Kim Vopni (00:01.464)
Hello, Sunshine Motley. I'm calling you Sunshine Motley because you are in the sunshine with your, with your. Yeah, I love it. I love it so much. I'm really, really excited to have this conversation with you. We're going to talk about when the sunshine's not around. We're going to talk about sleep, but obviously full circle why the sunshine is so important. But overall sleep. This is your world. This is your passion. As you were just saying, this is why you're here on earth and helping people sleep better.
Mollie Eastman (00:05.704)
wearing the sunshine sweatshirt being very extra.
Kim Vopni (00:30.914)
Your business name, sleep as a skill is so perfect. And I've wanted to have this conversation with you for a long time. So thank you so much for joining me. If you can tell us who you are, what got you to the world of sleep and circadian rhythm? Why is it your passion? And then I'm going to obviously ask specific sleep type questions after that.
Mollie Eastman (00:53.334)
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to have me here and to share about truly my favorite topic on the entire planet, which is sleep. And yet it wasn't always that way. So it was quite the circuitous route. did not anticipate that this would be my life. And I'm still so grateful that this is the direction. And yet if you would have told me this and gone on a time machine, you know, 15 years ago or so, and said this to me, I would have not believed it. Uh, because I really, for so
for the majority of my life, I just thought of myself as not a great sleeper. And I thought it was ingrained. I thought it was fixed. I thought that's just how it was. I thought I'm a short sleeper. I'm a night owl. It's in my jeans. I'll sleep when I'm dead. You all of these labels and narratives about it, but really from a place of this is the cards you're dealt and just survive it. There's nothing to really look at here. And things got more and more pronounced. was kind of always the way I related to that. grew up in a
kind of chaotic upbringing, not a lot of money, young parents, alcoholism, trailer welfare. mean, just really not the most colorful, not the most predictable environment, you could say. And as a result, sleep certainly didn't have a lot of those structures that sleep enjoys back then in my world. And so it just looked the way it looked, and it got progressively
worse my relationship to it over the years until I went through a period of insomnia that completely, you know, stopped me in my tracks. And that was about over a decade ago. And I was traveling internationally. My husband and I have been together 14 years. And we were serial entrepreneurs in Manhattan, burning the candle at both ends, stressed to the max.
decided to, you know, I'd read Tim Ferriss somewhere along the way for our work week and said, yeah, OK, I'm going to put everything in storage, be a digital nomad. And one-way ticket, and yet the amounting stress that we were both under was just getting higher and higher. And the way it showed up in my life was through insomnia. And I'd never experienced anything quite like that.
Kim Vopni (02:45.101)
You
Mollie Eastman (03:06.806)
And this was with added unpredictability of travel, which often tends to augment things anyway and shine a mirror of what's not working. And it really did that for me. And so we're in Europe during this period of time. And so starting in Madrid, know, couldn't sleep. Initially thought it was jet lag and had not traveled a lot coming from not a lot of money. There's not a lot of that in the past. And so throughout that process of
trying to get my sleep back on track. I kept doing everything not to do, unfortunately, and not knowing any better. So if you didn't sleep the night before, OK, we'll try to squeeze it out in other places. Go to bed much earlier than normal. Do all the things that might knee-jerk reactions seem like a logical thing to do. But as we'll discuss with sleeping a skill set, sometimes there is more information that we need to learn and doesn't always land as what we might think.
And so eventually I went to the doctors. I was in Croatia at the time and now had been like weeks of barely sleeping. And I went in and, you know, help, you know, I can't sleep and literally Google translate trying to have these conversations and was really met with sort of, you know, just a good luck and here's a prescription, you know, and so these were for benzos. So, you know, those are approved for short term use.
but certainly not for long-term use is the idea. However, we still see that sadly. And for me, that was a very important moment in my life because I come from a family with a lot of mental health issues and it's seen sort of the genesis of a lot of their more acute periods of time having sleep at its helm. And so the fear for me was, no, is this the moment where I go down that same path?
And now I'm going to be beholden to these medications and just a particular type of life. So certainly the fire was lit to figure this out, to say the least. So really put that same kind of overthinking, obsessive brain that I tend to have in general that got me into this mess in the first place and applied that to this topic.
Kim Vopni (05:18.573)
You
Mollie Eastman (05:23.574)
Thankfully on the other side, what I discovered completely changed the course of my life. Some of the topics that we'll likely, you know, of course get into circadian rhythm and trainment, chronobiology, the science of time and how time affects our biology, quantum biology and otherwise, and just left with this sense of why are we not all talking about this that can so fundamentally transform our experience of life and of course our sleep by extension. So today on the other side of all that,
We now have a top sleep podcast that's been running for over six years, a top sleep newsletter. It's been running for over seven years every Monday. We never miss a Monday. Online courses. We've got a very large O-ring database. So with that database, lots of information that we can kind of glean of what's happening on the ground for people with their sleep that truly moves the needle versus, you know, I can hope and, you know,
pray that this supplement's going to make the difference. Let's really see what makes the difference. And then I have a particular niche with a few key groups, especially with high stakes poker players, of all things. And I share about them because they are in casinos designed on purpose to confuse a circadian rhythm. if we can make a difference with groups like that, we can certainly make a difference with anyone. so I laundry list off all of those things of what life looks like today.
Kim Vopni (06:25.569)
You
Mollie Eastman (06:51.798)
purely from a sense of that if someone like myself who was in the conversation of there is no aptitude for sleep here, there is no just built in abilities, talents as it relates to sleep or work ability. And then on the other side of that, realizing that none of that really was accurate, that this truly is, believe, and I have, I could stand on evidence to support.
that in our modern society, sleep has become a skill set. And it's become such a skill set because of the fact that we've gotten so divorced from these rhythms of nature. You started with the sunshine piece, and that's a big, big part of it. And so much more that I think is really, really exciting. Because often when I talk about some of these things, what I often hear from people is that some of it is almost so
just common sense that it lands and but it's also something that we've almost forgotten and it takes that moment of recognition of yeah this tracks this this has legs to it and then of course we have mountains of research to support for some of the things that we'll talk about today that I think it's a really exciting time for this world asleep because honestly sleep as a domain or area of study is relatively new
It's only been in a little over since a little before the 1900s when we started really delving into sleep as an area, particularly, which is really of note during the industrial revolution when we all went indoors under electric lights at night. And this is verified by if anyone is interested in the area of study of sleep, there's a great book called Mapping the Darkness with an award-winning journalist who's written for many, many
established, respected publications and is one to note that this is really the genesis of this area of study of sleep is the divorcing of nature and going indoors. So there's lots we can talk about, but I am just as surprised as anyone else that I'm in this field.
Kim Vopni (09:05.965)
Why, I love hearing people's stories because it's all it's
Most people have some sort of a pain to purpose story and lived personal experience that then gets them to dive deeper, which you've done. I guess I want to talk about circadian rhythm. I know that is such a big part of what you do. But first of all, why is sleep so vital? You talked about your insomnia experience and most people will tell you when they don't sleep, they don't they feel like shit and they things aren't good when they don't sleep. But what is it about sleep that makes us feel like shit?
