182: Behrouz Hariri, CEO of Smart Nora: Discover How A Smart Pillow Could Help Minimize Snoring While You Sleep!

Welcome to the Sleep as a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of Sleep as a Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about sleep.

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Each week, I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle Style is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness, and I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.

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Welcome to the sleep is a skill podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about an innovative piece of tech that could help with sleep apnea and snoring. So smart Nora is the health tech company on a mission to help 2. 6 billion people suffering from snoring and sleep apnea. Nora's app. Patented technology has helped more than a hundred thousand customers improve their sleep.

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And as a result, their mood, energy, and relationships. Now, just as a quick aside, I have no affiliation with smart Nora. This is just a company that I had been connected with years back. Actually, they were one of my first clients. First podcast interviews and yet, unfortunately, there was an issue with our audio.

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So we are re recording again in, you know, present days to get this information out to you all. And hopefully this could be of value to you if you or someone you know deals with snoring and or sleep apnea. So we're going to get into this podcast, but first a few words from our sponsors. Please take a moment just to listen to the sponsors that we have partnered with.

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We only partner with sponsors that we really truly believe in their products and these sponsors help keep this podcast alive. So please check them out. And the ways to best do that would be to check out their website and see if it could be a value to you. If you're listening to this podcast, you're likely looking to improve your sleep.

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And welcome to the sleep as a skill podcast. All right. This is kind of round two for us because what was it? I don't even know. Like three years ago, one of the,  one of the first ever. Podcast recordings that we did for sleep is a skill back during the pandemic and lockdowns and all the things you were kind enough to come on and record and share about your product.

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And I am so sorry because somewhere along the lines, you know, beginners timeline with the podcast,  we lost the audio. And so now we're doing round two, but. I think it was serendipitous because I know you've got lots of new things to share of what innovations you've created and continue to expand upon in this long running company, Smart Nora.

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So thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Awesome. I'm really glad to be here. Amazing. You changed coasts in between our two conversations.  Yeah, exactly. I know bouncing all around, geez, uh, where's Waldo energy, but, um,  so well, thank you for coming along for round two, really appreciate it. And maybe we can just begin at the beginning of how you found yourself kind of at the forefront of this very innovative company and kind of the problem it solves.

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So like anything worth spending so much energy putting so much energy into with our own personal problem.  So my background is product design. I have been working in everything from agriculture to accessible banking to telemedicine. Always with that focus of going and talking directly to the customer and figuring out.

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Even if the design brief is what it should be. Um, so, I was working in San Francisco, working internationally on all kinds of design projects, and I came home to Toronto, and turned out my father and my brother had already started working on something for our mom, that was basically, uh, you know, bringing peace back into the bedroom.

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We were, we were all generalists. My background is design. My brother is a marketer and operations guy. Uh, my father is a snorer number zero and also a mechanical engineer and inventor. So, uh, we found that, you know, as we're telling friends and, uh, the family, what we are working on, there was a lot of intrigue and it wasn't something I had  looked at as closely before.

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Um, but when you start thinking about it, you're like, yes, everybody can name five people immediately. But. It's like two uncles here and a father and this and that, or maybe themselves because half the population snores,  you know, like to different degrees, but means easily 60 70 percent of us deal with snoring, whether it's ours or a partner.

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Uh, so it's a very common issue, but also one of those things that people have almost decided we'll just put up with it. But that's becoming less and less acceptable because we see the negative effects of sleep deprivation so clearly, right? Everybody's tracking their sleep. You can't really put your finger on it.

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And that's not like, I'll just put up with it. It's like, nope, I also deserve to get sleep. So good. And I always love and can resonate fully with the story of coming from kind of solving your own problem or problems with people around you or both. And love that you took some of those pre existing skill sets and put them to work on this very, very much needed area.

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And to your point, the numbers are staggering of the number of people that are dealing with this when I give talks and what have you, I often have people raise hands about different things they might be dealing with around their sleep. And unequivocally, the one that always gets the most activity is when we ask about, do you or someone you know, are they the same person?

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Snorers and that is just the one that so many people are struggling with because it's not just even a snorer But also the bed partner or someone close to you so it can really have this ripple effect So diving in there when you started in on kind of solving this problem I mean, it's kind of you're the only game in town and continue to really be one of the few people that are addressing this problem in this manner.

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Is that correct? And tell me a little bit of the scope of the landscape of, you know, what people, what they're dealing with snoring or know someone that is what the traditional approaches are and how yours is kind of stands out. Yeah. So, well, obviously, the, the, the longstanding tradition, as long as the snoring itself is nudging your partner or whatever.

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Yeah,  that's, that's the go to for most people. Uh, but yeah, but we found it's, uh, you know, the options, like the reason we had to build our own was the options were not really good. You have the mouth guards.  That, you know, start from the cheap boil and bites, uh,  Really, you know, you're drooling and it really doesn't fit well in your mouth, uh, to the, you know, the ones that your dentist can custom make for you, that's, uh, 2, 000 plus.

