Let's Talk Wellness Now

Mollie McGlocklin is an expert on sleep, she will share behavior and environmental changes that we can make from the moment we wake until we go to bed that impacts not only the quantity of our sleep but the quality of our sleep as well. Learn how the sleep tracking devices actually work and which ones are the best to use.

Do not miss these highlights:

[2:42] How Mollie went from a night owl to discovering how her sleep style was truly affecting her, physically and mentally

[7:51] Now that the importance of sleep is becoming more mainstream and its correlation to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s etc., people are becoming more stressed if they are not getting sleep

[9:40] Sleep is a skill and relies on technology, accountability and behavioral change to influence it

[11:15] The use of technology to monitor sleep and how hand and wrist trackers may not give you 100% accuracy on your sleep but can help identify some patterns to further evaluate

[21:04] Focusing on the day time in order to impact our results at night and working within our circadian rhythm

[23:46] The impact that getting full spectrum light during the day has on the production of melatonin

[26:11] How light emitting from screens during the evening affects us and some simple things we can do to change the lighting on them to lessen that affect

[35:20] Adjusting your body temperature to cue sleep as well, such as monitoring eating times, ambient temperature and work out times

About Our Guest:

Mollie is the creator of Sleep Is A Skill, a company that optimizes people’s sleep through a unique blend of technology, accountability, and behavioral change. The company was born from “scratching her own itch” after a lifetime of poor sleep habits culminated into a mega-challenging bout of insomnia for months without end. With a background in, she went down the rabbit hole to solve her sleep disturbances without sleeping aids. She became fascinated with chronobiology, and by extension, its practical applications to restore a state of homeostasis not only to her sleep but also to her life as a whole. Knowing the difference between a life with sleep and without, she’s now dedicated her life to sharing the forgotten skill set of sleep.

Website: https://www.sleepisaskill.com/   

Sleep Reset Course: https://www.sleepisaskill.com/sleep-reset

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Transcription of Sleep is a Skill, Master it, Episode #106:

Debra Muth 0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness. Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms. I’m your host, Dr. Deb. And I’m so excited today to have Molly McGlocklin with us today who is the creator of sleep is a skill. And Molly is going to share with us how to create an atmosphere in your bedroom that helps you encourage the best sleep that you can possibly have. I’m Dr. Deb, founder of serenity Health Care Center, I want to thank you for joining our let’s talk wellness now podcast, it has been such a pleasure to share our knowledge. With so many people, we are averaging about 25,000 downloads an episode. And that is amazing because it’s showing us how much people want to learn about health and wellness. Outside of the health care center, we have had the pleasure of changing lives for over 8500 clients, both men, women and their children. As a result of this, I have created serenity view and university Learning Center where you can access all of my knowledge that I have developed over 25 years of practice at your fingertips in an easy to find index library, you will have access to this dashboard 24 seven, it will be like having your own personal natural path at your beck and call. Anytime a day. I’d like to encourage you to check it out at Serenityu.com.

Debra Muth 1:55
So Molly, it is so great to have you here on our let’s talk wellness now show. I’m excited to talk to you about sleep because so many of my clients have sleep issues. And I know it’s a big problem right now in the past year with everything that’s been going on in the world. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this this topic of sleep?