Mollie Eastman (09:16.182)
Totally. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (09:41.108)
Yeah, absolutely. And we still have a lot of, on par with the fact that this is a relatively new area of study, there still are a lot of questions of what exactly goes on in these many hours each night, a third of our lives, on average 26 years spent asleep. And yet we don't have a lot of great answers about the specifics. But here is what we do appear to know, which is, I still think, quite astounding, which is that
There doesn't appear to be a single area of life that you cannot, in some way, shape, form, meaningful areas of life that you couldn't go onto PubMed and sleep and cognition, sleep and heart health, sleep and aging, sleep and emotional regulation, sleep and, you know.
purpose, if you will, that's a little esoteric, but certainly fulfillment of, there's connections with just about any area of life that's important to you. Now, if you wanna kind of zoom in more deeply, one of the reasons that sleep has gotten a lot more interest in recent years is that in 2012, the discovery of glymphatic drainage with a G was made versus lymphatic drainage with an L.
and glymphatic drainage with a G is this, almost quite literally, the cleansing of the brain, most notably in particularly the first half of our sleep ratio, from the first half of the night, so deep sleep predominantly. And what does that seem to be helpful for? The kind of flushing of this potential that could build up of beta amyloid plaque tau proteins.
And the flushing of that then seems to help stave off, or at least we see correlations when people are not sleeping well and the buildup of some of those plaques. And with that correlation does seem to be present neurodegenerative disorders. So things like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia, and otherwise. So there's still a lot of questions. mean, is it, does it just all happen to be there when you're sleep deprived? Is it causation versus correlation?
Mollie Eastman (11:54.4)
but certainly something's happening there that's gotten a lot of press. And also if you look at sleep deprived brains and brains of individuals dealing with some of those late stage neurodegenerative disorders, there are certainly some parallels with that buildup. So that's just one area of the neurological side of things, but we also have tons of evidence around.
cardiovascular health. have evidence around its impact on metabolic health on your waistline. You know, certainly from my vantage point with my passion around mental health and seeing the impact, certainly from a long lineage of struggles with that in my family, and for myself, of dealing with anxiety and other things, just knowing the difference, just, you know, point to, point toable research on.
how much that this can impact our experience of the world around us, even on granular things like our ability to read faces. My husband happens to be a nonverbal communications expert and so we'll read, you know, individuals not from like kind of a woo perspective, but from using AI of facial coding mapping and how to apply that also at the poker table. It's part of our poker crossover.
but we certainly have research to support that if you are overly sleep deprived for extended periods of time, that your ability to make sense of those faces or the world around you is impaired and on something so tangible as something like poker, that could cause a big loss, especially in high stakes poker, right? So lots of paths where you can see the deleterious effects of poor sleep. However, if you're looking from an optimistic standpoint,
Kim Vopni (13:25.207)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (13:36.854)
If you flip that, it has the opportunity to be one of the, I know I'm biased, but one of the most fundamental areas that can transform both your performance and your experience of life.
Kim Vopni (13:51.65)
Yeah, thousand percent. So let's start then with circadian rhythm, like defining what is circadian rhythm? Why is the sun important? And what we've heard a few people talk about sleep hygiene. And this is one element I would say, correct me if I'm wrong, that falls under that kind of sleep hygiene, hygiene category. So maybe let's start there and we'll kind of get more nuanced as you go along.
Mollie Eastman (14:20.342)
Yes, yeah. I just did a presentation the other day, and a live presentation. was sharing about this concept, working title, but nature as a sleeping pill. This is not medical information, but to share that there's really exciting research of the power of these.
Kim Vopni (14:32.907)
Yep.
Mollie Eastman (14:44.372)
diurnal rhythms as human beings were diurnal creatures, meaning we're meant to be active by day and at rest at night. And when we start deviating from some of that, we start to see some impacts that show up pretty reliably. Now, for thousands of years, we lived outside. And when we lived outside, a lot of this 24 hour rhythm and circadian rhythm really being circa about and about 24 hours plus or minus and
we would see that with the rising and setting of the sun, all of this would kind of get taken care of to a certain extent. And we can make that leap with research from hunter-gatherer tribes. Like we had a sleep anthropologist on the podcast. was fascinating. Studied the Hudson tribe in Africa and looked at their sleep patterns.
and found that one, they didn't have any sort of language around sleep anxiety, fears around getting off sleep, anticipatory anxiety. None of that seemed to be present in the verbiage and also seemingly the results. They would just sort of go to sleep somewhat tethered to the rhythms of nature a few hours after the sun would set and then awakening in alignment with sunrise. And that kind of rhythm just happened for many, many years.
We also see that today, if we look at certain research, like famous camping studies, they're known as out of the University of Colorado, where they took, then repeated this too, and repeated the results, where they took night owls that were, would say, I can't go to bed before midnight or whatever, night owl leaning, and they took them camping. And the only real difference was that they were outside the entire time, no artificial light sources.
And what they would find is that their melatonin production would move markedly earlier, quite quickly. And then this idea that we are a certain way, that we're fixed a certain way. And I was one of those people that was, you know, shout far and wide, I'm a night owl, you know, I'm extreme night owl. And I get so much of my best work done in the wee hours of the morning and what have you. That's not to take away from potential genetic drift. It's often referred to as a, you know, a tendency. And we all see that certain people that are just.
Kim Vopni (16:47.52)
You
Mollie Eastman (16:59.484)
always been this way, always early leaning, always a little bit more late leaning, but the question lies is are we starting to have more and more extremes and discounting?
how much of an impact our environment might be making on our results and measurable results like that melatonin production. And especially in a society where we're seeing sky high rates of supplementation with melatonin, even to kids and all age ranges. And as a hormone, it becomes really important for us to understand that the circadian aspect of things very well may be at its source point.
What we also see is that as of 2001, the EPA did a study and they found that the average American was spending well over 93 % of their time indoors. And that broke down to inside in an indoor space and then in automobiles and driving. And that was in 2001 before global pandemic, before work from home revolution, before everyone having multiple screens and Netflix jumping to the next episode and all the things that.
keep us even more indoors than before. So it's likely it's even higher than that. And yet we have research to support that the going outsideness is actually a huge component of our ability to have this workable diurnal cycle. So one of our top podcasts was with Dr. Sachin Panda out of the Sulk Institute.
He also made his way over to Huberman, so he's very happy when he stumbled on our podcast. And so he has decades of research on circadian health. One of the things that he found was the need for the average individual to have at least about, and this is very much about, but about an hour outside every day to be able to create sufficient melatonin at night and to reset those master clocks.
Mollie Eastman (18:58.42)
that super chiasmatic nucleus in your brain directly or very closely connected to the eyes and partly why the light is the number one zeitgeber, German for kind of circadian cure, time giver. And so what we see is that of this basic term circadian rhythms, often we think sleep, you know, which makes sense. So we think circadian health, sleep health.
