Article Club

 Hello, welcome to Article Club. Welcome. It is the show where we scour the internet, the worldwide web for an interesting article. We read it and then we talk about it. Hi, Allison. Hello. What juicy, juicy article are we talking about today? Oh, we're in the new year 2025. We're not to date us or anything. Not to date us, but people talk about resolutions.

They got all kinds of things they wanna do, and there's something that. Most people want more of in their life is sleep. Yeah. And most of what people focus on in sleep is what's your bedtime routine? How are you creating this perfect environment for sleep? Yeah, the blue, get rid of the cameras, all of that.

Not cameras, the phones, those two, there's cameras, someone's got cameras in her boudoir, but. A lot of what people focus on sleep is like the when you can't sleep, how to fix it or what the root cause is. Like you got sleep apnea. Yeah. You're grinding your teeth. What's going on? Tape? The whole tape phrase.

Yes. Mouth tape. Exactly. But what we're talking about today is actually why do we need sleep? So this is in the Atlantic and it's more from a biological perspective. Because most of the data out there around sleep right now is around the sleep clinics. Like my dad has a million sleep issues. He sleeps two hours a day, which maybe is the root of my problems, but he goes to sleep clinics.

This is all about, there's a facility in Yon Japan that's trying to figure out biologically why do we need sleep? And this facility sounds so nice, by the way. I know it sounds so birds chirping. Everything about pan sounds so nice. Wait, can we just acknowledge that when we picked this article and I started to read it.

I didn't know. We didn't know why we sleep. Yes, I know. Yeah. I think a lot about our, one of, we have a friend whose husband is literally a rocket scientist, and I remember I was sitting at a park with him one time and he started to explain to me that we actually don't know why planes fly. We understand Lyft and we understand all these physics properties, but we don't know why to fly.

Horrifying. And same thing, we don't really know why. We need sleep and like biologically what the triggers are for sleep and how you make it up. So it's a crazy question, but they're studying the biology of sleep versus the causes of insomnia and the treatments of that. And when I was thinking about this article, it also reminded me of the book Blitzed and Oh Babe, which is of you, you who haven't read blitz.

It's about, uh, drugs in the Third Reich and how all of Hitler's army were on speed or like a version of meth. And that's how they stayed awake. That allowed them to march into France and take it over. And that's like basically the world. World War II was led by meth and lack of sleep. I mean, that's an example of why I assumed we understood sleep a little bit more.

Right before reading this article, there's that book, why We Sleep. Do you remember Ariana Huffington had this whole book? Oh yeah. About sleep. She just did a big partnership. I saw. Oh, did she? Atia is always talking about sleep for longevity. Yeah. And cutting down your cardiovascular risk and dementia risk and all that stuff.

But it sounds like we don't actually know the tangible function. What is, what do they say in the article? Sub? Yeah, but what creates that specifically? Yeah. So we know sleep is good. We know it helps repair things, but we don't know what is triggering the repair. So what this article goes into is one that sleep is universal.

So it's something that. All living beings need. Even jellyfish what they talk about, jellyfish have to sleep or rest. And if they start to just relax and you keep poking them that, then later on they need poor, more sleep poor. Like I know running all these experiments on jellyfish, oh, my mom always asks about dolphins and do you know how dolphins sleep?

No. Okay. Because they're in the water. They could have predators that are coming after them. So dolphins actually sleep. One side of their brain falls asleep at a time. Oh. So they sleep with their left side and the right side, but when they're, when their left side is off, they then have another dolphin to the other side and they have their right side off and so they swim side by side so that they can have basically full view of the ocean, but a one side of their brain is turned off wild.

I know. Okay. That at least has some strategy to it. In the article, they talk a lot about how is something so catastrophically. Like vulnerable part of human nature and animal nature. You would stop wars, you would stop making love, you'll stop a lot of things. It's so that you can sleep. It's gotta be that important.

You'll stop procreating, all those things. Totally. Sounds like the dolphins really have it figured out. I didn't realize that. It's brilliant. But so what they talk about a lot is the. Concept of what causes you to go to sleep. And that whole piece is called sleep pressure. Sleep pressure builds as you stay awake, as you stay up late or even as your active days.

So like we've both, we're just discussing, we've had very busy days and my sleep pressure is high as one does. And so they go into this like study of like where we are so far, and understanding sleep, why the brain does what it does when it's sleeping, and like what's even happening while we're sleeping.