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Uh, but either way, the function of a mouth guard is to pull your jaw forward, because, why do we snore? Because the airway is partially collapsing. Yeah. Under gravity, right? So we are pulling the jaw forward to create more space. For the airway to stay open, which means your job is getting pulled forward, whether it's custom made or it's a bulky kind of cheaper piece, um, and comes with other side effects.

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So you wake up with the job, but also.  You can have gumline recession, uh, and you can have, uh, bad breath because your mouth is somewhat kept open if you're not living with one that is a good fit. Uh, so not something that aspirational, and if, you know, to put all that aside, do you want to have something in your mouth when you say goodbye and goodnight?

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Yeah. At the day, no. Uh, so that's actually the only solution that's, uh,  Validated. Mouthguards are validated. They also are prescribed for sleep apnea as well, but they come with all these clear, um, side effects. Everything else, like a chin strap and nose strips and all that stuff, they're not as clinically proven.

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Yet, promoting nose breathing does help. But it's not like that's actually a go to solution.  So, so that's what's out there.  And we realized, well, nudging the head works really well. And turns out we actually discovered something that's, we didn't invent this. Obviously, uh, we didn't even nudging to begin with, but also specifically very gently moving the pillow.

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We found that this was the easiest. Most humane way to stop ignoring, uh, just by literally sliding our hand under the pillow and doing that. Like, that's what my mom and dad were doing. And my  instinct was, well, I'm a mechanical engineer, I can automate this. Uh,  and then it turns out when we started talking to our medical advisors, This is a known method called positional therapy, and positional therapy is proven actually in the literature, both for snoring and even optimal apnea.

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Uh, so it is a known method, and what does it do?  We are activating the muscles that support the airway. So, for listeners that are not familiar with what we do and how we, how smart neura works, the smart neura is one sensor, that's a microphone that sits on the bedside. Thank you. It's monitoring your breathing, so we will proactively listen for early signs of, um, snoring or partial obstruction.

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And we are doing that with our machine learning algorithm because we've trained it so it knows before the human ear that snoring might begin soon. So before snoring actually gets loud,  We create a very gentle motion, slow up and down, only about a couple of inches, and it takes actually 30 seconds to slowly rise.

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So it's a very slow, gentle motion, but that's the actual trick. So it's slow enough so that you can get used to it after a couple of nights and it doesn't  wake you up, doesn't disturb your sleep architecture, but it's just enough to do this little bit of sleep training so the muscle that supports your airway  Activate do their job as they normally do when we are younger.

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And the muscle tone is actually firm. Um, nobody snores. You don't also snore when you're awake and even sleeping on your back because that muscle tone is engaged. So we're training this muscle tone to stay engaged. And some people also self trained based on a product to. Turn on their side, which also is better for snoring.

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Um, and that's, that's all there is to it. But the whole magic of it is how do you fine tune this? So it happens at the right time. Happens slowly enough  that, uh, the experience for our customers ranges from, Hey, I didn't even know it's there. My partner in the morning usually is like, Hey, snoring is gone. I didn't feel anything.

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Great. That's one group of our customers, and then gradually it will take you between that up to, let's say, 7 to 10 nights to, uh, fully get used to it and for this to, um, for this motion to become a new, familiar piece in your sleep environment and recede into the background, which is actually what our brain is doing all the time, right?

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Your brain during sleep is looking for new stimuli because it's about safety. Like, you're looking, you're basically scanning for breath, right? We are evolved for this, yeah. Exactly, yeah. So, any familiar noise, let's say you move into your new house and your air conditioning or your heating system has, you know, new sounds that you're not used to, that's going to keep you up until you get used to it, because then it becomes familiar.

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Same logic here. It takes only a few nights, and then the more you're relaxed about it, it will just fade into the background.  So good. And it's not only as if it's just one item or one approach that people could bring in and then Kind of mildly helps according to your website. So this research conducted by sleep score labs showing the effectiveness of smart Nora based on 500 plus nights of collected data shows 78 percent of snorers say smart Nora is better than other solutions they've used.

72 percent of snorers say they recommend this and 90 percent of participants found smart Nora easy to include in their routine. So really interested to hear more about this because we notoriously hear of people kind of resigning to snoring or the snoring of their partner, but it sounds as if of the, this study that you conducted with Sleep Score Labs, that this really seems to be a fan favorite, if I'm reading this correctly.

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Yeah, the study actually was also published in the sleep journal, so it's actually, uh,  interesting how this study came about because Roy Freeman, who previously was at Phillips and after that was at Apple, the product was his desk when he was at Apple.  So he tested the product. He actually reached out to us, or we actually met at, uh, I think one of the events.

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For the sleep foundation, I was like, I've seen your product  storing products. I've seen out there. We should do it. We should do a study. And that's how we ended up doing this study with SleepScore Lab. And SleepScore Lab, their whole mission is,  uh, especially like they were putting the focus on this when, uh, you know, Casper was out and all these sleep products where there was so much sleep marketing happening and SleepScore decided like, Hey, the thing to do is to validate.