But what I think is really exciting in this domain is that the message is starting to get out that actually, circadian health has its tentacles in a lot more than we might have realized beyond just sleep. And of course, I'm pretty sleep-centric. And so that's a big one. But it's also not just your sleep, but your wake, your experience of when you are awake. But then also just about every other aspect of health. So your hormones, your.
your aging, your cardiovascular health, your mental health, fertility, I mean just so much is connected. Thank you. Yes, these biological needs are really hidden. No one will see that more than when you take a long haul trip and suddenly, you you're going, you know, you're going number two at two in the morning and it's very confusing. So, and that's another example of why the magic of what's known as circadian rhythm entrainment that we
Kim Vopni (20:01.111)
Pooping?
Kim Vopni (20:14.913)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (20:24.096)
have the power to in train these rhythms is very magical because if we were to always just be stuck in these states and you you're always stuck in the New York time and even when you go to Hong Kong you're never gonna change it's not how it works we've actually the body is so dynamic that it will quite quickly get into action to line you up and sync you up it desperately wants to be on time and it's constantly sampling
the world around it through things like the eyes being the number one component. But then there's other ones. And that's where it gets really fascinating from almost a lifestyle approach. So with our programs, we look at how can we start to enact some of these things of the top down most impactful ones. So we look at light, dark. And that really does take a little bit more than I think the average person might realize to set life up in that.
I mean, and sometimes it's uncomfortable, you know, like I'm doing this podcast outside and it's windy and you know, you get all these things, but you get yourself connected to the elements and that tells your body certain information. So that's the light dark, but then we look at things like temperature timing. So it's a little bit cooler here. So I'm getting exposed to that temperature cue and it gives me information about the rhythm or seasons. And so the body.
really, really wants to know this information so that it can plan accordingly, talk about fertility, talk about hormones, and so much more. So we get into the temperature side of things. Then there's additional ones that keep going and make such a huge impact. One of the next being meal timing or meal type. Then below that, looking at things like exercise timing, exercise type.
Something that I've kind of coined around thought timing, because we have evidence to support that our thoughts are very different at different hours of the day, which is just mind-boggling. If you look at things like a really fascinating study called The Mind After Midnight, and we had the opportunity to have some of the top researchers behind that on the podcast and speak to that.
Mollie Eastman (22:31.798)
And there's very real world effects of what they would discover. So in those wee hours in the morning, some of the thoughts that would come up would be more black and white logic. There'd be kind of catastrophic thinking and sadly, suicidality rates going up in the wee hours in the morning. So the more we learn about these and we can either help.
Kim Vopni (22:43.851)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (22:51.474)
usher in and support creating an environment for a certain type of thought in the evening versus fueling the fire and getting ourselves all riled up and the inverse to be true and to actually in the during the daytime hours be mindful of those type of thoughts and that might be a good time to tackle things that we got to still tackle that might be activating but will make a difference on the other end. So that's that thought timing and then lastly
drug timing or chronopharmacology, the timing of our drugs, and it could be as banal as coffee, alcohol, THC, or supplements, prescription drugs, even psychedelics, et cetera. All of those are going to, of course, impact our sleep-wake cycles and impact that circadian health. So all of this at its core is that we're looking to have a strong circadian pulse.
and almost exist on a spectrum, know, so many of us sadly are on this weak circadian pulse versus there's things we can do to kind of move ourselves over to that strong side.
Kim Vopni (23:58.341)
Wow. And as you were talking about the thought timing, that's exactly where my mind went. I know how many times I will be fine during the day and in middle of the night if you wake up and if that thought goes, it is catastrophic. Everything, it's the worst possible scenario is always going to come about at about two or three in the morning. So it's so interesting.
Mollie Eastman (24:18.302)
yes. And yeah. And I shared about my family. And we've seen many of them dealt with suicidality and what have you. that's really important one to me as well, because the more we can educate on this, and when we know better, we can do better. And we can almost just have a sense that. And I know it's often easier said than done. And I've been there. But when those hours arise, and we're awake, and we're thinking of just everything looks really bleak.
Kim Vopni (24:36.365)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (24:47.772)
If we can have some of this information in the background to one, start to just even poke a little bit of Swiss cheese holes into some of these thoughts of just questioning, could this be a bit of the filter that I'm seeing, this kind 3 AM filter or what have you? And if I am to just hold out to when the sun rises, that we can almost have a trust that things will look different. And there's power in that. And then there's also power.
The more you talk about it, too, and it can almost be funny sometimes, my husband will always be on me because I definitely have a brain where I have to rein it in routinely. And I will often, right before bed, and it's kind of, oh, getting changed for bed, wind it down. And then I'll be, oh, did we pay that bill, do that thing, blah, blah, blah. I just like, is that good thought timing? Come on.
Kim Vopni (25:37.517)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (25:42.55)
You can kind of help self, you know, police each other hopefully or create an environment where we know that this is something where we have a say and I think that it can be empowering when we start to learn more about these things and really and almost, you know, have some comedy for ourselves when we drift off. Can we rein it back in?
Kim Vopni (25:54.2)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (26:07.128)
Yeah. What are some of the reasons why we wake up? So to get to the point where we are waking up even to have a catastrophic thought. It's not necessarily, well it could be I guess, but
We wake up for some reason and it can be multifaceted. So what are some of the reasons why we may wake up? And I know that a lot of people talk about the time in between one and three that are even like one and four. It seems to very common time. What are the reasons why we wake up and can circadian entrainment help offset that? And then third part of that question is and if we do wake up we're working on circadian entrainment. What are other things we can do in that moment to fall back asleep?
Mollie Eastman (26:47.988)
Yes, I'm so glad you asked that because first off, if anyone's sitting there and thinking, yes, that's me, do know that you're not alone. It's one of the most popular reasons that certainly that people come our way. see statistically very high rates of upset around wake ups or sleep fragmentation throughout the course of the night for many individuals in certainly the United States and beyond. And so here's what's important to know.
One, that there are many reasons for wake ups. And so there's an opportunity for us to get kind of curious and delve in because I don't want for anyone to be left with, it's just because I have to go pee. I just wrote my newsletter on this, do a weekly newsletter and literally yesterday just writing what I was pointing to this misattribution error, which we see commonly. Now sometimes we really do have to go pee. We drank a little too much.
right before bed and we actually legitimately do need to do that. But often one of the things is that we might have awoken and yet the source point might be different, but because we've been asleep for many hours, yeah, you could go pee. And so we want to kind of just one take on the lens that the sleep is a skill set. And so we're diving into what could some of that route be.
Now one you mentioned could circadian rhythm and train men make a difference with this? Yes. so that's one of the top ones for us to first begin on. Cause what we do when people are struggling with this is go in deeper and really audit their sleep and their health, behaviors, psychology, physiology, and more to really see some of the things that might be at the source of this. Now, the first one, is one just making sure, we fairly consistent with our
sleep-wake timing, specifically our wake timing, because our wake timing, we always have a say with what time we wake up, and our goal is to wake up about the same time, seven days a week, plus or minus 30 minutes. And even if you had kind of a rough night, which I know can sound counterintuitive, of course there are instances where if you're sick or, you know, extreme shift work or jet lag, there might be different protocols, but for in most cases, can we have that level of consistency with the wake up time?
