This episode is sponsored by a company I've used
for well over a decade, and that is 5 .11. I
wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California,
and have used their products ever since. From
their incredibly strong yet light footwear, to
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all the departments that I've worked for. Outside
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the world on the human performance project. We
have MRF coming up in May. And again, I bought
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that has been my ride or die through Murph the
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in Gainesville, Florida, and I've been multiple
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is offering you 15 % off every purchase that
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around holiday times. In fact, if you're listening
to this in the months of April or May, 5 .11
days is coming up. Between May 9th and May 16th,
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And if you want to hear more about 5 .11, who
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to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with
5 .11 regional director, Will Ayers. Welcome
to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always,
my name is James Geering and this week it is
my absolute honor to welcome on the show sleep
expert Pat Byrne. Now Pat began his career journey
working in the world of health and safety and
it was a tragic accident that killed his young
nephew that led him into researching the negative
impacts of sleep deprivation in the workplace.
So we discuss a host of topics from some of the
asbestos related death cases that he worked on
sleep deprivation in the first responder community,
his work with high level athletes, including
the NHL, optimizing sleep, the pros and cons
of wearables, sleep meds, the incredible potential
for AI in the medical community, and so much
more. Now, before we get to this incredible conversation,
as I say every week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe
to the show. Leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five -star rating truly does elevate
this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find. And this is a free library of
well over 750 episodes now. So all I ask in return
is that you help share these incredible men and
women's stories so I can get them to every single
person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
Burn. Enjoy. Well, Pat, I want to start by saying
thank you so much for taking the time and coming
on the Behind the Shield podcast today. My pleasure.
So where on planet Earth are we finding you this
morning? I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia.
I said this morning, I just glanced at my clock
because I realize it's my afternoon now, but
it's your morning still. Yes, it is. It's all
good. All right. Well, I would love to start
at the very beginning of your timeline. You have
an incredible journey. It's obviously very pertinent
to a lot of people that are listening. But let's
start at the very beginning. So tell me where
you were born and tell me a little bit about
your family dynamic, what your parents did and
how many siblings. Oh, wow. Well, I was actually
born in a little farm community outside of Vancouver
called Langley. And my father was a building
contractor. He's a carpenter. So we moved all
over. We moved to another town up north about
four hour drive away called Kamloops. Lived there
for a few years. And my parents moved to a town
called Fort Nelson, which is in very northern
British Columbia. It's about a thousand miles
north of Vancouver. town of about 1500 people.
So I grew up there, never saw television and
one radio station. You know, literally a three
room school, elementary school with no running
water, we had an outdoor toilet, those, those
kinds of things. That was how I grew up. And
then eventually, my parents moved back to Langley
and worked for my parents business. And so I
have a younger brother. an older sister and two
younger sisters. So there are five of us spread
all over the world these days. And then I, so
I, after I graduated from high school, I worked
in construction for a few years, fell off a roof,
hurt my back and broke my hand, decided construction
probably wasn't for me, went to university and
studied chemistry and biology. And got undergraduate
degrees in both of those from Western Washington
University. And then did a master's in biochem.
And so I moved back to, that was in Washington
State. And I moved back to Canada, into British
Columbia, looking for work. And ended up at what's
called the Workers' Comp Board, which is sort
of a combination of OSHA and workers' compensation
under one roof in British Columbia. Started there,
actually started as a file clerk, but within
a couple of months I was employed as an inspector.
So I worked a lot in sort of what's called occupational
hygiene, which is chemical safety. And I spent
probably eight years traveling all over the province,
inspecting everything from hospitals to pulp
mills to oral refineries to factories, looking
for chemical exposures. and enforcing the regulations.
Then I got involved with, invited to be involved
by our head general counsel to help run what's
called asbestos litigation. So we were suing
asbestos manufacturers for all the injuries that
they had caused workers, including deaths and
asbestosis and lung cancers. So I worked on that
project for four years all over North America.
A lot of the work was done in South Carolina.
and in Texas. And then when that project was
over, we got settlement mechanisms with the asbestos
companies. I was appointed to what's called the
Appeal Division, which is sort of in American
terms is really, it's an administrative law court.
So it was the senior appeal division of the administrative
law courts, largely because they had a lot of
occupational disease cases. And looking at causation
factors, they had a factory, for example, that
had 35 bladder cancer cases out of one factory.
And so they needed somebody there to look at
causation and what, you know, which ones are
work related and which ones are not work related.
So they needed somebody with a science background.
Then I went to, they sent me to law school. I
didn't graduate, but I took night school classes
and, you know, enough to be able to talk to lawyers
in my job. And I sat there on the bench for nine
years hearing all of these occupational disease
cases. Then I decided I'd been there 21 years,
decided to retire from that and got involved
in occupational health consulting. But part of
that just had before I had left the appeal division,
I had a young nephew who. He was a local basketball
star. In fact, his job or his challenge in high
school was that he had to guard Steve Nash. That's
no big deal. Yeah, no big deal. And so Steve
went off to university and did a great NBA career.
And my nephew went off and studied forestry.
And within a few months after him starting work,
he was working very long hours, 12, 14 -hour
shifts, driving home one Friday night. Fell asleep,
drove his car off a cliff and died. And that
sort of really changed my emphasis around health
and safety. I mean, at that time, I was the Canadian
director of what's called the International Board.
So it was an NGO, the World Health Organization.
And I talked to my colleagues around the world
and literally no one was dealing with fatigue
as a health and safety issue. And so I just started
that journey. I started looking around, realizing
nobody was actually doing it. And I started contacting
universities and military, made some contacts
to the U .S. military, and particularly with
a guy named Steve Hirsch at that time, who was
a Pentagon medical officer who had done a lot
of research in this area, and John Caldwell,
who was the head of the U .S. Air Force Sleep
and Fatigue Countermeasures Program. And so what
I learned in occupational hygiene is that if
you want to measure asbestos, you want to measure
noise, or you want to mitigate the risk from
those, you have to be able to measure it. And
so there was no easy way to measure sleep and
fatigue in the workplace. But what I did figure
out was that you could take these old... sleep
watches they were using in research and you could
take the software that they were using in the
air force in the army to to measure fatigue in
the and the pilots and in the army personnel
and marry the two together and create a technology
where a wristwatch where you can actually measure
fatigue and so i started a company called fatigue
science we developed the very first fda approved
sleep and fatigue watch way before Fitbit, way
before all of these things. And it's still used.
It's used mostly in military. It's very robust.
You can run a tank over them almost and they
run. But they weren't a consumer model and they're
expensive to do that. I retired from there probably
six years ago. And a lot of my work now is involved
with sports first responders. I do a lot of education
work around. trying to help organizations both
structurally to deal with health and safety and
fatigue and sleep issues, but certainly individuals
as well. Work with a lot of individual professional
sports athletes, both the NBA, baseball, right
across the spectrum. The challenge for professional
athletes is they don't want their team to know
they have sleep issues. And because they don't
get played, I worked with a major league baseball
player who was a first round draft pick. And
the team sent him over to me because he had sleep
issues. And we put him through a bunch of tests
and did figure out he had sleep apnea. They traded
him the next day. So that was a lesson to me
saying I'm not going to deal with teams where
they're going to mistreat people who have sleep
disorders. So anyways, that's where I'm at now.
And a few years ago, I wrote a book called Inconvenient
Sleep, How Teams Win and Lose. So it's not a
bad read. No, well, firstly, thank you for walking
us through. I want to go way, way back and then
walk through because there's so many areas that
are so pertinent to what I've seen in my career
in the fire service and what I'm seeing from
the outside looking in now, speaking to experts,
especially in the sleep medicine world like yourself.
Very first question going all the way back. I'm
one of five. I grew up on a farm. So I wouldn't
say I was having to use the bathroom outside
like I heard you talking to Michael Gervais about.
With that being your baseline, what did that
do as far as the perspective that you had on
the world as you moved back to, you know, one
would argue more modern technologies again? I
think, I mean, again, that was in the 60s. So
there was tons of new technology, but certain
in television. And you have, I think, a different
perspective of how it's used. And you don't grow
up, it's not part of your DNA. You look at it
as sort of an inanimate object. My view of the
world really was, particularly if you go in northern
Canada in the wintertime, it's dark, except for
maybe four hours of a little bit of brightness.
But what you see are literally billions and billions
and billions of stars. and you see how huge the
universe really is. And so that was my view of
the world, is that we were a really small part
of this huge, huge universe. And so I tried to
take a bigger view of technology rather than
going down the rabbit hole and getting into the
details of how it's used and worrying about those
things. How does this fit into the bigger scheme
of life? Well, I feel like we've done a polar
opposite of your. upbringing now where we don't
even look up from our phones anymore to even
see maybe the few scars that are seen through
the light pollution that we have in most of our
suburban and urban areas. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And it's interesting you talk about light pollution.
I did some work at Stanford a few years ago with
Dr. Maurice Ohayan, who's created some incredible
AI technology for diagnosing mental health and
sleep disorders. But he did a study looking at
illumination from satellites showing that in
areas where they had high lights in the cities,
it was like they had poor sleep. Yeah, and it
makes perfect sense. And that's the thing. I
think of six and a half years of talking to experts,
you can reverse engineer. If we lived as our
great grandparents did, you would probably solve
80 to 90 % of our mental and physical health
problems. Oh, absolutely. We've evolved in the
last 100 years from being not largely agrarian,
but largely a daylight society to a 24 -hour
society. And what happens is we end up fighting
our biology. So we are what scientists like to
call diurnal animals. So we're biologically programmed
in our DNA to be awake in the daytime and to
sleep at night. We're not like owls and raccoons
that are nocturnal animals. And so people tend
to forget that they're really fighting their
biology when they're staying awake at night.
And so what's happened, particularly with first
responders, and now it's really grown into a
whole lot of other professions as well, is that
their employer forces them to fight their biology.
Right. I mean, I did a lot of work in Western
Australia and the outback and iron ore mines.
And they work seven 12 hour days, followed by
seven 12 hour nights. And then they get a week
off. And the week off is they have to fly in
and fly out. So there's two days of that are
flying in, flying out and five days at home with
their family trying to actually get some sleep.
