The Sleep Advantage: Interview with Devin Burke

welcome back to another episode of

christian natural health today i am

excited to have devin burke with us

devon is an international and tedx

speaker the best-selling author of the

sleep advantage the founder of sleep

science academy and one of the top

health and sleep coaches in the world

his books keynotes programs and videos

have inspired thousands of people to

improve their sleep energy and life

devin helps high achievers and exhausted

insomniacs get and stay asleep so that

they can wake up with more peace power

and presence he was named one of the top

25 health coaches in america uh he he

has also studied the innovative holistic

coaching methods from some of the

world's top health and human performance

experts for over a decade

as a speaker and coach he's inspired

thousands of people to open their eyes

to what is possible through creating new

sleep health and performance habits and

routines

welcome devon thank you so much for

joining us

uh you're welcome sorry for sort of such

a long bio there all right like okay we

gotta get it all in yeah all right well

yeah

good to be here yeah yeah so so give us

kind of a little overview why is sleep

such an issue for so many people

i mean really in a nutshell it's stress

it comes down to stress i mean mental

emotional physical stress people are

more stressed now than ever so there's

as you can imagine there's more people

that are struggling with their sleep

it's

um you know not only

people are stressed before with families

and with running businesses or careers

or you know their finances and then

throw in a pandemic now you throw in a

war um

it's it's just insane and then

you know technology is a form of stress

and that's invaded

the bedroom yeah tvs

cell phones

um and that's that's so in a nutshell we

could go deeper but that's why people

are struggling yep yep totally makes

sense so before we get into all the you

know specifics and whatnot tell us why

sleep is so foundational to our health

why is it important

yeah i mean you said it it's the

foundation

of the health so when you're not

sleeping your body's not repairing your

mind's not repairing

essentially every aspect of your life is

effective from sleep and people don't

realize that if you're not sleeping

you're going to have a hard time losing

weight or maintaining your weight your

cognitive performance you're not going

to be you know as sharp your mental

acuity is reduced your emotional your

ability to emotionally regulate

is thrown off um your hormones go all

out of whack so you're hungry like crazy

crave all the wrong foods

you don't know when you're full

um so literally every aspect of our

lives even our from our are you know

protecting from major diseases like

cancer and diabetes

um every aspect of our lives from our

health to our relationships to our

careers is affected

when we don't get great sleep um so it

really is it's foundational for for

for living a long healthy life sure yeah

so for somebody that's just got your

kind of garden variety run-of-the-mill

what are the some of the very beginning

things that you would recommend in order

to help people fall asleep faster and

rest deeper and wake more refreshed

yeah i mean it's it's

it really isn't a one size fits all but

a lot of times there's people that are

people are doing things that it's like

let's

look at what to stop doing right

and unfortunately the things that affect

sleep are also the things that people

love to do like drink alcohol

um like eat big meals right before they

go to sleep

like drink caffeine too late into the

day

all these things affect quality of sleep

and we can talk about specifically how

but it's you know so not doing those

things like not drinking caffeine past 1

pm

um you know making sure that you have if

you are going to consume alcohol making

sure that it's earlier on in the day and

you're you're staying hydrated

making sure that you have your have a

fasting window from the time you eat to

the time that you're in bed all these

things impact quality of sleep

um

and then there's you know it's the

amount of stress

people take their days into their nights

so there's there's really no boundary

now especially with most people working

from home

from you know work and and like everyday

life so it's creating a real issue for

people um and so really drawing strong

boundaries with with work

um

and non-work is is critical if you want

to improve the quality of your sleep if

you want to be able to to fall asleep

faster and rest deeper yeah so if

somebody's trying to draw that boundary

what are some of the tips that you would

give them

yeah i would say just like you said an

alarm to get up which isn't really ideal

if you don't have to but setting an

alarm to like wind down

it could be as simple as that like

having a boundary where it's like hey by

6 pm

no more work like i'm not work you know

shutting it down i teach this thing

called three two one sleep like three

hours before bed you stop beating two

hours before bed no work

and then one hour before bed no

technology and you start your bedtime

routine or ritual something that kind of

prepares the mind and body real simple

to remember three two one sleep

but um setting alarms setting triggers

you know we're creatures of habit

so breaking

bad habits like taking our days into our

nights takes you know

a disruption and so it could be an alarm

on your phone it could be a post-it note

it could be a lot of things it could be

taking your computer and powering it

down or your laptop and closing it and

put it in the closet i mean people do

all kinds of things um it's just

important that you

number one that you honor that boundary

because just because you have it doesn't

mean that you're going to honor it right

so you have to understand how important

this is and that presupposes that you

understand how important sleep is

yep yep definitely makes sense and so

you've alluded a couple of times to the

correlation between sleep and stress why

does one influence the other they're

bi-directionally linked

so the more stress you experience the

less rest you experience and then the

less rest you experience the more stress

you experience

so unfortunately it's a it's a vicious

paradox so you're not when you're not

sleeping well your body's going to be

more stressed when your body's more

stressed

um you don't sleep well so on and on

this goes and then like i said before

because sleep bleeds into all areas of

our life if we're not sleeping well

we're going to experience not only more

physical stress but more mental

emotional stress because there's a lot

of studies that show that we're not able

to emotionally regulate we misread

emotion which then leads to conflict

relational conflict either with your

partner or your co-workers um

which creates more stress right so it's

like this vicious cycle that happens

um and so

people you can't separate your day from

your night or your day so it's

oftentimes people try to separate like

sleep and then my day it's like you

