187: Tony Wrighton, UK-based Journalist & Best-Selling Author, Unpacking Histamines, Sleep, and Biohacking — What You Need To Know

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.

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 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.

Welcome to today's episode of the sleep is a skill podcast. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Tony Wrighton. Tony is a UK based journalist and broadcaster. His presenting career has spanned two decades being a regular presenter on channels, including Sky News, Sky Sports News, ITV and LBC. Beyond that, he's a bestselling author and his NLP based books have been translated into 13 languages.

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He hosts a podcast called biohacking news featuring all the latest from the world of biohacking and health. In this episode, we dive deep into what histamines are, their surprising impact on sleep quality and practical biohacks that you can integrate into your daily life. Tony's expertise extends to neurolinguistic programming NLP in which he began training in 2004,  Over the years, he has progressed to the top of the field in these skills, practitioner, master practitioner, and trainer.

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He's also qualified in emotional freedom therapy, EFT, and is a registered mind factor coach and loves combining these skills with his background as a journalist. Tony is also a recognizable voiceover artist. He appears on a number of weekly television programs and so much more. I also highly recommend following him on social.

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He provides lots. of practical takeaways for things that you can do to support your health and wellbeing. But certainly this big, huge topic of histamines and sleep, you'll remember as you might be aware, a number of the over the counter medications for sleep include Antihistamines is one of their primary ingredients to lower the amount of histamines in the body, to have a experience of being more drowsy.

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So histamines and sleep are intimately connected and we're going to get into so much more, but first a few words from our sponsors and please do check out our sponsors. They really keep this podcast alive. So really appreciate your time and attention on the people that help make this podcast possible.

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You're not just investing in a blackout shade. You're investing in your health, wellbeing, and quality of life. So again, go to you block out spelled the letter U block out. And use code sleep is a skill for a discount  and welcome to the sleep is a skill podcast. My guest today, Tony, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and on multiple time zones.

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And, you know, there's a lot that I know you're juggling. You've got aspects of your books and helping other people in various. Places in their both biohacking journey, book writing journey and beyond. You are such a multifaceted, passionate individual around helping to support people in their health and well being and more.

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So thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Thank you very much for having me, Mollie. You've obviously been on my podcast. It was it was lovely to meet and chat to you. And yeah. Good to be here. So it's like an endless podcast swap. We'll forever go on each other's podcasts. Oh,  Let's do it. Please.

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The pleasure is mine. Um,  and you know, it's an interesting journey, how for me, how I discovered your work and you've got so much great information for people to check out. Highly encourage people to follow you on the different platforms and we'll share how to do that. It'll be in the show notes. And when I first stumbled upon you was in some of the things that you were sharing around your history.

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Demine intolerance and how that can impact our sleep. And I don't think we've done a good enough job on this podcast of really diving into that exact topic. And I know you're such an expert in that field and area and more so I was thinking that could be a good place for us to begin. And also bridging that gap for people of how, what are histamines and how could they relate to sleep?

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So just how you even found yourself as an expert in that area. Well, I've been a broadcaster for 25 years and an author alongside it, and I write around personal development topics, really, you know, personal development and wellness. But in the background, there was always something that wasn't quite right.

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And that led me to the world of biohacking,  and I love biohacking and, you know, it sort of played to my sort of strengths, perhaps, of being utterly obsessive about something and trying to figure out what was wrong. I've always had gut issues for many, many years and just couldn't quite figure out what it was.

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And I went through everything in the list in my interests in biohacking. I went to biohacking conferences, you know, I tried a low lectin diet and a low oxalate diet. I tried giving up gluten and dairy and soy and fish and eggs and nuts and all the rest of it. Nothing really worked. I right at the bottom of the list.

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was histamine intolerance.  Now, I am not a, I'm not a doctor and I don't want to be, I'm a journalist, but I went on a histamine intolerance diet, a low histamine diet, and no word of a lie, within about three hours, I started to feel better. And then I thought, there's something in this. And of course, what was really interesting was that, you know, Sleep or bad sleep causes histamine issues, and it goes both ways because histamine issues cause bad sleep.