Mollie Eastman (29:08.382)
Now for the wind down time, can we have fairly consistent wind down time and not giving ourselves too much time, which can seem paradoxical in that many times when we're struggling with sleep and things are just, you know, getting rough and you want to support your sleep, you'll say, I got to go to bed so early tonight. And it seems at first glance to be supportive and yet often it can get us into some trouble.
because now we're spending a lot more time in bed and it's training us for inefficient sleep. And so that can cause more wakeups right off the bat. So we wanna first see, is there kind of consistency with that wind down time? But then at the same time, are we spending either too much time or in some cases not enough time in bed and that can further cause stress and sympathetic drive and problems. So we'll identify that.
Then we'll go and also we can never step over the knowledge that there's over a hundred sleep-wake disorders and many people do not even have any remote idea of all the different disorders because why would you? But it's important to know that they do exist and that many times we're seeing that people are
Kim Vopni (30:13.717)
Yeah
Mollie Eastman (30:20.362)
be missed as far as some of the signs. Because do remember that the average doctor, unfortunately, even at a Harvard med, is getting around two hours of training in sleep. So it's more of a systemic problem versus malicious or what have you that they're withholding information. just, unfortunately, it has not been prioritized quite yet. And I think the tides are beginning to turn. We're hoping, but we're still seeing on the ground a missing there.
So because of that, you kind of have to do a little bit of your own skill set building right now, advocate for yourself. And if you do see some of those very clear signs, snoring, morning headaches, mouth breathing, drooling, teeth grinding.
If you're also seeing consistently that your fatigue throughout the course of the day, if you have jaw pain, all of these different things can point to something might be going on with your sleep each night. And then we want to definitely get tested to double check because the amount of people that are dealing with at bare minimum sleep apnea, commonly for many, including women, that's often kind of been called the slender women disease.
is upper airway resistance syndrome. And the other thing to be aware of for women as well is that over around the age of 40, we start to become more one-to-one with our likelihood of being diagnosed with things like sleep apnea as regard to men. So men being more apt to be diagnosed with sleep apnea.
throughout much of their life as compared to us until about 40 and over. And then things change both hormonally, the musculature of our face and mouth can change and airway, and then we can start to have more collapsing. So it cannot overstate the importance of doing this. If you think that this could be you or a partner, you could get a fairly affordable couple dollar app called SnorLab.
Mollie Eastman (32:23.114)
And you could one, just at least check on the snore box and see if you've got lots of that snoring going on. But that's not the only one. And we certainly see all kinds of cases where people are really not snoring and yet still being diagnosed with some of these disorders and other ones, periodic limb movement disorder, restless leg, et cetera, narcolepsy and more that could also be at play for wakeups. Now, if we keep going down the rung for other reasons for wakeups, you know, I think it's
goes without saying, certainly things like anxiety, depression can bring about oddities with sleep that we certainly want to get up under. But then it can be medications, drugs, different alcohol, THC, even though THC can be a surprising one for many people because they might be taking that with the thinking that that's a healthy, natural alternative. And there's, you know.
levels to this game. And so sometimes we see that being an important choice if we're dealing with pain as opposed to other options. But from a long-term approach, from optimal sleep approach, we might see that that might have some deleterious effects as well. So getting up under that. Then one of the other really popular reasons that a lot of people don't realize is metabolic health. So when we often
put continuous glucose monitors on individuals. And companies like Aura have now partnered up with, for instance, Dexcom. And Dexcom just put down to the tune of $75 million to be in partnership, $75 million or the partnership to be a part of that Aura Ring orbit to overlay their tech with the sleep tech.
Kim Vopni (34:01.506)
Wow.
Mollie Eastman (34:10.858)
and to make that connection for people of how much that metabolic health will show up in your sleep results. And commonly, wake-ups are a big part of that. So if people are wearing continuous glucose monitors, and now you can get them without prescriptions in the United States, which is really exciting and a more affordable route, so usually for about $100, you can get two sensors. And this is all relatively new. So you put those on, and then you can often see, wow.
that wake up at 3 a.m. also coincided with a spike slightly before that and then a crash and it all lined up and makes a lot more sense now. So now I have areas to access to impact. Beyond that, then there can also be things from an environmental perspective. So heat in the space, so too hot, or if we're going through hot flashes and having that thermoregulation throw off.
then all of those things can be supported by understanding are the things that we can do in our ambient temperature and our close knit temperature, like our cooling mattress toppers or otherwise, and the bedding that we're sleeping within. And now when I say all these things about the environment too, often people are going to be like, ugh, tune out. Yeah, I know. We want it cool and dark and quiet and what have you. But just taking the time to do a little bit extra of an audit in your space.
and ensuring because sometimes there's things that we haven't considered. So the quality of our air in our bedroom. So if you have a lot of, you you've got your partner, you got the dogs and the cats and kids and all of these off gassing, CO2 levels can go up in your space and that can be problematic to the quality of your sleep. So good air purifier in that space.
because it can build throughout the course of the night. So it might be at normal levels when you close the doors. But if it's not good at ventilation and all that off-gassing, then that could be raising and could be a source point of a wake-up. If we've got mold in our environment, if we've got off-gassing from some of the things that we're sleeping on or around, if there's too much light coming in, because we do have photoreceptors in our skin, but also, of course, with the eyes in particular.
Mollie Eastman (36:25.462)
All of these things can be some of the reasons for wakeups, but I don't want people to think that those are all because there are more than reasons.
Kim Vopni (36:32.857)
There's a lot. I talk about it, you know, in my community, a lot of people are waking up multiple times a night. And as to the point that you made, we wake up and we don't necessarily know, we just have woken up. We may not be aware of a temperature change or a snoring partner or us snoring. We wake up and then there's usually some sort of a sympathetic response, especially if it's blood sugar related or anxiety. And then it's like, I have to pee.
That's probably not the reason that you woke up, but then we start to associate it with it. start to, we train the bladder basically. So I give people techniques from a bladder signal suppression perspective. What are some of the other things in your world that you, what are other tips that you share with people? So when they wake up in that moment, if they, you know, they're not necessarily going to go and sleuth around exactly then to figure it out, but
Mollie Eastman (37:04.679)
frustrated. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (37:25.903)
In that moment when they just want to go back to sleep, like there's people who have trouble falling asleep, there's people who have trouble staying asleep or falling back asleep and they wake up in the night. Are there things that we can do that can help us in that moment and then over time as we continue to sleuth we can address the others as well.
Mollie Eastman (37:46.674)
Absolutely. And apologies. Yes, that was the third part of your question that I didn't quite. I breezed right over that. Yeah, bringing it back. Yeah, because that's so important, because people want to know, like, what do I do? And it can be so frustrating. And we start to kind of create this vicious cycle where it just happens again and again. And then you have this experience, like, not again. I can't go through another night. And I've certainly been there. And so it's a big hot topic question. Now, there's a couple different.
