Get access to more than 70 Ask Me Anything episodes with Dr. Rhonda Patrick when you sign up as a FoundMyFitness Premium Member Chronic insomnia and untreated sleep apnea profoundly accelerate cognitive decline, impair performance, and diminish resilience. In this episode, Dr. Michael Grandner outlines practical, scientifically validated interventions, including CBT-I and stimulus control strategies, to retrain your body for consistently restorative sleep. He provides critical insights into detecting hidden sleep apnea and explains how precise timing of morning light, caffeine, and supplements like melatonin can dramatically enhance sleep quality and daytime performance. Dr. Grandner also shares actionable tips for falling asleep faster, managing nighttime awakenings, and provides an honest look at the accuracy and pitfalls of sleep trackers. Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (04:45) Poor sleep vs. insomnia—how can you tell? (07:11) Does stressing about sleep make insomnia worse? (13:41) CBT-I’s real target—wakefulness, not sleepiness (16:11) Why your bed should be reserved strictly for sleep (20:23) Can trying too hard to sleep backfire? (21:38) Scrolling yourself awake? Try standing instead (24:59) What should you do if you can't fall back asleep? (27:51) Why effort keeps you awake (29:30) Sleep restriction therapy—worst name, best solution? (32:10) Can you train yourself to fall asleep faster? (34:52) Why bedtime cliffhangers sabotage sleep (36:32) Sedatives vs. CBT-I—which beats insomnia better? (40:45) Insomnia by the numbers—is it affecting you? (42:06) Why sleep apnea is shockingly common (and often unnoticed) (45:44) Is nighttime waking a hidden sign of sleep apnea? (51:50) Are at-home sleep apnea tests reliable? (53:22) Allergies vs. sleeping position—what causes sleep apnea? (56:05) What actually happens during REM and deep sleep? (1:04:33) Are dreams your brain’s way of decoding life? (1:08:50) How apnea destroys sleep architecture (1:10:20) Does untreated sleep apnea raise Alzheimer's risk? (1:13:19) How poor sleep disrupts attention and memory (1:16:36) Effective CPAP alternatives (1:20:39) Mouth taping—sleep hack or hype? (1:22:42) Measuring sleep apnea treatment success (1:24:45) Advanced sleep hygiene for chaotic schedules (1:28:13) Do blue-blocking glasses actually enhance sleep? (1:28:58) Why morning light is key (1:33:45) Should you delay your morning cup of coffee? (1:37:43) Why consistent mornings are crucial—even if bedtime isn't (1:41:14) Are you losing sleep to "revenge bedtime procrastination"? (1:46:01) Why 5 mg of melatonin might be too much (1:53:38) Do melatonin supplements contain more than advertised? (1:56:31) Can melatonin boost your immune system? (1:57:26) Debunking melatonin supplement safety myths (2:01:48) Do magnesium, glycine, and L-theanine actually help sleep? (2:04:49) Why glutamine and B12 might keep you awake (2:06:21) THC and REM suppression—the hidden costs (2:12:48) Does CBD genuinely improve sleep quality? (2:15:21) Alcohol as a sleep aid—more harm than good? (2:18:18) How late is too late for caffeine? (2:22:31) Why staying up late leads to unhealthy eating (2:27:21) Is shift work more harmful than smoking? (2:31:04) What's the ideal power nap length? (2:32:50) Strategic napping advice for shift workers (2:34:58) Optimal caffeine timing for shift workers (2:35:31) The fastest way to adjust to a new time zone (2:41:02) How exercise and light help beat jet lag (2:43:34) Can sleep trackers accurately detect wakefulness? (2:47:09) Sleep stage tracking—useful data or misleading? (2:51:36) Should you trust your wearable's sleep score? (2:55:54) How to use sleep tracker data effectively (3:01:08) Evening habits elevating your heart rate (3:03:11) Troubleshooting insufficient REM and deep sleep (3:06:07) Is your sleep tracker doing more harm than good? (3:10:25) Does better sleep boost cognitive resilience? (3:12:54) Why school start times clash with teen biology (3:15:32) Shifting your circadian rhythm with light and exercise (3:17:38) Can 15 minutes extra sleep boost athletic performance? (3:19:48) Is "sleep banking" a competitive game-changer? (3:22:15) Does poor sleep predict injury risk? (3:27:12) Why caffeine isn't enough to overcome poor sleep (3:28:50) Do eye masks and earplugs significantly improve sleep? (3:30:27) Proven techniques to fall asleep faster (3:32:24) Does reading before bed shorten sleep onset? (3:33:14) Can't fall back asleep? Try this (3:34:16) One proven strategy for deeper sleep (3:35:40) Reducing nighttime urination awakenings (3:37:23) Is sharing a bed disrupting your sleep? (3:39:02) How to tell if you're truly sleeping enough (3:40:40) Do you really need 8 hours of sleep? (3:41:55) Adjusting your routine to your chronotype Show notes, transcript, and summary are available by clicking here Watch this episode on YouTube
Full Episode
Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're taking a deep dive into sleep, one of the most critical yet often misunderstood pillars of health, cognition, and performance. Joining me today is Dr. Michael Grandner, a renowned sleep expert and researcher whose work bridges academia and real-world applications in optimizing sleep for peak health and performance.
Dr. Grandner serves as the director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona, where he's also an associate professor in the departments of psychiatry, medicine, and nutritional sciences.
Beyond academia, Dr. Grandner consults with professional athletes, elite performers, and high-level organizations to implement sleep strategies that directly improve athletic performance, cognitive function, and overall health.
In today's episode, Michael and I cover an extensive range of critical topics, including differentiating clinical insomnia from common sleep disruptions and the subtle yet significant signals used to identify underlying causes like hyperarousal, circadian misalignment, insufficient sleep drive.
We discuss why cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, CBTI, is the gold standard treatment, its most potent mechanisms, and we also discuss key interventions that yield the greatest improvements in sleep quality. We discuss practical protocols for addressing common sleep disturbances like stimulus control, strategies for nighttime awakenings, and personalized sleep restriction methods.
We also discuss recognizing and addressing sleep apnea, including non-obvious symptoms, data-driven red flags from wearable devices and effective non-CPAP interventions like oral appliances, positional therapy, breathing training and more.
We discuss advanced evidence-based sleep hygiene practices, including actionable protocols involving temperature modulation, breathable techniques and also precise timing of light exposure.
We also evaluate popular sleep supplements and substances from melatonin dosing and timing of magnesium, lavender, glycine, as well as nuanced impacts of THC, CBD, alcohol, caffeine, and late night eating on sleep architecture. We also discuss actionable strategies to manage unavoidable disruptions of sleep like shift work and jet lag.
the accuracy and limitations of best practices for interpreting and acting on data from consumer sleep tracking devices like the Oura Ring, Whoop, Apple Watch, Fitbit. And we talk about practical insights on how sleep consistency and strategic napping directly impact cognitive performance, athletic outcomes, injury prevention, and recovery.
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