Habits and Hustle
Episode 429: Dr. Michael Breus: The Sleep Doctor on Transforming Sleep and Health with Simple Daily Habits
Tue, 04 Mar 2025
Do you struggle to get a good night's sleep or maintain healthy habits? In this episode the Habits and Hustle podcast, I am joined by renowned sleep expert Dr. Michael Breus who reveals how making small changes to your daily routine can profoundly impact your sleep and overall well-being. We dive into the importance of waking up at the same time every day, staying hydrated, and making informed choices about water intake. We also discuss sleep disorders, the effects of alcohol and caffeine on sleep, and the role of supplements like magnesium. So tune in for practical, actionable advice that will improve your sleep and well-being. Michael Breus, Ph.D is a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and a Fellow of The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and one of only 168 psychologists to pass the Sleep Medical Specialty Board without going to medical school. He holds a BA in Psychology from Skidmore College, and PhD in Clinical Psychology from The University of Georgia. Dr. Breus has been in private practice as a sleep doctor for nearly 25 years. Dr. Breus is a sought after lecturer and his knowledge is shared daily in major national media worldwide including Today, Dr. Oz, Oprah, and for fourteen years as the sleep expert on WebMD. Dr. Breus is also the bestselling author of The Power of When, The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan, Good Night!, and Energize! What We Discuss: (01:01) GLP-1 Drugs (06:34) Wellness Fundamentals for Better Health (18:11) Strategies for Better Sleep Quality (24:01) Improving Sleep Quality Without Medication (34:47) Exploring Supplements, Melatonin, and Dream Therapy (45:08) Navigating Different Sleep Habits in Relationships (50:54) Celebrity Sleep Strategies and Hydration (01:02:43) Optimizing Sleep Habits and Hacks (01:10:16) Sleep Tips for Kids and Hydration (01:18:58) Dream Therapy Insights and Tips …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: AquaTru: Get 20% off any purifier at aquatru.com with code HUSTLE Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www.magicmind.com/jen and use code Jen at checkout. BiOptimizers: Want to try Magnesium Breakthrough? Go to https://bioptimizers.com/jennifercohen and use promo code JC10 at checkout to save 10% off your purchase. Timeline Nutrition: Get 10% off your first order at timeline.com/cohen Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here, code Jennifer20 for 20% off. Momentous: Shop this link and use code Jen for 20% off Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Dr. Michael Breus: Website:https://sleepdoctor.com/ Books: https://sleepdoctor.com/books
Chapter 1: How can GLP-1 drugs affect sleep apnea?
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.
You guys are in for a huge treat. We have one of our favorite guests ever. There you go. On this podcast. His podcast has still, I think you're still like the number one most downloaded podcast. That's why I keep on bringing you back because you bring it. We have the sleep doctor.
Thank you. Thank you.
Dr. Michael Bruce back on the podcast. Thanks. Thank you so much for coming back.
This is the three-peat, right?
It is a three-peat. And you think, like, how much more information can you even know about sleep?
Fair question.
Right? Sure. But you cease to amaze every time you give better and better, more concise, new information every time.
Well, it's interesting because sleep is such a new field in medicine that there's like new things that we learn about all the time. I think that's one of the reasons why I like the field so much is because I'm like this avid sleep nerd. I like read all the literature, but it's something new happens, like something miraculously new happens really quite often.
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Chapter 2: What are the fundamentals of improving sleep and wellness?
So for folks out there who don't know what all this means, so for people who have sleep apnea, which is a situation where your throat closes in the middle of the night, a lot of people have to wear a mask on their face, which pushes air down their throat to keep their throat open. It's also a weight-dependent situation in many cases.
So ZepBound, which is another name for Monjaro, which is, of course, like a GLP-1, has now recently been approved by the FDA for sleep apnea.
Really?
Right. Very interesting, right? So now all of a sudden, it's very interesting. So Monjaro has the, as Zepbound, that's the trade name, is now available for people who have sleep apnea. If you meet certain conditions, like you have to have a BMI that's a certain amount and things like that. But that's the first time something like that has ever happened.