Mollie McGlocklin 2:18
Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me here. I so appreciate you kind of sharing your forum that you’ve created to you know, talk more on this topic of sleep. And obviously, I’m biased, but I think it’s just such an important topic because it’s just so transformed my life. So I’m excited to share more with your audience. So thank you so much for having me. And having said that, then yeah, a little bit about my background, because it does help to provide context to why I’m so passionate about this topic and what led to the creation of our company. Now “Sleep is a skill”. And it really all became it all Oh, it was born because I was doing all the things not to do for your sleep for so many years. And yet, the kind of origin story for me was that I didn’t think it was I think so much about it for many years, I thought I thought that’s just how it was I thought I was a night owl I thought I’m you know, not the greatest sleeper. I’m a short sleeper. You know, I had all these labels about how I am and that it’s fixed. And it’s going to continue to be that way. And it’s just kind of my lot in life. And then, but it wasn’t until, you know, even with that kind of relation to my sleep. I wasn’t connecting when I was getting sick more often, as you know, I was living in Manhattan as an entrepreneur, a burning candle both ends, my habits of being a night owl got more exaggerated as the years went on. You know, and I’d have all kinds of justifications and reasons for this. And it would Oh, well I can make my own hours. So I’ll just sleep in later and all of these things. And, and But it wasn’t until I went through my own period of insomnia while traveling internationally. And you know, my fiance and I found a one way ticket and we’re looking to travel the world. And yet our level of stress was really through the roof. Our businesses were not in a place really yet to do that. And so my stress just completely got manifested. And it was so confusing because it’s like this should be a great exciting time and it is a rock bottom time in my life. Because you know, just the amount of stress that we’re under as entrepreneurs. And then in kind of unknown environments, and then you know, just hopping from Airbnb to Airbnb. I started going through my own period of insomnia that really was it was a really no pun intended a wake up call in my life. And what ended up occurring out of that was at the time I thought there was no silver lining. I thought there was nothing that was you know going to be beneficial or could be drawn from this. And even as a personal, you know, a positive person, I thought I there was fine No positivity in this moment. And yet it actually did in retrospect ended up being one of the best things that could have happened to me because it really changed the course of my life, I went down this rabbit hole to try, you know, to test all kinds of different things in the area of sleep optimization, but certainly just restoration of sleep, not even, you know, next level hacks or what have you, it was just like getting me back to baseline. But then from there, it ended up evolving to really kind of quantified experience around my sleep and understanding things that I had no idea what influenced my sleep around chronobiology and circadian rhythm optimization. So So once I restored my sleep, then I couldn’t stop talking about it. Because, you know, it was like, the colors are brighter this, you know, the clouds are parting type of experience, because I never know that I never had realized that this type of restoration and sleep was possible for me. But also just for the the mental health aspect of it for me, because I had been so riddled with anxiety when it was at its worst. And then to begin to restore that relationship, even to my mental health of having stability, there was just so important and something that I was not willing to compromise on after that fact. And just kind of improved from there. So. So out of that was born, “Sleep is a skill”. And here we are today. So from that was, you know, now we have online courses, private options, you know, newsletters, podcasts, and all of this whole world got created out of a problem that I had, really,

Debra Muth 6:48
I think that is such an awesome story. And the fact that you, you know, you sought out a way to help yourself with sleep, and now you’re trying to help others because sleep was really a big issue. I mean, it is, it is one of the probably I say it’s the second largest symptom that I hear women complaining of every day in my practice, I’m sure nobody’s getting that restorative sleep, it’s either I have a hard time getting to sleep, I have a hard time staying asleep, I wake up to pee and I can’t get back to sleep. And it’s interesting, because over the years, I’ve really seen sleep deprivation change, you know, went from, I can’t turn off my mind, I’m thinking of a million things to, I don’t know why I can’t sleep. And now I’m getting anxious because I can’t sleep. And I don’t know how to fix it. And of course, because of that I’m exhausted all day long. And it is a major problem in the menopausal world of women. But also, with everything that’s been going on in the last year in our environment in our world, it’s become a bigger problem.

Mollie McGlocklin 7:51
So well said and I actually like how you put that I haven’t heard anyone say it in that way of the evolution of kind of this. I can’t turn off my brain which we, you know, so many of us have experienced or heard other people share. And yet now to this kind of, you know, often mystification of I don’t know why I can’t sleep and then but then compounded by these anxieties and concerns, because now we thankfully are on the one hand, starting to get out more and more information about just how important our sleep is, you know, links with what appeared to be a correlation between Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s dementia and neurodegenerative issues. So now we’re starting to have it seep more into the mainstream conversation of Okay, got it, sleep is super important. And now I’m even more stressed out because now I’m not getting it and I’m anxious. And to your point, there are certain periods in our life for particularly for women, where things get even more augmented, more exaggerated, and just more and more mystified as to what to do. So you’re making a great point. Yeah.