So obviously there are a lot of issues around
that. But when we talked to the mine management,
we said, well, we understand that there are certain
occupations within the mine. It has to be run
24 -7. You can't shut it down. But do you really
need everybody in the entire mine to work 24
-7 or to work night shift? You have engineers
who are designing things at the mine. They don't
need to work at night. Why would you do that?
And their answer was, we want to be fair to everybody.
So we don't want to have some people that get
sleep at night and some people have to work at
night. And I said, you know, that's kind of,
I said, from my health and safety background,
that's kind of, don't be offended, but I said,
that's a stupid approach. It's like saying some
workers within our factory have to get exposed
to asbestos. So let's just expose everybody to
asbestos so that it'll be fair. Well, that's
what happens in our fire stations. And this was
maddening because my last place actually secured
budget to redo their toning system. So the alert
system. And I had seen a great device where you
have these kind of cubicles where we all sleep.
But this one was a little box and it had a speaker
and an LED strip. And it would just wake you
up. And so if you slept kind of roughly in the
dorm where your vehicle was, so, you know, the
two guys on the ambulance here, the four people
on the engine, then after a few weeks you got
used to it, you would wake up the next morning
and be like, oh, we had a great sleep. And the
people next to you were like, well, I'm glad
you did. We were up four times. But that was
the point is that you don't wake everyone up.
And they went to the polar opposite. still alerted
everyone and then put led strips in the the bunk
that would illuminate the whole bunk saying this
is where this one person's call is so it was
exactly what you're talking about and i was pulling
my hair out because the previous dispatch chief
had agreed And that's a phenomenal idea. He ends
up getting fired. And then, you know, I don't
know if it was to spite him or what it was, but
this is the thing that we face in the fire service.
You're not that important to, you know, like
the chiefs to monitor their radars. You don't
need to be awake. Awake the big boys and girls
that you've employed to do this job that need
to go and let everyone else sleep. You know,
you're absolutely right. And I think the foundational
issue really is ignorance. And I see that across
professional sports. I see it across industry.
I see it in with first responders is that the
senior people who are making decisions and this
goes right down to, you know, to the guys with
the boots on the ground. They don't are not given
foundational sleep and fatigue training. And
so, I mean, I've dealt with, you know, some ownership
and very senior people in professional sports
that are just. completely ignorant about the
effects of sleep on performance. And one of the
things I did, so I ended up working in the National
Hockey League with the Vancouver Canucks. They
brought me in. I worked there for seven seasons.
And the very first thing that we did was we had
the ownership, all the front office, all of the
coaches, all of the training staff and all of
the players. in one room at the same time and
I gave them an hour and a half lecture on sleep
and fatigue and what we were going to do for
the team so that everybody got the same training
everybody could understand what's going on and
it ran really smoothly and I've taken that approach
to industry as well I won't go into an industry
and train guys with boots on the ground about
sleep and fatigue unless their bosses are there
or their bosses get separate training so that
they understand the issues. And the problem is,
or the issue is that sleep and fatigue is fairly
new with respect to science. Sleep science is
new. And so people, even with medical doctors,
most of the medical general practitioners get
maybe three or four hours of sleep training in
a four -year program. It's just evolved. And
so you have a lot of ignorant people making ignorant
decisions because they don't have basic training.
And it's like trying to run an army without putting
people through basic training. Nothing good is
going to come of that. And so that's my emphasis
now and certainly in my career is to try to educate
organizations and try to educate workers and
people like yourself so that everybody really
understands. You don't have to go on Google and
look all. try to figure out what's real and what's
not real. And that's one of the reasons I wrote,
wrote my book was, well, it's more sports emphasized
is to show how much fake stuff there is out there
and, and, and how to be discerning about what's,
what research is real and what's not real. And
so, but I, so I think that's sort of the, the,
the fundamental issue as, as we learned about.
sleep and fatigue. I mean, everything we now
know about sports and sleep, we've learned in
the last decade. Well, you talked about, you
know, it may not be the same because it's sports.
Well, this is the problem with the fire service.
We have no research in sleep. So the very, I
would say, arguably the most overworked, underslept
profession on the planet. refuses to do research
on the one thing that's the amplifier for their
mental health problems for their cancer their
obesity their i mean you name it the things that
we all die from and there's they just refuse
they'll they'll they'll do research on this nozzle
or you know this kind of fan but the actual things
that are behind so many of our funerals there
isn't so we have to turn to the military and
the sporting community to make parallels because
i get told this all the time well where's the
research well firstly it's common sense But secondly,
if you really need to prove that being awake
every third day for 10, 20 or 30 years is not
good for you, here's the Navy, the Air Force,
et cetera, et cetera. So that's why these conversations
are so important. Yeah. So a couple of points
there. So one of the things I learned when I
was in the asbestos litigation is, particularly
with the asbestos companies, they would say,
oh, yeah, we know asbestos causes cancer in minors.
We don't know whether it causes cancer in carpenters
or in welders because there's no research done
on that. And then the research gets done and
say, yeah, well, we know now that the carpenters
are at risk from asbestos. They go, yeah, but
you haven't really shown that it affects office
workers with asbestos in it. And so that's really,
quite frankly, again, a stupid argument because
the fact is asbestos is a risk. And it causes
cancer, much like smoking or anything else. And
so it doesn't matter. The profession is irrelevant.
It's the risk that you're looking at. And there's
tons and tons and tons of research around risks
to anybody who fights their biology when you're
awake at night. One of the great researchers
in this area is from Washington State University,
Brian Vila, who's since now retired. He's written
a number of books. One of the early ones was
called A Tired Cop. So he's an ex -police officer,
PhD, who's done a lot, a lot of research around
the effects of sleep on police officers and decision
making. And what he's shown is that when police
officers are tired coming off 12 -hour shifts.
At the end of those shifts, they make very poor
decisions. Literally, they shoot babies. Or they
freeze and get themselves shot. And so the decision
-making around sleep for police officers is very,
very well studied. And they're humans. The only
difference between police officers and other
first responders is the uniform they put on.
If a firefighter put on a pilot's outfit and
worked the same shift, the planes would crash.
Well, the other thing is the firefighters work
a lot more sleepless days than a police officer
does because usually a police officer's week
is still going to be 40 hours. It's 12, which
is horrendous. But an average firefighter in
the U .S. is a 56 -hour work week. You add the
mandatories because they're so understaffed.
A lot of them, you know, not every single week,
but a lot of weeks they'll work now 80 hours.
So this is the thing. We've studied professions
that work less than us, but we still won't even
apply that, even though we work sometimes double
what some of these professions work. Right. So
my whole argument around that is not to sort
of be isolated in the sense of, you know, treat
firefighters, first responders as just humans.
These are humans who are up against this risk.
I mean, it doesn't matter if you fall off a 40
-story building. It doesn't matter what uniform
you're going to wear. Oh, yeah, look, the carpenters
are dying. Yeah, but the firefighters, we don't
know about the firefighters yet. Let's push some
off and see what happens. It's the risk you need
to deal with. It's not the uniform, right? Absolutely.
Well, I want to get to some of the litigation
side and then walk you through your journey from
that tragedy through to your exposure to the
sleep world. One of the epiphanies that I had
recently was, and there was a guest on Joe Rogan's
podcast called Sad Guru. And I forget what comment
was made, but it was something like what Joe
had said, well, you know. most people are good
and they think he said you know something like
oh the drug companies or whatever which there's
an element of truth in some of the the things
that they produce and the impact they've had
on our country but he said well they're he said
they're hurting too or something like that or
they need kindness too and i realized that when
we look at mental ill health we look at school
shooters we look at the addiction process and
you know prostitution and some of these areas
that have led a preschool giggling child to some
of these wayward paths But what we don't think
about is some of these corrupt politicians, some
of these heads of these tobacco companies, asbestos
companies, how do they sleep at night? And my
hypothesis is, well, maybe that's the mental
ill health being projected in that greed. So
with your exposure to some of these companies
where clearly there was no argument, their products
were killing a lot of people and they were making
a lot of money from it. Did you... Have any kind
of experiences to the kind of people? And was
there almost like a mental ill health component
to some of those individuals too? Or am I way
off? That's a great question. I mean, I don't
know the answer to that. I mean, when we sued
these companies, we sued them as corporations.
And of course, we had all their internal emails
and things that went on. And they were just making
decisions to make money. So it didn't matter.
They knew, for example, they knew in the 20s
and 30s that asbestos was causing huge amounts
of injuries. And they just chose to ignore it,
hoping it would go away. And so it was about
solely business decisions to make money and to
preserve their company. I mean, if you think
about it, if you're an asbestos company and all
you do is make asbestos products and all of a
sudden people know. that it causes lung cancer
and asbestosis and other things, your business
is gone. Right. And so, you know, as a board
of directors, they're there to preserve the company.
And so they're not there to look after the workers.
That's the union's job. So what about the, when
you look kind of reverse engineer, the creation
of something was there. And I'll give you an
example. I just had a rub the lot on probably
about a year ago now. And he's the real lawyer
from the film Dark Waters. So it was the DuPont
chemicals that were poisoning the village. The
same chemicals are actually in our firefighter
gear and our firefighter foams. But, you know,
it seems like a lot of times there is a knowledge
early on, even almost in the research process,
that these are harmful. And yet they still release
them. So you're not even talking about protecting
a well -established business by that point. You
know, Oxycontin is another perfect example. So
what were you seeing? Was there acknowledgement
of these issues early, early on in the timeline
of a lot of these companies? Oh, absolutely.
And part of it is how the government, once the
government sort of found out and regulators are
always way, way behind the curve. And what they
did with asbestos was to say, well, let's just
limit the exposure to people. It's not like,
let's get rid of this product. It's like, let's
let people get exposed, but let's just tell them
that a little bit won't hurt them. And asbestos
went along. I mean, you can follow the regulatory
schemes across North America about how they regulated
asbestos. And then it was like, well, you can
get exposed to... 5 million particles per square
foot or whatever, right? And then went down and
down and down and down and down. And now they
realize, well, really no exposure is healthy.
