699 sleep on a soft bed. Some people need a hard 01:31:36.699 --> 01:31:39.180 bed. Some people need this temperature. So it's 01:31:39.180 --> 01:31:42.380 about, you know, body awareness, really understanding 01:31:42.380 --> 01:31:46.060 what you need for your body. Now, you touched 01:31:46.060 --> 01:31:47.760 on melatonin. I just want to dip into the subject 01:31:47.760 --> 01:31:50.859 and then go to some closing questions. But Kurt 01:31:50.859 --> 01:31:52.760 Parsi, who I talked about before, he's got an 01:31:52.760 --> 01:31:54.840 excellent sleep remedy that he used to get a 01:31:54.840 --> 01:31:59.069 lot of his seals off Ambien. At the time, I think 01:31:59.069 --> 01:32:02.329 he was in pre -9 -11, so I think he was probably 01:32:02.329 --> 01:32:05.329 doing this post -9 -11, but he realized how many 01:32:05.329 --> 01:32:07.949 were on, I'm using air quotes, sleep medicines, 01:32:08.189 --> 01:32:11.649 and so was able to use this. But this is a cocktail 01:32:11.649 --> 01:32:13.970 of different things, a very small amount of melatonin, 01:32:14.050 --> 01:32:16.770 tryptophan, vitamin D, magnesium, and it works 01:32:16.770 --> 01:32:19.449 incredibly well. I'm really, truly amazed how 01:32:19.449 --> 01:32:20.770 well this works. It's not something I want to 01:32:20.770 --> 01:32:23.289 take all the time, but if, for example, I come 01:32:23.289 --> 01:32:25.029 off a shift and it's been a rough shift and I 01:32:25.029 --> 01:32:28.649 kind of want to reset, It's a great, great supplement 01:32:28.649 --> 01:32:32.689 to aid my sleep. I see a lot of melatonin supplements 01:32:32.689 --> 01:32:34.770 with a huge amount of melatonin out there. And 01:32:34.770 --> 01:32:38.489 I also see a big misunderstanding of sleep aids 01:32:38.489 --> 01:32:40.270 and that actually they make you unconscious. 01:32:40.270 --> 01:32:43.489 You're not getting a deep quality sleep from 01:32:43.489 --> 01:32:46.010 those. So what have you seen through your eyes 01:32:46.010 --> 01:32:50.729 in the world of sleep aids? Oh, yeah. You know, 01:32:50.729 --> 01:32:53.670 people want to get in our society. Everybody 01:32:53.670 --> 01:32:57.470 wants a quick fix. Give me a pill. Make it better. 01:32:57.550 --> 01:33:00.350 Wave a magic wand. So there are different kinds 01:33:00.350 --> 01:33:04.350 of sleep aids. I can obviously send you a link. 01:33:04.409 --> 01:33:06.710 My friends in Australia have a great blog around 01:33:06.710 --> 01:33:10.829 that. But generally, there are two kinds of sleeping 01:33:10.829 --> 01:33:14.630 pills. Ones that put you to sleep, like Zoplicon 01:33:14.630 --> 01:33:16.890 and Ambien. But then you have to sleep on your 01:33:16.890 --> 01:33:19.210 own. And then there's others that actually put 01:33:19.210 --> 01:33:21.229 you to sleep and keep you unconscious for longer 01:33:21.229 --> 01:33:23.789 periods of time. And those ones make you groggy. 01:33:24.380 --> 01:33:27.739 um you know they can become addictive um melatonin 01:33:27.739 --> 01:33:30.920 is interesting so melatonin is a natural hormone 01:33:30.920 --> 01:33:33.439 that your body produces and so somebody came 01:33:33.439 --> 01:33:34.920 up with the idea well let's just keep adding 01:33:34.920 --> 01:33:37.880 more heart more melatonin and that'll that'll 01:33:37.880 --> 01:33:42.060 be better okay um and there are about 3 000 papers 01:33:42.060 --> 01:33:44.659 written on melatonin and the jury stole out about 01:33:44.659 --> 01:33:49.460 whether it works or doesn't work um and so it's 01:33:49.460 --> 01:33:54.420 it's uh It's the only hormone that's unregulated 01:33:54.420 --> 01:33:58.000 in North America. So to get melatonin in Europe 01:33:58.000 --> 01:34:00.800 and the EU, and we talk about this in my book, 01:34:00.880 --> 01:34:03.340 you have to see a doctor, get a prescription. 