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So it can be just a never ending spiral of bad sleep and histamine issues. And once I started to figure out the histamine issues, I did start to sleep better as well. And I have thoughts for your audience, by the way, on how they can improve their sleep. Ooh, I love this. Okay, a cliffhanger. What a fantastic journey.

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And, uh, I certainly relate to kind of Solving your own problem in the journey certainly brings that level of commitment. And for me, I kind of relate to that obsessive tendency of like, we are going to figure this out and go deep. So very excited to uncover what you did discover because I think for some people, maybe they've heard about histamines or they've taken antihistamines to help them sleep, they think, and yet that's maybe the extent of their knowledge for many individuals on any sort of connection.

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So maybe you could help us. break down, even though that's part of the problem is our inability to break down histamines, maybe you can help us break down what that is and how that does really show up in the kind of sleep results, but also anxiety and other things.  So on my podcast, biohacking news, I sort of heard this histamine issue get talked about quite a bit and I just didn't really understand what it was.

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I knew that I'd taken antihistamines for allergies in springtime and that was about it. Um, and I'd heard this histamine intolerance concept get. talked about quite a bit, but it is confusing because ultimately histamine intolerance is when your body struggles to break down histamine. And we need, we've got histamine in every cell in our bodies.

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We need histamine to survive. It helps our bodies sort of create inflammation and deal with inflammation. Um, so we need histamine, but some of us struggle to break down the histamine that we eat and struggle to break down the histamine that we create. in our bodies. And when an excess of histamine occurs, all sorts of different symptoms come up.

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And that is one of the really complicated things because, I mean, honestly, there's a list of symptoms and it might as well be every symptom that anybody's ever suffered with. Exactly. It's everything, pretty much. Everything from a bad gut, to hives, to migraines, to dizziness, to constipation, to diarrhea, to everything else.

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And of course, blood pressure bad sleep, restless sleep, struggling to go to sleep, struggling to stay asleep, really difficult for people with histamine intolerance, waking up in the middle of the night and then not being able to go back back to sleep. Sometimes they might have been listening to your podcast forever, but unfortunately they've got an excess of histamine in the system.

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Yeah. And then what really does the head in is that histamine levels depend on all sorts of things, like time of day. time of the month for women, whether what you ate last night, whether that banana was ripe or unripe, all of these sorts of things. And one of the highest histamine times of day is between two and four in the morning.

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Oh,  gosh. Yes, exactly. Okay. So you're kind of uncovering a potential blind spot for so many individuals that, wow, maybe this is part of the source for My 2 a. m. 3 a. m. 4 a. m. wakeups or just kind of this unrest or odd list of symptoms as you pointed to it's just this like laundry list of things and sometimes these odd symptoms that might go  unseen or treated by traditional doctors.

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So how do you have people think about this with they coming to you with now questioning? Am I dealing with histamine intolerance? What do I do? What is, what are kind of the steps to take for those individuals and especially if they're struggling with sleep? Yeah, one of the difficult things about histamine intolerance is there's no particular test that works particularly well.

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And the best thing to do actually first step is follow a low histamine diet for a few days.  That's what, that's what I did. And I started to feel better within a few hours. And if you are struggling with your sleep and everything else that people have addressed on your podcast, and you know, I, I know you're brilliant courses and everything else.

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If that's not working, you could look at histamine intolerance up to 15 percent of people suffer with it. I've been suffering with it before it was even, A thing. Yes. Totally. I know I can share personally, I've had different flare ups of histamines, especially with sickness. Like, um, when I got COVID, I got like different rashes and certain skin things as a result and low histamine diet was part of the protocol that then I brought in to bring things back to more homeostasis, but certainly some difficulties with that from a gene expression perspective and a number of things that make it challenging for me to deal with histamines.

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And we've seen this for so many individuals and clients that we work with. And I think we got to get the message out in a bigger way. Okay. So many people, the struggle might be that we can't really test in, in any more kind of standardized way. So we want to take some of these other steps. Yeah. So you can start by going on a low histamine diet.

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And I'm glad you mentioned long COVID because, you know, there's always an underlying reason. Why are you histamine intolerant? It might be genetic. There are certain genes that some, some people are the DAO gene. Some people are just deficient in it and, and struggle to create their own diamine oxidase and that can cause histamine issues for some people.