Kim Vopni (37:49.647)
Yeah, no, was a long question.
Mollie Eastman (38:15.924)
the schools of thought to share. one, the one that has some of the most research behind it, and people may or may not have seen this in the world of sleep, which is CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And as opposed to what happened for me when I went to the doctors and left with sleeping pills, that is technically not supposed to be first line treatment. Gold standard is meant to be in the United States.
the recommendation of implementation of CBTI because it has such high efficacy because we got a lot of research to point to its effectiveness and now we don't always see that be the case unfortunately, but If you do get to that point and you leave a doctor's office with that recommendation, what do you do? Well one It's aiming to kind of create an environment
similar to CBT, it's impacting and questioning some of the standard thoughts that we might have arise and starting to do more of that poking holes. And that can certainly on the ground show up with wakeups. So we might have some of that catastrophic thing, ugh, it's 3 AM, I'm never going to get back to sleep. This is always happening to me. And I never used to have this problem. And then I turned 45. And then my hormones did this. And now I'm stuck like this.
or my husband's sleeping fine and here I am, just all of that stuff can start spinning. And whereas CBTI looks at a couple of things. So one, their suggestion is to, if you see that now you've been up for a little stretch of time, say around 10, 15 minutes, and you don't feel particularly sleepy, their recommendation is to get up and out of bed, go somewhere else in dim lighting, relax.
until that sleepiness feeling comes back again and you're kind of training yourself to notice and spot some of those signs of that kind of droopy eyelids and sort of just this transition from that activated brain state of all the things that are going wrong or whatever to now, oh, kind of this like trance-like state. And then in that moment, going back into bed and attempting sleep. And then if that comes, great. If you have to do it again, you do it again. Now,
Mollie Eastman (40:34.984)
That is one approach I will say for, now it can be quite effective for many people. Some people that doesn't seem to be as effective for as people like myself that could overthink and could be like, well, wait, how long have I been awake? Wait, now I'm outside. I don't feel like being outside right now. Why do I have to be reading this book right now? Now I'm not tired. Now I'm even more awake. And so for people like me, one of the things that made a difference was something called ACT.
Kim Vopni (40:57.614)
I'm
Mollie Eastman (41:04.342)
or acceptance commitment therapy for insomnia. And that's a slightly newer approach. And sometimes we see a Venn diagram, kind of a hybrid of the two. And with this, what this looks like is with ACT, you're accepting the fact, dare I say, as upsetting as that could be, you're practicing accepting that I am indeed awake at 3.20 a.m. and I'd rather not be, but I am.
And in this moment, can I kind of practice lying here and getting present to the environment around me, feeling the sheets, kind of getting out of your head and into bed, as they say. And in that moment, also one thing that seems to be a really important reframe that I've seen make a difference for myself and others is this idea that when resting,
that you're still giving your body something of benefit while, of course, it might not be the exact same as sleeping, but that there's still some benefit in staying in that kind of supine position, relaxed, eyes closed in a darkened environment. One, you're giving the circadian cues of nighttime, and you're not disrupting that, because we see otherwise, where some people.
Like, you know, an episode of the Golden Girls, and they go out into the kitchen, and the lights are turned on, and they're eating food, and just all these cues that are going to not help our cause and further confuse all those clocks and every cell and organ in your body. So by maintaining that signal that it is bedtime, and it's time to sleep, and that there can still be some reparative mechanisms at play,
Kim Vopni (42:23.362)
Hahaha
Mollie Eastman (42:42.676)
that often can help take off a little bit of the pressure for people because sometimes we see sleep become a bit of a performance anxiety inducing task. And now we're feeling we're failing this thing and we got a big day tomorrow and now we're going to be even more of a mess and da da. So if we can remove a bit of that pressure and trust that we're still getting some benefit even in that state, that seems to be helpful.
And then I'd say also knowing something about what's known as paradoxical insomnia often is helpful to this concept that commonly we can almost trust that it's likely we're getting a little bit more sleep than we might realize if we've been struggling with insomnia or difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep. And while it can feel like, I barely got any sleep last night, what we can commonly see in sleep labs is when people are all hooked up that they're actually the body and mind is
brilliant and able to squeeze out some of this, you know, micro sleeping and elements of sleep. And that's not to gaslight the individual and be like, well, you should be fine. Even though you didn't totally feel like you were asleep for a lot of the night, you know, where there's something up there that we're going to support. But in the interim, until we kind of get the nervous system and the body coming back to an equilibrium, knowing all as well, having that safety back in play, if some of that is there, then
knowing that can often remove some of the pressure and help to have a sense that I can get through this day ahead because I probably got more sleep than maybe I realize. And then I would also say, I'm sure people have heard of some of these things that they could do in the wee hours of the night where they can do some breath work, they can relax, they can help calm down that nervous system. But what I would often say is,
Okay, in the short term, yeah, maybe you're more awake than you would like. Maybe there's some reflection to do of did we eat a little bit later? Did we get a little more riled up? Did we, you know, there's something that we can maybe make a difference in the future. But especially I would have us take the pressure off of this night and just trust that now we're going to go to work on the daytime because that's a lot of where our power lies is how are we managing our days from the moment we wake up?
Mollie Eastman (45:00.968)
and getting that bright light, that sunshine that we started this whole podcast around, are we getting that consistently? Do we having this structure in place? Do we have some of the skill set of sleep at hand? And then the more we do, what we see is that there's a lot of mirroring happening. by day, how you are by day often gets mirrored in the nights. And if you're all riled up and the sky is falling energy by day,
then it's likely gonna show up in the evenings. And I'm not to say that that can also apply in other areas like our metabolic health. So if we're having spikes and crashes all day long, that's likely to still show up while we're sleeping and then cause more of those wakeups. If we're in a sympathetic dominant state, which often can ramp up some of our sleep disorders like sleep apnea and otherwise, those are all gonna kind of transfer over.
Kim Vopni (45:56.976)
Super fascinating. I have a question. Something that I saw, was like, you know, I was scrolling and I saw something that was a decent hook and it was a woman who said the, it was something about the, viral sleep hack or something. And she said when she went, yes. So she said, look up, look down, look to the side, look to the other side, look all around, then go the other way.
Mollie Eastman (46:13.607)
Yeah, yeah.
Kim Vopni (46:21.345)
Of course, I've tried it a few times and then like I can't, mean, sure, I can fall back asleep pretty easily all the time anyway, but I was like, let me try it. So have you, you have seen it? What is, is, is there a mechanism behind that? What is the strategy there and what's potentially happening?
Mollie Eastman (46:21.632)
Yep.
Mollie Eastman (46:27.572)
in general. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (46:37.334)
Yeah. Yeah, how fascinating is that? So first off, you know, it went mega viral and absolutely enough so that Andrew Huberman kind of pointed to it and discussed it a bit. And it's been kind of a bit of a topic of conversation by different experts. And from...