01:34:04.279 --> 01:34:07.659 And so the melatonin is regulated there, so they 01:34:07.659 --> 01:34:09.520 know exactly how much melatonin you're getting 01:34:09.520 --> 01:34:12.060 and how much is in each pill. North America, 01:34:12.100 --> 01:34:14.899 it's a supplement, food supplement. And so it's 01:34:14.899 --> 01:34:17.869 completely unregulated. And so people just buy 01:34:17.869 --> 01:34:20.550 them off the shelf. And there's a great research 01:34:20.550 --> 01:34:22.289 paper where they went and collected all of the 01:34:22.289 --> 01:34:24.689 melatonin supplements and actually tested them. 01:34:25.350 --> 01:34:28.649 And some of them had no melatonin. Some had way 01:34:28.649 --> 01:34:33.210 more than they said. And I've put an exact number, 01:34:33.270 --> 01:34:36.350 but I think like 70 % of the ones did not have 01:34:36.350 --> 01:34:40.050 the amount that they said it had. And some of 01:34:40.050 --> 01:34:41.810 them even had some more dangerous chemicals in 01:34:41.810 --> 01:34:44.489 them. So it's a completely unregulated industry. 01:34:45.319 --> 01:34:47.739 And again, I talk about that in my book, which 01:34:47.739 --> 01:34:51.539 in quote, the research in that is, so I'm always 01:34:51.539 --> 01:34:55.239 reluctant to recommend those kinds of things 01:34:55.239 --> 01:34:58.739 to people. My view is if it works for you, even 01:34:58.739 --> 01:35:00.899 if it's a placebo, if it works for you, do it. 01:35:03.239 --> 01:35:07.760 So, but I, you know, because we're in a society 01:35:07.760 --> 01:35:10.319 where you think you can pop a pill, make you 01:35:10.319 --> 01:35:13.489 better. People tend to gravitate to those kinds 01:35:13.489 --> 01:35:16.949 of things. But again, because sleep is so individual, 01:35:17.149 --> 01:35:22.550 if it works for you, do it. I think it was Benadryl, 01:35:22.649 --> 01:35:26.869 if I'm not mistaken, or PM, Doc was talking about 01:35:26.869 --> 01:35:29.270 when they put the side -by -side comparison between 01:35:29.270 --> 01:35:31.670 shift workers that are chronically sleep -deprived 01:35:31.670 --> 01:35:35.069 and people that used Benadryl as a sleep aid, 01:35:35.189 --> 01:35:37.890 the actual lifespan was the same. Because there 01:35:37.890 --> 01:35:40.270 was this misunderstanding that you were sleeping 01:35:40.270 --> 01:35:41.710 when you weren't actually getting sleep. And 01:35:41.710 --> 01:35:43.949 so I think that's a really important kind of 01:35:43.949 --> 01:35:46.850 observation. You talked about the wearable that 01:35:46.850 --> 01:35:49.489 you ended up creating. I just want to hit this 01:35:49.489 --> 01:35:52.590 topic quickly as well. I see a lot of claims 01:35:52.590 --> 01:35:56.069 and people. really believing oh i had this much 01:35:56.069 --> 01:35:58.810 rem sleep i had this much and i had for example 01:35:58.810 --> 01:36:01.090 professional professor russell foster who's one 01:36:01.090 --> 01:36:04.210 of the again yeah so i caught it caught it caught 01:36:04.210 --> 01:36:06.409 it in my back is good oh okay beautiful yeah 01:36:06.409 --> 01:36:08.829 i'm an amazing amazing man and so you hear about 01:36:08.829 --> 01:36:12.689 you know even the the what we think of as the 01:36:12.689 --> 01:36:15.090 layman as the gold standard like an eeg or something 01:36:15.090 --> 01:36:17.029 and then you're like no actually it's it's really 01:36:17.029 --> 01:36:19.640 not great science and that's that's things stuck 01:36:19.640 --> 01:36:21.800 to your head so now you're wearing a ring or 01:36:21.800 --> 01:36:23.779 a watch and saying that you've got this diverse 01:36:23.779 --> 01:36:26.859 you know rich