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It's hormones.  Uh, menopause or mold exposure. That was mine. And it takes a long time to work all this stuff out. And then increasingly I've been getting a lot of people sort of coming to my biohacking work and saying, actually it was long COVID or some sort of post viral issue that came after COVID. Yes.

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Right. So we're, so you've been seeing more like an uptick of this or the symptomology of this. Yeah. And I mean, I would recommend Tina Pierce, who's been on my podcast a couple of times. She specializes in histamine intolerance, long COVID and menopause. And she just, I think she's booked up about six months in advance, but she's, she's a doctor.

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She's brilliant. You know, I mean, she's got a lot of good content around, around long COVID and histamine intolerance and how great, yeah. Yeah. Like it sort of.  The recovery looked very similar to sort of post viral fatigue for a lot of people and it was post viral, wasn't it? And that's, and that causes the sort of secondary, the follow on, which is histamine intolerance that can massively affect our sleep.

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And then, of course, once your sleep goes wrong, your histamine symptoms get worse. Exactly. Oh, my gosh. So well, and it's not so good that we're dealing with it, but so good that something like yourself is helping us break down what are our pathways for action around this. So certainly beginning with something that is largely free or right, just a matter of testing out a low histamine diet.

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And it's funny too, because one of the things I've seen for people is we might, you know, suggest, okay, test out a low histamine diet, but people, this is just my experience, have come back with like, Oh, this diet is too hard or confusing or, you know, just kind of apprehension around diving into this. But what you're seeing is that.

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stick with it and, you know, at least just test it out and see, do your symptoms resolve or kind of lessen? And that is part of our kind of goalposts of seeing, okay, this is solving part of our problem with histamine intolerance. Well, yeah. And, you know, as I said, I'm not a practitioner. It's really interesting because I, I do this biohacking work and I'm an author and that's the sort of bread and butter for me.

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But on the side, I then sort of started to think, well, I could use my journalistic skills to write a couple of books on histamine intolerance. And I did. Yeah. Thanks. One called histamine intolerance explained the one called the histamine intolerance cookbook. And they've been great because actually there's not that much information about histamine intolerance out there and it can be quite dry.

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And what we do see is that, you know, when you start to follow a low histamine diet, you can quite quickly start to feel better and that can improve sleep improvements. Um, The issue is going to be honest here, Molly, a lot of the best things in life are high in histamine.  Red wine, highest histamine thing you can consume in the world, I think.

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Yeah, I don't agree more. And then surprising things that are healthy, right? Presumably with bone broths and avocados and certain things that you would think and that are often recommended when you are struggling with your health. But maybe for those individuals that are struggling, histamines might not be the time or the place.

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And I wonder if you can share too. Is this something some people might hear this and be like, what a horrible diagnosis. Is this like my whole life? But do you think of it in a manner of no, we're looking to solve kind of deal with the symptoms now, but then getting to the root cause, like you were pointing to maybe molds, maybe hormone imbalances, maybe COVID, et cetera.

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Is that part of your way of looking at this? Yeah. So obviously immediate symptom management, you know, people want to feel better and they want to sleep better as well. And, you know, honestly, I, there was quite a long period of time when I was waking up in the middle of the night, going to the loo and then taking two questions in tablets before going to bed in the middle of the night, because I'd be blocked up every night.

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And there will be a lot of people listening to your podcast or watching your podcast and they will wake up with a stuffy nose in the middle of the night. Classic histamine intolerance symptoms. Yes. First thing you want to do is get a good air purifier and open a window.  You know, I mean, that's like, that's a real basic, but it's, it may sound almost too basic, but you know, it does make a difference.

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Is there any top out of the amount of quercetin that we can ingest? safely or any call outs there? Because I hear different people doing similar things of really doubling down. Any thoughts on that one? Honestly, that was what I was doing. I would say once you're starting to get, if you're at the stage where you feel like you need to take quests in the middle of the night, then really you want to be speaking to a practitioner about it.