But it's this combination of industry trying
to preserve their products and the government
playing along a little bit because the research
isn't there and saying, okay, well, you can still
use these dangerous things, but we'll just limit
how much people can get exposed to it. Yeah,
I know my last place, they did a big asbestos
mitigation. If I've got my story right, I don't
want to say where it was because I want to make
sure my facts are right. But there was a massive
asbestos mitigation from this large theme park
that was put into this area. I think that ended
up catching fire. And this is way before I worked
for them. And from what I understand, as one
of my firefighter partners who... retired you
know when i was there so that was the difference
in our our time in that department he'd been
hired on and i think all of his classmates were
on that fire and i think there was only like
two or three of them left from that class that
survived and this was not a department that usually
fought fire this was you know they're so well
sprinkled and so safe that it was just a medical
cause that went on which is why i think the sleep
deprivation is another huge contributor because
they weren't exposed to carcinogens normally
but that one asbestos fire They always talked
historically about how they thought that was
the root of so many of the cancers that killed
their friends. Right. Now, it's very interesting
because when I worked in the Appeal Division
where we saw these cases, so you would often
have widows would coming who filed appeals have
been in the system for a few years saying, I
think my husband's or my wife or my partner's
cancer was caused from their work. And so the
insurance companies have found different ways,
whether they're like in Canada, they're government
regulated. So it's basically the workers' comp
systems. They deal with it in different ways.
And so part of how we dealt with it in British
Columbia was we said, if you get mesothelioma,
which is a particular kind of cancer in the lungs,
and you've had any exposure to asbestos in your
career, then it's caused from your work. But
what's happened is where you have to litigate
it, go to court, it's a whole different set of
standards. And it forces widows and unions to
try to prove that their exposure was caused from
works. Very difficult, very difficult proposition.
And so they end up doing, and what they did in
the States was, and I worked with Ron Motley.
And a huge firm out of South Carolina that really
started all the asbestos litigation. And they
looked at not just one individual, but they looked
at thousands and thousands and thousands and
thousands of workers and filed lawsuits with
thousands of plaintiffs. So that the picture
you could see, the clear picture that out of
all of these thousands of people, look at all
the disease that starts. Not just one guy fighting
the companies, it's thousands and thousands and
thousands of workers fighting together. And they
were very successful in doing that. Well, I think
this is the problem. Firstly, the American Fire
Service is so fragmented. And I don't know if
you've discovered that in your time down here
or up there. But certainly down here, it's very
fragmented. Counties and cities don't talk to
each other sometimes, and it's ridiculous. But
then you have the states as well. So some states
will have a cancer presumption. But even for
only certain things, like I just had a guest
on who had breast cancer, career female firefighter.
But because it was diagnosed when she hit 40,
they were like, well, it doesn't fit the criteria
now. Well, she hadn't slept every third day for,
you know, whatever. She'd been exposed to all
these things. And then I hear these horror stories
and it's so nauseating of responders that actually,
you know, are in a state that has presumption.
And the insurance companies will just fight it.
And it's been said from people within circles
that they've heard people say, oh, no, we just
keep fighting it because they'll die before they'll
ever get a penny, which is nauseating. Yeah,
it happens all the time. And then, yeah, no,
it's sad. And I mean, part of it is this sort
of acceleration of, we're talking about sleep
and fatigue and those kinds of things. is more
and more people are working longer and longer
hours. And there's less and less research actually
going on, being funded to look at those kinds
of issues. And probably the biggest sleep and
fatigue research lab in the world is in Washington
State University. And they've got all these simulation
labs. They do, quite frankly, really amazing
work around there. But they're one small group.
The U .S. military does a lot of research. you
know, the research out of that. And a lot of
research around sleep and fatigue is scattered
everywhere. And you find it in ergonomics journals,
you find it in all kinds of things all over the
world. And so it's really hard to kind of pull
a lot of those pieces together. But you know,
it's, it's one of the things that bothers me
a little bit about all the discussion around
sleep and fatigue is that people tend to, Treat
poor sleep as a disease. And poor sleep is not
a disease. Poor sleep is a symptom. And it's
a symptom of many different things. It's a symptom
of mental health issues. It's a symptom of work
scheduling. It's a symptom of other biological
diseases. And so lifestyle issues. And so what's
happened is they don't really. It's very difficult
when somebody has a sleep issue to be able to
figure out what the cause of that is. Is it mental
health or is it a combination of all of these
things? I've worked with minors in Australia
who are obese, who have sleep apnea, who work
terrible, terrible work schedules, have terrible
diets. And they're not sleeping and they're at
high risk of having a heart attack. And so what's
the cause of that? Well, everything. Yeah. Well,
it's a vicious circle, isn't it? Because once
your hormones start getting disrupted, now you're
creating a less healthy human. And we're told,
well, just sleep when your day is off. Well,
as you just pointed out, when I was 21, I probably
could. But now I'm 35 and I've been on shifts
for 15 years. And like you said, I've gained
weight. I now need a sleep app. My sleep quality
is going to be so much worse because of the breakdown
from my sleep deprivation. Right. And I think
the missing component of all of this is education.
Really educating early on firefighters, first
responders about sleep and fatigue so they understand
how their own body even works. When I deal with
professional athletes on teams, I said the people
you need to educate are the players in the junior
teams because they need to be educated before
they get here. For me, try to change the sleep
habits of a guy that's making $10 million a year
and got there doing what he was doing. He's not
going to change very much. He's not going to
listen to me. But it's the young guys and the
young women who are coming up who really need
to be taught that. It's not taught in schools.
They teach nutrition in school. They teach visual
education in school. They teach cooking in school.
They don't teach anything about sleep. And so
I think that there's a huge gap in our society
around that issue. No, absolutely. I want to
get into that because I think the front door
is really where we force change. But you talked
about the tragedy that really opened your eyes
to the sleep deprivation element. I have had
so many guests from the U .S. military when it
comes to the sleep research side because that
is a wealth of information that I can draw on
because my own industry refuses to really put
any money in that whatsoever. And Alison Brager
is from the U .S. Army. told me that they were,
I think it was, was it Fort Bragg? It was one
of the forts anyway, where they were doing some
of the, I believe it was a special forces selection.
So obviously the candidates are staying up all
night. Therefore, a lot of the cadre are up in
these weird hours. And it was up in somewhere
that was, I think it was North Carolina, so somewhat
mountainous. And they were literally having people
drive off the side of the mountain, the instructors,
because they were so fatigued. So talk to me
about... you know you the impact that losing
your nephew had and then let's walk through your
journey into you know really even the the front
door of sleep research where it was when you
entered and then where we are today sure and
just to back up a little bit it's interesting
you mentioned fort bragg i actually did a fair
bit of uh teaching there around sleep and fatigue
issues and also uh for dietrich with the the
us army medical medical corps there and one of
the things that they changed And was in special
forces, they had this notion that you could actually
sleep harden people so you can teach people to
be awake long hours and survive. They finally
realized you can't. And so they actually gave
up on that, that whole concept and are now actually
basically teaching people how to get. good sleep
when they can. It's a completely different mindset.
But the old mindset, we'll just harden these
people, we'll teach them how to stay awake, doesn't
work. So certainly in my journey with my nephew,
and he was like 22 years old, and he didn't even
drink coffee, didn't drink alcohol, didn't drink
coffee, just a good kid, good basketball player.
In fact, he had, when Steve Nash was a playing
in the U .S., my nephew was, he created basketball
programs in his community for little kids. And
they actually named a sports court for him, which
is still active today, basketball court for little
kids, which is the first time they ever did it
for a 22 -year -old kid. So he had a, you know,
he had a, it was a great kid, had a, you know,
had a lot of involvement in the community as
well. And so, I mean, not only his uncle, but
always his godfather as well. And so, he had
this emotional feeling, obviously, when somebody
dies too close, and shock for somebody young,
not expected. But then you sit back and say,
why was he awake for so long? And one of the
things that I learned after a while is that falling
asleep is actually fairly unusual around sleep
issues. Because there's this huge period of time
before you fall asleep where your faculties aren't
up to par, right? Sleep's not an on -off switch.
You're not awake, you're asleep. There's this
huge period of time. And then even when you wake
up and get sleep inertia. So we learned around
those kinds of things. And one of the other sort
of analogies I learned around this is we probably
all played this little game. Kids sit around
and all hold our breath. See who can hold their
breath the longest. And finally, everybody starts
breathing. What's happening there is your brain
allows you to control your sleep or your breath,
which is actually a good thing in sports and
other things you can control. But your brain
will only allow you to control it consciously
for a period of time. And when you get to a point
where there's not enough oxygen in your brain,
your brain just takes over and say, sorry, you're
being stupid. You need to breathe. And it'll
force you to breathe. And sleep is exactly the
same way. You know, your brain will allow you
to stay awake. And some of that may be, you know,
sort of a survival thing, but allow you to stay
awake for even long periods of time. But you'll
reach a point where your brain goes, sorry, I
need to shut down. We need some repair work here.
And it'll put you to sleep no matter what you're
doing, whether you're watching television or
flying a plane or whatever you're doing, it'll
put you to sleep. And so we can control. certain
aspects of our sleep, but you pay a price for
it. Once you start fighting that, you pay a health
price for it, you pay a safety price for it,
and you pay a performance price for it. And all
of those kinds of prices depend on what uniform
you're wearing, right? If you're super sleep
deprived and you're watching television, you
fall asleep, there's probably not too much harm.
But if you're having to make decisions about
people's lives, or you're flying a plane or driving
a train, there's big consequences. And so we
tend to see the kind of things you see on the
news are the big accidents. You don't see all
the small accidents. And so because it doesn't
involve a lot of people. And that's been a real
challenge for accident investigators to look
at how much. What component of an accident was
actually associated with sleep? We had an accident
here. Literally, I can walk down five minutes
from my house where a small plane crashed trying
to land at the airport. And it had taken off.
It had flown out. And it was losing oil. And
it tried to circle back and couldn't quite make
it to the airport and crashed. And so they had
this big investigation. And all of it was about...
firefighting actually on the on the plane and
fire suppression and the materials the real cause
of the accident if you read the report was that
the maintenance guy who changed the oil on the
plane on night shift had cross -threaded the
oil cap and his supervisor didn't even pick it
up who's supposed to check on those things and
it went off and of course the oil leaked off
so what they should have been looking at was
The sleep history of the guy who made the poor
decision, the mechanic who made the poor decision,
and they didn't do it. They didn't even look
at it. They ignored it. And that's very true.