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And only have a marketplace of validated solutions, and they're still to this day continuing that, but also they now work as an R& D, uh, arm with any company that wants to bring sleep science into their products. Uh, so really interesting set up there. Yeah, and I see on your site, The emphasis on the snoring component, if someone's listening and they say, well, I'm dealing with sleep apnea, you know, mild, moderate, severe.

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How do we think about a product like this in relationship to that? Or is it, how do you speak to that piece? I would say definitely talk to your sleep specialist because what we see is that  60 percent or more of people give up on their CPAP. Yeah, totally. The gold standard solution, yes CPAP works because it is pushing positive air pressure into your, uh, airway, and it is a strong solution, but for that same reason it's also really hard for a lot of people to get used to it.

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So we don't sell Nora for sleep apnea. We sell it for snoring, but we're not doing anything about your apnea. Show this to your specialist. And we've had examples where people have consulted with the doctor.  Well, you know what? I'm not even using, I'm not doing anything. I might as well do something. And the logic is clear because.

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What we do is activate the muscle group to open the airway, which is the same goal as any other solution. Uh, so yeah, so while we haven't done a study for apnea to,  that might happen in the future,  for now we are clearly only using, uh, selling the product for the indication of snoring, but we've had sleep specialists who have come to us and said, you know what, I had a few patients who were totally, uh, unable to use a CPAP, and I've been working with them with NORA.

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And has have gotten positive results. Yeah, and it feels as if, do you see a lot of application where people are using this in conjunction with some of the other things we're doing that they might be doing for obviously minimizing snoring and apnea, whether it's CPAP and or oral appliances or certain, certainly obviously.

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In all of these, uh, again, numbers, because that's not  our day to day.  Always, you know, also like, uh,  60 percent 70 percent of people I know snore. So I'm always also VIP customer support for some of my own friends.  Follow up with people. And I've, I've seen all of these. Permutations, uh, it's a combination therapy is what it's called.

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Uh, so we can help with somebody who's already using mouth guard, not getting the full results for their snoring,  putting them together can help. Uh, and it always comes down to the severity, right? Like, wherever you are,  how bad your snoring is, we can bring it down a notch. And you might, for example, be using a mouth guard, it's not really doing the job, but we can, together those two can Sure.

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And this is an FDA confirmed product, if I'm reading this correctly? That's, that's basically us just saying that as a non medical over the counter solution, that's the indication that we use right now. I love how on your site too, you break it up between for snores and for partners as you were speaking to.

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So the component of us being on the lookout for those unpredictable types of noises in our environment. So really can impact the partner as well. One of our most popular podcasts. still to date has been with Dr. Wendy Trexel, who wrote Sharing the Covers, right, and speaks to some of the concerns around sharing the covers and what can happen when snoring goes untreated or sometimes for both partners that we might be contending with.

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So I especially appreciate that if someone's listening and even if you're not snoring that if your partner is snoring, there can be use case for for both.  Let's face it, most snorers. Are not bothered, but they're alright. Yeah. We know that really well. The pain point is always for the partner, and the snorer is made aware because they're keeping their partner awake until your story gets so bad that, yes, you're also not breathing well.

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We see, like, if you read our reviews, it's both cases, but mostly it's about the relationship. Hey, we are back in the same bedroom after so many years. It's been the best decision we've made for our relationship. Um, that's the emotional feedback that we get all the time. And the reason people take action primarily is because of that.

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So, uh, I remember I had a great conversation with Dr. Drexel as well, and  the stats are fascinating, like snoring is the number one reason for couples sleeping in separate bedrooms. So, and then from there you can drive everything else. Or,  uh, if, let's say, snoring is interrupting your sleep by one hour, we know every one hour of sleep Increases libido, uh, for women by 14%, which is  comparable to, uh, medical solutions,  increasing,  uh, if you're increasing your sex drive,  sleep is as effective as some products.

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Um, so I'll put all of that together. It's clear what is the benefit of taking snoring out of the bedroom. Absolutely. And I think one of the reasons why that podcast ranks so high was because we're using some of those, that language around things like sleep divorce and Wendy's. Aim to rebrand this to sleep alliance and communication and dealing with whatever the problem is and to your point, if we deal with it and we find a solution, we can make the argument that would strengthen the relationship and not be a deterrent with some of the language of, you know, sleep divorce, sleep alliance, but actually the sleep communication element and discussing this testing different things and seeing what works.

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Yeah, I think what I find really fascinating is how much our level of anxiety around sleep affects everything. Your anticipation of going to bed. We constantly hear from people that I need to run to bed, fall asleep before my snoring partner, so hopefully I get some sleep before they wake me up, or maybe I can sleep through it.

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You really can't like if you're at, if your mind is already there, you know what the problems  for insomnia, there's, you know, tons and tons of research where your anxiety level, your fixation on insomnia itself is, it's a self reinforcing cycle. So, we find the same thing with snoring is.  One, the interruption always goes both ways.