Like what is the biological function so that we know. It's like the, the waves. Yeah. The cycles. Yep. Exactly. There's, I'm like picturing all these little poor little animals with electrodes all over their heads. Yeah. And we're watching their little waves so that we get, and we get that something's building up, but we just don't know.

What's causing that buildup and like how the buildup actually impacts the sleep. So she talks about sleep pressure. If you had done like a bender and you'd been up for 12 hours, 24 hours, 12 hours is probably normal, you've been up for 24 hours. That the waves actually during your sleep are different. And that sleep pressure impacts even also, also how you sleep and the activity that happens, which like intuitively makes sense, like that doesn't seem that revolutionary.

And didn't we talk about mice who have some sort of. Some sort of part of their brain removed or something like it impacts the waves. What was that? All that? Yeah. I was thinking a lot about that Demi Moore movie that she won, the Golden Globe for Substance. Don't obs seen. Its Oh, but oh boy. Wild. Highly recommended.

Don't commend, but we can talk about how I ran into Marco Qually on a beach once. That's another story. Neither. She was lovely. Yes, I'm sure. So there is a. Substance. So I was thinking of those substance that that builds up in the brain when you're awake, and that's called Adina sign, but we don't know.

That's the one thing like there that does exist as one potential that exists, and they know that that's correlated when you're not sleeping or when you're awake for a long period of time. Adina sign builds up and that's what caffeine basically blocks. Yep. I think it's part of the reason we know that that's one, like that could be part of the Yeah.

Yeah. Sleepiness, Uhhuh, Uhhuh, but we still don't know what kicks the adenosine into. Into gear, correct? Yeah. Yeah. And when you're sleeping, we also know that Aden seem drains. No one's outs a sleep expert here, Allison, right? No. Not even these. We figure this out. Not even these homies in Japan. Yes. Which is so cute to Cuba.

I'm sorry. Thinking about them. They're like at a like tempura restaurant and they're like, it's a caa. We're trying. Yeah. We're trying to just not talk about work. We're trying to not talk about sleep. And then, did you see the Pigeon study? The pigeon study? Man, it's just so cute. I wanna hang out with these people.

I know. I know. I can't imagine anything that could, could take up my time. That much I know. Take up my brain, all my sleep pressure devoted to sleep. I had the exact same thought. Imagine being so passionate about. A topic that you like, can't not talk about it, that you have to like, just, that's cool. Keep it in your pants for 10 minutes to not talk about it.

But it also must be so stressful that no one knows the answer, although AI's gonna figure this out. That's my takeaway. But fast forward to the end of the pod. Guess we can wrap that up. Okay. To your point, there's all these things that they know are correlated, but they can't quite figure out like the why behind these things.

So Adena sign, yeah. Builds up with your sleep pressure. Yeah. And then while you're. Sleeping. There's these little scrubber scrubber roos that kind of drain it from your brain, and they're also like, we don't even know where it goes. We don't really know what creates a Dina sign. We like. There's a couple of different hypotheses, but no one's agreeing on what creates it.

And then there's like the question I think with so many different, not that not sleeping is, although I guess like insomnia is a disease, but like other diseases, they've been like, oh, maybe there's a genetic mutation and so maybe there's a gene that actually is requiring you to need sleep. So they've taken some certain genes outside of mice.

These poor mice. I know, but when those mice then don't get the rim. Yeah. They seemingly don't build sleep pressure. So there's some, yeah. There are some sort of, yeah, and they're, um, they're observing thousands of mice and the mice who sleep crazy, like the mice who naturally don't sleep well. They're pulling out those mice and then they're looking for genetic issues.

Yeah. And they've targeted this sort of like specific gene. Yeah. It's like an R 2K some, it's something random. Okay. So. Do we think sleep is bad? Sleep is genetic, or sleep skills are genetic. Well, I did some side homework from the reading because I had a boss when we worked together and there's all these people that say, oh, I don't need that much sleep, blah, blah.

I think, I think they've shown scientifically that people need seven and a half to eight hours and women probably more Probably that's the Instagram science. I'm saying Moms need more sleep. It's true. And she slept for three to four hours a night. And was always seemingly well rested. And it was a problem for our working relationship because I would wake up at 6:00 AM to go work out and I'd have 20 messages from her and emails and I was like, can you just like delay send of these?

