Something You Should Know
Bonus: SYSK TRENDING - The Science of Sleeping, Breathing, and Hydration
10 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What are the basics of sleeping, breathing, and hydrating for better health?
You hear a lot about sleep and health, but it's rarely as simple as, just get more sleep and you'll be fine. There's a lot more to it than that, which is why today's SYSK trending topic is how to sleep, breathe, and hydrate your way to better health. Most health advice tells you to do more, more exercise, more vegetables, more willpower.
But what if some of the biggest gains come from doing things you already do, just differently? Today, we're talking about three things you do every day, sleeping, breathing, and drinking. Small changes in how you do each one can have big effects on your energy, stress, health, and even longevity.
To put this in perspective, my conversation with Dr. Michael Bruce explains how getting sleep, breathing, and hydration right can dramatically improve how your body functions. And we'll get to that right after this.
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Three things you do every day. Sleep, drink, and breathe. You can't not do them. You have to do them. And maybe you could do them a little better, according to my guest, Dr. Michael Bruce. Michael's name has popped up on other episodes of Something You Should Know.
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Chapter 2: Why is hydration more about quality than quantity?
He's been a guest, but even other guests have referenced him or quoted him. He's considered one of the top experts on sleep anywhere. And he is about to explain how small improvements in how you sleep, breathe, and hydrate yourself can have extraordinary results. Michael is a double board certified clinical psychologist and clinical sleep specialist.
He's the author of numerous bestselling books, and his latest is called Sleep, Drink, Breathe, Simple Daily Habits for Profound Long-Term Health. Hi, Michael. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here. So why, I'm thinking people are wondering, why would I need advice on how to sleep, breathe, and hydrate myself?
such a great question so i get this all the time like michael we already do that next here's the thing when you think about the fundamentals like what is the dna of wellness what can you stack all that on if you're deciding to optimize your health or start a new health program or any of that if you're not sleeping well if you're not hydrated and you don't breathe appropriately you're not going to be able to accomplish any of those goals so
Why not start with the basics? And you kind of have to do them every single day. So if I give you a couple of tips that you can just kind of smooth on into your routine and it doesn't take a lot of energy or effort, why not?
So let's start with drinking, hydration. That should be easy. I mean, the advice that everyone's always heard is drink eight glasses of water a day and you're good to go. Is that pretty good advice?
It's not the worst advice that I've heard. Eight glasses of eight ounces of water puts you at 64 ounces, which is about three quarters of the way you probably want to be there, depending upon your height and weight, things of that nature.
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Chapter 3: How can sipping water improve hydration compared to gulping?
I will tell you, though, that here's the thing that I think most people don't understand is it's not necessarily about amount. It's about quality. and timing. So as an example, number one, what kind of water are you drinking?
If you're drinking water straight out of your tap, I would tell you that there are websites where you can put your zip code in and you can learn exactly what is in the water coming out of your tap. To be clear, there's a lot of things that go into that water to clean it in order for it to be usable again. So for me personally, I only drink filtered water.
Now, to be fair, you don't have to go buy some crazy double osmosis thing for your home. Although if you do, you're going to get much better water. I went out and I brought a Brita pitcher. and take my tap water and I run it through there so that way I know that I'm getting decent quality water. If you can, don't drink water in plastics.
There's a lot of data that's coming out about these nanoplastics that appear to leach into the water and then we drink them and they've actually started to find nanoplastics in utero babies now. So we really want to keep that away if at all possible. And then there are actually types of water.
So you can't just call yourself mineral water or spring water without having minerals in it or coming from a spring.
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Chapter 4: What is the four, seven, eight breathing technique and how does it help?
And of course, those two sources of water are infinitely better than kind of tap water that's not gonna have a whole lot for you. Now, a lot of people like to ask me about things like what are called hydration multipliers or these powders that you can put into the water to maybe make it better water or make it absorb better. Here's what I'll tell you is most of them are loaded with salt.
And so for folks out there who've got high blood pressure or are salt sensitive, this might not be the best idea. Then another area that I found super duper interesting that I didn't really think about before because I was the same of what do I just drink eight glasses a day was sipping versus gulping makes a massive difference. So this took me a little while to comprehend.
And so I had to think of an example. And the one that I thought of is sort of like this. So most people don't realize it. But when you wake up in the morning, sleep in and of itself is a dehydrated event. You lose almost a full liter of water just from the humidity in your breath every single night. And so when you wake up, we want you obviously drinking water and clearly you're dehydrated.
So what a lot of people will do is they'll they'll go and then they'll drink water. 30 ounces right in the morning, right before a workout. This is not a great idea. Let me explain. So when you walk out in the morning, to your kitchen and walk over to your sink, usually there's a dried up sponge that's lying there somewhere. You are that dried up sponge every single morning.
If you took that dried up sponge and you stuck it under your faucet and you open up the faucet full blast as though you were gulping water, what happens to the sponge, right? The water hits it and it runs right off it. But if you actually had it at a slower rate,
right like sipping water and you let it absorb into the sponge soon the sponge regenerates and now you have a useful tool you are the sponge and so the better you can sip the better it will absorb well one of the other things that i have heard about hydration is yes you should drink water but the other fluids and the foods with fluids count
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Chapter 5: Why is sleep quality just as important as sleep quantity?
Oh, absolutely. One of the big recommendations that we have is making sure that each one of your meals has water-filled vegetables in it, right? And the good news is most vegetables have got a lot of water in it, but having that decent-sized serving of it, you can actually count towards your water. Absolutely. And also, I want to be clear, you can actually count coffee towards your water.
