Everything You Need To Know About Sleeping Better, Hacking Sleep, Sleep Cycles, Insomnia, Sleep Apnea & More With Dr. Daniel Gartenberg (Best of LIFE Network's Experts!)

Ben Greenfield (0:00)

Today's LIFE Network Replay dives into all things sleep with Dr. Dan Gartenberg. He's an expert within our LIFE Network community, creator of the SleepSpace app and a leading mind in sleep science. We talk smart bedrooms, soundscapes, insomnia treatments and how to supercharge recovery through better sleep architecture. Show notes and links are all at bengreenfieldlife.com/lnsleepspace. LN SleepSpace. Let's jump in with LIFE Network Expert Dr. Dan Gartenberg. If you want to hear more from him, check out joinlifenetwork.com.

All right, folks, so I have recently been chatting with a guy who's super smart about sleep, who has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and is a sleep scientist. I've also been experimenting with this app that he made called SleepSpace. So his name is Dr. Dan Gartenberg, and this SleepSpace app is kind of blowing my mind, and I'll fill you in more on how it works and what it's measuring and all that good stuff. But first, let me tell you about Dan. He is the CEO of SleepSpace. He's also a professor at Penn State University in the Department of Biobehavioral Health, and he has been developing these kind of like sleep improvement technologies for the past 15 years. He's working for artificial intelligent groups in the Navy and in the Air Force. He's gotten more than $3.5 million in grant awards from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Aging as a principal investigator. And all this investigation is basically based on solving one of arguably humankind's most important health care problems that affects billions of people around the world. And that would be sleep, more specifically poor sleep health. So some of his focus based on this SleepSpace app is developing a connected, almost like a smart bedroom where you can use sound and light and vibration along with different wearables. And you can use this to diagnose and treat sleep disorders or even if you don't have a sleep disorder, just basically sleep better. So he's working on everything from solutions for insomnia to sleep apnea, to reduce risk for Alzheimer's disease and heart disease based on your sleep patterns. And all of it's based around digital health technology. The same stuff I've been experimenting with with his app SleepSpace. During the podcast, Dan will be a Bifillian a little bit more on his research, on a ton of questions I have for him about sleep that we've never talked about on this podcast. And we'll discuss this SleepSpace system as well and how it can be used. But there are probably going to be a lot of resources, a lot of links for today's show if you want to take a deeper dive or if you have a bunch of follow up questions for me or for Dan or your own sleep feedback to add. So I'm going to put all of the show notes at bengreenfieldlife.com/sleepspacepodcast. That's bengreenfieldlife.com/sleepspacepodcast.

And I guess first of all, hello, Dan.

Dr. Daniel Gartenberg (3:04)

Hello. Thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

Ben Greenfield (3:08)

Yeah, I know we've been trying to make this happen for a while and we've shared lots of text back and forth. So here we finally are. And you know what, before we even dive into sleep, and I want to hear how you got interested in all this in the first place, because I think you have an interesting story. I got to tell you, paradoxically, I didn't sleep so well last night and I actually wanted to ask you about it. I thought I should ask Dan about this. So the one thing I did last night that was probably a little bit different was I took my wife out on a date and it wasn't like super late and it wasn't like we were out till midnight or anything like that. I think I was actually in bed by 930, 945 But I haven't really been drinking alcohol much lately. I actually have been primarily drinking, as some of my listeners know, more like ketones at night or like ketone alcohol alternatives. Those actually, if anything, seem to help support sleep and satiate the appetite at night. But I am old fashioned and not only that, shocker.

Everybody is going to paint me as a teetotaller, whatever that word is now. I also shared half a glass of wine with my wife during my actual entree. So I technically had some whiskey, half a glass of wine last night, and I didn't sleep so great. I woke up at midnight, almost like wide awake, slept another four and a half hours. So what's your take on alcohol and sleep, man?

Dr. Daniel Gartenberg (4:32)

Well, I mean, it's so clear that alcohol just destroys your sleep architecture, and usually it's more than just one glass. So I went out with my father-in-law and my wife last night, and I had one glass. I'm a Makers on the Rocks kind of guy.