information about your sleep so 01:36:26.859 --> 01:36:30.260 if you wouldn't mind educate us on you know the 01:36:30.260 --> 01:36:34.439 the landscape that is a reliable wearable and 01:36:34.439 --> 01:36:37.899 and what can it actually tell someone sure a 01:36:37.899 --> 01:36:40.899 great question so to begin with sleep is a process 01:36:40.899 --> 01:36:43.750 that goes on in your brain Okay. Doesn't go on 01:36:43.750 --> 01:36:48.109 in your wrist. And so the question is, so how 01:36:48.109 --> 01:36:49.970 do you, how does it know whether you're sleeping 01:36:49.970 --> 01:36:52.430 or not? Because it's a process that goes on in 01:36:52.430 --> 01:36:54.989 your brain, not on your wrist. And so it's based 01:36:54.989 --> 01:36:58.930 on motion. And so most, virtually all of these 01:36:58.930 --> 01:37:01.789 have accelerometers and then much like your iPhone, 01:37:01.869 --> 01:37:04.630 you twist it, it'll twirl around and it measures 01:37:04.630 --> 01:37:08.489 motion in your wrist. And so in, I think it was 01:37:08.489 --> 01:37:13.430 in the late seventies, Cole Kripke, two researchers 01:37:13.430 --> 01:37:17.010 in California, created this algorithm where they 01:37:17.010 --> 01:37:20.130 were able to show that based on wrist motion, 01:37:20.409 --> 01:37:22.470 we could tell whether you're awake or likely 01:37:22.470 --> 01:37:26.789 awake or likely asleep. And it's open source 01:37:26.789 --> 01:37:28.350 stuff. It's called the Cole Kripke algorithm. 01:37:29.810 --> 01:37:32.170 And I know Daniel Kripke. I interviewed him for 01:37:32.170 --> 01:37:34.289 my book. He's a really great retired guy, University 01:37:34.289 --> 01:37:36.270 of California, San Diego. And I asked him about 01:37:36.270 --> 01:37:40.430 the sleepwatches. He goes, basically, I said, 01:37:40.449 --> 01:37:43.300 they're... in a polite way, said they're crap. 01:37:44.819 --> 01:37:47.319 So what's happening in the sleep industry is 01:37:47.319 --> 01:37:51.520 what these things can actually measure is they're 01:37:51.520 --> 01:37:54.479 pretty good, like 90 % pretty good at telling 01:37:54.479 --> 01:37:56.359 you whether you're awake or whether you're asleep. 01:37:56.560 --> 01:37:59.500 But that's all it can really tell you. And so 01:37:59.500 --> 01:38:03.680 I liken them to a bathroom scale. You stand on 01:38:03.680 --> 01:38:05.420 the bathroom scale, it says you weigh 180 pounds. 01:38:05.619 --> 01:38:10.180 So what? Is that good? Is it bad? It's just a 01:38:10.180 --> 01:38:13.850 number. It doesn't tell you to lose weight. It 01:38:13.850 --> 01:38:15.829 doesn't tell you to gain weight. It doesn't tell 01:38:15.829 --> 01:38:17.489 you anything. It just tells you a number. You 01:38:17.489 --> 01:38:20.029 have to individualize it. But what's happening 01:38:20.029 --> 01:38:23.050 in the sleep watch industry is once you sold 01:38:23.050 --> 01:38:26.449 a watch to somebody or a bathroom scale, they 01:38:26.449 --> 01:38:27.630 measure themselves. They're not going to buy 01:38:27.630 --> 01:38:31.550 any more from you. You only need one. And so 01:38:31.550 --> 01:38:35.890 they started to create more and more bling to 01:38:35.890 --> 01:38:38.180 make it more interesting. And so what they said, 01:38:38.220 --> 01:38:41.460 no, we can tell what sleep stage you're at. They're 01:38:41.460 --> 01:38:45.239 guessing. And it's not very accurate. But what 01:38:45.239 --> 01:38:47.939 I say to people, even if it's accurate, what 01:38:47.939 --> 01:38:50.560 are you going to do with the information? You're 01:38:50.560 --> 01:38:52.260 going to go to bed at night and go, yeah, I think 01:38:52.260 --> 01:38:54.600 I'm going to get more REM sleep tonight. It doesn't 01:38:54.600 --> 01:38:57.680 work that way. It's useless information. And 01:38:57.680 --> 01:39:00.399 so athletes come to me all the time with this 01:39:00.399 --> 01:39:03.659 information. What do I do? I said, take your 01:39:03.659 --> 01:39:07.619 watch off to begin with. Or don't even look at 01:39:07.619 --> 01:39:09.779 it for a week. It's not the day -to -day thing. 