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It's very rare that you will snore and your partner will just take up and leave the bedroom. Maybe later, when they've totally resigned to, like, giving up on it.  Uh, but for years, both partners are going to get woken up, interrupted, interrupted, woken up, like all that. So one of the things I actually find interesting,  Is for the feedback we get from some of our customers, like, Hey, sometimes, yes, I hear the faint snore.

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I know it's beginning, but also I know I don't have to fully wake myself up to turn my partner over because no, I will kick in. Like, even if you're super sensitive.  So, it speaks to that emotional aspect of it. Like, okay, yes, we know snoring still exists. It has come way down. But also, I don't have to then be the one that wakes up for it.

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I don't need to take the trash out anymore. Nora, Nora is taking care of it. Uh, and  that's a really interesting piece. That, even knowing that there is a solution, one you don't Are willing to admit you have a problem only when you know, there's a solution So as long as those things if you tried a bunch of things and hasn't worked for you You might as well ignore the problem because it's so disappointing to try again Right.

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Absolutely. Um, and then if the solution actually looks a little nicer than something on your face. Okay. Maybe actually I'm willing to admit that. So what we found actually with when we started, um, putting the product in the market,  we were surprised that the demographic was younger than what we assumed.

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I think all of our minds. Yeah. 45 plus. married couple, uh, and that's, but no, we have a lot of 25 plus, um, customers as well.  We are, when you're younger, you can put up with sleep deprivation  and you don't want to take on an identity. Like you don't want to take on the label of a couple that deal with snoring, but guess what?

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If the solution is cool, then you might as well. Exactly, definitely innovative and actually it was funny too because I know, I believe that was one of the things we had touched on when we first connected was I had been at um, CES years back before COVID and there are looking to be different advancements and companies that were trying to help support solving this problem.

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But I've really yet to see a company that has done it in quite the way that you've done it for this. Treatment approach. So I think to your point, it's hitting on a lot of things that can just be low or it can amplify the likelihood of compliance because it is so kind of passive and easy to implement.

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Yeah, that comes also to some design decisions we made. One, I think we had the benefit of my design background. Sure. Launched enough pilots to fail and know that you only learn from  Totally  And two we were designing it around the store in the house my father. So it was like we had the immediate same time Yeah So one of the things that one of the decisions we made and we patented this is that we don't change your pillow You keep your pillow and we found that's very important because You might not realize it, but the smell, the texture, uh, the weight, like everything that you've gotten used to, if I change that, and also want to slightly move your head, that's just too many things.

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That's too many changes.  Um, so we made this decision that we will have a pad. That you put inside your own pillow, and that's one of those, you know, seemingly inconsequential, but actually turned out to be a very important besides, um, because when we started designing our own, there were a couple of examples in the market that would pack everything into a pillow.

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There was like electronics.  And  the microphone and the moving pieces, everything in a pillow that they were shipped to you, which was like a brick of a pillow.  And it was very much an engineered solution. And guess what the other problem is? You put everything in the pillow, the vibration actually travels.

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Through conduction goes from the pillow and you actually feel the conduction, so it was  not a good solution at all. And that's why those products didn't have traction. Yeah, we actually changed the whole  that space by putting all the electronics outside of your pillow. So one, you don't have any anything under your head, which we love that you have no electronics under your head, just air and moving pieces.

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Um, and, uh, the fact that, uh, it becomes a very slim profile, so we should really not be there when you don't need it. We just inflate and deflate and go back to being a very slim pad under the pillow.  If you've tuned into the show or followed any of our content here at Sleep as a Skill, you may have heard that everyone that we work with wears the Oura Ring.

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And as a result, we've amassed a very large database of Oura Ring users and get to see what really moves the needle for people when it comes to their sleep measurably. Now, because we have so much data around sleep optimization, many ask what they can do to improve their sleep quality. And for years, my answer has been that one of the few things I've seen makes such an overnight difference is the use of a quality cooling mattress topper.

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Not just any ordinary topper that claims to be cooling with like gels or what have you, but an actual cooling topper that uses water and can be dynamically adjusted to suit your unique needs and preferences. Now, this is why I am so excited to announce that 8 Sleep is now an official sponsor of the podcast.

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So with eight sleep, you can enjoy advanced, uh, sleep tracking, allowing you to monitor key metrics like heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep stages, all integrated seamlessly into the app. It also has a dual zone temperature control, which means that you and your partner can each set your own ideal sleep temperature Plus the gentle rise wake up technology uses temperature and vibration to wake you up gently and naturally avoiding the jarring sound of an alarm, but it doesn't stop there.

There's more, more, more. So the system even includes a smart alarm feature that wakes you up during your lightest sleep phase. I know a lot of people have asked me about this, and this is included in here within a customizable time limit. window, ensuring you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to start your day.