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You know, and the questions, if you don't have a practitioner,  one of the questions that's really important to ask is, do you deal with other people with histamine intolerance? How many, and the important one, have they got better?  Because if they haven't, you may want to, you know, because it is, it's, it's a specialist issue.

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And I've got a great practitioner who pretty much just works with histamine intolerance people. And that's really important.  Oh, absolutely. Is that practitioner that you work with someone, is that separate from Tina Peers or? Yeah, it's not Tina Peers. I work with someone called Caroline Sherlock, who, who has a company called Eat, Drink, Live Well.

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But there's also, um, April Alexandria Nutrition. She's been on my podcast. She specializes in histamine intolerance and worked for a histamine intolerance  There's Beth O'Hara, who's, who's excellent. You've probably heard of her. Yes. Actually. Yeah. She'd be good for a podcast as well. She's really, really good guest.

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And then there's, um, Jade Layton, who's UK based and you know, it doesn't really matter where people are in the world these days because we can all meet on zoom, can't we? So it's fine. Oh, exactly. Totally. Well, I appreciate you sharing about those different practitioners. And so I think I need 10 percent from all of those practitioners.

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Exactly. And also what you said was what my experience was when I was dealing with that long COVID and really going down the histamine rabbit hole was that your book and the cookbook was one of the few resources that I could find. find that was really helpful to guide of really making this more of a lifestyle for individuals, at least for the symptom piece, until we figure out what's at its source.

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And so that's so, so crucial. And to your point, sometimes this takes many different cooks in the kitchen with different practitioners and resources. So really, really helpful. Any other call outs that you want to share about histamine or ways to think about that as it relates to sleep? Yeah, I mean, just on the cookbook quickly, it's funny because, because it's quite homespun, the cookbook.

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And, you know, as we were talking about before we started recording the podcast, my main work is publishing books, nonfiction books and helping other authors publish books as well. And we do that through indie publishing and it tends to be print on demand on Amazon and only really works if it's black and white.

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Color is just too expensive to print. So I was like, all right, I'm good. I want to write a cookbook for people with histamine intolerance, but it's going to be black and white. I mean, you want a color in a cookbook, don't you? And to my surprise, people still buy it and still find it really useful, I guess, because the information in there is, you know, I mean,  there's loads, low, low histamine ketchup, for example, or yeah, you can't have bone broth, but as a way of making a low histamine bone broth, which is much easier.

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Yeah. You can't have leftovers because they can be high in histamine, but you can freeze your leftovers and then take them out of the freezer the next day and warm them up and then they'll be fine. All of that sort of thing. You don't need color pictures for so. Yes. Oh, that's  amazing. See that innovative approach.

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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 will thank you.  Okay. So having said that now, I know you've also been in the biohacking space for many years and curious if you have a particular way that you think about biohacking.

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Sleep and supporting sleep in general across these multifaceted biohacks since this is sleep is a skill we're looking to build our skill set in the sleep optimization as many different angles as possible. So just curious if you have any other call outs on that topic. Oh, I have a lot of thoughts around sleep and, and even since we last chatted, I can't remember what it was, but it was probably a few months ago.

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So, you know, firstly, just with the histamine, once people start to address those histamine issues, I, and I'm always happy to sort of, people reach out, the DMs are always happy to sort of have a, have a little chat about it, but I do think that people will start to notice that they sleep better. And for a lot of people with histamine issues, it's just being blocked up in the night.

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That is so annoying. So do invest in a good air purifier and then see if that helps. Absolutely. And then, You know, a lot, actually, it turns out a lot of people with histamine issues is not the diet that needs to change. It's their lifestyle. It's the stress. Yeah. And that's it. And of course that affects the sleep as well.

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And I found  a huge improvement and I've got to be totally honest with you here. They sponsor my podcast, but there's a supplement called sleep breakthrough by, by optimizers. Oh yes. Yeah. And the main ingredient. Yeah. I mean, it's unbelievable, isn't it? You know, what's incredible? Like. They've been sending me bottles of sleep breakthrough for a couple of years and I was like, Oh, I don't need that.