Kim Vopni (46:51.457)
Okay.
Mollie Eastman (47:00.182)
The thinking is, no, we do not have a ton of double-blind placebo-controlled studies pointing to this, unfortunately, although I wish. However, there are certain theories of why this could be effective for some individuals. So what we do have research around is things like EMDR. And EMDR being have very high efficacy for kind of trauma release or impacting mental state.
And EMDR also by virtue, by extension, has supports with sleep. why is... Yeah, so it's eye movement and we're looking at dislodging some of that trauma response by literal, kind of lateral and changing in the eye location. So the movement of the eyes. Now this kind of came into vogue out of...
Kim Vopni (47:32.463)
Can you define EMDR, sorry?
Kim Vopni (47:48.013)
Right.
Mollie Eastman (47:52.456)
Stanford years ago and some of the realization was actually first attributed to walking and the thinking was that the behind this was dealing with some trauma and found that they felt better when kind of mulling over it, processing it while walking the grounds at Stanford. And so then they had a curiosity of, why might that be? And they were really laughed out in a lot of conversations for quite some time.
until they were able to kind pin down some actual research and kept being able to replicate this and point to this, which is that one, if we think about the structure of the eyes in general, if they are an external and visual part of the brain, where if you think of a giant brain kind of encapsulated in...
kind of goo, if you will. And so it's held there. What's often there too is this connected these two eyeballs. And so they are a piece of the brain that is external. Now, when we have this movement of the eyes.
than even just as basic as, for instance, walking, that seems to have a lowering of sort of anxiety or stress or rumination and help to kind of calm the mind and get that darting happening. And there's lots of kind of theories on why. Now, other experts can certainly go into more detail on that for sure. But just some of what shakes out is that we seem to see when those movements are applied.
then we are left with some of this changing of the psychology that we, different psychology, same stimuli. And so similar thinking applies with something like sleep because if a lot of this, we absolutely see that there's research to support things like gratitude, for instance, where kind of ending your day in gratitude, and we see this with gratitude journaling and research around that.
Kim Vopni (49:31.406)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (49:50.996)
with ease of falling asleep and more staying asleep and ability to get back to sleep when awoken. And so the psychology piece is present. And then if you pair that with the physiology of something like those eye movements, all of it kind of makes sense to almost have that reset, if you will, like a hard reset from the body and mind. Do we need more research? Yes. But it is interesting that so many can point to that being an effective strategy.
Kim Vopni (50:10.67)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (50:20.417)
Yeah, and though we sort of hovered over it, but this woman was basically sharing that if she wakes up in the night, she keeps her eyes closed. She then would take her eyeballs and as if her eyes were open, she would look up to the sky. Then she would look down to the ground. She would look to the right. She would look to the left. She'd kind of go in a circle to the right, then in a circle to the left, and then you're done. And you know.
In her terms, magically you fall back asleep after that. that's something that it's a pretty, it's a very benign noninvasive thing. You can try to see if that would help you. And now with a little bit more knowledge from the EMDR perspective for people to look into.
Mollie Eastman (50:59.358)
Yeah, absolutely. And it also speaks to some of these other things that could almost land as like soft skills, like, just give me the supplement, give me the prescription, et cetera. But when people hear things like worry journaling is one of the things that's in CBTI as an approach, and yet,
Kim Vopni (51:10.734)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (51:20.754)
We've had different experts on the podcast that work with Navy SEALs and dealing with very real world extreme situations and death and lots of high pressure to say the least. And yet the ability to take the time and pen to paper, write out what is plaguing their mind and getting that out and then being able to have kind of a column for the action that they can take.
Even if it's something as basic as in some cases accepting, know, someone has died and now we're in the process of accepting that. Or if there's something you can do about it, then you know, taking action at 9 AM tomorrow or whatever it is by getting those things out and sorting out and helping the brain have that sense that loops are being closed, that we can be at peace and at ease. A lot of this is supporting that. Now, if people are interested in kind of more
experimental or things out of the norm. Dr. Matthew Walker wrote one of the bestselling books, Why We Sleep. And so he's on the board for a company called Somni. And Somni uses, so it's kind of like a headband and using transcranial stimulation so that that can, the aim to help support lowering of some of that stress response. It's supposed to be using AI to get to learn your brain.
in the hours leading up to sleep, but also some people using those when they wake up. I also am friendly with the creator of Muse headbands and what they found to be one of the most popular times that people are using their headbands is when they wake up or to fall asleep. So very sleep-related. I also know the Creators of Primal Mind app that has data around time that hypnosis is used and often that is very much
you know, located around wake ups as well, and to kind of help calm that mind and get us back to sleep. So these are all different approaches, but one of the things I think is one of the overlooked, you know, magical, you know, approaches and impacts is when we start living in alignment and learn these circadian aligned techniques.
Mollie Eastman (53:36.554)
then a lot of these things just kind of work. know, cause I used to go to bed with like, as if I'm going to battle, I'd have like a stack of notebooks and books and you know, the eye mask and all of the things. I am ready and you know, good luck going in that way anyway. Cause also I'm just kind of like a Chinese finger trap. The harder you try, the more stuck you are. And so it's forcing sleep does not go together very commonly.
So instead, one of the things that was so relieving to me was to get that I could remove some of my attention from the nights and start to shift to these days and get that how I'm managing my days actually is completely setting me up for a night of ease and not having to think about this. And now life is like fascinating. It's still fascinating to me where I'm.
and you know, just reliably every night at about the same time, even with travel and a lot of different things, of course, there's always going to be variability with jet lag or whatever. for the most part, reliably, I get tired at around the same time, almost like a kid where you're just like, you know, yawning and all the symptoms of tiredness and you don't have to think about it and you don't have to like meditate yourself to sleep and you don't have to effort. And now, of course, there's going to be acute situations and times in everyone's life and everyone's going to have.
times where sleep is better or worse to greater or lesser kind of accordion model extent. But I think the more we learn this, most of the time we can get a kind of a Pareto's principle to support that this is less of a struggle.
Kim Vopni (55:10.223)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the predictability piece. To kind of wrap this up, I'm gonna come back to where we started, which is a circadian, which is during the day. You've kind of touched on a few things. So we've established that light, so light especially in your eyes, so no sunglasses, no lenses ideally, first thing in the morning is one important thing. You mentioned a couple other things with, so light during the day, timing of meals.
activity thought you went through a few of those at the beginning. If you were to kind of summarize that maybe even give an example of what your day is with your thought timing, your meal timing, all that. I've heard people say, you know, go outside at lunchtime to have your meal. And what would be the most important things for people to do during the day as we work on this circadian entrainment that you talk about?