01:39:10.359 --> 01:39:12.739 It's week -to -week, month -to -month. Look at 01:39:12.739 --> 01:39:15.600 the patterns. And what you really can only focus 01:39:15.600 --> 01:39:20.100 on is bathroom scale information. How much do 01:39:20.100 --> 01:39:22.020 I weigh? You're not going to jump on the bathroom 01:39:22.020 --> 01:39:24.520 scale every day and worry about how much weight 01:39:24.520 --> 01:39:26.979 you're losing. Maybe every week or every couple 01:39:26.979 --> 01:39:29.399 weeks, if that's what you're trying to do. And 01:39:29.399 --> 01:39:31.020 it's the same with sleep watches. All it does 01:39:31.020 --> 01:39:34.359 is create anxiety. They're good at measuring 01:39:34.359 --> 01:39:35.779 whether you're awake or whether you're asleep. 01:39:36.140 --> 01:39:39.479 great stuff but everything else is just bling 01:39:39.479 --> 01:39:42.359 trying to get you to buy stuff well i think for 01:39:42.359 --> 01:39:44.340 my community as we said especially when there's 01:39:44.340 --> 01:39:47.060 that loss of perception of how tired you really 01:39:47.060 --> 01:39:50.069 are the hrv which obviously now you're talking 01:39:50.069 --> 01:39:52.149 about taking a pulse so that would be an accurate 01:39:52.149 --> 01:39:54.630 measurement i totally understand that so if you 01:39:54.630 --> 01:39:57.229 understand what hrv is in the application and 01:39:57.229 --> 01:39:59.109 should you train hard today should you have a 01:39:59.109 --> 01:40:02.010 light day i totally get that but like you said 01:40:02.010 --> 01:40:03.789 people become obsessed and i've had people you 01:40:03.789 --> 01:40:05.189 know i was supposed to have got this but i feel 01:40:05.189 --> 01:40:07.729 like shit well there we go the ultimate metric 01:40:07.729 --> 01:40:09.649 still from what i understand the sleep medicine 01:40:09.649 --> 01:40:12.770 world is do you feel tired that's really your 01:40:12.770 --> 01:40:15.770 true you know metric and you do not need wearables 01:40:15.770 --> 01:40:19.220 for that specific thing Yeah, the wearable technology 01:40:19.220 --> 01:40:23.100 just hasn't evolved. Again, much like melatonin, 01:40:23.119 --> 01:40:26.500 it's an unregulated industry. These are all sold 01:40:26.500 --> 01:40:32.380 as gadgets, Cracker Jack toys. They're fancy, 01:40:32.479 --> 01:40:35.539 but they're not sold as medical devices. Because 01:40:35.539 --> 01:40:37.300 if they're sold as medical devices, they have 01:40:37.300 --> 01:40:41.479 to go through FDA. They have to actually do testing 01:40:41.479 --> 01:40:44.060 to show that it... it'll do what it says it does 01:40:44.060 --> 01:40:46.399 yeah well even then how many how much litigation 01:40:46.399 --> 01:40:48.159 has happened after they've been approved too 01:40:48.159 --> 01:40:51.579 so no no no i i no i i agree with you and so 01:40:51.579 --> 01:40:54.020 i mean i tell athletes like don't pay attention 01:40:54.020 --> 01:40:57.520 to the details on this um you know why are you 01:40:57.520 --> 01:40:59.899 wearing this you know what what is it do you 01:40:59.899 --> 01:41:03.300 want to know right you want to know week to week 01:41:03.300 --> 01:41:06.039 month to month how well you're sleeping you don't 01:41:06.039 --> 01:41:08.819 you don't need to measure this every day right 01:41:08.819 --> 01:41:12.380 get into a schedule right organize your sleep 01:41:12.380 --> 01:41:15.640 in a