I know that you're up working at 3:00 AM but that doesn't work for me. Yeah. And she was like, yeah, I just, I only need three to four hours of sleep. I wake up, I feel rested, blah, blah. And so I was like, okay, what's the counter to these people who don't sleep well? And there are, there is another gene that they've been able to identify that is.

Genetic and that there are families where people need minimal amounts of sleep, like only need four to six hours to operate like at the same level. Crazy. She was a little bit too early for the old schedule send. Yeah. On Gmail. Exactly. That came out a couple years ago. That would've been, no, actually I think she, I think it was she and she was just like, for forgot.

She was like, oh, I'll try to do that, or I'll work on that, but it never really landed. Okay. Interesting. So we do think there's something around those people. I would like to understand if there's a gene for the people who wake up refreshed. In general. Yeah, right. The time I wake up, I'm like, oh, bus hit me and other people, just my husband included.

Springy. Springy. Let's go start the day. What is that about? We can get to it. I don't know. When you think about your own sleep, do you think more about, how do I sleep better or what? Or you sleep pretty well? I sleep pretty well. It's, it's fascinating. I've never thought that deeply about this because I thought we understood why we slept and this has led me to think, what are all the other things?

Okay, how planes fly, right? What are all the other things I'm assuming smart people have figured out and I like, we actually have no idea and I should be existential where worried about I'm this way with like step tracking, all that stuff. I can't do it. I can't overthink it or else I know. I'm gonna get in my head about it.

So I've always been worried if I learned too much about sleep, I wouldn't be able to sleep that. Why do we sleep book? I remember it was all the rage. I, bless me, I totally forget the author. And I read before bed and I remember reading that sleep book before trying to go to sleep. And then I'd be like, am I in REM and am I in whatever?

And like luckily, I have been blessed with some decent sleep. We can talk about pregnancy in children. That's like a whole other sleep, fascinating thing because pregnancy fucks your sleep up completely. But I'm like avoidant when it's not a problem and I wonder how many other people are that way. Do I have to understand every intricacy of how something works?

If it's working okay for me? Have you looked into sleep more? Because I know you've been, you've had a sleep journey. I have had such a sleep journey and I feel like in my twenties I was all about like sleep, just being one. It was, it came easily and I also thought I could do with less. Okay. Because other things seemed more important to me, so, okay.

So is this college or is this Preco? No, post college. Post college, twenties. Are you your college? Yeah. Okay. Post-college. Post college. Although I, I've never pulled an all-nighter. Ever. Oh, me neither. I, the closest I've come is like a late night in New York, which is like 2:00 AM maybe three. But no, I never stayed up late.

I've always known I needed sleep. Like I've never really felt that I could. And so I feel like something that you need so intrinsically, why do we care? If we don't know why we need it, it hopefully will unlock when it's not working for people. If we completely understand the mechanism. I get that. Sure.

But yeah, on a personal level, I mean, I. Yeah, I think it's like personally avoidant and we're so privileged. Also, where do you stop? Like I need to uncover the answer to every part of my existence I feel like could get completely overwhelming. I now, I would like to put out into the universe. I would like a list.

Maybe I should ask Chad. GBT. I know I'd like lists of 10 existential things we actually don't understand aside from why are we here? The why. Yeah, the why life after death or whatever. But what are the like obvious 10 things that I think we understand that we actually don't Yeah. That I should be worried about.

I'm with you. Because then we will add 'em to the pod. Great. We'll look at those articles. Okay, so tell me more about sleep. So twenties, so didn't really care about sleep very much Broke, would prioritize other things. Broke. Wasn't broke. Wasn't broke, yeah. Would prioritize other things? Would prioritize, like hanging out with friends?

Mostly exercise because I feel like I'm pretty good about going to sleep early. 'cause I'm a Cinderella at midnight. I. I am just dead to the world. And I often, I was thinking about this article a lot in the context too, of night owls and early birds because people who, and is that has to do with the quality sleep or is there something with like sleep pressure when it builds for you?

Does it build more at certain times of day for certain people? Because I can wake up early, no problem. I can get through most of the day, no problem. But then around seven or 8:00 PM I feel like my sleep pressure. Is crazy, but maybe it's just 'cause I woke up earlier and so the sleep pressure is just built.