Dr. Debra Muth 8:58
And you know, I, I don’t know yet. I’m still the jury’s out for me is the Fitbit that tracks our sleep better for us or worse. Because it’s great that we can track our sleep, but it’s like, oh my god, I only got 45 minutes of deep sleep. Oh, shit, I only got five hours of sleep tonight, you know? And then all of a sudden, it’s like, well, no wonder why I’m so exhausted. I’m I’m still not sure how that fits into our world yet. But I’d love to hear your take on how Fitbit devices and other devices that people can put on their bedside stand to track their sleep, how well are those for us to have so that we know what were sleep is like and are they really accurate?

Mollie McGlocklin 9:39
You I love this question. Because sleep is a skill is really built on the intersection of technology accountability and behavioral change as the kind of three part method to influence our sleep over the long run, and you make a great point because we really do have technology as kind of the foundation in this because interestingly, it’s so paradoxical because so much of what we speak to is kind of harkening back to, you know, almost ancestral health and looking at how we used to sleep and so an alignment with the circadian rhythms and rhythms of nature. And so so we’re harkening back to that, but at the same time, kind of realizing that, you know, Pandora’s box is open. And technology is kind of here. So with that, how can we almost make a marriage of how our lifestyles are right now there are so inter interwoven with technology and actually use that to our advantage. And you make a really great point that sometimes depending on the case, it can be if you don’t have a sense of what to do about your about those results, it can be stressful, and then almost be a kind of nocebo response where then you’re starting your day with this, like, great, I got this crappy score, and let’s go take on my day. So if you don’t, if you’re aren’t equipped for the tools of what to do about that, that can be super disempowering for sure to say the least. And so so it’s a bit of a catch 22. But I will say for us, we really lean into some of these trackers. And what I would say about that is definitely there’s a spectrum of want of trackers that are give you a bit more insight and tips or not tips, but bit more metrics that can tell the story a bit better. So that we can see, oh, I can make this clear connection. So an example is, for us, every person right now, and you know, 2021, we have every client wearing the aura ring, and no affiliation. Just that that’s what we’re using right now, it’s the most focused, one of the most focused piece of wearable tech that’s kind of user friendly, and does a great job at highlighting what I’m about to highlight around some of the behavioral metrics. So what they can tap into is heart rate variability, which for many of my clients ends up being really pretty life changing once they start queuing into that metric, which it essentially it’s kind of the readout of our autonomic nervous system. So we can get a real clear sense of both, you know, HRV, is really influenced by so many factors, but it certainly can measure stress, mental, you know, cognitive stress, but then also physical stress. So if you’re, you know, working out too, too hard. If you are, you know, eating certain foods that aren’t agreeing with you, alcohol will really decimate, often HRV. And you know, number of other things, we can start to very quickly see, oh my god, last night, I had ice cream and wine or whatever. And now my HRV has tanked, my body temperature has gone up, which is another one of the metrics on there, my respiratory rate has gone up as well. So I’m breathing more throughout the course of the night in a way of, you know, often more shallow breathing. And then my heart rate has gone up and and actually took me longer to stabilize throughout the course of the night. So metrics like that can be helpful, because then you can start to connect the dots a bit better, instead of just like, Oh, I guess I’m a bad sleeper. So that’s sort of that can be the sort of the danger of the kind of flatter sleep trackers that don’t provide as much of that context, or information. And what I also will say is what you said was so great about the deep sleep and the REM and all that stuff, because I have a lot of clients that will come here and they say, Oh my god, I only get five minutes of deep sleep a night or whatever it is, and what I often make sure people understand what that is, as of right now. I do anticipate that this will change. But as of right now, the wearables that are on the hand or the wrist, are often not don’t stand up particularly well for sleep staging. So if you do if that’s really important to you to get up under, as of right now, it’s more of the head based trackers. And the newer kind of releases this talk of a couple of these radar tech trackers that are getting some interesting feedback around their classification abilities of sleep staging, and getting written up and pretty, you know, well established sleep journals. So so we’ll see that one’s a little bit newer, the radar tech part, but certainly the head based ones because what we know about sleep stagings is more brain based. So the hand and wrist are using an algorithm that kind of gives it there best guess of what sleep stage you might be in. But it’s a bit more of a coin toss as far as in most studies that we’ve seen so, so to take that, then you want to be informed about the information that you’re getting back. Most of them do tend to be pretty good. I’m I know making sweeping statements because it depends on the on the tracker, but some of the top tier sleep specific trackers tend to be pretty good at knowing, are you asleep? Or are you awake? So just like the you know, what time ish? Did you go to sleep? What time and oh, you had some wake ups, that sort of information? And so none of them are perfect, you know, certainly you probably are PSG is going to be the way to go for total accuracy. But in the interim, that can provide a lot of information as far as getting our baselines, what time are you going to bed? What time are you waking up? how frequent are those wakeups? Are we seeing certain patterns if we pan out Oh, interesting, you really, you look like a different person on the weekends. As far as you know, your your habits versus the weekdays, things of that nature, when that often might not be illuminated or might be a blind spot without the presence of the those trackers.