I've seen that with police officers and car accidents
and others, is unless you fall asleep, they don't
want to know about it. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Just
jump in because I wanted to ask you that. So
we have what's called line of duty deaths. And
a lot of times. Someone will fall from the aerial,
a 110 -foot ladder, or there'll be very commonly
an intersection crash. Someone will go through.
And more recently, when I'm asking some of these
sleep medicine experts, they talk about micro
-sleeps. So every time this has been investigated,
oh, they made a mistake, they should have stopped,
or, you know, oh, they just fell, or they just
got lost in the fire. The more I learn about
this side, the more I question, and the same
would be attached to the gray area of involved
shootings. We have the ones where we completely
screw up. That's, you know, that's not even in
contention. We have the ones where it's a justified
shoot, also not in contention. But the kid that
reaches for his driver's license and he thinks
he's going for a gun, you know, all these ones,
all these mistakes. How often have we brought
in sleep deprivation into this conversation?
Rarely. And that's one of the things I like the
research done that Brian Viola has done. I said
at Washington State University, it's V -I -L
-A. He's got some great books, some great research
in that area. And it's still being continued
even though he's retired. They don't because
it's too hard. One of the things that... I've
used in accident investigations is a U .S. Air
Force and U .S. Army technology software where
it's called, it's a couple different names. One's
called SAFTE, which is our Fast Fatigue Avoidance
Scheduling Tool. So what it is, it's you put
in a sleep history of someone for the previous
at least 72 hours, and it will tell you pretty
accurately the range of that person's reaction
time. And it's used now by virtually every airline
in North America is built into their scheduling
systems to try to make sure that the pilots are
getting the sleep that they need. And if the
schedules are too fatiguing, it'll kick them
out. But I've used that technology a lot. So
I can tell you, for example. If there's that
kind of incident, for example, you're talking
about when somebody gets shot, you go back and
look at the 72 -hour or longer sleep history
of that person. And I can tell you pretty accurately
what range, how much change in their reaction
time was there. So I can tell if they've lost
50 % of their reaction time or 25 % of their
reaction time. The Federal Railroad Administration
has done some really, really good research showing
with that software, showing at what point can
you now attribute that to an accident. So the
technology is there. It's just not widely used.
So we have one of the shifts. I think we talked
about it on the phone a while ago. So one of
the things that's maddening to me is the 56 -hour
workweek. play around with it so rather than
do 24 48 which is you know we have three platoons
three shifts a b and c so that means that i'm
on then b is on then c is on then i come back
again and so now they'll be like oh well actually
let's do a 48 96 so now i work 48 hours without
sleep but then i get four days off spinning the
rubix cube but the rubix cube is never smaller
and this is the problem is that there's no no
conversation at all like why are we working our
responders the amount of hours per week why are
we not giving them more time off in between shifts
to allow them to get as close to you know normal
again as we can talk to me about you know i know
i know we're kind of you know just spitballing
a little bit but when we hear about sleep deprivation
i hear the same statistic 24 hours without sleep
is like blood alcohol 0 .1 which is a great stat
but i'm assuming those people in those studies
had slept well prior to that now they're talking
about men and women that haven't slept for 20
30 years what cognitively would be the decline
if you happen to kind of punch in the numbers
if someone had been on a 48 hour shift A lot
of our emergent calls happen at night, whether
it's bad car crashes, fires, etc. So let's say
40 hours, 42 hours into a 48 -hour shift with
no sleep. What would be the increase in likelihood
for mistakes in the meds that we push? Huge.
I'd have to put it through the software to give
you the exact number, but the technology exists.
And so what you do is you put in... And it's
not just the sleep duration, but it's sleep quality.
And often sleep quality is more important than
sleep duration. And so one of the things we did
with that sleep watch that I invented, created,
was to import that software into the sleep. So
you could wear a watch, much like a Fitbit or
anything, but it also puts it through that software.
And it'll give you a real -time fatigue score.
And it'll tell you, you can look at the, they're
available, commercially available today. You
look at it and it'll tell you not only what your
fatigue score is, but if you don't get any more
sleep, it'll tell you where you hit the point
where you're at a serious accident risk. The
problem with industry using that technology is,
particularly in your area, what do you do with
somebody who's mid -shift and they're saying,
you know, in two hours, you're just way too tired.
to be doing anything. You're at a high risk of
an accident. So I just, I've had a lot of discussions
with Brian Vell over this. Him and I used to
travel literally all over the world. We lectured
together in Malaysia and all over North America.
Is insurance liability. Employers don't want
to know. Even though the technology exists to
measure this in real time and to help people,
they don't want to know. Because if they know,
they have to take action. And they're short staffed
and they don't want to take action. And it's
one more thing on their plate. So they'd rather
be like the monkeys with their hands over the
eyes and ears and the mouth and do nothing and
download all of the responsibility to the individuals.
And that's one of the discussions we had around
police officers, particularly in L .A. that Brian
had worked with, is they saying, we don't mind
if you use these watches, but it's your responsibility.
We don't want to know what the results are. So
I want to put something to you. A person, especially
a person who spends certain days of the week
in a religious building and then comes out with
goodness in their heart, you would assume that
they would be deeply invested in the well -being
of their people. Let's say hypothetically that
isn't enough in the world. It is for me, but
a lot of people that I've met that run these
organizations, that doesn't seem to be enough,
which blows my mind. firefighter funerals is
what made me start this podcast that's how horrendous
i think that it is to lose someone so the other
side is i keep hearing people well you got to
show the financial savings you have such a unique
perspective in all these litigations the shortcuts
that were made at the expense of the health and
even the lives of the employees talk to me about
if is that a false economy And if so, is it actually
better to invest in your people properly? Would
that actually save the business a lot of money
longitudinally as well? Oh, great question. I
think you hit the nail on the head here, which
is it actually does save money and it saves lives.
In fact, the origin of that software I talked
to you about that Steve Hirsch created when he
was with the Pentagon was designed initially.
as an economic tool to show the military that
they can actually save money by reducing fatigue
levels. It didn't come out back. It didn't come
out. It wasn't invented initially as a risk mitigation
tool. It was invented as an economic tool to
show them they could save money. And so, yeah,
that's the whole purpose of it. But a lot of
it is just... quite frankly, flat out ignorance
on the part of people who get to make these decisions.
Because particularly in competitive industries,
they look around, I don't want to do anything
because my competitors aren't going to do it.
And I'm just going to cost me money. And so I'm
going to lose out. I see that in the trucking
industry all the time. The trucking industry
across North America works on very small margins.
And one trucking company is not going to do very
much around sleep and fatigue. because it costs
them money and they have to compete with the
guys that aren't doing it. And so you get regulators
in there who are trying to regulate it. And quite
frankly, they're doing a very poor job of it.
As a regulator myself in the past, you try to
make things easy for yourself. And so you create
these hard, hard boundaries. It's like speed
limits. You cross this boundary, you broke the
law. And that just doesn't work very well for
sleep and fatigue issues because a lot of it
involves training. A lot of it involves personal
medical issues for people. How do you do sleep
screening? Do you do mental health screening?
How do you help these people? It doesn't matter
what schedules you put in. If somebody's got
sleep apnea, even if they do work in day shift,
they're at high risk. And so it really starts
with dealing with individuals as human beings
and saying, we're going to, put you through these
stresses of working night shift, which is fighting
against your biology. But let's get you in the
best shape we can to do that. And let's minimize
the risk as we go on. So let's do sleep screening.
Let's give you education. Let's do mental health
screening. Let's do some monitoring with you.
Let's put some resources in there to help you.
They just don't do that. They're not there yet.
Yeah. And I think with the resources, it's just
simply manpower, you know, or person power, whatever
the term is these days. But it's money. Yeah,
yeah. But that's the thing. So when you again,
when I love that phrase, and I always butcher
the term, but something like plant the seed of
a tree under which the shade you'll never know.
And the problem is what I see in the fire service,
that's all I know, as far as you know, intimately,
is that person, whether in the city or county
council, whether they're in the chief position,
they want to look good in that budget year, they
want their Christmas bonus or whatever they're
getting that no one else sees. And so they're
not investing long term. Whereas if you simply
just invested in your people up front, 10 years
from now, people will be talking about you with
folklore. Like, oh, you know, Jennifer or Steve,
they revolutionized our department and it was
a brave choice. And actually they were lauded
for it at the time. But now everyone's loving
it because not only... Are our people so much
healthier and the mental health crisis come down
and we've got to fit a workforce. But now we've
got extra budgets to reopen fire stations and
buy more engines. Yeah. And I think some of it
is sort of one size doesn't fit all. So every,
in my experience, fire stations are sort of like
almost like different little companies. In British
Columbia, and this is built into the law, and
it's called the Fire Services Act, the employers
can employ firefighters by working them two 10
-hour days followed by two 14 -hour nights, which
has always been the schedule here. The other
alternative is they're allowed to rework 24 -hour
shifts. And now they're starting to go to 24
-hour shifts, which is being pushed by a lot
of the firefighters. And in some fire halls,
it's a great idea. And in some, it's a terrible
idea. And so an example is I've done some work
here at our airport here, the YVR airport here,
and they have their own firefighting groups.
They virtually don't get called out at night.
There's virtually no calls at night. So working
24 -hour shifts is great for them because they've
got beds. They just sleep at night. It's like
working day shift, but you're sleeping there
instead of at home. It's a great idea rather
than jerking them around with their circadian
rhythms, working 10 -hour days here and 14 -hour
nights. It's a way better system. But for other
fire halls where they get called out a lot because
a lot of them are first responders in downtown,
it's a terrible idea. These guys are awake 24
hours and not sleeping and driving home. And
we know that they're a high risk. for accidents.
In fact, in New Jersey, and if you know this,
it's a criminal offense to be awake 24 hours
and drive. Oh, really? Yeah. So how the hell
do the firefighters get home? Yeah, good question.
It's called Maggie's Law. No, no, absolutely.