So maybe it just is a matter of you a napper when you start the clock. Are you a nap? No, I've never been able to nap. Yeah. Interesting. Are you a napper? No. Yeah. No God. Except when you're pregnant again, which we can do. A side note for pregnancy was always a good sleeper. Both pregnancies up at 3:00 AM no matter what, existential, doom, existential thoughts, you've got like hormones rushing through your body, something's telling you're a mom.

Now why are you sleeping? You idiot. And then you have an infant, and of course you're up with that infant. I currently, and for the last three years have had the three or 4:00 AM cortisol, wake up. Okay, so here, so hormones. So we're talking about genetic, we're talking about like why we need to sleep and what are the core fundamentals of sleep, but then there's gotta be a billion things that get in the way of that sleep.

And for women, we have, our hormones are constantly changing the way we feel, the way we operate. We need to look into sleep in cycles. I know I'd be, I actually would be very curious why cortisol kicks in at that point. Is that because they're done scrubbing the Edena sign and then all the other hormones can like ar rear their ugly head?

Is that the most important thing that. The why that's like fundamental to sleep has to happen. The little I looked into it in pregnancy because I was like, this is crazy. This is like on the dot 3:00 AM there is some break in the cycles that like this allows for some reason it bubble up, it bubbles up.

At that point, I, and I dunno why pregnancy exasperates that. Yeah. Also you're sweating, you're sweat, you're disgusting. So that's the other face of sleep. I'm trying not to look at my phone again for sleep hygiene. Yeah. And I thought, I said where do you put it? Like why do we call also, why do we call sleep hygiene?

Sleep hygiene? Like it's not actually about cleanliness. Maybe it's 'cause in sleep, like we were talking about all these little, the Adena sign, like scrubbing clean. Mm. Like the bat or storing the wrong thing. So like why are we picturing the brain as like this cleaning device? Let's also talk about that scrubbing.

'cause that's something I always assumed. I knew that, oh, sleep is when. Things get cleared out that I don't need anymore. Have you heard? I actively think about this. They talked about that a little bit. Yeah. And they talk about it uhhuh and that seems to be, that seems to be the case. That's like a hypothesis of why we need it.

A hypothesis of why we need it and like scrubbing away. And if you didn't scrub away every little still naps that was connected, every little observation during the day, you would be overwhelmed with It would just be like messy. Just, yeah. Garbage and noise. And I, I mean, side note, total tangent. Wonder like how that's related to memory also.

Yeah. I think my scrubbers do a really good job 'cause I'm a really future facing person. I do not remember what happened yesterday. So are they like scrubbing harder and then, and why do we call it scrubbing? It's harder for me to wake up in the morning 'cause they're just scrubbing me clean. Yeah. Whereas maybe other people, it's just like a light brush.

Literally in this article they're talking about. That like Adena scene and like doing cleanup, like why is this all, why are we cleaning up the memories? It's such a funny metaphor. Maybe it's just organizing, it's it's visual. Yeah. Like you can actually imagine a cleaning spot. The hygiene question is interesting.

I've never thought about it that way. So my sleep hygiene, I still have my phone next to my bed. I just don't wanna look at it in the middle of the night. So I have my Alexa. Is it your alarm clock? Oh no. So it is my alarm clock, but I have my Alexa. And Alexa I recently learned can also whisper and so I'll terrify.

So I'll say to Alexa, what time is it? And she'll say. It's 3:00 AM and it's always exactly 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM and I'm like, this is wild. Like on the dot. It doesn't really matter what time I go to sleep. Wow. Do you feel less alone? Because Alexa can tell you. As opposed to to, no, but I'm proud of myself every time that I ask her instead of looking at my phone because that's, yeah, that's good.

There's such a yearning to look at the device. Okay. Maybe I should try that. Huh? I try to just put it, it's like I'd have to get out of bed to look my other. That's good. That's smart. My other trying sleep hygiene, trying to achieve is not looking at my phone after 8:00 PM. Whoa. Okay. This I've noticed about you.

'cause I'm constantly like texting you. What do you think? Should we do it? Come on, Don. I'm like, wow, this girl's got great. Where is she? Phone hygiene. And I get that. Stupid received, but Oh, notification. Notifications. Silence you. Yeah. You've been silenced. You've been absolutely silence. Nobody's listening to you.