Let me explain. so coffee is coffee in and of itself is a diuretic but it doesn't really have that great of a diuretic properties until you get about three cups into you so to be clear and i am the sleep doctor i'm telling you that if you want to have your coffee in the morning one to two cups you can actually count those cups towards your hydration
Now, as a quick tip, in order for you to get the biggest bang out of your buck from caffeine, now I'm becoming the sleep doctor once again, is what you want to do is you want to drink your caffeine 90 minutes after you wake up. You want to hydrate before you caffeinate because once again, your body is very dehydrated and
While the two cups of coffee do count towards water, you don't wanna mix it up with the caffeine right away. If you do wait 90 minutes, here's what ends up happening, is the adrenaline and cortisol that your brain needed to wake you up finally starts to slow down. And when you add caffeine, you actually get a bigger bang for your buck just by waiting 90 minutes after you wake up.
the only other thing about caffeine that i think is important to think through is when should you stop and so caffeine becomes important from a hydration standpoint because again once you hit the third cup that's when it starts pulling water out of your body so you want to be careful for that but you also probably want to stop around 2 p.m in the afternoon because caffeine has a half-life of between six and eight hours and so if you stop at two then half of the caffeine is out of your system by ten and that means you've got a far greater likelihood of getting some sleep
so let's talk about breathing because i you know i breathe i breathe all the time i seem to do it pretty well because i'm still alive i'm not dead well i don't think that's the right way to think about it to be fair like are you in great shape if you uh you know don't exercise no of course not right same kind of concept here is i do it could i do it a little bit better and is the juice worth the squeeze i
I think that's actually the more important question is, okay, Michael, you've come up with all these cool ideas to maybe make my breathing better or make my hydration better, but is it really worth it? Like, am I going to get something out of this? So I think we will. And breathing is actually kind of an interesting one.
And to be fair, it was the one that I was the least familiar with, but actually had the most experience with.
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Chapter 6: What are chronotypes and how do they affect sleep patterns?
Let me explain. So most sleep doctors work in pulmonary offices because pulmonary doctors or lung doctors usually own most of the sleep labs here in the United States. And so we end up dealing with patients that have got asthma, COPD, all kinds of breathing related issues. And so understanding how the lungs function becomes very, very important.
Also, sleep apnea is arguably the number one diagnosis in terms of sleep labs. So certainly something that I've had a lot of experience with. But thinking about breathing differently, not on the medical side, but thinking about it on the, hey, could I do it better side? And what good would that do me?
Here's one of the techniques that I learned that actually turns out to be incredibly helpful, not just for me, but for my patients with insomnia. It's called four, seven, eight breathing. So this is an interesting technique, and it's exactly like what it sounds like. You breathe in for a count of four, you hold for a count of seven, and you breathe out for a count of eight.
If you do this 10 to 12 times, your heart rate will drop to about 60 beats per minute. The reason this becomes so interesting and important is because 60 beats per minute is exactly the place where your body can enter into a state of unconsciousness. Anything higher and it cannot.
So this technique of four, seven, eight breathing, I actually have taught many of my insomnia patients who wake up in the middle of the night. So you might have listeners out there who are saying, hold on a second, what is he talking about? So I have a lot of patients who tell me that they wake up between one and three o'clock in the morning and they have a terrible time falling back to sleep.
This is where breathing can actually come into play to help lower your heart rate, decrease your anxiety and get you back to bed. The 4-7-8 method works because number one, you're counting during the whole process so you can't think of anything else. And because of the way you're breathing, it's lowering your heart rate at the same time.
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Chapter 7: How can shift workers manage their sleep effectively?
This allows you to not think and just breathe. And then the natural sleep process has a tendency to take over. And so that pattern is, just run me through it again, four. Sure. Go ahead. Seven, eight, breathing. Actually, we can do it together. So everybody listening, you would do it like this. Breathe in, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. That's it. It's very simple. And you count in your head and you go through it 10 to 12 times and you really get involved and you're counting and you're breathing and you get into it and you just stop thinking. And then the natural sleep process kicks in because your heart rate has gone lower and you're good.
My guest is Michael Bruce. He is a clinical psychologist, clinical sleep specialist and author of Sleep, Drink, Breathe, Simple Daily Habits for Profound Long-Term Health.
Chapter 8: What practical tips can help reduce snoring and improve sleep quality?
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So Michael, let's talk about breathing during the day, just regular breathing. It could probably use some attention, but it just seems so automatic.
It does seem automatic. And here's the thing is, is it really helping you? So as an example, another thing that I noticed, and maybe you could tell me if this happens to you as well, when I'm really concentrating on something like reading an email, I don't breathe. Like I sit there and I'm reading, reading, reading. And before I know it, if it's a long email, I'm like, and I have to breathe.
So a lot of people, when they focus and concentrate during the day, they actually forget to breathe. And that's an important factor. And then the other thing that I've noticed during daytime breathing that a lot of people don't have a tendency to do is when I tell somebody to take in a deep breath, when they breathe in, if their shoulders rise,
That means that they're actually not using their abdomen. They're using their thorax to breathe. And so what I try to teach them to do is to breathe wide, not up. Now, what do I mean by that? When you breathe, you don't want your shoulders to rise. What you want is when you take a big, deep breath,
You want to feel your belly expand almost like it's a horizontal breath versus a bringing up your shoulders breath. And again, these are different things that you can do during the day. Now, you're probably sitting here saying, well, Michael, when would I do that? Why would I do that? This seems kind of like... Information overload. How can we put off something like this together?
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