way that okay um you schedule it you know 01:41:15.640 --> 01:41:18.340 i'm i need to get sleep i need to get seven hours 01:41:18.340 --> 01:41:20.500 or whatever eight hours of sleep let's go i need 01:41:20.500 --> 01:41:23.699 to be in bed by 10 o 'clock i'm asleep by 11 01:41:23.699 --> 01:41:26.460 i get up at six or seven o 'clock in the morning 01:41:26.460 --> 01:41:30.199 then don't worry about it um you know the rest 01:41:30.199 --> 01:41:34.260 is just um i just fluff as far as i'm concerned 01:41:34.260 --> 01:41:37.460 i don't think and in fact For some professional 01:41:37.460 --> 01:41:40.060 athletes, it actually causes way, way more anxiety 01:41:40.060 --> 01:41:43.899 than they need to go through. So yeah, I don't 01:41:43.899 --> 01:41:46.180 recommend that. But one of the things we did 01:41:46.180 --> 01:41:49.260 in the watch that I created was we only looked 01:41:49.260 --> 01:41:53.039 at when you're awake, when you're asleep. So 01:41:53.039 --> 01:41:56.380 you only get that as a metric. We can tell how 01:41:56.380 --> 01:41:58.180 many times you woke up in the night and for how 01:41:58.180 --> 01:42:00.000 long. That's pretty normal. You can do that. 01:42:00.199 --> 01:42:02.460 But what we did was we melded that technology 01:42:02.460 --> 01:42:05.720 with the Air Force technology. that could predict 01:42:05.720 --> 01:42:10.479 your reaction time. So you can get some of that 01:42:10.479 --> 01:42:12.180 with HRV if you really know what you're doing, 01:42:12.239 --> 01:42:14.739 but it's really basically the same thing. You 01:42:14.739 --> 01:42:19.340 can tell, you can say, and we know from a lot 01:42:19.340 --> 01:42:23.859 of the research done by the US government, FRA 01:42:23.859 --> 01:42:26.159 and others, is we can tell where those limits 01:42:26.159 --> 01:42:27.979 are. We can tell, and you can tell yourself, 01:42:28.220 --> 01:42:31.300 I'm about to hit the wall here, right? And I'm 01:42:31.300 --> 01:42:34.270 at a high risk of an accident. So that's, technology 01:42:34.270 --> 01:42:36.369 that we that we built and that's how it's being 01:42:36.369 --> 01:42:39.729 used today but the rest of the stuff about REM 01:42:39.729 --> 01:42:43.489 sleep and deep sleep is just is is just marketing 01:42:43.489 --> 01:42:46.449 so one more area that I should have asked you 01:42:46.449 --> 01:42:48.850 earlier and I'll make sure I squeeze it in the 01:42:48.850 --> 01:42:52.140 impact of caffeine on sleep and the impact of 01:42:52.140 --> 01:42:54.859 alcohol, because I think it is probably the most 01:42:54.859 --> 01:42:57.979 widely used decompressor, even though ultimately 01:42:57.979 --> 01:43:00.819 biologically having the reverse effect, but so 01:43:00.819 --> 01:43:03.579 many of us unwind with alcohol. And then I've, 01:43:03.640 --> 01:43:05.439 you know, I've become more and more aware of 01:43:05.439 --> 01:43:07.659 the detrimental element on my sleep personally, 01:43:07.699 --> 01:43:11.560 if I drink the night before. Right. So both have 01:43:11.560 --> 01:43:14.859 good and bad things, right? I mean, alcohol relaxes 01:43:14.859 --> 01:43:18.920 you, right? And so there's some good, good sides 01:43:18.920 --> 01:43:22.899 to it. The problem is, If you rely on it to fall 01:43:22.899 --> 01:43:26.920 asleep, the quality of your sleep, you know this 01:43:26.920 --> 01:43:30.760 from polysomnography, is your sleep architecture, 01:43:30.979 --> 01:43:33.060 it messes up your sleep architecture. So you 01:43:33.060 --> 01:43:34.880 don't actually get the restful sleep you need 01:43:34.880 --> 01:43:37.960 to get. So that's the good and the bad of alcohol. 