You're screaming into a void. And I'm like, I'm trying. But it's fine. It's, I admire it. Thinking of like the brain shutting off and for the different things. I was thinking of the TV show severance. Yes. And how. They've split their brain in half to separate some of these pieces. Yeah. Innies and Outies.

Innies and outies. And I was thinking of like sort of sleep is in some ways that, not a severance moment, but the way that they're describing it in this circle, and it seems like some of the research that they're doing, or could you actually sever, could you sever the part of your brain that makes you a bad sleeper?

Could you remove these different pieces to. I don't know. Make it so you don't build sleep pressure or maybe, or mutate the gene, right. Or something. There's a piece in the article about how hamsters who are hibernating have to wake up to sleep. Oh, that blew my mind. So that I went what? So that maybe there's something there.

Maybe. Yeah. That like hibernation, which we think of as I thought it was the ultimate rest. Recovery is actually still not sleep. Like the process of sleep is not biologically happening in that moment. Yeah. They're just, I guess like straight chilling if we're able to identify the mechanism of sleep. I don't see why you couldn't.

I don't know. Create the thing that attaches to the thing and adjust it. But I don't know about consciousness. Is that what you're asking? Separate your conscious self from your sleeper self. I wasn't quite going there. Okay. But I, I mean, but maybe I think other and like, are you a different person when you're sleeping?

Wow. Does anyone really know you? Does anyone really know you? I was also thinking about the longevity question. Mm-hmm. You brought up like everyone's read, outlive and thinking about Peter Atia and how can we know that something is so essential, like sleep, but not know. Like actually, how do you prove that increases longevity?

If we don't know why we do it, it's all correlation, right? Yeah. Which is the problem. We, we, yeah. We don't know exactly how it works. We know it's doing something good and then we can see, okay, the people who are getting more sleep, live longer. Yeah, live longer, but those people who are getting more sleep are probably doing other good things for their bodies.

It's so hard to parse out. And quite frankly, it's also wild to me that like the bedroom, when you are looking at apartments, it's based, or houses or whatever it may be. Yeah. It's based off of the number of bedrooms. They're like, oh, it's a four bed. I mean, bathrooms too. Yeah. But. The bedroom also feels like a really, if we are really trying to create these like perfect conditions for sleep, the bedroom feels like a really antiquated or like outdated system.

Like why aren't we on pods? Yeah. Or something that's like creating the perfect environment to sleep. Totally. Yeah. I don't know. Although I guess all those horrible hotels tried like the little sumber pods that people would, could stay in that I don't think anyone liked. Although those hotel pods have saved me a time or two.

Really? Oh my God. On like when you're doing crazy international legs or whatever, Uhhuh, and you just need, it's like you can barely, you need to lean into the bed. You can like lie down and there's a sink like on the bed. That's the best. Okay, so tell me more. Tell me a little bit more about the sleep journey.

We have the 3:00 AM wake up situation, 3:00 AM Are you trying different stuff wake up or has and has anything in the article like illuminated some of that for you? Have you dug deeper into sleep? So I probably spent all of last year trying to improve my sleep hygiene because I was just into denial of the fact that.

I was really stressed and that in fact was probably the biggest impact. But I was trying not to lick my phone before bed. I was doing magnesium. Yeah. Tea. I was doing melatonin. I got this like lavender essential oil stuff. I have a face mask. Oh my. I for Christmas, my brother gave me the Thera body eye mask.

Yes. Which has got, it's, it's got. Like three different vibration settings. Oh, so, so it basically kicked the migraine thing. I got you out out the door Amazon tube, which I wear all the time. But no, I can't decide if I like it yet or not. I actually think it's really good for napping, but I don't know if I like it.

Is it cool? No, it's only weight vi, it's vibration. It's different like rhythms that are supposed to scientifically. Lull you to sleep. Sounds like a sleep, somehow. A whole lot of bullets. I know. It's, it's a hundred bucks of vibration and I'm like, I should have just bought something like a vibrator, literally, and just stuffed in my exact existing face mask.

But it turns off after 15 minutes though, so that's nice. It helped me nap, but it, I actually like couldn't fall. It's a good face mask, but I couldn't fall asleep. Okay, it, so you're troubleshooting. I'm troubleshooting all this stuff for sleep and then when you wake up, they say, don't just sit there and be paralyzed in your own thought, but either get up and do a walk, which I don't ever do.

