AMA #42: Optimizing sleep - bedtime routine, molecule regimen, sleep trackers, sauna, & more

**Peter Attia, MD** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything episode 42 I'm once again joined by Nick Stenson.
In today's episode, we cover a bunch of questions, but all of them on one topic, sleep.
Sleep is something that we've talked a lot about on past podcasts, mainly with Matt Walker. However, we haven't done a sleep podcast in over two years. In that time, we've collected a lot of questions around sleep and we cover those in today's episode. These include questions around my pre-bedtime routine as it relates to various behaviors that I use to optimize my sleep. We've got a lot of questions about my current molecule regimen. So what are the meds, supplements, et cetera, that I use to help with sleep, both for routine use and maybe sometimes what I would describe as unusual circumstances, such as great jet lag and things like that. Talk about how I use sleep wearables, including both the positives and potential negatives of using such trackers for sleep. Now, if you're a subscriber and you want to watch the full video of this podcast, you can find it on the show notes page. And if you're not a subscriber, you can watch the sneak peek of the video on our YouTube page. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 42

**Nick Stenson** (1:55)
Peter, welcome to another AMA, how you doing?

**Peter Attia, MD** (1:57)
Doing well, how are you?

**Nick Stenson** (1:58)
I'm not too bad, not too bad. How's the week going?

**Peter Attia, MD** (2:01)
It's good. We're still struggling with this decision about to read or not to read the books. I guess that's the thing that's on my mind today at least.

**Nick Stenson** (2:09)
Anyone listening, if they have a strong preference, either way, if Peter should read it or not, let us know and we'll tally up the votes.

**Peter Attia, MD** (2:16)
That's an uninformed vote, because I think people would naturally tend to vote for the author to read the book, but I have information that they don't have, which is I've already heard myself read a sample of it, and it's absolutely horrible. So it's really just a question of, can I be coached into reading it better, or is it just flogging a dead horse, and is it better off to just have a professional do it?

**Nick Stenson** (2:37)
No, I think if there's anything about you, it's that you're coachable.
So I think you could get there. It'll still be interesting to see what people think.
All right, so Peter, today's AMA, not gonna be about the book, but what it is gonna be about is sleep. So sleep's a subject that, I mean, we've had a lot of podcasts on, especially with guest Matt Walker, but it's been about two years since we've had any type of content on it. And it's a topic that we get so many questions on, and we continue to get so many questions on. So what we did is kind of compiled all those questions for today, and we're gonna kind of discuss all of that. So that will include questions around your pre-bedtime routine, your behaviors, as it relates to how you're currently improving your sleep. We'll talk about the molecules that you currently use, pharma, over-the-counter supplements, and how you think about that, with not only you and your patients. And then we'll also talk about wearables. What are some of the pros of them? How can they be helpful? And at the same time, what are some of the potential dangers of them in terms of what people think about? So with that said, I think we'll just start jumping into it with question number one.

**Peter Attia, MD** (3:48)
Yep, that sounds great.

**Nick Stenson** (3:49)
Perfect. So you shared a bit ago on Instagram, kind of your thoughts, not only around sleep trackers, but also some changes you made to your pre-sleep routine, which have been really effective.
And we received a lot of follow-up questions from the audience where they just wanted to dive deeper into that. And so I think what maybe be helpful is just start with what is your current pre-bedtime routine look like, especially if you're really trying to optimize your sleep for that night.