#233 Sleep Optimization Q&A with Dr Olli Sovijärvi, Teemu Arina and Siim Land

Teemu Arina (0:28)

Welcome to Biohacker Live Show. My name is Teemu Arina. Today is a special day. We celebrate sleep internationally. And if you're in the chat, throw your comments, questions in there. We're ready to take your whatever you have to ask or whatever's been wondering, what's been going on in your mind about sleep. We're happy to help you out here.

And I slept pretty well last night. I mean, it's Friday and normally by the end of the week, you haven't slept that well. But in my case, my numbers and everything is much better today than earlier this week. So I would love to hear also your sleep numbers. How much did you get deep sleep? How did you sleep this week? Last night, what's your oral data showing or your Fitbit or whatever, like put it on the chat and remember to subscribe, smash the like button and yeah, follow us on Bikers Summit.

We have exciting guests also on the show. Dr. Olli Sovijärvi, the resident guy in Helsinki is online as well as Siim Land, who has written a couple of books in the pandemic year. One of them is the Stronger by Stress book and then he also did the Mineral Fix and Immunity Fix and he's here to share some of his knowledge about sleep hacks and all that.

So welcome guys, how are you doing?

Siim Land (1:56)

Welcome, welcome.

I'm doing awesome. How are you doing?

Dr Olli Sovijärvi (2:00)

How are you doing?

Siim Land (2:03)

How are you doing?

Dr Olli Sovijärvi (2:05)

You're doing, yeah. You've been sleeping good lately. You're doing.

Schmarz Lieg and greetings to Holland also. Welcome to this sleep webinar. It's getting late and my jokes are getting even worse.

But today is the International Sleep Day. And, you know, just want to remind with a short slide that we have some new stuff in the Biohacker Center store.

We have Siim's book.

You know, it's actually really beautiful hardcover book, which I also have in my shelf. And that's just, you know, you cannot find any more comparison book about stress and longevity. We have some new red light stuff by Flexbeam. We have A-Struck Ketometers, Sensate, or Sensate. Sensate for deep relaxation. We have OrganMix, Black Stuff, Finnish Collagen, High Quality Collagen Bars, and also some Sleeping Aids, in forms of Magnesium and Zinc, which are highly bioavailable. So a lot of good stuff here, but today's questions and answers webinar, of course we go through some basic stuff related to sleep, but let's keep this interactive and perhaps even funny.

Teemu Arina (3:32)

I can pick up some questions from the chat also as we go forward. Yeah, on the backercenter.com, if you look into the top right corner, there's a word called sleep. And if you tap on that one, you can see some of the promotions that we have today for sleep optimization from our website. So check that out. Now there's a lot of questions coming in about red light, infrared light. We're gonna tap into that as we go forward. There's also interest in deep sleep and regenerative sleep, how to improve sleep quality. We definitely tap into it as well as nervous system, heart rate variability, parasympathetic nervous system, how to reduce anxiety and jitters in the evening so that you can fall asleep.

Yeah, there's some good stuff coming up. And yeah, sleep cycle, circadian rhythms.

Siim is of course one of the top experts nowadays on circadian biology. And yeah, we happy to answer your questions on these. Maybe Olli, you could like give a primer into like the basics perhaps, like the basics of what's going on there when you fall asleep.

Dr Olli Sovijärvi (4:50)

Quick basics in the sleep. So let's take a look at some slides here and I'm gonna be the speaking head as well. So sleep is basically a constitution of sleep cycles which last about 90 minutes. And the basic things to understand are that we need maybe four to five sleep cycles at least per day to get optimal amount of sleep. And we have different forms of sleep like the N1 is, it's like a light sleep. Number one, N2 is light sleep. Number two, an entry is deep sleep. And the deep sleep is probably dominant in the early phases of the night, which is very important. And the REM sleep increases towards the end of the night and in the morning. We know that the brain has a glymphatic system which is actually clearing out all toxic metabolics byproducts while in the sleep.

Another view on these different stages of sleep. So usually the N2 light sleep, it's about 45 to 55% of the sleep. And we should aim for at least 20% of the N3 deep sleep. And REM sleep is highly variable. And the problems arise that we cannot really quite effectively measure the REM sleep with these devices. Of course, it gives some estimates.