Debra Muth 16:14
That’s a great point. Because you know, the stress during the week versus the relaxation on the weekend can change. And I’m so glad that you pointed out that difference with the trackers, because some people really believe that what they see in the tracker is accurate. But I wear a tracker. And I’ve noticed like I’ll be awake half the night and it’ll say, Oh, you slept eight hours. And I’m like, I did not sleep eight hours, I was looking at the clock at 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, 3:00. You know, and so you are absolutely right, they’re not 100% accurate. And I think that’s important for people to know. But in the same token, if you’re seeing a lot of patterns where you’re waking, or your heart rate is changing, it’s a good indication that maybe you need some further evaluation in your sleep, you know, maybe you need a sleep study, maybe you need to work with someone like yourself to see, okay, what is actually happening, especially if you know you’re not sleeping well, and you know, you’re exhausted. It’s a baseline information to get a further evaluation to see where you’re at. And I think that’s, that’s how we need to look at them, versus they are the holy grail of what’s happening with our sleep.

Mollie McGlocklin 17:21
Exactly, yes. So well said. And, you know, it is an exciting time, because we do see a lot of things. I mean, the sleep tech market is set to you know, the estimations of that even by you know, 2025 are in, you know, the billions and billions, I mean, it’s just insane, what is already out there available and what’s kind of coming. So you know, just stay tuned, there’ll be more and more information available. But then also, you know, you also made a great point, there are certain people that it might not be well suited for, if you are really dealing with, you know, just next level anxiety and getting all this data might not be the best fit for you at the moment. So really, kind of being honest with yourself when I was going through what I was going through with my sleep, and I was just so panicked about it and stressed and you know, just just was irrational state that I was sort of, I actually I’d had some of these, you know, I didn’t have, you know, all the latest and greatest now like, I’m like dripping in trackers now. But back then I just, you know, had I had an Apple Watch, I just, I actually tossed them because it was stressing me out so much to know about my heart rate. And you know, just seeing some of that information was, you know, really signaling to me, oh my god, something’s wrong. I’m, you know, this is horrible, you know, kind of that inner dialogue. So, I will say that there are pockets of people that it might not make the most sense at the time. But I will also say that I have also found for some people that it’s been really empowering because it’s helped them to gain confidence to see okay, well, I did sleep a little bit last night, or, you know, cuz sometimes our brains can play tricks on us. There’s a thing known as paradoxical insomnia, where we think that we are awake the entire night, but we are getting little micro, you know, fragments of sleep. And it’s not to say that that’s sufficient, but at least it’s something so that you can hold on to, and start to build up that confidence because at times, it becomes a bit of a performative act around sleep, and we start to just think of ourselves, as you know, not skilled in this area. And that’s how it is. And yet there’s once we start to put legs to the fact that Oh, yes, this is actually a skill based thing and we can improve it.

Debra Muth 19:44
Yeah. Molly, what are some of the misconceptions or myths around sleep that that really don’t serve us? Well, but that we’ve kind of hung on to over the years.

