There's a great study out of the University of Chicago and what they discovered was is they took a group of people who were well-rested and they gave them the flu vaccine then they took a group of people that had been sleep deprived similar to your experience only sleeping three to four hours for several days in a row then gave them the flu vaccine they took both groups and they exposed them to the flu what they discovered is that the group that was well slept was immune to the flu and didn't actually get the flu the group that had low sleep the week before

very large percentage them not only contracted the flu but it was a really bad one and in one case actually had to be hospitalized

I am Vision Laciani founder of Mind Valley the School for Human Transformation

you're listening to the Mind Valley podcast where we'll be bringing you the greatest teachers and thought leaders on the planet

to discuss the world's most powerful ideas and personal growth for mind, body, spirit and work

what I wanted to do was bring to you a really special guest Dr. Michael Bruce he's the youngest person to pass the sleep medical board in the United States he's one of only 168 people in the world

who has ever taken the sleep medicine board without going to medical school he has a private practice as a sleep specialist he is the author of three Amazon best selling books and founder of the sleep doctor

dot com Michael how are you I am well rested and it sounds like you are too my friend so let's get started on this Michael our audience is fascinated by sleep and one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on is because

you know like many of us out there I'm an entrepreneur I'm a busy busy busy person and I tend to follow a lot of coaches a lot of advisors a lot of people with

followings on Instagram and Facebook and it seems that in America today that's this hustle idea that's this idea that work is about hustling it's about the hours you put in and I've never seen anyone talk about the opposite

of that or at least extensively talk about the opposite of that which is the importance of rest and rejuvenation and that's what I'd like to have you speak to us about the importance of sleep the importance

of rest and how do you sleep as a way to boost your productivity and cognitive performance you're preaching to the choir my friend because that's my main focus so I've been an actively practicing sleep specialist now for 19 years

and it's been really an interesting journey because when I first started out everybody who slept was lazy right everybody who really valued their time in bed wasn't seen as non productive

and especially in the United States it's such a go go go kind of environment and what we really know is that productivity wellness health fundamentally cannot be without sleep

I always tell people all the time you can last three days without water you can last 30 days without food you can last seven days without sleep

so if you're looking at it from a higher article standpoint sleep is it man sleep is one of the basic needs that everybody needs and it really helps with literally everything

now tell us about the importance of sleep firstly how do we know that we're sleeping enough this is an important question and I've actually got some tips for people around this

so everybody's sleep need is different okay so eight hours is a myth let's just start right there not everybody needs eight hours I'll tell you

what my sleep pattern is I go to bed around midnight I wake up around six six thirty and I sleep approximately between six and six and a half hours a night

and I'm the sleep doctor right I mean this is crazy right it's really not crazy believe it or not you can actually look this up genetically if you want to

but everybody sleep need is different and that need changes over the course of time so one of the concepts that I developed very early on in my practice

and I talk about it quite often is what I call my bedtime calculator so most of us know that we have a wake up time that is set

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