Mollie Eastman (56:00.254)
Yeah, great question. OK, so I have to have people get the MyCircadian app. And there's other apps, just that one has for wherever people might be out on the globe, geotag you where you are. So first, you can even get aware of what time is sunrise in your area. What time is UVA rise? What time is UVB rise? What time is sunset? And all of these are a part of this conversation of kind of learning a little bit of the physics of light. You don't have to get too crazy, but it's
really quite fascinating when you start to learn some of this. So you learn some of those aspects. If available to you, if you can really live in this alignment with circadian health, there can often be some benefits if you can align, particularly, especially hitting that UVA rise, but even benefits with that sunrise. Now, of course, there's all kinds of considerations and factors here. So I get that we might not always be able to do that.
So if that's the case, you're picking your consistent wake up time, seven days a week, plus or minus around 30 minutes. And that becomes your new anchor time. Then with that anchor time, you get nothing else out of what I'm talking about. You keep that anchor time and then you almost ideally kind of fall out of bed outside if you can, so that you're going straight out to get that sunlight in your eyes. Now I know that sometimes people are waking up before sunlight. And if that's the case,
from a circadian line perspective, from a quantum biology perspective, our goal is to have you have kind of red light before that or candlelight, kind of what you would have naturally been exposed to. Because we'll remember that Edison only created the sun or the light bulb at 145 years ago. We've been on the planet for thousands of years. We somehow figured out before people freak out when I say that you shouldn't be having these things. And yet.
Kim Vopni (57:49.367)
Yeah
Mollie Eastman (57:53.11)
Somehow we made it work and we had less sleep issues, imagine, or at least from what we can discern. so can you, until that you get that natural sunlight in your eyes, then you're not getting exposed to the bright of your screen, of all these overhead lights telling you the kind of wrong times of day. Angle of light is a factor in this as well.
So then you're exposed to that potentially sunrise or that same wake up time. Your front loading, if you only have say that one hour that I mentioned to get outside throughout the course of the day, where do you kind of spend that time? If you can spend it particularly on the front half of the day, quite notably, and then maybe pieces of midday to get a little bit that UVB and UVB is where you make vitamin D and vitamin D is crucial to then this.
process of creating serotonin, and then that's necessary to create melatonin. So if you're devoid of that, which many of us are very low in vitamin D, especially in winter months and northern latitude locations, if that's the case for you, I highly suggest getting some of these vitamin D lamps where you can make vitamin D from a lamp. One of my favorites is Mitolux. And so it has that kind of UVB aspect to it.
Chroma D is one, and then also Spurdy Lamp is another. No affiliation with any of these, but these can help create vitamin D from that light source if you are in those northern latitude locations. So then what I like to do is then I get up, I go outside, get the sunlight in my eyes, I make breakfast, which I never used to do. And this goes into circadian rhythm intermittent fasting. And you're looking to really eat largely when the sun is out.
and give yourself a bit of a digestive break as much as possible when the sun has set. So then you're getting that food and bringing it outside, preferably, ideally. And I know this is all in a spectrum. Sometimes we can't make this happen. But if we can, then can you eat outside? And sometimes you look weird. Sometimes you have blankets, like I have right here, and just things on hand. and this is a funny one called Sun Hug. And this is a new company that
Kim Vopni (01:00:01.197)
You
Mollie Eastman (01:00:09.748)
It's literally like a tent for the winter. So you go into the tent and creates a greenhouse effect and you can then still get all of that full spectrum light inside the tent. But right. And then you're nice and cozy and warm in there. So it still gives you aspects out there because unfortunately these windows, you can't these windows block a lot of that full spectrum light and the lux that comes through. So you got to learn a little bit of the physics of this, but once you learn it, it's in your.
Kim Vopni (01:00:18.615)
Cool.
Mollie Eastman (01:00:37.13)
brain and it's now you just know it through and through. And so then you're eating outside on the first half of the day. You're ideally moving your body. So then if you right after you eat, you can kind of have that glucose walk ideally and get more sunlight in your eyes. Sometimes people say, where I am, the sun is blocked. If we can kind of walk where you can get a bit more access to sunlight, great, do that. And so even if it's in a northern latitude location, cold,
can also be supportive of mitochondrial health and make up for some of the absence of that sun. So this gets in the quantum effects of this. But at its minimum, you're getting at least that hour of sunlight front loaded, preferably, then dip into a little bit of UVB that we'll show you on that app, and then a little bit of sunset if possible. And during that sunlight time, you want all upregulation activity. So that's when you're sending the
email to the boss or whatever that might be more activating. You're dealing with all that stuff that you got to deal with and that's more upsetting possibly or just up regulating by day. And then you're also getting building musculature, which is helpful for thermoregulation. You're eating throughout there. You are also having the body temperature go up. So we know that would.
body temperature is dynamic and so we're looking to have that all raise and even in your environment you might turn up the temperature if you have that ability so that you're mimicking what would be happening outside inside and then the flip side of everything I just said occurs when the Sun is setting.
So that indoors you're kind of turning down the temperature to help mimic what would be happening outside You are changing all of your lighting over to incandescent red lights candle lights Himalayan salt lamps all of these different options that are very fire like If you're gonna be exposed to that blue centric light because it is so impactful to melatonin production, especially the brighter and more Close to you with proxemics that that's there
Mollie Eastman (01:02:42.772)
Then you have your blue blockers on to kind of help shield a bit of that. And then you are abstaining from a lot of movement during this time. New research points to anywhere from about four to six hours before bed, minimizing high intensity exercise. So you're kind of just gentle wind down. Doesn't mean you can't have a nice walk or stretching or yoga.
But you're bringing that in. You're really aiming to not eat during that time. You're being mindful of that thought timing piece, not the taxes conversation time, not as much as that's often the time I think of all these things. But so we're really helping to guard those kind of conversations. And also what's known as kind of a lack of novelty in the hours leading up to bed, particularly around the 90 minutes to two hours before bed. It's ideally not the best time.
to start the most exciting novel on the planet, to watch Netflix with brand new late breaking blah, blah. So it's not the time to get into something that's really gonna activate. And that can also go for just checking the emails, going on social. And it's not to say, I I totally get it. I'm just as addicted to some of these things as the best of us, but.
Can we create guardrails and certainly start to wind that down and be thoughtful about what's going on on there? Can we triple click on our iPhone and get red on the back so that the red screen is present so you're not getting hit with the light and kind of setting up? Like I have.
a couple different accounts on different platforms that some are just all positive, know, just comedy light or whatever. So I can have options so I can have a bit of a say of what's going to be in my environment. The amount of time my husband and I watched the office and you know, everything, you know exactly what's coming. There's not a lot of surprise. So all of these things can help make a difference, but the
Mollie Eastman (01:04:36.82)
The real work too underneath there is dealing with some of those things in our lives that aren't working. I often say sleep is a barometer of the workability of our lives. And so many different periods in our life, we might be navigating certain things that we've got to address by day and that in turn will support our nights.
Kim Vopni (01:04:57.911)
That is so awesome. I had a question about the red light, but you answered it. was, I guess, my question was about timing of it. Is it better to have it in the morning or the night? But you said really it's both. You can use it both. Because I live in Vancouver and right now I'm usually at 5.30 to 6 a.m. wake up. I've always been that person. I wake up right now and it's dark for at least two and a half hours still. right? then, so that the red light's coming into play.