Mollie McGlocklin 19:56
Great question. Okay, so one, I’d certainly would stand in this concept that sleep is a skill. I think that’s a great place to frame what you’re about to then embark on to learn if you are so inclined to do that. So standing in that place will help give you power around Oh, yeah, this is something that I can actually make a difference in. And then the next one would be that it’s regulated to the nights. So a lot of people that I work with are the first things they want to know is okay, what do I do when I, you know, I can’t turn off my brain like you were speaking to what how do I how do I turn it off? Like, tell me that in that moment, and I want like the quick five minute way to make myself fall asleep. And often what, even while while might be upsetting to know that often it doesn’t quite work like that. At the same time, it can be really empowering to know that from the moment we wake up in the morning, there are so many things that we can do to help support our sleep in the evening. So that’s really what we do is more of a focus on the daytime, to impact our results at night. And so that kind of that shift in thinking seems to help because often once you’re just laying there, if you try to fall asleep, oh, my goodness, it’s like a Chinese finger trap or something, the more you try to force it, the more it’s stuck you are. And so naturally, when we are looking to cultivate great sleep, then I think what is really eye opening for people in a new perspective to come at it is is that it really has so much more to do with the living of our lives day in and day out. And one of the things that we’ll definitely touch on is about the connection to light and how much that just plays a tremendous role. It’s actually the top most important, you know, time giver, or zeitgeber is the kind of route but it’s known as time giver for our the health of our circadian rhythm. So circadian rhythm entrainment is basically a framework with which we operate there to strengthen our circadian rhythm. So, to give meaning to that, as human beings we are meant to be diurnal creature, or we are diurnal creatures, meaning meant to be active during the day and at rest at night. And we operate within this, you know, 24 hour ish rhythm. And but the really most important thing is, it’s not just like a given, like, that’s how it goes, it’s either a strong, you know, it’s exist on a spectrum. So you might be on the strong side of your circadian rhythm, or you might be on the weaker side. And for many of us, in modern societies, we are somewhere closer to the weaker side. So from that, we’re looking to strengthen that and a lot of it has to do with first thing in the morning, you know, getting outside getting sufficient, right full spectrum light that so many of us are totally deficient in. And then sprinkling that throughout the entire course of the day, all that bright light, not from just behind a window, unfortunately, that won’t cut it. And then, you know, peeling off the sunglasses, taking off the hats getting as much of that light exposure as you can at the particular times that really can help make a difference, particularly sunlight anchoring, which is you know, first thing in the morning for you to anchor that that master clock, and then and then in the evening shifting over to dim, very, very dim to dark. And you know, and ultimately while you’re sleeping fully dark lighting. And that might seem like oh, that’s like a light suggestion. No, it’s a big deal suggestion. NASA has incredible studies around this for their astronauts looking at what they they compare to they use the terms dynamic lighting versus static lighting, and they would show just like this wildly measurable, observable change in melatonin production for the participants that were exposed to dynamic lighting, meaning that they had that super bright hit of full spectrum light during the daylight hours and then shifted to very dim like candlelight almost, or, you know, very red spectrum dim light to total darkness at night and the melatonin was just it was like a different person, you know, those different groups. So that’s one place to stand that will make such a difference with that, you know, as far as your results with your sleep, so I think it would all go into that spectrum of it’s a skill and so much of it can be really managed during the day.

Debra Muth 24:48
This is a great topic and I’d love to hear your opinion while we’re talking about light on the light spectrums from computers. So there’s a lot of people that are reading on a Kindle or working on a live laptop or they have a tablet. Or they’re in a room where they have wireless and the lights are coming in from the wireless and the wireless topic is probably a whole nother topic. But I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you could give us some tips on what people can do if they are reading from that Kindle or using their laptops or tablets before they go to bed, what are some tips that they can do to help with that light? Because I know that light is a big problem when we’re working like that from our computers?