And it's because they know that if you're awake
for 24 hours, you likely have the reaction time
of somebody that's 0 .1 alcohol. So just to bring
a solution, because this is the one thing that
the sleep medicine world seems to agree with
is We have beds in the station. As you said,
the quality of sleep, very poor, because as I
always give the analogy, imagine someone holding
those orchestra cymbals above your head and then
said, I'm going to smash them in your ear, or
I might not, who knows. You're not going to get
that deep quality. But if you had an extra 24
hours in between your shifts, so the 24 hour,
one day on, two days off, which is very poorly
labeled, 2448, it would be a 2472. So my whole
observation is, You're not bouncing around from
day to night, day to night, which clearly seems
to be horrendous because you can see the physical
of our cops and nurses and doctors. But you give
these responders one more day, which brings it
down to a 42 hour work week. And that's what
blows me away is the people in the offices making
these decisions go home at 40 hours. But the
people that they're telling to stay in the station,
as we said, is 48, 56 and beyond. All economic
decisions. Yeah. So again, investing in your
people. Yeah, no, absolutely. And understanding
that, you know, it's like saying, I don't want
to spend any money to take the asbestos out of
this building. I'll just let these guys work
here. You don't want to deal, you don't understand
the risk. Or if you do, you don't want to do
anything about it. So I want to flip it around
completely. We've talked about kind of deficits
from sleep deprivation. You work in the sports
world as well. Like you said, a lot of the main
arenas that everyone's familiar with and all
these different sports. Talk to me about what
you bring to those athletes and what are you
seeing as far as the correlation between sleep
and then performance and also injury mitigation
as well? Yeah, it's very interesting. The leagues
are all different. So in the National Football
League, they play now 17 games, not at night,
once a week. But in the teams that I've worked
with, I work for the Seahawks and work with some
East Coast teams as well, is, again, it's education.
So once you sit down the management and the players
and the coaches and say, OK, here's how sleep
is affecting your reaction time. When you get
back after Monday night football. You fly back
to Seattle or wherever you fly back to LA. Why
are you getting them up at six in the morning
for meetings? Oh, we've always done it that way.
Well, don't do it that way. Like you have options.
So it's, so some of those things are, are, are
easier in the NBA and in national hockey league,
they play 82 games, 41 in the road, 41 at home.
And they play a lot of back -to -back games.
And so we know the players are going to lose
sleep, those back -to -back games. So there are,
things that the team can do and the players can
do to mitigate that. One of the things we did,
we went through the schedule with the Canucks,
for example, every year, and we figured out which
of those back -to -back games where they had,
we're not going to get much sleep because they
had to finish one game at 10, 11 o 'clock at
night. You have to load up, pack up all your
stuff, get on a plane, fly to the next city,
get to the hotel, get to sleep, get up and play
a game the next day. So one of the things that
we did was we worked with the entire team. We
worked with the PR people. We worked with, because
the players have to get press interviews after
the game. We worked with the players. We worked
with the equipment guys, which is the slow part,
having to gather up all this equipment and get
it on a plane, get it on a bus, get it to the
plane and get it out. So coordinating all of
those kinds of activities in the past, it would
be after the game is over, it's often three hours
before they're in the air. We got it down to
an hour. So it gave the players two extra hours
of sleep during, and it made a huge difference,
huge difference in their performance. You could
see it in the, even the management said, this
gave us five extra wins a year to do that. So
there are, NBA is a bit different. Although the
schedules are the same, the NBA tends to play
the same five, six, seven, eight players all
game. Right. So physically, it's just a different
game, but they have a lot of the same issues.
These guys aren't getting to sleep till two or
three o 'clock in the morning having to get up
and play. The research around injuries is kind
of interesting. There really isn't. I think intuitively
people think that injury, that if you're sleep
deprived as an NBA player or whatever, there's
going to be increased injuries. The problem is
we know that's true in industry, but we're not
sure about sports yet. There's very little research
because they just don't do that kind of research
in professional sports. And so we don't really
know. People say, yeah, we think there is, but
we certainly know in industry. Higher fatigue,
results in higher accident risks. There's great
studies done by the railroad industry, airline
industry, military to show that that's the case.
Just not sure how that translates into sports
yet because it's just certainly different activities.
But yeah, the biggest selling point, I think,
in professional sports is changing your reaction
time. So we can tell, you know, if you're not
sleeping well, you have poor reaction time. And
we know, and my experience in professional sports
is that the players that don't sleep well don't
have very long careers. You know, and we see
that a lot. And we also know that they don't
perform very well. I've got, I studied all. 23
players for seven years. Some players obviously
rotated out, followed their sleep, looked at
their reaction time fatigue. I can tell you that
the 30 % worst sleepers on the team were the
30 % worst players on the team. I think that's
so important. Firstly, I think the injury...
What I've seen in our professions is that chronic
sleep deprivation, because when you are not only
do you have the cognition side and making the
mistakes as far as proprioception and where you're
literally putting your limbs, but also you grow,
you repair when you sleep. So you've got this
chronic breakdown. So that makes perfect sense
that you don't see as much in the sporting world.
One thing that, again, there's a kind of resistance
to accepting is that we are tactical athletes.
We're not sporting athletes. We're not doing
a certain group of movements to an extremely
high level. But especially in the fire service
with Jack of all trades, master of none. But
with the law enforcement and you talk about reaction
times, that could literally be shooting the right
person, shooting the wrong person, getting your
shot off before someone tries to kill you. So
these are, you know, these are. parameters i
think are extremely important to be discussed
in the first responder professions absolutely
that's why i'd encourage people to read brian
bill's research it's really um really great stuff
around around around that but but there's a big
difference too between professional athletes
and first responders and firefighters is recovery
if you're a professional athlete i work i work
with one guy makes 17 million dollars a year
He doesn't have to do the things around the house
that we do. He should come home. He has help.
He gets the summers off. He gets lots of days
off to recover, even though they do a lot of
travel. They live a life of luxury. They have
lots of time to recover. You're a firefighter
and looking after a family. I've worked with
firefighters who are single moms or single dads.
and having to not only try to get to sleep or
in profession, but, you know, juggling their
kids back and forth between their acts and those
kinds of things. So there's a lot, a lot of differences
between, you know, the stresses put on by firefighters
and then there is on professional athletes. Yeah,
you were literally preaching to the choir because
when I first went through my divorce, I was going
through paramedic school as well. So I was doing
a 24 -hour shift, getting off shift, going to
sit in the classroom for eight hours, you know,
again, getting my son, getting him off to school
again, then going to do a clinical in a hospital
or ride with the local fire department as a paramedic,
rinse and repeat. So, I mean, the chance of recovery
while still trying to be a good parent with the
emotional trauma of a divorce. I would say was
probably a little different than a sporting superstar.
Right. And that's one of the things I talk about
when we educate. whether it's firefighters or
athletes or whoever is to understand that poor
sleep is not a disease right it's a symptom and
it could be a symptom of a lot of different things
in your case there's you know stresses um you
know and and you know um those things lead to
mental health issues there's sleep disorders
or for 100 different sleep disorders and people
don't even screen for them so the biggest challenge
i think around all of this is saying you know
as an individual what are the stressors what
is it if i'm not sleeping well what's causing
it well i want to get I'm sorry, I didn't mean
to step on you there. I want to get to what you're
actually bringing to my community. But one thing
I want to hit on because Michael Gervais brought
it up and it was a great question. And it's something
I've observed in myself. And I've been out the
fire service now for four and a half years. And
I just went on a round the world kind of research
slash fundraising thing with a bunch of special
operations people. And got to recreate what would
be the emotional, physical stress and then the
sleep deprivation, circadian rhythm changes that
are exposed to a lot of our men and women in
uniform. And it put me way back. And it really
was very haunting as I was like, my God, that
was such a great way of me seeing how much more
acute that felt from a well -rested state. go
to sleep every night to what i perceived i was
then so michael asked you about baseline and
can the brain trick you into thinking you're
okay when you're actually way below par and so
i want to revisit that question because that's
pertinent to so many people listening that's
actually a great question and the short answer
is yes um there's a wonderful research um out
of again washington state university bay hans
van donaghan and others and there's some similar
work done by blinky and others is, is to show
that. So with basically what they did was put
large groups of people into a sleep lab so they
could monitor their sleep with, with polysomnography.
So brainwave technology, you know exactly what's
going on with these people. And every few hours
they had to take what's called a reaction test,
simple reaction tests. So it's called a PVTs
psychomotor vigilant task. So a little light
shows up and you hit a button. So it's, it's,
it's, you can fake being. Bad, but you can't
fake being good. It's a reaction. So they knew
how long people slept and how well they slept.
And they knew exactly what their reaction time
was while they're awake. And so they did a couple
of things. One is they just changed how many
hours they were allowed to sleep. And they could
show them exactly that the difference between
four, six and eight hours of sleep made a huge
difference in their reaction time. But what they
did as well is when they took the reaction time,
it was a black box in the sense that the person
who took the test didn't know what their score
was. So they would ask them subjectively, how
do you feel? And so for the first couple of days,
particularly when they lowered the number of
sleep hours, again, the first couple of days,
the subjects would say, you know, yeah, I'm feeling
a little bit under the weather, a little bit
tired. But after a couple of days, At that level,
they said, you know, I feel okay. I feel normal,
right? And the term has been referred to as renorming.
So your brain renorms and four or six hours sleep
feels normal. And I get that all the time, professional
athletes, but I feel good. I said, take a reaction
test. You know, there's a difference between
how you feel and how you can perform. And so,
no, you're absolutely right, is your brain can
trick you into thinking. And we hear that. I
say that all the time. People with sleep apnea.
So we know they're getting probably less than
four hours sleep a night. And their brain's foggy.
They don't even know it. And then they get a
CPAP machine. And almost overnight, they're getting
eight hours of sleep or seven or eight hours
of sleep. And it's like this fog clears out of
the brain the way they describe it. So it makes
a huge difference in their lives. Kirk Parsley,
who's a Navy SEAL turned physician, was talking
about the sleep deprivation itself can cause
almost like a lack of muscularity in the larynx
that can then lead to sleep apnea. And so what
I've seen in the fire service is, and I joke
about this a lot, a lot of our dorms now look
like the bar in Star Wars. There's so many hoses
and masks around everywhere, which is great.