Or I like try to read from my Kindle. I try to read before bed 'cause I know when that happens, I sleep better. Yeah, same. Again, I don't do all these things all the time, but I've tried some more, like meditation, kindy stuff, but nothing has kicked. I actually don't have trouble falling asleep. My o my issue is the wake.

The wake up. The wake up. And when I left my job last year, I start sleeping through the night again, but now it's bad. So it was really a short-lived. De-stressor. Okay. So basic. So I think it's cortisol is really my, my, okay. My armchair expert diagnosis. So you have no hypothesis on the function of what makes you sleepy because that's all working more or less What's interrupting?

What is interrupting it exactly. And some sort of spike. It's these hormones. I know. Can I tell you one of the most fascinating sleep experiments that I've uh, witnessed in my daily life, it is a toddler. Gaining sleep pressure throughout the day. When I read this article, I was like, oh yeah, this idea of sleep pressure.

I can see it happening in my kid. I can see the dr. I could see an eye rub, I can see the glossy eye. Like you see it happening and then they start getting whiny and duh. And when you like push it, when you push it, when you push it and you, they don't get their nap, then all hell breaks loose. And then okay, that's a fascinating thing.

Don't you wonder if we all have the same level of Adina sign that builds, but so that's why kids need to nap. 'cause their body's just smaller and can't process it all. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, that would make perfect sense. Or they haven't learned to manage it. Like maybe we're all just as tired as we always were.

Yeah. We just don't know how to handle it. And it is the cutest thing in the world when then the second they hit the pillow, like my kid falls asleep with a book on her face, like a huge book, like in the midst of wherever, which is wild. It's like her body doesn't need to be comfortable anymore. A magic potion just put her out.

So that has been fascinating to see. And then also with infants, there's a lot of, you're so overtired you can't get them to sleep. And I wonder if that happens with adults. I'm so exhausted. Yeah. I know. I need to sleep and I still can't sleep. I don't know. This could be a totally armchair, physicist moment, but to your point, kids need a lot of sleep.

You see the sleep pressure build. They need all the sleep time physically see it. Like when we have this whole phase of life from, let's call it. Probably like mid-adolescence. 'cause I feel like younger kids sleep still like 12 hours a day or something. Yeah. Two. I don't know until probably you're 60 when you sleep, let's say an average of eight hours a night.

And part of it's like you need to sleep when you're building your body as a child, and then you get to a steady state. But then I think about, okay, like my dad, who's almost 70, and my grandmother, who's 95, they sleep so much. My grandmother sleeps in till 10:00 AM now. And she used to wake up at 6:00 AM It's a Benjamin Buttons situation.

Yeah. What is that? Why do they, if it, if sleep is like so helpful for longevity, why do the old people like need way more? Should we be sleeping? Well also, they have the time to should, but I don't think, I don't think it changed. Like she slept, she sleeps more now at 95 than she slept at 70. It's not like she was working.

It makes perfect sense that as a kid is growing their body, they need the energy, they need the sleep. Then you're in this, okay, I'm okay. And then as your body gets weaker, it probably needs, it probably craves more rest. Is that actually, is there what's happening in the older people with more sleep? Or is it like, and is it a failure or Yeah.

Is it a, is it tion? Like why do we need do more as we get older, as we're younger and as we get way older? Mm-hmm. More recovery of some sort. But we don't know why. We don't know why. Dunno why. Okay. So do you think your sleep is, is situation, is genetic because you mentioned your dad. Oh, I get nervous about that a lot.

My mom. Sleeps like a lamb anywhere. Yeah, exactly. No problem. Sleeps every night. Like, yeah, I, Mike, my sisters and mom and I all are in a similar need to read a book. My mom read, listens to a podcast. Hello mom. You're getting very sleepy, but everybody's in that steady. State, like with anxiety, I was, I was at a bachelor this weekend and one woman has two kids and to your point, like one's five months old and she was talking about her own sleep and she listens to this podcast that is, I think a little as ME, but it's just describing cereal.