Mollie McGlocklin 25:32
Sure, absolutely. Yes, so the light from our tech can certainly be disruptive, but particularly at certain points of the day. So what we’re trying to do is create a two part system to our days, so one on the first side of the day, it’s that it’s really flooded with as much light as possible. And our activity matches a light filled environment, which tends to be more stimulating, more energy filled, your body temperatures, higher, all those solid things, but then we shift into the evening, that’s when we want to really also match our behavior with the lighting really, and with the time of that day. And I know sometimes for certain people listening, you know, you might have shift working, or you, you know, might have certain reasons why you would be a bit off of the rhythms of nature. So even if that is the case for you, you’re creating that similar as much as possible, creating a faux kind of rhythm that works for you within but still with the property within these same principles, because they’re so in a in us for 1000s of years, and so we just haven’t evolved to be able to be without them. So as far as the the tech, then once the once the evening comes one, as much as possible, we want to work to set up our lives so that we can ideally be shifting down and also from a brain state, because we’re looking to really lower kind of the Hertz production of the brain in the evening. So that we can kind of just easily drift off into sleep. But if we’re, you know, all amped up doing all kinds of heavy duty work, that can often be more challenging to make that transition. But on the times, we do need to use some of the tech, then you definitely want to manage the light output from that. So I often suggest flux, or sorry, not flux flux is you know, an option for sure that a lot of people know of, but another one that a lot of people don’t know as much is Iris, i r i s and so you can google like, you know, Iris blue blocker. And that is a program, yeah, maybe 10-15 bucks or something. And that will get you a lots of different options of how your screen is displayed. And one of them for sleep is like full on red screen, basically. And that will really help cut out any of that existing kind of blue and green spectrum light that tends to mess with our melatonin production. And then for phones, you can there’s actually a hidden kind of setting on your phone. I’m actually putting up a video on this I think today of how to just find that if you have an iPhone, because it’s just kind of hidden in your color filters, and then so on, you can set it up so that you can just triple click on the side and then oops, then it goes all red at night, then then you can easily just triple click on the side and get rid of it in the mornings. But if you don’t have an iPhone, Twilight on androids, is a app that can help do something similar. So different ways you can set that up blue blockers in the evening can help support this too. However, the clear ones really won’t do the trick in the evening. So you really got to get either the amber or read to help that but they won’t save the day as it relates to like, you know, if you’re sitting in our or you go to like Target Walmart at the big box stores with all that light. And then you just think, oh, I’ve got my blue blockers on, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t really work like that. So they can help support but really, you want to shift your environment as much as possible to further signal to the body. It’s really to the to the master clock in your brain, which is directly connected through your eyes. That’s why this light is such a big topic. And it’s known as a super charismatic nucleolus. And that master clock is what really directs the rest of the peripheral clocks in your body of what to do and when and why that’s so important is it will really impact kind of hormonal production at certain times, impacts things like glucose impacts, you know, or stress states. I mean, it just there’s a tremendous effects that I think many have, I certainly didn’t realize when I was dealing with my sleep that you know, just some of the things that I was doing that were you know, really not serving me.

Dr. Debra Muth 30:02
Yeah, exactly. Do you have a recommendation of what time of the day we should start implementing some of these light changes on our devices? If we’re going to be working on them after dinner? And you know, some from say, like six o’clock to 10 o’clock? What would you do?