So you mean people are now being prescribed Monjaro or- Zepbound. Or Ozempic for sleep issues?
You could, in theory, do it. There's one drug that has actually been approved by the FDA to do it. So to answer your question, yes, that is a possibility. So then people say to me, like, well, Dr. Bruce, I don't want to get put on a CPAP machine. I'd rather just do a weight loss drug and see what happens. And so the question becomes, is that a good idea? Is that a bad idea?
What do we think about that on the sleep medicine side of things? So I'm going to be honest with you. I think it's got some pros, but I think it has more cons than it does pros in the general sense. So the pros are you lose some weight, which is probably pretty good. That's a pro. But in fact, weight loss may or may not have anything to do with your airway.
So depending upon where your weight sits on your body. So for example, if you've got a lot of weight around your neck and you lose that weight, that's probably going to help sleep apnea because it's not crushing your neck in the middle of the night. But if you carry most of your weight through your hip area, it may or may not have a tremendous effect.
So I could see it as a combination as an example. So for example, you might get put on CPAP machine, then use a GLP-1, and then the pressure for the CPAP machine gets lower and lower, and then we can take you off the machine. So I think there's a lot of different ways. I think people need to be creative, but it's kind of interesting idea.
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Chapter 3: Why is waking up at the same time every day important?
Now you're at like 36 to 48 hours. Now you're actually starting to feel some mild physical pain. Like you're feeling that physical fatigue. You're feeling all these things. When you hit, you know, like 48 to 72 hours, you'll start to hallucinate. You will not be in reality. And by the time you hit four days of no sleep, I could ask you your name and you wouldn't be able to tell me what it was.
So what it does is it affects every organ system and every disease state. Everything you do, you do better with a good night's sleep. Every time, like it's unbelievable. But sleep is flexible. So people shouldn't go, oh my God, sleep is so important. I better get eight hours every night because that's horseshit too, right?
We got to remember something like everybody doesn't need the same amount of sleep. You certainly don't need the same amount of sleep throughout your lifetime. And it can also vary based on the stress levels that are going on in your life.
where you are on your menstrual cycle if you're a female, where you are in your pregnancy life journey, where you are in your age, like there's so many different factors. So people shouldn't lock into this idea of eight hours, but they should lock into the idea of sleep's important, right? And so if I can put some very basic parameters around my sleep, I can get it to work really, really well.
Let me give you one example. So you like it when I say things that are nice and short and kind of get it in there, right? So this is the number one hack, and I know you hate that word, but this is the number one habit that I'm asking people to do. Wake up at the same time, seven days a week. No sleeping in on Saturday, no sleeping in on Sunday. Let me explain why.
When you wake up in the morning and your eyes open up, sunlight hits your eye and there's a melanopsin cell, which is a special cell that sends a signal to your brain to turn off the melatonin faucet in your head. It sets a timer for 14 hours later. So if you're waking up at 6 a.m., 14 hours later is 8 p.m., and that turns on the internal melatonin, kind of like the internal Ambien,
right?
And now you're falling asleep on the regular, but now it's Saturday and you slept in until eight or nine, right? So guess what happened? Your melatonin doesn't kick off at eight. It kicks off at 11. It is a direct relationship. The timing that your melatonin kicks into gear is directly related to what time you woke up that morning.
So by being consistent, you can now consistently have your melatonin working. And here's what's cool about that is when you're consistently sleeping within that schedule, when you do have a bad night, You snap back so much easier than when you don't. I have bad nights. Like the sleep doctor is not immune to all of this stuff.
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Chapter 4: How can you prevent waking up in the middle of the night?
I swear to you, it's crazy.
What bed should I buy?
I'll talk to you about that. Let's fix your insomnia first. So when people wake up in the middle of the night, it's actually not your fault. Let me explain. When you wake up in the, well, I'm sorry, when you go to bed at night, your core body temperature rises, rises, rises until it hits a peak.
When it hits that peak, it begins to drop, usually around 10, 10.30 at night, depending on your chronotype. Remember my animals? That'll change a little bit. But as soon as that happens, your core body temperature continues to drop, drop, drop. At some point, your core body temperature has to raise. Otherwise, you're going to become hypothermic.