So the whole podcast is describing cereal. Yes. Different kinds. A box of tricks. And yes. This is amazing. That's a sleep podcast, but that's just describing cereal. What a choice. We'll have to choice. We'll have to find it. I know, but she was, I love it. 'cause it's. Like meaningless. Right, exactly. Also like childhood wonder of like tricks.

Yeah. What's it called? We need to I if put it in the show notes. Yeah. Put it in in the show notes. Exactly. Exactly. What's been like your worst sleep deficit you think you've ever had or the highest amount of sleep pressure. Probably jet lag. And so I wonder what happens that with your circadian rhythm, how that all comes into things your tricking your body into thinking this is totally cool.

We can just go about our day. Even though it's. It's like yesterday or something. It's yesterday. We, I recently traveled from California to Australia and we left and then we got there two days later, a 13 hour flight, but two days later and then came back Friday morning and got back. Friday morning earlier than when we had left.

It was crazy. So I once did that from Australia and I left on Valentine's Day alone and I landed in San Francisco on Valentine's Day alone. And I was like, I had DE two. Oh my gosh. Solo Valentine's Day. Wow. Pretty cute. Yeah, I think jet lag, I'm, and I'm always trying to find the answers to it. For this trip, I downloaded this, I forget what it's called.

It's like sleep tracker thing. Have you heard of these? Oh, this, yes. Yes. My, my boyfriend's sister-in-law is this, and it tells you like how much caffeine you should have. I do think it helped, and it's exposed yourself to super bright light, even though it's 11:00 PM so I'm like. Putting a lamp on my face.

You do what you can and when to really avoid the caffeine uhhuh when you're supposed to nap. Not that I ever did. Some of it is this is for people without small children. Yeah. Which no way I could just stick a nap right now. But I do think that helped and apparently astronauts use it. So there we know.

Cool. We know enough about like how to trick our body into acclimating. Okay. The other thing they did not address in this article at all, but I was so curious about, I mean maybe they touched on a little bit with the hibernation, but why do we need to sleep and why do we need to sleep when we need to sleep?

So I was thinking a little bit about like circadian rhythms and obviously you get exposed to light, you get exposed to the dark, but then I was thinking about. My sister-in-law works so many nights. She'll have a night shift and then she has to sleep during the day. And so then you're like, is that sleep?

Like why do we have to sleep at night? Why is dark the right setting for that? What, how effective do we get? Do you build up more pressure if you, I. Stay during the night and sleep during the day, or what does that even look like? There must be something evolutionary about it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the whole cicada rhythm.

Rhythm thing. Yeah. You can see your predators in the day. There was no electricity today. It doesn't matter when you sleep, but yeah. What were you supposed to do? Just sit around and be incapacitated and then And wait for when it's time. Yeah. Or, and if you're hungry, like you can't find anything. You can't find any food.

Yeah. I just, I, reading this article has also just made me think we're babies, we're put to sleep. With a lovey or not like with a parent, or not. In my case, it was like, here's your blankie, here's your Barney Doll. Yeah. You have at it and we're taught quote unquote, like taught good sleep habits and you all of a sudden you're an adult and you're like, of course I go to sleep.

Of course I do it this way, or whatever. This just, and that's what's been happening for thousands and thousands of years. This article has really made me question this whole around parenting at least. It's like you need to teach your baby how to sleep through the night. You need to teach your toddler how to sleep through the night.

Here's how you do that. You make the routine. Yeah, you yada yada yada. So the sleep hygiene thing we're putting on ourselves and we're also putting on our kids. And I mean, luckily, hopefully they don't have a gene where it's just, fuck you. I'm not gonna sleep, gene. Some kids do, but we're just trying to, I don't know, put them all into that same construct that we were always put into.

Yeah. Which I guess is best for us. But what I do know is I would like to go to this mysterious Japanese. Sleep institute don't even know where. It seems delightful. I know where to scuba is and they scuba, they eat tempura and there's like pretty trees there. It sounds absolutely delightful. Okay, the last thing on sleep.

Yeah, so I think part of why I sacrifice sleep in my twenties and part of why there's all these like hackers of let's get the most sleep, is because there's like this narrative. Or belief that if you wanna be productive, you have 24 hours in a day. 168 hours in a week. Yeah. But sleep is antithetical to productivity, but it's also essential for it.

Yeah. And so I feel like why we are asking this question right now, like the why do we sleep, is because, first of all, people need a reason. Because they're like, if we don't really need it, like if there's no real why behind it, then we can just take those hours and use that to. Totally progress. Late stage capitalism.