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And for those of you who struggle with snoring, eight sleep has an anti snore feature that adjusts your sleep environment in real time to help reduce snoring and improve overall sleep quality. So this is truly a game changer for anyone serious about optimizing their sleep. So if you're ready to take your sleep to the next level, head on over to eight sleep and use the code sleep as a skill, all one word at checkout for a discount.

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Today, I want to talk to you about something that often flies under the radar, but is absolutely crucial for great sleep minerals. Now you've heard me talk about circadian rhythms, light exposure, temperature control, and more, but let's dive into the foundational elements that fuel our body's ability to sleep deeply and restoratively specifically minerals.

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Our modern lifestyle with its processed foods and environmental stressors can leave us depleted of essential minerals. This depletion can mess with our sleep quality, leading to issues like restless legs, poor sleep initiation, and waking up in the middle of the night. Enter beam minerals. Beam minerals are designed to replenish your body's essential mineral levels, providing the building blocks your body needs for optimal health.

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And this includes better sleep. What I love about beam is that they use a hundred percent bioavailable liquid minerals, which means your body can actually absorb and utilize them instantly without Without any fillers or additives, magnesium, for example, is known as nature's relaxant, helping to calm the nervous system, support muscle relaxation, and some argue by extension can promote deep restful sleep beams.

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Magnesium is sourced in a way that ensures maximum absorption and effectiveness, making it a key part of my sleep routine. But beam doesn't stop there. They've created a comprehensive blend that includes other vital minerals like potassium, calcium, and trace minerals that work synergistically to support your overall health.

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And of course your sleep, the result, you wake up feeling more refreshed, more balanced. and ready to take on the day. So if you've been struggling with sleep and feel like you've tried everything, it might be time to look at what's happening on a cellular level. Beam minerals can help fill in those gaps and give your body the support it needs for truly restorative sleep.

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So head on over to beam minerals spelled B E A M today and use the code sleep as a skill, all one word at checkout to get a special discount on your order. Your body and your sleep. We'll thank you.  So interesting and actually just recently we interviewed the Creator of  SnoreLab and the app that can kind of give you a score of how much you're snoring and they have you, your product front and center on their remedy shop.

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And presumably with, I mean, they have just insane number of users. And so imagine that they're only really putting on, uh, products that are, Making a difference with these numbers and have you seen people do things like that with different certainly with the Sleep score labs and then with things like snore lab or Wesper or some of these other things that can Give us an idea of how much you're snoring then you implement using smart Nora and then see that measurable change for the average user Yeah, so it's basically mirror is the same study that we did we study that we had It was like two weeks before two weeks after  Usually people don't have the patience to do two weeks  after, but it gives you a good indication of what is possible.

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So with Snorlap, it's like amazing how it's like this organic app story that has been out there forever and it has,  and I know in Japan they're like way bigger, so they have like this, somehow this fit in, in the Japanese market. But yeah, but a lot of what we get from people is like, Hey, here's my, Screen before and here's my screen after  No good, have you seen that as well for other wearables?

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We do have a lot of listeners that are testing on aura ring loop, etc. Do you see that measurably show up? Yeah, we did a promo. I totally remember maybe two three years ago. We said hey if you're already tracking with aura just We'll give you a discount code and we saw the same thing. Um, I expect to see the same thing with whoop.

And I think this is a bigger conversation around  at this point we have, the market is so familiar with tracking sleep,  but we are not familiar with easy solutions for improving sleep  behavior. Change is the biggest one. Yeah. One of the things tagline like. Nora improves your aura score.  We think that's where the industry should go.

Like, okay, now one third of Americans actually have tractor sleep, which is crazy.  One third of Americans have sleep for an extended period of time.  One amazing, because previously sleep data was a couple of nights in a lab. Right. Sleep by yourself. And we all know, like, anyone who has done a sleep study, like, the next morning, like, how are you going to use this information?

So it only makes sense to use it for clinical issues that are visible whether you got sleep in your own bedroom or somewhere else. Sure. And we've come to learn that  the magic is actually in longitudinal data because we see patterns, we see change in your patterns. Hey, sleep is such a standard  activity that if all of a sudden you start sleeping three hours less than you did before, we might not know exactly what's going on with you, but we know something is going on with you.

We need to get that out, right? Um, and American Heart Association last year, uh, basically listed sleep data as directly correlated  to your cardiovascular health. So what does that mean? I want to go to my doctor with my sleep data. I don't want to go say, hey, I have high blood pressure. Then get a prescription for a sleep study, wait two months, go get a couple of nights measured, and then come back.

That, that whole thing is reversing, and I think people just intuitively know how valuable it is. And, uh,  sleep definitely is one of those behaviors that  is so hard to self monitor. Like sleep journals If you compare the sleep journal with the objectively tracked sleep, you will start to see how we have blind spots  around when we went to bed, when we woke up, how many times we woke up.

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You don't remember all of those things. We actually had the same funny experience when we were.  Testing initial prototypes of our own product. We're fine tuning our snore, um, detection and when it should activate. And obviously  we were,  uh, focusing on snoring and not on noises of traffic or a dog barking or a baby crying, things that you would hear overnight in a house.

