Dr. Meeta Singh: Sleep Habits for High Performance | E127

**Hala Taha** (0:00)
You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Hala Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex-FBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and best-selling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, how to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast.
This week on YAP, we're chatting with Dr. Meeta Singh, a sleep medicine doctor, keynote speaker, and sports science trainer whose work focuses on coaching the sleep muscle to help maximize performance in both individual athletes and sports teams. Her principal philosophy is to cut through the hype and disinformation about sleep and provide an evidence-based guide to getting your sleep right.
Dr. Meeta is the former chief of sleep medicine and medical director at the Henry Ford Sleep Center and has served as a consultant for the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB amongst other sports teams. Aside from helping athletes get better sleep, Meeta also coaches CEOs and executives like our former guest, David Meltzer. Meeta is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology as a psychiatrist and sleep medicine subspecialist. In this episode, we talk about why Dr. Meeta became a sleep medicine doctor, the importance of sleep and the real amount of sleep you should be getting. We'll also discuss sleep's effect on decision making, how to use caffeine in the right way, understanding the difference between insomnia and sleep deprivation, and how to get rid of the habit of late night overthinking. If you've been looking to level up your sleep habits for high performance, this episode is a must listen.
Hi, Dr. Meeta, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

**Dr. Meeta Singh** (2:24)
Hala, thank you for having me. Thank you for giving me a platform.

**Hala Taha** (2:28)
Of course, of course, that's what we're here for. I love the topic of sleep. In fact, sleep is one of our most popular topics that we cover on Young and Profiting Podcast. We had Dr. Daniel Gartenberg back in episode number 12, and he was actually one of our most popular episodes. So just really excited to dive deeper and see if we can uncover some new gems for our listeners.
And before we do that, I do want to introduce you to our listeners. So you are a world famous sleep coach. You've coached CEOs like David Meltzer, who's been on the podcast a couple of times already. You also coach sports teams, NFL, NBA, MLB, you name it. And you even have a world series champion ring, which is huge, we'll get into that later.
So you know everything about sleep. You worked at the Henry Ford Sleep Center as well.
So can't wait to pick your brain, but we always like to kind of get background on our guests at first. And so I'd love to understand how you got into sports, how you got into sleep. From my understanding, you were never into sports as a kid. You were quite nerdy and that's how you ended up going into medicine. But I'd love to understand the evolution, what you've done, why you are a sleep expert.

**Dr. Meeta Singh** (3:41)
So first of all, I'm not surprised that sleep is so popular. We spent a third of our lives sleeping, Hala, a third. And so oftentimes, almost everybody has some issue. It's such a fascinating subject, right? Everybody wants to learn something about it. Now for my background, so I am a sleep medicine doctor. I did my training in psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic and then I came to the Henry Ford Health System to do a training. I did a fellowship in sleep medicine and for many, many years I've actually been in clinical practice there.
So all along, I've always wanted to work with optimizing sleep with a goal of optimizing performance and it was really easy because I was based in the greater Detroit area in Michigan and we have the car companies and they often travel, they're jet lagged, et cetera, so I was helping with them. And then, and of course, sports just happen by happenstance. I heard something on the radio. Somebody was like a so-called sleep expert was talking about what they were suggesting to the local NFL team.