01:43:38.239 --> 01:43:41.800 The same with caffeine. Caffeine is great, keeps 01:43:41.800 --> 01:43:45.600 you awake, keeps you alert. But again, if you 01:43:45.600 --> 01:43:48.460 take it too close to when you need to go to sleep, 01:43:48.560 --> 01:43:51.520 you're not going to fall asleep. Same with napping. 01:43:51.939 --> 01:43:54.060 Napping is good. Napping is sleep. But if you 01:43:54.060 --> 01:43:56.479 nap too close to when you're meant to fall asleep, 01:43:56.760 --> 01:43:58.600 you're not going to fall asleep. So it really 01:43:58.600 --> 01:44:01.920 screws your schedule up. So you need to look 01:44:01.920 --> 01:44:04.239 at whether it's alcohol or napping or caffeine, 01:44:04.420 --> 01:44:21.729 look at it strategically. that's just sabotaged 01:44:21.729 --> 01:44:23.770 your opportunity for getting the best quality 01:44:23.770 --> 01:44:26.750 seat now it's a really hard seesaw that you're 01:44:26.750 --> 01:44:29.050 on because you know you're exhausted you know 01:44:29.050 --> 01:44:30.949 so then you drink coffee and then you're kind 01:44:30.949 --> 01:44:32.930 of wired so then you drink some alcohol to wind 01:44:32.930 --> 01:44:34.909 yourself down and then now boom you're back on 01:44:34.909 --> 01:44:37.710 shift again and you know so it's it's a vicious 01:44:37.710 --> 01:44:40.090 circle exactly that i saw it myself so it's an 01:44:40.090 --> 01:44:43.289 important observation all right well then your 01:44:43.289 --> 01:44:45.970 book is called inconvenience sleep um firstly 01:44:45.970 --> 01:44:47.930 before we go to to the closing questions where 01:44:47.930 --> 01:44:51.439 can people find your book uh amazon anywhere 01:44:51.439 --> 01:44:54.460 anywhere online books are sold brilliant yeah 01:44:54.460 --> 01:44:56.640 all right so the first of the closing questions 01:44:56.640 --> 01:44:59.500 are there any other books that you love to recommend 01:44:59.500 --> 01:45:02.140 it can be related to our discussion today or 01:45:02.140 --> 01:45:07.819 completely unrelated um be honest i we're dealing 01:45:07.819 --> 01:45:11.340 with sleep and fatigue issues i spend most of 01:45:11.340 --> 01:45:13.079 my time actually reading research papers rather 01:45:13.079 --> 01:45:16.590 than rather than books I actually haven't found 01:45:16.590 --> 01:45:18.430 any really, that's one of the reasons we wrote 01:45:18.430 --> 01:45:20.329 the book. I haven't found any really good books 01:45:20.329 --> 01:45:24.510 around that. I think podcasts like yours and 01:45:24.510 --> 01:45:26.369 blogs, there are a few really good people around. 01:45:26.449 --> 01:45:29.909 I mean, yours. I mean, Michael Chauvet has a 01:45:29.909 --> 01:45:34.789 broader kind of view of things and stuff. Ian 01:45:34.789 --> 01:45:37.229 Dunnigan out of Australia. He's got a great, 01:45:37.250 --> 01:45:41.130 great podcast. Virtually all about sleep, sleep 01:45:41.130 --> 01:45:44.979 and fatigue. I've worked with him. pretty extensively 01:45:44.979 --> 01:45:49.380 um brilliant guy very funny irishman um moved 01:45:49.380 --> 01:45:51.220 to australia so you can't understand a word he 01:45:51.220 --> 01:45:56.159 said but um uh yeah brilliant so i i would recommend 01:45:56.159 --> 01:45:58.239 particularly because things happen so fast and 01:45:58.239 --> 01:46:00.479 it's so new in our society time it gets time 01:46:00.479 --> 01:46:02.439 it gets into a book it's it's outdated almost 01:46:02.439 --> 01:46:05.319 right yeah that makes perfect sense so thank 01:46:05.319 --> 01:46:07.859 you um well the next question what about a film 01:46:07.859 --> 01:46:14.239 and or a documentary that you love oh boy films 01:46:14.239 --> 01:46:17.619 uh think about that i don't watch that many movies 01:46:17.619 --> 01:46:22.000 anymore um i think i'd probably date myself because 01:46:22.000 --> 01:46:25.060 