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I'm passing it on to my wife. Not interested. And then we were on holiday a few months ago. And I was like, I'll try a scoop of that. And I slept so deeply and I've looked into, and ever since I've been taking,  but, um, and as I say, it really has nothing to do with the fact that my podcast partners, but I've looked into why I think this is.

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And I think  many of us who sort of  run our own businesses or have histamine intolerance or whatever it might be, our GABA receptors are somewhat impaired in some ways and we are deficient in GABA. And GABA is one of the ingredients in this sleep breakthrough. And since, and I, and I just feel like it's topping up my, I've needed it forever.

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And I've known, I know my wife sleeps like a log and I toss and turn all night long and I now not, I think I'm just boosting up my GABA reserves. And so I'm interested to know what you think about the GABA in the sleep breakthrough. Oh, yeah. It's interesting because that GABA topic can be a big one for optimizing your sleep.

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And we also know that certain medications that we have concerns about long term use are hitting at similar areas of the brain, but in a whole different regard. So meaning like benzos and Z drugs, but we know that there's part of a reason why those have that at least short term effectiveness. for people in that sedation effects is that it is helping to support that GABA production or hitting at GABA receptors, I should say.

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So having said that, then we are interested in certain drugs that can facilitate similar response, but in a presumably safer way. And that's what's interesting about some of the drugs or supplements that People like bio optimizers are putting out, companies like bio optimizers are putting out, because it does hit at that ability to kind of calm and down regulate in the evening.

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And that's what so many of the people that we're working with are struggling with, and measurably so. So one cool aspect is that the Oura Ring and WootBand have now added daytime stress monitors, right? And so one thing that we've been seeing for so many of our people that we're working with is that they are often having an uptick in their stress response into the evening, and kind of appears almost similar to when people talk about delayed cortisol pulse, and that's a signature for many people with struggling with their sleep.

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So we're seeing some signs of that where people are having just a stress response into the evening, whether it's based on that kind of hormonal issues. And or is it some of the ways that they're engaging in the world around them in the evening hours? So things that can help facilitate that down regulation are of quite of a lot of interest.

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And so something like bio optimizers, another one I like is, um, proscriptions has a new formula for sleep, which is really interesting. And they actually even have adenosine in that one, which is really kind of rarity in the supplement space for helping to support that sleep pressure. But hitting at the GABA piece and with the aim of crossing sort of that blood brain barrier, which can be a struggle for some of these supplements to actually make that difference.

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So all that to say that I completely hear you and I have lots of that sleep breakthrough here, and it has been useful at different points too when we're struggling with our sleep to have those things at the ready. Yeah, you can take passion flower as well, just a passion flower tincture,  which is a natural way of getting more GABA in the body.

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Um, and I tried that recently. I mean, I, I find again, you know, alcohol tends to be very high histamine. So I, I want a tincture that is not alcohol based. Um, and I found one and I ordered it and I took one dose of it. And I honestly felt knocked out for about three days. I was walking around like a zombie.

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So again, maybe that's a sign that my gatherers that I'm just like so frazzled 30 years of running my own business and writing books and running around like a headless chicken. And, you know, I mean, I, I, One of my books that I wrote was called Stop Scrolling. And I think the other thing is that we're all just so hypersensitized and hyper vigilant all the time.

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And you think about our parents generation,  or maybe their parents generation, they used to clock off from work, go home and not think about work until Monday morning on a Friday night, didn't they? And they had the whole weekend just to relax. And we need to try and recreate that as hard as it is, because we're all so stressed out that really.

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That is the cause of a lot of our histamine issues and our sleep issues. Oh my gosh, I just found your book. I didn't know about stop scrolling and I think I need to get this because that is such an area for so many people that we're working with, myself included, this continual struggle of the addictive tendencies.

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And certainly, I don't know if you can relate to this, but then the self talk that is not serving of like, well, it's work. I have to be on social media, please. There's no being setting up these kind of guardrails for ourselves. I'll be very curious to read this. This looks great. Okay, so that can be yet another way to address.

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I think that's underrated and maybe sometimes the thing that people don't want to hear is these behavioral changes can often yield such high results for people in these areas, especially with sleep. We can't divorce the experience of high stress load throughout the course of your day and into your night.