Mollie Eastman (01:05:02.798)
good.
Kim Vopni (01:05:27.821)
And I haven't used it so much. I have used it a bit at night, but not as much. so at night, typically, you know, I'm starting to yawn and feel tired, sleepy, seven o'clock. The sun is typically at this time of the year in Vancouver setting around 430 in the afternoon. And so it's kind of like that two and a half, three hours later. And then I'm usually going to bed like nine ish somewhere in there. So.
Mollie Eastman (01:05:43.668)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (01:05:54.178)
timing of red light for somebody like myself in the northern hemisphere, you could use it at both times of the day. Is that correct? Did I understand that correctly? Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (01:06:01.844)
Yep, it's perfect. I'm glad you said that because, and I'll further distinguish between red light, so red light sources like a red light bulb or what have you that's kind of a gentle in the background, and red light therapy, because sometimes people will interchange those. And so I'll draw that line, that red light therapy. So say like the red light panels or what have you.
Kim Vopni (01:06:25.687)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (01:06:26.358)
If you test those so that my circadian app or other apps you can test the lux output and Those panels will often be very bright. So commonly they'll be like 2,000 lux 3000 lux off put so it can be quite activating and technically any bright light from any spectrum is going to be the thinking can be more activating some people more sensitive than others it's also why some of the call-outs with the light therapy is
thoughtful around people with bipolar and other things, because we might have more episodes because of that sensitivity. So it is interesting that we're all, there's a level of sensitivity. But with red light therapy, ideally, if you can kind of keep it somewhat close to when we would be exposed to infrared light, which is during the day, but particularly on the ends. So if you look at sunrise and sunset, that pinky hue is the presence of a lot of infrared light.
Kim Vopni (01:07:19.437)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (01:07:22.518)
So, you know, if you really want to get super circadian lines, then you can kind of dip those in there. But then what's interesting is red light itself that doesn't have the therapeutic effects, just a plain old red bulb on Amazon or whatever. Then that can act as almost like you just made a little fire or something, right? And you woke up before, you know, dawn and so you made a little fire and that's giving you a little bit of light source.
Kim Vopni (01:07:35.052)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (01:07:41.483)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mollie Eastman (01:07:49.23)
And that's kind of our modern day equivalent as opposed to turning on the million watt whatever above us and just the cortisol inducing effect that that can have. Also, what we want to think is that there's photo therapy and light therapy is enough of a drug in that we know a drug is really defined as something that can create a physiological effect and point to a paper that can be written about it as its impacts on your body.
Kim Vopni (01:07:54.412)
Right.
Kim Vopni (01:08:15.48)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (01:08:17.454)
And definitely light therapy counts as that. And as it relates to circadian health, the time by which you get exposed to the brightest shot, that bright shot of first morning light is when there is kind of this almost invisible countdown clock that from that time around, you know, 16 hours or so later.
that you are likely to get sleepy as tethered to that time. So there's strategy involved there. So I shared, I work with a lot of high stakes poker players. And if they've got big tournaments or a world series of poker or whatever, we look to train their biological peak. And their biological peak, we can shift that out later if they have a late game. So we can move that by exposing them to their first shot of bright light later. And that will keep them up later.
Kim Vopni (01:08:54.83)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Vopni (01:09:06.03)
Hmm.
Mollie Eastman (01:09:07.126)
The inverse is also applied if you also start turning on all the lights in your place at four in the morning or whatever, then you're likely to get sleepier earlier because you've now trained yourself that this is your kind of mimicked or faux sunrise because you made a faux sunrise inside.
Kim Vopni (01:09:24.876)
Right. Yeah. Super cool. Okay. I've kept you for a really long time. That was much longer than I thought we would have here. Thank you so much for being so generous with all your information.
Mollie Eastman (01:09:33.718)
Well, apologies if I went on too many tangents. I get quite excited about this topic. Hope it was of value for people. Right? Yeah.
Kim Vopni (01:09:40.446)
No, the tangents are the best, honestly. I love the tangents. I feel like the gold is there. So where can people find you? Learn more. You mentioned you have a newsletter, your podcast. Where can people find you?
Mollie Eastman (01:09:53.686)
Yeah, absolutely. So at sleepisaskill.com, they can go and do a few things. They can take a sleep assessment and get information right away based on what they're dealing with. Also, you can sign up for a weekly newsletter, and it's called Sleep Obsessions. So every Monday, you can get information out for free. We also have a weekly podcast, so with different experts.
you know, sharing about other areas of health and love to also hear from you too and different things that people can be aware of fun rant talk about a tangent. I had gone to CES a long, long time ago and you know, huge electronics event. And I, this is the first year that they had sleep, a sleep wing that's always there. But then right next to sleep, alphabetical was sex.
Kim Vopni (01:10:30.378)
You
Mollie Eastman (01:10:47.422)
And it was first year sex was allowed. I'm just going right in and telling you about this. And the creator of, god, what was it called? It was a vibrator. That's a smart vibrator. And I'm sharing this, given your area of expertise and what's on your backdrop. I know it's a little bit of a leap. And what she was noting was that they found circadian components of the strength of orgasms.
Kim Vopni (01:11:02.006)
Yep.
Mollie Eastman (01:11:15.35)
that we're having in the strength of the organs in the morning, by night. I'm sure this is not news to you, but for me it was really fascinating. I still want to learn more about it. Anyway, so there's always possibilities to have different experts in surprising areas. Love to have you on, but on that podcast. And then beyond that, we also do a couple other things. So we do sleep audits. So we can audit your sleep particularly.
wearables, most notably, our ring, because we have such a database to draw from as to see where you're kind of falling in Paris. And then we also do cohorts. So we're going to be doing another cohort coming up in the new year in 2026. Because the commitment is that no matter what you're dealing with with your sleep and your budget, if you just looking for free support, we aim to give that and make that available.
And if you are looking for additional support at various price points, that ideally there's something for everyone and someone that came from not a lot of money and feelings of disempowerment during some of those times.
the ability to have that information, but also that sense of community, because you can feel so alone. I remember vividly when I was dealing with this searching sleep support group, like why is there no sleep AA? Because you feel like the only weirdo that is dealing with this. And it turns out not true. So many of us deal with this at different points. And I just appreciate you creating a forum for people like myself to share about these things as well.
Kim Vopni (01:12:28.526)
Totally.
Kim Vopni (01:12:35.2)
Yeah.
Kim Vopni (01:12:42.294)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (01:12:50.348)
Yeah, yeah, well, it's so vital to our health. It's vital to our pelvic health. So many people struggle with more symptoms when they don't sleep. Part of the reason they have symptoms is because they're waking up multiple times. So it can get into that vicious cycle. And hearing from other people that offer tips specific to sleep that's not just me and the pelvic health component is really, really valuable. So so appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mollie Eastman (01:13:12.822)
Mmm.
thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you.