it's really kind of older older ones i like i 01:46:25.060 --> 01:46:29.239 like movies that follow people's lives right 01:46:29.239 --> 01:46:31.520 and there's there's just so many of them i like 01:46:31.520 --> 01:46:35.989 um oh boy I'll probably pass on that because 01:46:35.989 --> 01:46:38.810 my brain's mush at this point. Because I actually 01:46:38.810 --> 01:46:40.909 don't watch that very many movies. I'm a sports 01:46:40.909 --> 01:46:44.390 and I watch a lot of blogs. I love watching cooking 01:46:44.390 --> 01:46:47.909 shows. Oh, okay. There we go. Yeah. I like the 01:46:47.909 --> 01:46:50.029 Jamie Oliver stuff. There's a bunch of other 01:46:50.029 --> 01:46:53.449 ones around. I like to cook. I'm a chemist by 01:46:53.449 --> 01:46:56.529 training. So it's like chemistry experiment. 01:46:57.689 --> 01:47:00.810 And so I find that relaxing learning all these 01:47:00.810 --> 01:47:03.560 different techniques to cook. Jamie is someone 01:47:03.560 --> 01:47:05.239 I still want to get on. I've got to figure out 01:47:05.239 --> 01:47:08.760 how to connect the dots and get to him. But what 01:47:08.760 --> 01:47:11.300 he did in the UK and what he tried to do in the 01:47:11.300 --> 01:47:13.800 US with the food in our schools is a story I 01:47:13.800 --> 01:47:16.520 think that needs to be heard. It was told a few 01:47:16.520 --> 01:47:18.479 years ago, but it needs to be re -heard, especially 01:47:18.479 --> 01:47:21.560 after COVID. Right. And I think that's one of 01:47:21.560 --> 01:47:24.619 the things. I like his style. I like the diversity 01:47:24.619 --> 01:47:27.340 of the cooking. But I like that he has this sort 01:47:27.340 --> 01:47:31.979 of... educational aspect to what he's doing and 01:47:31.979 --> 01:47:35.199 he wants to help move society forward in terms 01:47:35.199 --> 01:47:38.880 of nutrition right and what works and what doesn't 01:47:38.880 --> 01:47:40.560 work and how easy it is to actually cook good 01:47:40.560 --> 01:47:43.779 nutritional food you know and i i'm a big fan 01:47:43.779 --> 01:47:46.619 of people and ian's one of these and others a 01:47:46.619 --> 01:47:49.239 big fan of doing the same with sleep right and 01:47:49.239 --> 01:47:51.760 people like you right let's let's you know let's 01:47:51.760 --> 01:47:54.859 educate society let's educate people um if you 01:47:54.859 --> 01:47:57.680 have an educated group they make smarter decisions 01:47:58.670 --> 01:48:01.329 Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Well, speaking of an 01:48:01.329 --> 01:48:03.829 educated group, that was a good segue. Is there 01:48:03.829 --> 01:48:05.970 a person or other people that you recommend to 01:48:05.970 --> 01:48:08.989 come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the 01:48:08.989 --> 01:48:11.390 first responders, military, and associated professions 01:48:11.390 --> 01:48:15.989 of the world? Absolutely. I talked to John Caldwell. 01:48:17.170 --> 01:48:20.250 He started a seminar. He's in Florida, actually, 01:48:20.350 --> 01:48:24.949 last I heard. And also, Ian Dunican is great. 01:48:25.090 --> 01:48:29.720 He's done. He's an amazing character. I would 01:48:29.720 --> 01:48:32.100 try to get, I mean, if you could get anybody 01:48:32.100 --> 01:48:35.119 from Washington State University, I'll get the 01:48:35.119 --> 01:48:36.880 names for you. Then the guys would have taken 01:48:36.880 --> 01:48:38.579 over, particularly the police research. I think 01:48:38.579 --> 01:48:41.880 it's really, really good stuff there. So let 01:48:41.880 --> 01:48:44.380 me, I'll, I can, I'll email that to you and you 01:48:44.380 --> 01:48:47.399 can pass it on to your, your, your audience if 01:48:47.399 --> 01:48:49.180 you like. But yeah, no, there's the folks at 01:48:49.180 --> 01:48:51.600 Washington State University that do the research 01:48:51.600 --> 01:48:54.300 for first responders is pretty amazing. Brilliant. 