Mollie McGlocklin 30:17
Yeah, great question. So, you know, all of these things, like optimization of pretty much anything does exist on a spectrum as well. So you know, some of the people that come in, they’re already doing pretty great with a lot of their habits. And now they want the next level kind of bio hackery things. So for them, it’s like, oh, how can I really align with the rhythms of nature, and you know, right after sunset, they’re putting on the blue blockers, or, you know, trying to really mimic what’s happening naturally, because all these things I know, it might sound kind of like, all these things we got to think of, but really, what we’re doing is the aim is to try to mimic what was happening for 1000s of years is, you know, kind of hunter gatherer tribes and you know, when we would just the sun would set and it was kind of like, party over that was just sort of the end of the day for in a lot of regards and fire extended things a bit longer. And then later in history, it’s like, you know, candles and lanterns and that sort of thing. But it’s really hasn’t been until the development of the light bulb that we’ve been able to extend our days, so tremendously, so dramatically, across all economic groups, that suddenly we can have a 24 hour day if we so choose. So from that place, you know, just really being mindful that we’re looking to bring things back as closely as we can to those rhythms. So now, sometimes that might not be quite possible. And then there are times at different seasons, you know, that the depending on where you are on the on the hemisphere on the globe, like a northern hemisphere location, you know, the sun might be setting at 430 at night. And so then for that person that really might not be practical to start wearing blue blockers right around that time, or might not make sense with the lineup of their bedtime wake time or what have you. So from that place, knowing that it does evolve and does shift and your goals are important, for the goal of getting solid sleep, then what we want to aim to do is usually at least around two hours before bed, having those blue blockers on what some companies are creating is kind of a staging process. So what you can get is kind of an orangey amber color blue blocker, that you wear post sunset, and because then you can kind of still like move around, you can whatever do the dishes, like clean up all those sort of things. But then then closer to bed, then you can shift to full on red blue blockers. As some of these, then they just are much darker, they cut blue and green spectrums. And so with that, that it just can make it a little bit more impractical for walking around. But it does really seem to do the trick for a lot of people of you know, signaling, bedtime, and you know, really calming that process. So that could be another stack to make it a bit more doable in your life.

Dr. Debra Muth 33:21
Those are great tips. I love them. You know, I know you have to run, you’re having some tech issues yourself and have an appointment. Yes. So I want to be really conscious of your time. But is there anything else that you want to leave with our listeners that would really impact them? Like maybe one thing that they could do that could make a huge difference for them to get started?

Mollie McGlocklin 33:41
Um, well, yes, thank you. I know, quite a tech filled morning, for sure. Oh, my goodness, I got to it live after this. So I’m praying to the internet gods, that that works out. But aside from that, what I would say is, so most important things that I would like to leave with people to think about their sleep is one, the importance and also the opportunity that this can bring of aligning with these rhythms in a way that we might not have examined previously, and how it can actually enrich our lives in a lot of ways. You know, I’m so much more an outdoorsy person now that I’ve learned what I’ve learned that I wouldn’t I certainly on the path that I was on before would not have, you know, set up my life in this way. So one, you know, just ensuring that you’re getting outside each morning and kind of make it like a non negotiable for yourself. Even if it’s a few minutes that you’re exposing your eyes to that sunlight each morning, even if it’s cold or what have you. It just kind of becomes you know, like dog my, my clients that have owned dogs or like win the game on this one because they tend to like Okay, fine. Yeah, I’ll just you know, I’ve got to bring the dog outside at some point. So I’ll make sure I do it on the earlier side of things and, you know, that sort of thing and just kind of rain or shine. That’s what we do. And then looking to douse yourself in as much light within reason as possible throughout the course of the day. And then what I’d also say is one thing that we didn’t quite mention, I’ll just briefly bring this in is the the second rung, as far as most impactful time givers is temperature. So temperature will really cue the body as to what time it is and what to be doing when so our body temperature is meant to be, you know, some of the highest throughout the course of the day and then falling pretty dramatically for body temperature that the you know, our bodies, so strive to be in homeostasis with the, with that number, and yet it does drop in the evening to support sleep. So in order to kind of mimic that, we want to make sure that particularly in the evening hours, that we’re doing certain things that can help lower that body temperature. And so some of that is actually ensuring that you’re not, you know, snacking and eating late into the night. And a lot of people will say, Oh, I don’t do that. But once we start kind of drifting their last meal, really looking at what’s your last bite of food, and drifting that a bit earlier, because it’s kind of align more with sunrise and sunset. So there’s something known as circadian rhythm intermittent fasting, where you’re largely trying to eat within sunrise and sunset, that can really help make a difference on lowering your heart rate, improving your HRV, lowering your body temperature, lowering your even respiratory rate while you’re sleeping just by something is kind of simple as that, but it is a big behavioral change, because many of us kind of, you know, the evenings are snacking and watching things or whatever. So, so that’s one element that shifts our body temperature, because food digestive process is something that heats us up and is very active. So you know, that’s one element, but there’s tons of other things that will change your body temperature, obviously, the ambient temperature, so you can lower that in your space at night. But then even you know, ensuring that you’re not doing late night workouts, as you know, too, too close to bed anyway. And then thought timing is actually a fascinating one that can heat up your brain matter. So there’s certain clinical studies looking at, there’s a gadget that’s meant to you know, I’m not saying you need to get this gadget, but I just mentioned it to make the point called lbbb, that has some clinical trials behind it, of looking at chronic insomniacs, that their brain matter actually seems to have difficulty lowering and the temperature is higher than people that are not struggling with sleep. So then the thinking there is to they cool, it’s like a little headband that cools your prefrontal cortex. But my point with that is more just to give reverence to the types of thoughts that you’re engaging with, at night. And, you know, sometimes it can be more a bit of a blind spot, like we don’t realize that we happen to, you know, have some of the more stressful conversations with our partner at night, or it’s, you know, we don’t quite realize that the show that we’re watching, you know, while entertaining is kind of putting us into a bit of a stress response, you know, all of these things, just start to really notice our patterns. And then remember that we have a say and have something that we can take action to improve.