Yeah. Could you imagine if it's actually you don't need to sleep and take this pill and the duh, and if we get rid of this gene, then you don't build up a sleep and then sleep pressure and then you're fine. If you're the only one who's not taking the pill, then you're gonna fall behind. Yeah. Especially in America.

Yeah, exactly. Fascinating. I know. So I'll leave you with that. Can we wrap up this sleep thing with, we both decided to wear bright red today? Bright orange for those. Oh, you think it's orange? Yeah. I know it's orange. I am so sure that this is red. And I'm sorry for all of you on audio. This could be like the gold dress.

Blue dress controversy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Bright orange. Head to our YouTube channel. Sound off in the comments. Sound off. It is clearly red. Wow. And it's almost exactly the same. I think yours, because yours is knit. It might have a slight orange orangey hue, but I dunno. Supposed orange. The, it's in the eye of the beholder it sounds like.

Okay. I think it's time to turn over to our segment that we like to end on. What's blowing up the group chat? What's happened in the group chat? This, what is the segment Alison? This segment is about everyone's got their own text threads. Everyone's reading every sub stack under the sun. You're probably listening to a bunch of other podcasts, and then you're talking to other people about it, and you're learning things.

You're finding new products, hacks, things that are annoying you, and this is what's happening in the group chat. Carly, what's happening in your group chat? Okay. Two things. We'll see if, we'll see if I can get away with two things. The first one you taught me about. Blowing up the group chat is moon juice.

Moon juice. So did you juice last night? I, I did not. I forgot which hate to hear it, which I know hate to hear it. And I'm having one of those days where it's, I feel like I was moon juice. Moon juice is when you put some water outside on a full moon. It's the evening of the full moon, and that water becomes infused with magical powers.

That helps you. Have a great day and sometimes you can set an intention. It is a foolproof way to improve your life juice. First time I did that juice, I had the best month of my life, so there's that. It could be first time buyers left, but honestly I forgot to and I was thinking about it and I think that alone made me have a good day today.

I did it too. I did it last night and I have to say. It's Maybe it's just delayed reaction. Delayed reaction. Yeah. Give it some time. Give it some time. Yeah. Can I do one quick other one? Because I realized I have my other thing. It's boring. It's boring. Blowing up the group thread for a good moisturizer and I just took my little self on the way to the pod studio to.

Sephora and got that moisturizer. So I just love a little crowdsource little, everybody had an opinion. I think that Dustin Bader dupe the This one? Yeah. Huh. The opinion that won out was a TikTok hack Uhhuh. Then I'll report back. Yeah, I got it right here. Okay. My blowing up group chat. No sponsorships yet though.

No. Yeah, but if you want to reach out, I blown up my group chat. This was so I was like I said, I was at a bachelorette this weekend. Again, and several people went attv. One day, if anyone needs a bachelorette guest. Yeah, I'm call. I'm your girl. I'm like, 27 dresses. A bunch of people went ATVing. And I was like, been there, done that.

I actually have never been ATVing, but I had no answers in going. I felt like I've been there, done that, and so I abstained and six of us abstained. All smart souls and instead we were like, oh, we're staying at this house, the pool, blah, blah, blah. Do we really need to go off property? 'cause we're like actually off of a highway in Scottsdale.

And we decided instead to just hang out the house and do, people were like, oh, maybe I'm gonna do some yoga. I'm gonna do some like my Peloton app. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna do my stretching app. Everyone that did it is now obsessed with it. It's called pliability and it, speaking of sleep, I sometimes do it before bed because it, it's like sneaky meditation because I've never been able to commit to Headspace or I don't even know what the other ones are 'cause I can never commit to that.

So meditation with movement. Yeah. So it's, you are basically holding stretches for three, two to three minutes, like deep stretches. So it feels. So good. I always feel incredibly more relaxed and just my body, I feel like a 35, my body is just hitting its limits and it feels good. And I had three people after the batch I'd be like, what was that app again?

And so pliability is alright. Pliability. Let's also put it in the fricking bob.com. Yeah. All right. Pliability, moisturizer, moon juice, what you know, and some sleep hygiene tips. And that's that. That's that. Yeah. All right. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. We'll see you next time on Article Club.