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And we don't want to take,  um, and as we were testing these, sometimes we would realize that, uh, one of us would say, Hey, I My Nora actually activated, but I don't think I was starting to like. No, you were snoring. We watched you fall asleep and and wake up and your brain cuts out that piece in the middle that you were asleep because  you blacked out essentially.

Uh, so I think that's the magic of, um, sleep tracking because it brings something that's totally unconscious, something that you can't possibly track to that level yourself.  and makes patterns visible to you that you wouldn't know otherwise. So it's such a great jump and off point to start improvement or look for patterns.

Absolutely. Yeah, you're touching on something so profound because how could we know what exactly is happening while we're unconscious in a particular way when we're in this whole altered state? And one of the things that you also pointed to was how notoriously  Especially when it comes to snoring, we tend to not be the best judges of is this a problem?

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What severity is the problem? It's the partner that might experience that to greater or lesser extent.  Snore denial.  That's a great vocab term. Snore denial. Do you have snore denial? And now we have, you know, these different solutions that we didn't have, you know, years prior. And now I'm seeing on your site too, New York times has named smart Nora, the best anti snoring device for four years in a row.

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So clearly it's making this measurable difference in many aspects and to many groups. So really, really important. And I also appreciate too, I know before we hit record, you shared with me, because we do have a number of people that are concerned about EMFs and what they're bringing into their bedroom.

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You showed that there is, you know, some different ways of thinking about this product in regards to that as well. Yeah, I think we are, I was, one, we made that choice of no electronics under your head, which doesn't make a lot of sense to the device is sitting at a distance and  low energy Bluetooth to connect to the base.

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So it's the same as all the wireless headphones. So it's pretty standard. And also we have a cable that you can just use the Bluetooth cable instead to just connect to the base. So  we thought about these. Um, I think the whole idea, for example, people keep asking us, hey, uh, very engineering minded people, like why don't you drop this and just use a cell phone?

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Because everybody has one. Why don't you just track them? Like, well,  one, we really don't want to promote having a cell phone the whole night by your side. Sure.  Uh,  we actually have a fully revamped version of our app coming out soon. Oh. You can do a full night study and you can get sleep meditation, sleep journeys, your recording before, after, all that stuff.

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But we don't think you should have to use it. If you're curious, you should be able to. Sure. Like, if I'm having one push,  like just one button device. Yeah, and all you need to do is like press go to sleep is a much better experience. Yeah, relying on a phone. Right, exactly. Like, that's one other thing we're looking to ideally remove out of the spaces.

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All those temptations and things that we can go down rabbit holes and talk about. A big EMF source would often be our very own cell phones. And you mentioned, too, that USB connection is available within there as well. You can just connect the USB to the base, which charges it and also the connection goes through that.

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Amazing. Great, great, great. Awesome. Okay. So having said that, is there anything we left out before we shift over to how you're managing your own sleep, given that you've thought deeply about this area? So one thing that we've started a conversation around recently is  Helping people just have a little fun, but also just open up about talking about snoring, especially women.

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Like we are, we are much more protective about talking about snoring. We get emails from guys who say, Hey,  thank you. My wife and I are sleeping so much better and my wife asked me to never leave you a public review. So I'm sending you this two paragraph email thanking you. So, but we've never gotten that from the opposite sex.

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So. Fine, you know, this this is kind of norms we live within Uh, but I think it's important to just be fine. Yes. Everybody snores. It's pretty much the same percentage Uh, it has to do with weight. So yeah women tend to be Less overweight than men, so it almost tracks with that, uh, percentage. Uh, but I think it should,  we should talk about it because snoring is correlated to, um, heart failure.

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Like, that study came out last year. So, the whole idea of either putting up with your partner's snoring or denying your snoring. Yes. Neither of them are good for our health.  And I think this has always been there, but we're just living longer now. Right. We all start.  You know, snoring, and then eventually maybe apnea.

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Like, as we get into our 40s, 50s, it has always been there. It has always been one of those things that puts pressure on the cardiovascular, um, system.  But,  just life expectancy was different. Quality of life expectation was way lower. You could have a groggy day, maybe,  and you would just chalk it up to being in your 50s.

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We don't expect that anymore. We want to be active. We want to be mentally present. And you want to push your cardio, and you're watching people get healthier in their 40s and 50s, which is amazing. And this is part of it. Like, if you want to get healthier later in life, well, guess what? You need sleep, because without sleep, there is no recovery.

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And if you sleep night after night of no recovery, there is really no path to getting healthier. You need to recover, you need to regenerate, and guess what? You can actually really extend your longevity. Absolutely. Uh, and such a good point, too, about on the front of women and how we also see for sleep apnea and snoring as we age, often for, across the board, but certainly for women, upticking, you know, past, as we go through perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.