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And then expect that you're going to sleep, you know, this deep restorative sleep, we have to kind of peel back these layers. And that's one aspect of that. So good. Is there any other major call outs for you when you think about sleep? I know this is a huge topic, but before we shift into how you're managing your own sleep.

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Yeah. One of the things that I looked at in, in stop scrolling was sort of mixing my background in mindset coaching with biohacking. Yeah. And you know, sort of really easy things around calming down in the evening. We know that red light and at night helps. I know you've talked about blue blocking glasses loads in the past, putting together, for example, you may or may or may not have looked at the, the hack where you can turn your iPhone screen fully read.

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Yes, of course. So good. I mean, I can never believe it when people are sort of staring at a screen at 11pm. If you're going to be looking at a screen at 11pm, at least make sure it's fully red and there's no blue line there. Exactly. Yes. And it's such a free, available, um, shift. And then if people are listening and you don't have an iPhone, you know, you can get the Twilight app on Android.

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There's ways to make it. fully read. And the difference you feel, it's like even the lack of addictive tendency, I mean, it's still going to be addictive, but it does drop the excitatory nature in a measure. Like you feel this in your nervous system, the difference. Yeah. And then I've been sort of tracking all sorts of parameters for years.

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Some very objective things like, you know, obviously the ring can tell us exactly how long we've slept at night. And then some very subjective things like, well, what was my energy level like out of 10, for example, on a particular day, or how was my digestion? Or, you know, did I, did I feel happy? Um, and I've noticed,  that the more that I switch off during the day, and if I switch off for a period of hours during the day, I have a huge amount more energy.

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And of course, again, this is so intuitive, but all of the best things in life don't involve screens. You don't even need me to list them to say that there is all of the best things. Um, and so it's sort of so basic and so obvious that when you switch the screens off, you're going to have a better time and a nicer time.

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You're going to really spend time with the people you want to spend time with and be more present and in the moment.  Agree more. Well, that's a fantastic bow to put on this topic for now anyway, or part, you know, one to shift to out of all of these things that you have been discovering over this many, many years, curious to hear how you're managing your own sleep.

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And like you pointed to, I feel like we're very similar in that it keeps evolving, keep shifting. You know, if we ask you this a year from now, I'm sure there's probably it's, you know, extra or different things you might be doing. But today What would you say your nightly sleep routine is looking like right now?

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With the caveat that with the biohacking stuff, and obviously my podcast News, people love biohacking. the exotic, the new gadget that costs thousands and everything else, or the Oora Ring. And all the stuff that works the best is the really boring stuff. So that's my caveat. Okay. Yes. Same. Yeah. Yeah. So I have found the first thing that really works the best is a consistent bedtime.

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And I have found that the earlier the bedtime, the better. And it's taken me a long time to work this out. You know, I was, I was, a TV presenter in the UK for 15 years. And I was often on the late shifts. So I'd be presenting 10 till midnight. And then I would, and then sort of, and talk about blue light blocking five to midnight.

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Um, I'd have  literally a hundred studio.  Yeah. So I might get home and I couldn't, even if I went to sleep, I wasn't sleeping that deeply. Um, and I think my nervous system was just sort of really hyped up.  And I, and I've certainly noticed in terms of the Ura Ring and HRV.  The earlier I go to bed, the better my H.

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R. V. score. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, absolutely. This kind of, um, circadian rhythm. The depths by which circadian rhythm continues to surprise us in its tentacles, you know, addressing many aspects of health and well being. You know, one of the ones I've been speaking on a lot, too, is how our thoughts even exist on a circadian rhythm, which is really, really fascinating.

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We have research to support that. That the types of thoughts you have at midnight are very different than 12 p. m. And can have real world consequences like wee hours in the morning, having upticks in suicidality rates and certain things. So there are more and more elements to the circadian story that are being uncovered.

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And to your point, this correlation between HRV and our nervous system, it is quite noteworthy. And we do know that that is an aspect because many people say, Oh, my HRV stinks, or, you know, they're not pleased with their HRV in some way, shape, or form. And they want to know what can they do. One of the things is what you're speaking to kind of this circadian management, this consistency of sleep wake cycles, and then having it more connected to the rhythms of nature, not drifting too, too far out to that like night shift piece that we might say, ah, amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing that works better than anything. And remember, I said it was the boring stuff,  but only 27 percent of people do this, which, which constantly blows my mind. And it's just leaving the phone out of the bedroom. And there's a reason for it. Firstly, I haven't got the self control not to check my phone in the middle of the night.

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Yes. And secondly, um, in those few minutes. before you go to sleep and when you wake up in the morning. They are such precious minutes for your brain to unwind and when you wake up to sort of think about the important stuff. You want to be dictating where your brain goes. You don't want that to be at the whim of, of a thousand developers behind the app you're using, whatever it may be, uh, just deciding with their algorithm, what you should look at in those precious moments before sleep.

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And I've just noticed that it results in a deeper sleep, higher HRV. Feeling more refreshed and. Go to bed earlier as well, because I'll often go to bed at, say, like, you know, 1015 and think, Oh, I'll turn out the light in 10 minutes. But if I've got my phone there, sure enough,  I'm still looking at the Bitcoin price or something like that.

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Yes, exactly. One can never be sure where we'll end up in those rabbit holes. Yeah. So good. Okay. The interesting about that stat that you said is 27 percent of people are, that's the few amount that is actually leaving their phone outside of their bedroom. Oh, I believe it. But Molly, that was research from years ago, so it might be higher now.

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I mean that this is absolutely incredible how these devices have changed our lives. And by the way, I actually think the only way to really get over it, and this is something I write about in Stop Scrolling, is one of Robert Cialdini's Six Laws of Accountability, which is you've got to be fully, Publicly accountable.

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So set up a WhatsApp group with someone else and confirm every night that you've left the phone out of the bedroom. So me and my wife have a WhatsApp group based around our house. So like a few little sort of personal Roman principles. And if the phone's in my room, she knows about it the next day. Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

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She's there as well, but like, but you know, she keeps me accountable. Oh, that's fantastic. Yes. I mean, and the accountability piece, I think is just such a huge aspect. That's really what our programs are built around as well with, um, the threading in through the war ring. And now we've added whooping. And so having that ability to know that we're being observed in a particular way.

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So the observer effect or the Hawthorne effect can be so powerful in the shift of our behaviors. So I love that. And what do you think of the new Samsung ring? Oh, yes, I like it. And I'm actually really interested in what's coming going into this year and into the following year. There's so much rumblings around new, exciting tech.

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I actually just got off a call. With a new company that's aiming to be kind of aura meets clinical grade diagnostic quality to test for things like sleep apnea. And what's amazing is then that can all be on your ring that you're wearing every single day. So that's just one company that's Looking to kind of be a disrupter and there's even more coming.

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There's more coming even from tech, say like on what you're sleeping on. So for mattress toppers and mattresses did tech for snoring and the other aspects of quality of sleep. So. There's going to be a lot of disruption. So right now, I'm still an advocate for Oura Ring. I'm such a fan, and it's made such a difference in my life.

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And I think it's just, you know, going to be the wild, wild west, because more is coming. So, so having said that, okay, so if we got a decent picture of your evening, then what might we see in your mornings? And with the argument that how you set up your day can impact your sleep results.  Yeah. I mean, the most important thing in the morning is just waking up and having a few moments when your phone's not there.

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So again, it's the, it's the, it's the setup from the night before. Yeah. Um, after that, it's, it's a bit of a mad sort of family scramble to get everyone out the door in time. We tend to, we tend to sort of have various routines based on there's never enough time to work. So sometimes we'll, we'll do the morning shift and I'll be off out the door doing work early.

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And sometimes it'd be evening. But it's a But there's not a massive amount, apart from the fact I intermittently fast, there's not a great deal in the morning that, that sort of is exactly the same from day to day. But at some point in the day, I'll meditate, I'll work out, I'll do loads of walking. I live in Portugal and the sun's out, I'll be outside a lot.

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But it just doesn't necessarily come first thing in the morning, because sometimes there are more pressing matters. Yes. Oh, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. OK, so that's fantastic. So there's certain foundational components that you like to have fairly consistently. And it sounds like giving yourself that break from the addictive tendency of the phone is a big foundational component.