I'll give you one guess as to what time that usually is for you.
Three o'clock in the morning.
That's exactly right. So every human on earth wakes up at some point in time during the night, usually between one and three o'clock in the morning. That's because of this increase in core body temperature. However, most people don't even know that they've woken up because you have to be awake for about 45 seconds to actually realize that you're awake. And they roll over and they're back to sleep.
You, however, are not. So let's talk about that situation right there, okay? So when you look at that situation right there, there's a few different biology aspects that you need to know and understand. So number one, my first thing is I tell people, don't go pee. Now, I want to be clear. If you got to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom. But hold on for a second.
90% of people tell me they wake up and they say, well, I'm up. I might as well go pee. So there's a statistic that people don't know. In order to enter into a state of unconsciousness, you need a heart rate of 60 or below. What do you think happens to your heart rate when you go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position and go pee?
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Chapter 5: What supplements and techniques can aid in better sleep?
CBN is one of the constituents within the cannabis plant. So there's THC, there's CBD, there's CBN, there's something called CBG, there's also something called CBC. There's several different components that a lot of people don't know about. But if you're going to the dispensary and you're looking for something to help you with sleep, you really want to be looking for this component called CBN.
And you would probably want a ratio of three of those for every one CBD and every one THC. THC is the component that makes you feel buzzed. It makes you feel fun and all that kind of stuff. Now you notice I'm saying it's okay to have some THC. Let me explain. THC at high amounts will lower your REM sleep and increase your heart rate, which we don't want either one of those.
But at lower amounts, it will lower anxiety. So I would argue that you want something that's high in CBN, because that's what helps with lowering your awakenings, CBD to lower some anxiety, and THC to lower some anxiety to help you enter into sleep. Now, I want to be very, very clear. You don't have to take marijuana to help you sleep.
But if this is something that is habitual for you or something that you feel comfortable with, that would be a formulation that I would look at. The other thing I think is important to look at here is if this is happening on the regular, you probably want to come and talk to somebody like me, like a sleep specialist who's been trained in something called cognitive behavioral therapy.
Because there's a technique called sleep restriction that I would use in that case to be able to consolidate the amount of sleep that you get. So while this is going to sound very, very strange, we talk about it a little bit in the book, this is what we do is if you're normally waking, let's say you woke up at 3.30, you're up until 5.30, then you fall back asleep for an hour.
10.
So I'd have you go to bed at 10.30 or 11. So notice later than normal. So build up that sleep debt, right? And then I would have you get up at probably five. I would restrict the amount of time that you have in bed. Now you're gonna say, Michael, I already don't sleep. You're making this worse. My anxiety is gonna be through the roof. What are you talking about? This sounds crazy.
But you take no naps during the day and you wait again until that night at 11. What I'm doing is I'm naturally building up your sleep deprivation to use to my advantage. So if you do this for five to seven days in a row, By the way, you shouldn't do this on your own. You should only do this under the supervision of somebody who knows how to do this because there's some things that can go wrong.
What'll happen is your sleep consolidates and now you're no longer awakening in the middle of the night. So then what I do is once I've gotten you six solid hours, I start to stair-step you out slowly. I can get you six and a half, seven hours. I can get you to wherever you need to go.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential risks of using sleep medications?
It's a synthetically produced hormone, which affects lots of things in the body, which is why I don't like it, especially in kids.
No kidding. I know. And also, it's also not something to get addicted to either. Correct. So basically then, magnesium, vitamin D, you say, are two that you're comfortable with.
Super comfortable.
And omegas. And omegas. Well, yeah. So wait, what do you mean? So talk about the omegas. You say gaba root and hops.
No, I said valerian root and hops. And then I said gaba. is one of the ones that I like to use. And as in terms of overall supplementation. So you wanted to know about omegas? So one of the things we know is that omegas, they help with a whole host of different functions in our body, which then relate to sleep.
So as an example, one of the things that omegas do is they help create the membrane around cells that makes them stronger and stronger and stronger. So less bad stuff can kind of get in. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
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