Dr. Debra Muth 38:20
Oh, these are really great tips and, and tips that we have not heard on this show, or I have not even talked to with somebody before. So these are really great, because, you know, typically you get the same old, same old, but there, we do have a lot of power and a lot of control, once we know the tips of how to change our lives a little bit. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do everything right, right. But even sometimes, if we just made one or two little changes, like we shift our workout to the morning instead of the evening, that can make all the difference in the world, right or just shifting your eating pattern. You know, if you’re used to eating at eight o’clock at night, maybe you eat at six o’clock at night instead. And that can make a big difference. So a lot of this doesn’t have to be a big major overhaul, it can be little shifts, that’s what I’m understanding.

Mollie McGlocklin 39:07
Absolutely, yes. So well said. And that can make a huge difference in your results. And do think of it to your point as these are a lot of behaviors that we just mentioned. So even if you just tackle one of them to begin that can be kind of put you on the path to improvement there.

Dr. Debra Muth 39:24
This is really awesome. Molly, I know our listeners are going to be dying to know more about what your team is doing and what your company is doing. How do they get ahold of you if they want to dive in this with you deeper?

Mollie McGlocklin 39:36
Yeah, absolutely. So we really aim to have options for anyone no matter where you might be at with your sleep if you kind of just like casually are curious about up leveling your sleep or if you’re really struggling and across the board in different levels of you know, finance, we aim to have something for everyone. So what we to you is if you go to sleepisaskill.com, it really acts as kind of a bucket for all the things. So there you can, the first step you can take is fill out a sleep assessment. And so then you’ll get some tailored information back based on what you are struggling with specifically with your sleep. And then if you are interested in more specific, you know, specific sleep services, we can, then we can auto send you more information about that. But that can also sign you up for our weekly newsletter that goes out every Monday. And in case you couldn’t tell, but I’m pretty obsessed on this topic. So I call it Monday, Molly’s Monday obsessions and so it’s all the things I’m obsessing about in the world of sleep. And different kind of sleep experiments, charts and graphs from different clients and you know, latest kind of sleep information put there. And we also have our weekly sleep is a skill podcast, with different sleep experts or you know, sleep tech, or concepts or products or, you know, all kinds of things in that area. And then if you are, you know, at a point when you just really want to transform this area, we do have online courses and kind of guided but with, you know, a lot of accountability is kind of at the crux of what we offer.

Debra Muth 41:15
That’s awesome. We will have all of Molly’s information and how you can get a hold of her on our show notes and on our social page. So don’t worry if you’re driving, you don’t have to capture all that we will capture that for you. Molly, it has been delightful chatting with you. Thank you so much for being a guest with us today.

Mollie McGlocklin 41:34
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate it.

Debra Muth 41:38
Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review, share this podcast. And if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest.