The Definitive Guide To Sleep - Dr Greg Potter - #027

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi friends, how was Unite Sleep? Was it good? Hopefully after today's episode, it's going to be better. Today, we're going to speak to Dr. Greg Potter, who is a PhD graduate from the University of Leeds and a specialist in sleep. His work has been featured absolutely everywhere, from Reuters to Time Magazine, Washington Post, USA Today, Daily Telegraph, BBC Radio, he's pretty prolific. And he's also the content director at HumanOS.me. Now, the guys at HumanOS haven't sponsored this episode at all. However, it is a fantastic service that you should check out. And later on in the episode, Greg explains what it's all about. But if you do want to go and have a look, it's free to sign up. And with the code MODERNWISDOM, you can actually get their premium version for $1 for the first month. And there's no minimum term. So check it out. Now, many people take a lot of time researching their diet or their exercise and making sure that they're trying to live a healthy life. But quite a lot of us overlook just how important sleep is in this equation. And having read Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep, I was struck by just how little care I was giving to my sleep habits. The implications on your health, mood and performance, both in the short and long term, are pretty drastic. And I don't think that there can be enough weight applied to just how important sleep is. Now, hopefully today, we're going to convert you from a non-believer to a sleep paragon, who is armed with some new tools to improve their sleep and a passion to actually make it better. Essentially, what I'm saying is that if you live a long and healthy life with all of your faculties still intact, at the ripe old age of 95, you can be on your deathbed, incredibly mobile and full of Zen, and look back at this podcast and think, thanks Chris and Dr. Greg.
Dr. Greg Potter, welcome to Modern Wisdom.

**Dr Greg Potter** (2:38)
Thanks very much, it's great to be here.

**Chris Williamson** (2:40)
How are you today?

**Dr Greg Potter** (2:41)
Yeah, I'm very well, how are you?

**Chris Williamson** (2:43)
Fantastic, thank you. Did you get a good night's sleep?

**Dr Greg Potter** (2:46)
Not bad, I've been up for a while.

**Chris Williamson** (2:48)
By whose standards did you have a not bad night's sleep?

**Dr Greg Potter** (2:52)
By my own not particularly good standards right now.

**Chris Williamson** (2:58)
Rigorous sleep standards, right?

**Dr Greg Potter** (3:02)
Well, I didn't set the bar too high, but the last few weeks has been a bit ropey at times.

**Chris Williamson** (3:06)
Is it do as I say, not as I do?

**Dr Greg Potter** (3:09)
Yeah, it's one of those.

**Chris Williamson** (3:12)
So can you explain to the listeners what your specialty is? What you focus on in your research area?

**Dr Greg Potter** (3:21)
Sure, so I have just passed my PhD.

**Chris Williamson** (3:25)
Congratulations.

**Dr Greg Potter** (3:27)
Thank you very much, which was at the University of Leeds, and I'm in Leeds right now.
And during my PhD, I focused on sleep, diets and metabolic health in UK adults. So I focused on studies of human beings. And in my PhD, there were several different parts. It began with the validation of a dietary recall method. So if a nutritionist is interested in how diet affects health and risk of various diseases, then they need accurate ways of capturing what somebody eats. And to that end, you need to validate the tools that you use. And I was involved in the validation of one of those tools, which is called MyFood24. And it's the first validated tool designed for you specifically with adults in the UK. It's very comprehensive. And that paper is just being published. And I then used that data set to look at associations between when people eat relative to when they sleep and their metabolic health. I also did some work looking at how sleep duration is associated with risk markers that are associated with diabetes in the UK and also with how people eat. And then at the end of my PhD thesis, I did a randomized control trial of long-term melatonin supplementation among people who are at high risk for type 2 diabetes. So let's say, for example, Chris, that your dad has type 2 diabetes, that would increase your susceptibility to that disease. Question was, can you use melatonin as a prophylactic agent against you developing type 2 diabetes? So just wrapped all of that stuff up. And now I work for HumanOS as Content Director. And I've been working with those guys for about the last 18 months or so, and I've more or less been working full time for the last four months. And the CEO also has a strong background in sleep research. So we share that in common.