01:48:54.300 --> 01:48:56.039 I'd appreciate that. Thank you so much. And I 01:48:56.039 --> 01:48:57.579 guess I need to connect with Brian Villow as 01:48:57.579 --> 01:49:00.310 well. Yeah. Yeah. No, Brian's retired. It's hard 01:49:00.310 --> 01:49:02.789 to get ahold of. And so he has had a few health 01:49:02.789 --> 01:49:05.069 issues. And so he's, he's retired, but he, the, 01:49:05.170 --> 01:49:07.069 the, the, these are the people that have worked 01:49:07.069 --> 01:49:09.710 with him and continuing the research, but Brian's 01:49:09.710 --> 01:49:11.510 books are, are brilliant. And his research is 01:49:11.510 --> 01:49:14.170 brilliant. So. Okay. Fantastic. All right. Well 01:49:14.170 --> 01:49:15.789 then the very last question before we make sure 01:49:15.789 --> 01:49:18.329 people know where to find you specifically, what 01:49:18.329 --> 01:49:24.949 do you do to decompress? Good question. I walk 01:49:24.949 --> 01:49:30.289 a lot. I mean, I'm older. 70 years old. Don't 01:49:30.289 --> 01:49:32.170 look 70, by the way, for everyone that can't 01:49:32.170 --> 01:49:35.529 see you right now. You look about late 50s. I 01:49:35.529 --> 01:49:41.010 walk a lot. I try to work out, ride a bike. I 01:49:41.010 --> 01:49:44.909 fish. I have a little boat and I go out and I 01:49:44.909 --> 01:49:47.510 catch crabs and prawns and putts around in the 01:49:47.510 --> 01:49:51.930 ocean and try to be part of that instead of kind 01:49:51.930 --> 01:49:55.670 of being. sort of focused in on my new details 01:49:55.670 --> 01:49:59.930 around my life or my work, I try to get out and 01:49:59.930 --> 01:50:02.869 be in nature. It makes a huge difference. Do 01:50:02.869 --> 01:50:05.069 you find yourself going full circle back to the 01:50:05.069 --> 01:50:08.970 farm life that you grew up as a kid? Yeah, just 01:50:08.970 --> 01:50:12.449 growing up up north and being out in nature and 01:50:12.449 --> 01:50:15.329 looking up at the sky and seeing how huge the 01:50:15.329 --> 01:50:17.970 universe is and what a wonderful life we have 01:50:17.970 --> 01:50:20.439 here. I couldn't agree more. There's so much 01:50:20.439 --> 01:50:24.439 kind of myopic focus on things that really, I 01:50:24.439 --> 01:50:26.359 mean, they mean things to certain people, but 01:50:26.359 --> 01:50:28.460 I mean, as a species, there's so many other things 01:50:28.460 --> 01:50:30.279 we can be more passionate about and move the 01:50:30.279 --> 01:50:32.039 needle forward in physical and mental health. 01:50:32.279 --> 01:50:35.100 So before we let you go, where can people find 01:50:35.100 --> 01:50:37.199 you if they want to reach out or follow you online? 01:50:38.600 --> 01:50:47.319 I have LinkedIn and I have Twitter. I don't pay 01:50:47.319 --> 01:50:49.000 a whole lot of attention to it, but I have Twitter. 01:50:49.399 --> 01:50:52.739 I have email. I have cell phone number. So I'll 01:50:52.739 --> 01:50:54.720 pass that. You have that. And you're welcome 01:50:54.720 --> 01:50:56.699 to pass it on to anybody that wants to contact 01:50:56.699 --> 01:50:58.960 me. I'm happy to chat with them. Beautiful. Well, 01:50:59.020 --> 01:51:01.020 Pat, I want to say thank you so much. We've gone 01:51:01.020 --> 01:51:03.680 all over the place, you know, from litigation 01:51:03.680 --> 01:51:06.659 and asbestos to sleep and first responders. But 01:51:06.659 --> 01:51:08.500 it's been an amazing conversation. I want to 01:51:08.500 --> 01:51:10.199 thank you so much for being so generous with 01:51:10.199 --> 01:51:12.420 your time today. My pleasure. Anytime.