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Absolutely. And so just having some of these more out of the box solutions that can be really easy to implement, really important. So good. Thank you so much for kind of bringing to light the gravity of this situation when we talk about cardiovascular health and some of the impacts. So important. So having said that, Every person that we bring on the podcast, we asked four questions around how you're managing your own sleep.

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And we tend to really learn a lot from different people, just some different ways they're thinking about this area. And certainly you've thought deeply about it and your whole family is in on it. So what would we see for you so far right now in your nightly sleep routine at the moment? For me, the name of the game is Consistency.

I learned early on that I'm an accordion sleep person, so I get really good sleep and I get so pumped that I'm really energized during the day. And then I either work or play too late. Yep. I realize I have this like, you know, the two nights of eight hours of sleep, and then that goes down to five, and then I get it back to eight.

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And that just exhausts your system. So,  Uh, I think one of the best things I did, I picked up a habit of going playing volleyball Saturday mornings. So I have something fun to do and I'm willing to get up at the same time as I do during the week. So I get up at 7, run out for 3 hours of volleyball on Saturday mornings.

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And I actually started to change it because then Sunday is just the one day. Okay, maybe I won't get up as early, but it's maybe one day. Of the week that I have this, uh, inconsistent sleep time.  I think it's really important to focus on the basics. There's so much out there around, you know, from the supplements,  wearing the, um, the blue, um,  blockers, all these things you can do, but all of those are like in the diminishing return range.

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Like, yes, if you're a pro athlete, yes. If you are already have upped your game, all that stuff. But you don't start there. You start with  Andrew Huberman's list, right? Yeah, exactly. You get up in the morning, make sure you move, eat healthy, have good social connections. Guess what? That also helps your sleep.

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All of the things help each other, right? None of them is the fix to the other one. It's all kind of a collection of things. And then you will just realize, okay, um, I'm 85%, 90 percent there already, yes, I can optimize, and I can make sure some of these things like blue light late in the night doesn't throw me off my routine, but that's not going to make your routine.

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It's so funny too, because we now, so we've worked with hundreds and hundreds of people's wearable data, particularly with the aura rig, so we've gotten really nuanced on seeing what really truly moves the needle for people in sleep optimization perspective outside of research, and one of the things that we see time and time again is exactly what you just.said people will come in and they it's almost like you could reverse the pyramid around how people begin so often they'll come in and they'll want to know what's the gadget what's the supplement what's the thing and you got to turn that pyramid upside down and it's actually exactly with what you spoke to often kind of the unsexy things you know the consistency the keeping to the consistency is way harder than putting on the glasses exactly that's right i think that's right so of course our mind goes to a trick But there's no trick.

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It's, it's same as, uh, same as going to the gym. Yeah. It's not the gear you wear, it's how often you are in the gym. Exactly. So good.  So having said that, that gives us a glimpse of your nightly routine, how about your morning sleep routine? You already kind of alluded to it with Andrew Huberman and the sunlight and what have you.

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Is there anything that we might visually see? I think one, try to have as little as I can because  My I can stay up all night if I have something interesting around. Yes, I need to get bored Tuesday. I know that and the challenge is like, hey. There is 15 minutes of nothing. If you're awake on the other side of that 15 minutes, fair game.

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But I'm never, I'm never awake.  After 15 minutes of boredom. So, for me, it's books. And, uh, in the morning, I find it very important for myself to wake up with a sunrise lamp rather than an alarm. Sure. The quality of what you experience is important. Day and night difference. You wake up slowly. And it helps me keep the same, around the same way regardless of the season.

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Um, so that's it for me is books and sunrise lamp.  I love that. I need to be bored to sleep mantra. I don't think I've heard anyone phrase it quite like that. It is so true. I completely relate to that. One of the, I tell in my, um, on our courses and what have you, we have different modules that we bring people through and they're all under the umbrella of circadian rhythm and treatment.

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And one module that we have is called thought timing and looking at the timing of our thoughts How we have these diurnal patterns for our thoughts very different types of thoughts that we have at night versus day And I always let everyone know that this is forever one of my most challenging modules myself Because I even though i'm in this all day every day I could absolutely, if left to my own devices, keep listening to the podcast, read the exciting, you know, article, keep going.

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And yet you're pointing to something so brilliant of being bored to sleep and setting yourself up in that container to make sure that that happens routinely. So good. I think that might lead us to the third question, and imagine, so what might we visually see on your nightstand? You already mentioned some books.

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So curious what we might see there. So yeah, it's usually books. I try to read fiction if I can.  I've been doing that too. For the same reason. Yep. Not getting back into, like, the worst thing for me to read is getting a strategy book, for example. Same. Yep. Because I need to expose my laptop, right? Uh, so, uh, and that's it.

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I try to keep it simple and, uh,  dark, uh, light out. No shades and what have you. Yep. Totally. Yeah, we actually are having, um, you block out on the podcast coming up soon and they have a whole mantra around getting total blackout rooms and just different innovative ways to do that. And you're engineering mine on the case.