But I still see that as... a band -aid not getting
to the root of the problem so what are you seeing
as far as because i mean cpaps are obviously
huge now in americans is is that something that
someone is doomed to have the rest of their life
or can that improve sleep along with weight loss
actually get to where they don't need that anymore
right so first of all one of the things i like
to say is that nothing good comes from poor sleep
And sleep apnea is one of about 100 different
sleep disorders. But it's kind of the poster
child for it. And the reason it is, is because
somebody invented a CPAP machine and they get
to sell them like crazy. Sometimes they overprescribe
them because they, quite frankly, and I talk
about this in my book, they get kickbacks is
the right word, but they get a benefit for prescribing
it. And so sometimes that's overprescribed and
I don't often follow the people. And so there
are different causes of sleep apnea. And we're
talking about, and so some of them are just jaw
structure. I talked to the head of our sleep
research here out at the University of British
Columbia. And he told me that a lot of his patients
now are actually middle -aged Asian women because
of their jaw structure. And it's their jaw structure
as they age that's causing sleep apnea. versus,
which we see in the National Football League
as well, obesity, which, again, it closes off
your throat. Those things can be dealt with.
And there are laser treatments that can be dealt
with. So there are many causes of sleep apnea,
and some of them are more curable than others,
and they don't all need CPAP machines. So with
that kind of... No, the vicious circle is the
wrong way, but getting to the nucleus of an issue,
what I'm seeing is it's kind of like the hypertension
drugs. Well, you're going to be on this forever.
Your psychiatric meds. Well, you know, you're
stuck with Obutrin now. It is what it is. To
me, if you are able to address someone's poor
sleep, whatever, and the CPAP happens to work.
I would hope there'll be a conversation just
like with prescription medication. The goal is
to get you off this in X amount of months, a
year, whatever it is. So talk to me about the
actual application. What are some of the things
that people can do once they start sleeping better
to improve the chances of not needing to be strapped
to a machine when they go to bed anymore? Right.
So that's having a clear understanding of why
you're wearing it to begin with and what was
causing your sleep apnea. And so you can go from
there. Certainly, weight loss, anything that
you can do to improve your health, proper diet,
proper exercise. But I think you're right. Once
people get on a regime, whether it's a CPAP machine
or whatever it is, they tend not to move from
it. And part of it is, at least in Canada as
well, is we have very few sleep physicians. sleep
specialists, very difficult to get to see them.
And so once you're on a regime, you're basically
left alone. Most general practitioners across
North America have very little sleep experience
or education. And so what they do is they give
you a little pill to take, right, or prescribe
a sleep CPAP machine or send you over to get
a polysomnography done. Get some PSG to see what's
causing that. And I've seen tons and tons of
those reports. And a lot of these... And I talk
about this in my book. So when sleep became a
thing in the 60s and 70s, people said... So these
sleep clinics popped up all over North America.
And they weren't regulated. And so the pulmonologist
jumped in there. And a lot of them, basically
what they're prescribed is CPAP machines. All
they're doing is looking for sleep apnea when
there's like 90 other things, including mental
health stuff. So it's very difficult to find
physicians that are able to look more holistically
at what's going on with your sleep. So you're
right. Once you get on a regime, they go, oh,
you've got sleep apnea. Here I have this machine.
We see in 30 years. And so there really isn't
that kind of follow -up that you do sometimes
see with drugs. When we were talking and you
were saying exactly that, what kept resonating
in my mind is I haven't met a single person that
came back from a sleep study that said anything
other than, oh, they said I stopped breathing
2 ,500 times. That was the problem. And you're
looking at them going, well, Brian, you're also
70 pounds overweight and you drink Mountain Dew
17 times a day and you've got all these other
things going on. I don't think that is the thing.
If that was even truly what you were saying,
because some of these apneic periods, I mean,
did you breathe at all? Did you have one breath
the whole hour? Because these numbers you're
giving me are pretty crazy. So that's why I question,
as you said, some of the science. Are they being
given the holistic picture? And I heard you talk
about this with Michael, and this is something
I've observed with wellness in general. When
I studied to be a paramedic when I was doing
my exercise physiology in college, We broke down
the body into the renal system, respiratory,
cardiac, etc. And that's, I think, how we've
devolved in medicine. We forget that we are part
of this beautiful, interactive physiology and
nothing is a standalone. Again, I talk about
this in my book, is that what's happened in the
evolution of medicine, particularly in the Western
world, is it's become specialized. So there are
eye doctors and ear doctors and heart doctors
and feet doctors and hand doctors. But humans
are not a bunch of jigsaw puzzles all taped together.
We're an integrated system, and one part affects
the other. So one of the reasons I'm a huge fan
is one of the reasons I spent a few years working
with Dr. Maurice Ohayan at Stanford. He runs
the Stanford Sleep. epidemiology research center
and he has artificial intelligence systems that
um he he had this out you know 10 years before
ai was even a thing and he's used and it's very
i i just absolutely in love with the program
you can talk you'll talk to this computer for
half an hour 45 minutes and it can diagnose sleep
disorders mental health issues organic diseases
all based on symptomology So what he told me
was when you go see your doctor, they're basically
doing the same thing. So they're trying to figure
out what your symptoms are. They pretty much
know what's going on. They send you for tests
to try to confirm it. This computer program is
highly, highly accurate. And it's amazing because
it says, you know, which I went through it. So
I have what's called positional sleep apnea.
So which means I can't sleep on my back. If I
do, then I wake up with sleep apnea, so I have
to sleep on my side. So there's those kinds of
different forms. And it'll also diagnose depression,
ADHD, whatever you have. Mental health, it gives
you a picture of what's going on totally within
your system. And he's used it for epidemiological
studies all over the world. longtime professor
at Stanford University. This guy is a medical
doctor. He's a psychiatrist, neurologist, and
he has PhDs in biology, mathematics, and computer
science. Oh, so he struggled in school then.
Yeah, he's a slow learner. But putting these
things together, but again, you know, and I've
talked to him. I said, why can't individuals?
And he has allowed me to access this for athletes,
individual athletes. which has been a great lifesaver
for them because we can tell right away, like
what's going on with, with some high level athletes
is, is the medical profession are scared to death
of him because on that system, because it takes
away, it's essentially you can get on the computer
and, and, and get diagnosed and you don't need
to jump and see 10 different specialists. And
so the technology is, is evolving. And our society
will change. But my view of this is that a lot
of these things, including the medical profession,
are engaged in their businesses. And so they
have huge economic interests and not changing
very much. So you have these sleep labs that
prescribe CPAP machines. They're not going to
change. His system will diagnose your sleep apnea
in 20 minutes talking to the computer, which
is more accurate than the current systems are
using for a few hundred dollars instead of a
few thousand dollars. But again, it's all economics.
And unfortunately, in the medical profession,
it's really gotten entrenched into older technology.
That's amazing because that's what we are really.
We're trying to critically think by regurgitating.
things that we've learned. But rather than being
threatened by that, what an incredible tool that
we could use alongside the human diagnosis and
actually allow us to, for example, the physicians,
to actually spend the time with the patient.
Because this is the problem I see. I mean, we
demonize medicine a little bit. And obviously,
there's elements of medicine that is incredibly
successful in trauma surgery and pre -hospital
medicine. And there's drugs that work phenomenally
well to save lives every single day. but our
doctors get this minute window with these people,
so they end up being this kind of prescription
pad. So imagine if we could combine the factual
critical thinking element through AI with the
human bedside manner element of the doctors of
yesteryear again, we could maybe kind of revolutionize
medicine rather than be threatened by it. Absolutely.
So what happens when you go to see your GP, they
have to... not only figure out what's going on
with you, diagnose you, and then prescribe some
treatment. But one of the things we experimented
with a bit at Stanford was where doctors would
ask their patients to go online, give them some,
we gave them some codes. They could go on, they'd
go through that system. So when they showed up
at the doctor, the doctor already knew what was
wrong with the guy or woman, right? They already
knew the diagnosis and say, would ask a few questions
to confirm it, but then they could spend their
time on treatment. Love it. Yeah, I've just been
exposed to I've been told literally, James, if
you don't get into AI right now, a year from
now, you're going to be left in the dust. So
I just bought a program to do to help with this
side, you know, but that is the future. And obviously,
when we hear of AI, we see creepy robots and
all that kind of stuff. But there's so many applications
where it can collate all the wisdom, hopefully
ancient wisdom as well, and be an adjunct to
the human side, not a replacement for it. Right.
And part of it is breaking down the longtime
barriers between the medical profession about
who can do what. Right. And so we're starting
to see because of, you know, certainly in Canada,
we have we don't have enough physicians. And
so they're getting nurses to do some of the work
that doctors used to do where they're doing.
We're getting pharmacists to do some of the work
that doctors used to do. So they're slowly starting
to break down some of these. these, you know,
artificial barriers where everybody, you know,
and they're within their profession, they can
only do certain things. So now in certainly in
British Columbia, pharmacists can prescribe certain
drugs by themselves. You don't have to go see
a doctor because you can't find doctor either.
So it's, it's, it's coming. It's, it's slow.
And part of it is, and one of the fear in the
medical profession, and I have a little bit of
this fear as well, people who self -diagnose.
without getting sort of an outside opinion. And
that's one of the things that I think the folks
at Stanford were worried about too. You don't
want to go through the system and have a computer
tell you you're bipolar. You need some counseling.
You need some guidance. So if you have sort of
self -diagnosis without treatment, it can be
a disaster. Yeah, we see that as paramedics.
It's called WebMD. People tell us they're dying
from goodness, whatever. All right. Well, then
you talked about, you know, the presentation
and the knowledge that you bring to the first
responder profession. So talk to me about what
people can find in the book, Inconvenient Sleep.
And then what are some of the pillars that you
discuss to the men and women in uniform? Well,
the book itself was really written out of my
frustration. And I co -wrote it with my daughter,
who's a sports lawyer and former athlete. is
really out of frustration trying to give some
baseline data and some understanding to coaches
and to athletes. We see people quoting all kinds
of research and they have no idea that the research
is just complete crap. Right. You know, it was
we should use these cold water baths. Well, you
know, it was done on, you know, five rugby players
in Brazil 20 years ago. I mean, it's that kind
of thing that that sleep research has exploded
and it's not all of it is good. So we try to
give them some guidelines around how to interpret
research and how to, you know, and what works
and what and what hasn't worked, you know, in
our experience. And again, education. In education
by itself, one of the analogies that we use with
professional athletes is I can go in and talk
to you about sleep, but that's like me going
in and talk to you about getting into shape and
then walking away. So here's all the great things
you need to get. It doesn't work with athletes,
right? You need to provide equipment. You need
to provide. hands -on training you need to provide
um some goals you need to help them monitor it
right if you want to get into shape you can do
that but with sleep basically walk in and say
yeah you need to get more sleep here so you do
it and you walk away right so i try to say you
need to start treating sleep like you treat physical
education right getting into shape and and and
you know that goes to the same thing about habits
so if you're a professional athlete you work
out for the most part year round Right. And we
see, we see, they don't get, we see that they
don't always get into the same kind of good sleep
lifestyle habits year round. Right. So we're
trying to say, you know, you want to make yourself
a good athlete and a sustainable career is you
need to treat your sleep habits exactly like
you treat your physical conditioning habits.