can't you can't do that because of this

exact thing

gotcha so um what would be some tips

that you would give for somebody that's

struggling with chronic stress in order

to try to make it so that the stress

doesn't bleed over quite as much but

like stress management techniques or how

do you go about that yeah at sleep

science academy we teach mindfulness you

know that's one of the and the reason

for is there a lot there's a lot of

studies that show that it helps reduce

stress also helps people sleep but

really having creating stress awareness

like what is creating stress in your

life first and foremost a lot of times

people don't even realize that they are

choosing stress

um so really doing an inventory first

and foremost of what areas of my life

are creating the most stress for me

and then taking responsibility and

ownership for the ways in which you're

allowing that to continue that's

where we start with people

and then it's putting in place new ways

of

what we call mastering stress it's not

enough to manage it you need to really

master it and most people manage their

stress by using alcohol or distracting

themselves

you know or

there's a lot of ways shopping

like a lot of people

we're not really taught to

master our

our psychology or physiology and so you

know something as simple as breathing

techniques like taking the time to to

slow down and do some diaphragmatic

breathing throughout the day

don't wait till you're in bed to do this

although that would help too

exercise is an incredible way of

offsetting stress most people don't move

their bodies enough making sure that

you're eating you know good foods and

you're taking you actually have space in

your day like a lot of us and i'm guilty

of it sometimes as well go back to back

with meetings with appointments yeah

we were talking about this you know it's

right and that's a form of stress you

know when you're going from one thing to

the next thing there's not a break

there's not a time for your brain and

body to reset

it's um even if you love what you you do

it it creates a form of tension that

needs to be discharged

yep absolutely definitely makes sense

so and what are some of the keys would

you say to amazing sleep that you would

recommend for everybody what is it that

we're actually looking for in terms of

of what restorative sleep looks like

yeah i mean so again we're talking about

quality of sleep we're talking about

delta deep sleep and rem sleep when

people say okay let's talk about quality

of sleep um

delta deep sleep happens in the first

quarter

of the night and every 90 minutes we go

through a full sleep cycle but we're

getting most of that body repair during

the first quarter of the night and then

most of our rem sleep is happening in

the fourth quarter of the night so we

want to make sure and usually people

cut that short right

so first and foremost you want to make

sure that you're practicing good you

know what we call good sleep hygiene so

limiting caffeine and alcohol all the

things that we mentioned you have an

environment that's supportive of sleep

like your bed is a supportive mattress

it's your room is clean it's dark it's

quiet because environment absolutely

impacts the quality of our sleep sure

making sure physically you're taking

care of your health

this is like such it's i mean it's

common sense not common practice but

what's good for your health is also good

for your sleep

so if you're eating the right foods if

you're if you're moving your body if

you're doing things to manage your

stress of course that's going to help

you sleep better and if you're sleeping

better it's going to be easier to

implement all those things than the next

day um and really unders just

understanding i think it's important

that people just

take a step back and measure it because

you can't manage something that you

don't measure

so you know we we use the aura ring it's

it's a little device you wear on your

finger it's

the most accurate it's not 100 accurate

um but really just like you you know you

get a blood test you say oh i have high

cholesterol or high cortisol or whatever

it is you know and then you can make

decisions based off that data it's

important if if you want to improve the

quality of your sleep that you're

getting data or feedback and you

understand how to interpret that

feedback so you can continue to make

progress

and improve

so those are some of the secrets yeah

great so how does the aura ring compare

to like a sleep study

so it's not as accurate as a sleep study

but it's close it's gotten a lot better

over the years with their new technology

and

um you know and you're never really

looking at one night you're looking at

several weeks or even months of data

uh so you know it's

going to a sleep study it's definitely

it's not quite there yet but it has

drastically improved uh over the years

with their their improvements

so but really it doesn't even have to be

an ordering it could be

a sleep diary

you know it could be a apple watch a

fitbit something that's going to give

you some consistent data so that you can

start to draw some some correlation

based off of the changes that you're

either making or not making and how

that's impacting your sleep

okay and um what advice would you have

for somebody who

lies awake dreading the fact that they

won't fall asleep

and then it actually perpetuates the

problem

people who struggle with that

a lot of people struggle with this and

it's not sexy what i'm about to say but

it's effective um so accepting actually

so a lot of people try to force and

control sleep sleep's not something that

you can force for control

yeah

just like your heart beats your lungs

breathe

you can't force sleep

and trying to do so actually creates

more frustration which creates more of

you staring at the ceiling tossing and

turning so just accepting the fact that

that's your experience and this there

this goes a lot deeper um but but

just having that in your mind like okay

i'm not gonna fight this i'm just gonna

accept that this is my experience

sometimes creates enough space for your

body to actually relax and initiate

sleep again but there's a whole

there's a lot more to what i just said

there but that's where i would start

gotcha okay great

so uh what have i not asked you that you

feel is important to leave with our

audience today

um

that's a great question i mean i feel

like we covered a lot of ground

um

i don't know i don't know is there

there's no questions that come that pop

into my mind right off the bat

all right that's my catch-all to make

sure i didn't miss anything important oh

yeah i think i think

you we covered some some ground here in

this in this quick conversation sounds

good so where can people go to find out

more about you

so sleep science academy if you have

issues with your sleep and then all the

social channels it's devin burke

wellness awesome all right well i will

link to that in the show notes and thank

you again so much for your information

and time yeah you're so welcome

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