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I'm sure you got the total blackout piece. That's amazing. Fantastic. Okay. And then what would be, as far as when you think about your management of sleep, you may have, you may have already touched on it, but. What has made the biggest change to the management of your kind of sleep game or said another way, maybe biggest aha moment in managing sleep?

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I think the biggest aha moment for me was how much physical activity increases quality of my sleep. Yeah. I've seen that time and time again. It's very counterintuitive because when you're in this loop of being tired and you think you want to rest And you still don't get dressed because your body is not dressed.

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Your body is not, hasn't done its thing. And I always tell  my friends, I feel like each of us have a pet.  We've been given this mammal, but it's a pet. You have to get, take it out for a run. You have to, you know, give it some sunshine. You have to give it good food. You can't change the animal, the animal to do animal things.

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Otherwise it's anxious. Right. Yeah. Um, so it's basically that simple mantra. To calm your mind, use your body.  Beautiful. That over and over, very true and very counterintuitive. Because you think rest equals rest equals Stillness, but rest equals a lot of times, um, a change, a contrast in activities. And, uh, that's the fantastic, uh, TED talk called Seven Types of Rest that I think everybody should, should watch, which talks about this.

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Rest is not sleep. You need social rest, you need creative rest, you need,  um, physical rest, so on and so forth. Oh, that's interesting. I don't think I've watched that. So I will pull that up and see if we can add that to the show notes. Amazing. Thank you. And I love what you're saying too about exercise movement, making such a difference in our sleep results, building that sleep pressure, thinking of it the same way we would, you know, our, Golden retriever or something.

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We got to take them outside. We got to move around our kids We want to tire them out have them, you know Kind of get great sleep and we need to do or have the opportunity to do the same So really really great now for people listening and maybe they've never heard of they didn't even might have not even known that This was an option for them of treating whether for their own snoring or for the partner For both, how can they maybe test this out, follow some of the things that you have coming and the research and all of this?

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What are the best ways to do that? Best ways to do it is go to our website, smartnord. com, or we have another one, easier to remember, stopsnoring. com. Out of the way! We love it. Great domain.  Let's go to stopstorm. com. You will end up on our website, follow our newsletter. We always share any updates we have.

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And we often also try to find other things that can help your sleep, whether it's partnerships that we set up,  other companies, friends. I think that's like a really nice thing to be able to do to hundreds of thousands of people that are our customers or follow the brands like, Hey, we give you your sleep back.

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Here's now all these other ways to improve it from there. Beautiful. So important and just so appreciate that you put your engineering mind to this problem and are helping so many people over the years because it's been how many years? You created this quite a while ago, right? Yeah, we've been in market since 2017.

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2017. Amazing. So good. We are in multi multi million nights of better sleep surf. So that's  remarkable and crazy that that started from one bedroom and now. It's so good. Awesome. And I know we're before we hit record, we're going to set up something for listeners to so I believe you should be able to use code sleep is a skill.

We'll get that all set up for people. And so you can just get in there. Try it out. See the potential difference that this could make not only for you and your partner and the domino effect that that could have for the well being of the globe. So let's snoring better sleep. That would be fantastic. And the domino effect, just I'll share this final story.

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Yeah, please. One of the times we're talking to our customers, one of the most amazing lines I've heard, I heard, and it's like made, made my hairs stand on my arm. Um, someone was telling us that, Hey, I was like getting into my thirties, mid thirties, and I thought I'm becoming a very serious person.  I started using Nora and I got my sleep back and then I was like, wait a minute.

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My sense of humor is coming back.  I was in this kind of semi depressed state and I was like, wow. I wasn't, I was never expecting to hear your personality is coming back. I was like, yeah, I wasn't myself. The same person I was in my twenties was coming back. And I believe I'm going to affect nothing. Can't get more interesting than that.

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Can't get more than that. I believe that wholeheartedly, the amount of research we see of the surprising spidering into unexpected areas of life that are touched when we improve our sleep are just that. astounding. You really struggle to find a single domain of light that's not impacted when our sleep is not working.

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And conversely, when we start to have it work, then the positive ripple effects, I mean, right down to have to share, um, even certain research around our ability or interpersonal communication, our ability to read faces, to kind of properly understand the nuances, like soft skills and kind of interact with the world around us and connection.

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You know, so it's So far reaching and expands your experience and extends your experience of life. So big deal. Thank you for the work you're doing. I mean, really appreciate you taking the time for the second time to come back here and share what you're doing really makes a difference. Amazing. Awesome.

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Let's see by the next time we talk, which city you're in. Okay. Yes, exactly.  The wandering, the wandering podcast hosts over here.  Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us.  You've been listening to the sleep as a skill podcast, the top podcast for people who want to take their sleep skills to the next level.

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Every Monday, I send out the sleep obsessions newsletter, which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet. Fun fact, I've never missed a Monday for over five years and counting. And it contains everything that you need to know in the fascinating world of sleep. Head on over to sleep as a skill.com forward slash newsletter to sign up.