So that part of it, I'm sorry, I've forgotten
the second part of your question around the pillars
around, around First responders in the military.
And it really comes down to exactly the same
thing. It's treating sleep not as an adjunct
thing, but as a primary component of our health,
safety, and mental health. And to get into the
kinds of habits, I call it sleep resilience.
I have this argument all the time with other
people who do what I do in the profession, and
they call what's called sleep banking. So they
say to professional athletes and Olympic athletes,
you need to, before a big event, you need to
bank sleep. Well, you can't bank sleep. We're
all operating on a deficit anyway, so we ain't
banking anything. We're still trying to catch
up. No, no, but that's exactly right. So they
start with the premise that you don't get enough
sleep and they're saying, we're going to accept
that. We're not going to try to encourage you
to constantly get good sleep. We're just going
to accept your lifestyle or whatever's going
on. And so you need to just really focus in on
trying to get up, you know, catching up on your
sleep a week before an event. My argument is
you're tackling the problem the wrong way. You
need to start treating sleep, you know, if you
want sleep resilience so that, you know, even
if you're anxious the night before a game or
you miss some sleep, it's not going to overly
affect your performance. It's much like if you're
a professional athlete and you have to fly to
a game and you miss a workout, it's not going
to hurt your career that much, right? And so
we need to start treating sleep as exactly the
same way as a really important component of our...
Health, you know, health, safety and well -being.
And it's just not getting there yet. There's
all of these barriers, whether they're economic
barriers or historical barriers. I mean, all
of the schedule, particularly for firefighters
and police officers, all of that grew up way
before sleep research came up. So it's for me,
it's about education, getting people on the same
page and getting them to understand the issues.
So speaking of that, the term sleep hygiene obviously
comes up a lot. Talk to me about light, sound,
and temperature and any other areas that an individual
can control as well as hopefully being part of
the fight to improve their work week, which is
the other side. So you've got the environment
they can't control at the moment. What can they
control in their fire station and when they get
home? Right. Yeah, you can Google sleep hygiene.
There's a million things it tells you to do.
Most of them, I think, are a little questionable,
are certainly not based on science or based on
theory. One thing that is based on science is
controlling noise and controlling light and comfort,
comfortable bed. For me, my experience is, and
Dr. Caldwell from the US Air Force does the same
thing, it's about darkness. Because if you're
trying to sleep anywhere, because we're diurnal
animals, we're supposed to be sleeping while
it's dark out. And so managing darkness is probably
the most important thing you can do. So if you
wake up in the night, it's dark and go back to
sleep. You're not getting focused in on other
light issues. And so I said to him, what do you
mean by dark? Like how dark should dark be? He
says, if you can hold your hand a foot away from
your face and you can still see your hand, it's
not dark enough. So for me, it's made a huge
difference. Getting blackout blinds into my bedroom
is huge. So for me, sleep hygiene is managing
your lifestyle. So you give yourself the opportunity
to get the sleep you need. It's like scheduling
anything in your life, whether it's holidays,
schedule your sleep and have a comfortable environment
and a very dark and quiet environment. So when
I was listening to you talk about this with Michael,
again, the first thought is, well, what about?
stars moon etc so talk to me about the different
types of light because when we reverse engineer
to us a few hundred years ago there probably
would have been light coming in but it's a different
kind of light i'm assuming yeah i'm not sure
i don't think they even know i i mean humans
got into caves and shelters pretty early to sleep
out under the stars um But it is definitely artificial
light now is different. And certainly we know
now in a different spectrum of light that it's
actually the blue light. And the reason you want
to avoid light, part of it is not just that it
wakes your brain up, is that it has to do with
the production of melatonin. So when it's dark
out, your brain... produces melatonin that helps
you fall asleep and stay asleep and when it's
light out it it's it um reduces the amount of
melatonin that's being produced so there's you
know there's the kind of a awareness of you know
if you wake up and it's light and you're kind
of trying to wake up and see what's going on
kind of thing but it's also the hormonal thing
with with melatonin so you talked about sound
he talks about light and i've i've got like tape
over my fire you know smoke detector on the roof
and actually I'm going to buy blackout blinds
but I want to get the ones there's actually a
curtain rail that you can automate because I
want to wake up with a natural light so I don't
want to be you know oversleeping and groggy as
hell but the one other thing that I hear a lot
is a temperature and you know they say about
67 each side which observationally i feel is
is also a factor for me personally because if
it's any warmer than that i start to feel warm
in my bed and not sleep as well yeah i think
you had it at the nail on the head there as well
is is that sleep is very personalized right and
so you know all of these sort of temperature
and comfort ranges and things around sleep are
very very personalized And, you know, some people
sleep on a soft bed. Some people need a hard
bed. Some people need this temperature. So it's
about, you know, body awareness, really understanding
what you need for your body. Now, you touched
on melatonin. I just want to dip into the subject
and then go to some closing questions. But Kurt
Parsi, who I talked about before, he's got an
excellent sleep remedy that he used to get a
lot of his seals off Ambien. At the time, I think
he was in pre -9 -11, so I think he was probably
doing this post -9 -11, but he realized how many
were on, I'm using air quotes, sleep medicines,
and so was able to use this. But this is a cocktail
of different things, a very small amount of melatonin,
tryptophan, vitamin D, magnesium, and it works
incredibly well. I'm really, truly amazed how
well this works. It's not something I want to
take all the time, but if, for example, I come
off a shift and it's been a rough shift and I
kind of want to reset, It's a great, great supplement
to aid my sleep. I see a lot of melatonin supplements
with a huge amount of melatonin out there. And
I also see a big misunderstanding of sleep aids
and that actually they make you unconscious.
You're not getting a deep quality sleep from
those. So what have you seen through your eyes
in the world of sleep aids? Oh, yeah. You know,
people want to get in our society. Everybody
wants a quick fix. Give me a pill. Make it better.
Wave a magic wand. So there are different kinds
of sleep aids. I can obviously send you a link.
My friends in Australia have a great blog around
that. But generally, there are two kinds of sleeping
pills. Ones that put you to sleep, like Zoplicon
and Ambien. But then you have to sleep on your
own. And then there's others that actually put
you to sleep and keep you unconscious for longer
periods of time. And those ones make you groggy.
um you know they can become addictive um melatonin
is interesting so melatonin is a natural hormone
that your body produces and so somebody came
up with the idea well let's just keep adding
more heart more melatonin and that'll that'll
be better okay um and there are about 3 000 papers
written on melatonin and the jury stole out about
whether it works or doesn't work um and so it's
it's uh It's the only hormone that's unregulated
in North America. So to get melatonin in Europe
and the EU, and we talk about this in my book,
you have to see a doctor, get a prescription.
And so the melatonin is regulated there, so they
know exactly how much melatonin you're getting
and how much is in each pill. North America,
it's a supplement, food supplement. And so it's
completely unregulated. And so people just buy
them off the shelf. And there's a great research
paper where they went and collected all of the
melatonin supplements and actually tested them.
And some of them had no melatonin. Some had way
more than they said. And I've put an exact number,
but I think like 70 % of the ones did not have
the amount that they said it had. And some of
them even had some more dangerous chemicals in
them. So it's a completely unregulated industry.
And again, I talk about that in my book, which
in quote, the research in that is, so I'm always
reluctant to recommend those kinds of things
to people. My view is if it works for you, even
if it's a placebo, if it works for you, do it.
So, but I, you know, because we're in a society
where you think you can pop a pill, make you
better. People tend to gravitate to those kinds
of things. But again, because sleep is so individual,
if it works for you, do it. I think it was Benadryl,
if I'm not mistaken, or PM, Doc was talking about
when they put the side -by -side comparison between
shift workers that are chronically sleep -deprived
and people that used Benadryl as a sleep aid,
the actual lifespan was the same. Because there
was this misunderstanding that you were sleeping
when you weren't actually getting sleep. And
so I think that's a really important kind of
observation. You talked about the wearable that
you ended up creating. I just want to hit this
topic quickly as well. I see a lot of claims
and people. really believing oh i had this much
rem sleep i had this much and i had for example
professional professor russell foster who's one
of the again yeah so i caught it caught it caught
it in my back is good oh okay beautiful yeah
i'm an amazing amazing man and so you hear about
you know even the the what we think of as the
layman as the gold standard like an eeg or something
and then you're like no actually it's it's really
not great science and that's that's things stuck
to your head so now you're wearing a ring or
a watch and saying that you've got this diverse
you know rich information about your sleep so
if you wouldn't mind educate us on you know the
the landscape that is a reliable wearable and
and what can it actually tell someone sure a
great question so to begin with sleep is a process
that goes on in your brain Okay. Doesn't go on
in your wrist. And so the question is, so how
do you, how does it know whether you're sleeping
or not? Because it's a process that goes on in
your brain, not on your wrist. And so it's based
on motion. And so most, virtually all of these
have accelerometers and then much like your iPhone,
you twist it, it'll twirl around and it measures
motion in your wrist. And so in, I think it was
in the late seventies, Cole Kripke, two researchers
in California, created this algorithm where they
were able to show that based on wrist motion,
we could tell whether you're awake or likely
awake or likely asleep. And it's open source
stuff. It's called the Cole Kripke algorithm.
And I know Daniel Kripke. I interviewed him for
my book. He's a really great retired guy, University
of California, San Diego. And I asked him about
the sleepwatches. He goes, basically, I said,
they're... in a polite way, said they're crap.
So what's happening in the sleep industry is
what these things can actually measure is they're
pretty good, like 90 % pretty good at telling
you whether you're awake or whether you're asleep.
But that's all it can really tell you. And so
I liken them to a bathroom scale. You stand on
the bathroom scale, it says you weigh 180 pounds.
So what? Is that good? Is it bad? It's just a
number. It doesn't tell you to lose weight. It
doesn't tell you to gain weight. It doesn't tell
you anything. It just tells you a number. You
have to individualize it. But what's happening
in the sleep watch industry is once you sold
a watch to somebody or a bathroom scale, they
measure themselves. They're not going to buy
any more from you. You only need one. And so
they started to create more and more bling to
make it more interesting. And so what they said,
no, we can tell what sleep stage you're at. They're
guessing. And it's not very accurate. But what
I say to people, even if it's accurate, what
are you going to do with the information? You're
going to go to bed at night and go, yeah, I think
I'm going to get more REM sleep tonight. It doesn't
work that way. It's useless information. And
so athletes come to me all the time with this
information. What do I do? I said, take your
watch off to begin with. Or don't even look at
it for a week. It's not the day -to -day thing.
It's week -to -week, month -to -month. Look at
the patterns. And what you really can only focus
on is bathroom scale information. How much do
I weigh? You're not going to jump on the bathroom
scale every day and worry about how much weight
you're losing. Maybe every week or every couple
weeks, if that's what you're trying to do. And
it's the same with sleep watches. All it does
is create anxiety. They're good at measuring
whether you're awake or whether you're asleep.
great stuff but everything else is just bling
trying to get you to buy stuff well i think for
my community as we said especially when there's
that loss of perception of how tired you really
are the hrv which obviously now you're talking
about taking a pulse so that would be an accurate
measurement i totally understand that so if you
understand what hrv is in the application and
should you train hard today should you have a
light day i totally get that but like you said
people become obsessed and i've had people you
know i was supposed to have got this but i feel
like shit well there we go the ultimate metric
still from what i understand the sleep medicine
world is do you feel tired that's really your
true you know metric and you do not need wearables
for that specific thing Yeah, the wearable technology
just hasn't evolved. Again, much like melatonin,
it's an unregulated industry. These are all sold
as gadgets, Cracker Jack toys. They're fancy,
but they're not sold as medical devices. Because
if they're sold as medical devices, they have
to go through FDA. They have to actually do testing
to show that it... it'll do what it says it does
yeah well even then how many how much litigation
has happened after they've been approved too
so no no no i i no i i agree with you and so
i mean i tell athletes like don't pay attention
to the details on this um you know why are you
wearing this you know what what is it do you
want to know right you want to know week to week
month to month how well you're sleeping you don't
you don't need to measure this every day right
get into a schedule right organize your sleep
in a way that okay um you schedule it you know
i'm i need to get sleep i need to get seven hours
or whatever eight hours of sleep let's go i need
to be in bed by 10 o 'clock i'm asleep by 11
i get up at six or seven o 'clock in the morning
then don't worry about it um you know the rest
is just um i just fluff as far as i'm concerned
i don't think and in fact For some professional
athletes, it actually causes way, way more anxiety
than they need to go through. So yeah, I don't
recommend that. But one of the things we did
in the watch that I created was we only looked
at when you're awake, when you're asleep. So
you only get that as a metric. We can tell how
many times you woke up in the night and for how
long. That's pretty normal. You can do that.
But what we did was we melded that technology
with the Air Force technology. that could predict
your reaction time. So you can get some of that
with HRV if you really know what you're doing,
but it's really basically the same thing. You
can tell, you can say, and we know from a lot
of the research done by the US government, FRA
and others, is we can tell where those limits
are. We can tell, and you can tell yourself,
I'm about to hit the wall here, right? And I'm
at a high risk of an accident. So that's, technology
that we that we built and that's how it's being
used today but the rest of the stuff about REM
sleep and deep sleep is just is is just marketing
so one more area that I should have asked you
earlier and I'll make sure I squeeze it in the
impact of caffeine on sleep and the impact of
alcohol, because I think it is probably the most
widely used decompressor, even though ultimately
biologically having the reverse effect, but so
many of us unwind with alcohol. And then I've,
you know, I've become more and more aware of
the detrimental element on my sleep personally,
if I drink the night before. Right. So both have
good and bad things, right? I mean, alcohol relaxes
you, right? And so there's some good, good sides
to it. The problem is, If you rely on it to fall
asleep, the quality of your sleep, you know this
from polysomnography, is your sleep architecture,
it messes up your sleep architecture. So you
don't actually get the restful sleep you need
to get. So that's the good and the bad of alcohol.
The same with caffeine. Caffeine is great, keeps
you awake, keeps you alert. But again, if you
take it too close to when you need to go to sleep,
you're not going to fall asleep. Same with napping.
Napping is good. Napping is sleep. But if you
nap too close to when you're meant to fall asleep,
you're not going to fall asleep. So it really
screws your schedule up. So you need to look
at whether it's alcohol or napping or caffeine,
look at it strategically. that's just sabotaged
your opportunity for getting the best quality
seat now it's a really hard seesaw that you're
on because you know you're exhausted you know
so then you drink coffee and then you're kind
of wired so then you drink some alcohol to wind
yourself down and then now boom you're back on
shift again and you know so it's it's a vicious
circle exactly that i saw it myself so it's an
important observation all right well then your
book is called inconvenience sleep um firstly
before we go to to the closing questions where
can people find your book uh amazon anywhere
anywhere online books are sold brilliant yeah
all right so the first of the closing questions
are there any other books that you love to recommend
it can be related to our discussion today or
completely unrelated um be honest i we're dealing
with sleep and fatigue issues i spend most of
my time actually reading research papers rather
than rather than books I actually haven't found
any really, that's one of the reasons we wrote
the book. I haven't found any really good books
around that. I think podcasts like yours and
blogs, there are a few really good people around.
I mean, yours. I mean, Michael Chauvet has a
broader kind of view of things and stuff. Ian
Dunnigan out of Australia. He's got a great,
great podcast. Virtually all about sleep, sleep
and fatigue. I've worked with him. pretty extensively
um brilliant guy very funny irishman um moved
to australia so you can't understand a word he
said but um uh yeah brilliant so i i would recommend
particularly because things happen so fast and
it's so new in our society time it gets time
it gets into a book it's it's outdated almost
right yeah that makes perfect sense so thank
you um well the next question what about a film
and or a documentary that you love oh boy films
uh think about that i don't watch that many movies
anymore um i think i'd probably date myself because
it's really kind of older older ones i like i
like movies that follow people's lives right
and there's there's just so many of them i like
um oh boy I'll probably pass on that because
my brain's mush at this point. Because I actually
don't watch that very many movies. I'm a sports
and I watch a lot of blogs. I love watching cooking
shows. Oh, okay. There we go. Yeah. I like the
Jamie Oliver stuff. There's a bunch of other
ones around. I like to cook. I'm a chemist by
training. So it's like chemistry experiment.
And so I find that relaxing learning all these
different techniques to cook. Jamie is someone
I still want to get on. I've got to figure out
how to connect the dots and get to him. But what
he did in the UK and what he tried to do in the
US with the food in our schools is a story I
think that needs to be heard. It was told a few
years ago, but it needs to be re -heard, especially
after COVID. Right. And I think that's one of
the things. I like his style. I like the diversity
of the cooking. But I like that he has this sort
of... educational aspect to what he's doing and
he wants to help move society forward in terms
of nutrition right and what works and what doesn't
work and how easy it is to actually cook good
nutritional food you know and i i'm a big fan
of people and ian's one of these and others a
big fan of doing the same with sleep right and
people like you right let's let's you know let's
educate society let's educate people um if you
have an educated group they make smarter decisions
Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Well, speaking of an
educated group, that was a good segue. Is there
a person or other people that you recommend to
come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the
first responders, military, and associated professions
of the world? Absolutely. I talked to John Caldwell.
He started a seminar. He's in Florida, actually,
last I heard. And also, Ian Dunican is great.
He's done. He's an amazing character. I would
try to get, I mean, if you could get anybody
from Washington State University, I'll get the
names for you. Then the guys would have taken
over, particularly the police research. I think
it's really, really good stuff there. So let
me, I'll, I can, I'll email that to you and you
can pass it on to your, your, your audience if
you like. But yeah, no, there's the folks at
Washington State University that do the research
for first responders is pretty amazing. Brilliant.
I'd appreciate that. Thank you so much. And I
guess I need to connect with Brian Villow as
well. Yeah. Yeah. No, Brian's retired. It's hard
to get ahold of. And so he has had a few health
issues. And so he's, he's retired, but he, the,
the, the, these are the people that have worked
with him and continuing the research, but Brian's
books are, are brilliant. And his research is
brilliant. So. Okay. Fantastic. All right. Well
then the very last question before we make sure
people know where to find you specifically, what
do you do to decompress? Good question. I walk
a lot. I mean, I'm older. 70 years old. Don't
look 70, by the way, for everyone that can't
see you right now. You look about late 50s. I
walk a lot. I try to work out, ride a bike. I
fish. I have a little boat and I go out and I
catch crabs and prawns and putts around in the
ocean and try to be part of that instead of kind
of being. sort of focused in on my new details
around my life or my work, I try to get out and
be in nature. It makes a huge difference. Do
you find yourself going full circle back to the
farm life that you grew up as a kid? Yeah, just
growing up up north and being out in nature and
looking up at the sky and seeing how huge the
universe is and what a wonderful life we have
here. I couldn't agree more. There's so much
kind of myopic focus on things that really, I
mean, they mean things to certain people, but
I mean, as a species, there's so many other things
we can be more passionate about and move the
needle forward in physical and mental health.
So before we let you go, where can people find
you if they want to reach out or follow you online?
I have LinkedIn and I have Twitter. I don't pay
a whole lot of attention to it, but I have Twitter.
I have email. I have cell phone number. So I'll
pass that. You have that. And you're welcome
to pass it on to anybody that wants to contact
me. I'm happy to chat with them. Beautiful. Well,
Pat, I want to say thank you so much. We've gone
all over the place, you know, from litigation
and asbestos to sleep and first responders. But
it's been an amazing conversation. I want to
thank you so much for being so generous with
your time today. My pleasure. Anytime.