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Love that. and more and those other things that stack into setting you up powerfully for your day. And then we check in with what might we visually see on your nightstand or ambience, any call outs in your bedroom space. Well, I have a whole box full of goodies. Yes. And I know Molly that you are the only person as geeky as me in terms of Adapting your alarm clock.

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Is that what I'm saying? Yes. Yes. Yes. Say more. I love that. I don't know where it is, but I basically, I've got a bit of, um, camera, camera grade red perspex gel that goes over my, that goes over my, um, alarm clock. And that has made a huge difference. I couldn't find that alarm clock anywhere. I mean, surely there's a company idea out there somewhere to just bring out a blue blocked alarm clock.

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Right. I know you would think it wouldn't be that crazy of a concept. I've been down the rabbit hole, but I couldn't find it as well as that. Got an eye mask. But one of the things I love about Portugal is that there's a culture here where all the houses and all the flats have these full blackout blinds, which are absolutely lovely.

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So, um, and it's amazing. We went back to the UK recently and we slept so much worse because at the moment in the UK, the light is coming up sort of four, four 30 in the morning. And of course here, you don't know what time it is until you sort of do. Yeah, because of your circadian rhythm, but it's lovely and dark in your little cave until you lift the blinds.

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I think that makes a massive difference. I've played around quite a bit. We would talk about stuffy noses earlier on. And one of the things in my little sleep box is ex Leah. Have you heard of that? Yes. You know, I, this is ridiculous, but I think of you when I use it like every night. So I'm always like, yeah, I'm so glad I saw it because you were one of the people that further underscored for me that I needed to make this a nightly routine because for so long I would, you know, periodically use it or flare up or something, but now it's really part of my evening routine.

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I love it. Great. So it's a nasal spray. It's just natural. It's xylitol. Yeah. Basically, and it can really, really help with, with nasal issues. And if that's an issue for you, then you could also try something else that's in my sleep box, which is a red light device that has two prongs goes right up the nose.

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Yes. Yes. So good. Oh my gosh.  Love it. But if that's something that's an issue for you, do you use air purifier in the bedroom? I do. So I have two in there. I have the Jasper, which I'm a big fan of, and then the Air Doctor. And part of, so I'm about to be getting the Bivir procedure. I don't know if you've heard of this.

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So it's really cool. Here, I'll send it to you. It uses radio frequency to  expand your nasal passages and the thinking is that just all of us, yeah, could be candidates for this because, you know, it's like a lunchtime procedure, as they say.

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And in the United States, the fact that apparently what I'm hearing from different ear, nose and throat doctors and I'm working with on this, That commonly it can be covered with insurance. What's in the United States is always a tricky thing, but even if it's not covered with insurance, it's not a wildly expensive endeavor.

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You know, it's still an investment. It's about 2k or so in the United States, but what it's doing is then expanding the nasal cavity so that your breathing is improved, particularly while sleeping. So that sounds amazing. Yeah. So I'm going to be exploring that and I'm actually going to get some content on it to kind of share.

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For others that might not know about that this could be, because you might think, oh, it's either surgery or now I just got to have like, you know, the strips or all these different little things, but this could be a nice in between. Wow. And did you, I mean, I'm sure you've tried mouth taping. Yes. James Nester.

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Of course. Did that not, because I, I have used that intermittently over the years and I did find that helped sort of feel a bit freer up in the nose as well. Yeah, absolutely. So a couple things about that. So one, my stack right now is I'm using intake breathing with the little magnets for the nose and they're so cool just because it's so dramatically expands your nasal cavity or passageways.

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Okay. I don't know. What are these things? Oh, you're going to love them. Okay, just put it in your chat or in the chat for you to check out because they'll probably want to work with you or something. I only just got, I think we're like literally this week supposed to be getting an affiliate code. So I haven't even had like any sort of thing.

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I just genuinely have been loving them and paying for them for quite some time. And so there are two little magnets that go on the outside of your nose. And then you'll just have a lot of fun with when you put the little expander on. It will measurably expand your nose and you look different. It's so crazy.

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Yeah, it's really cool. A lot of athletes love it. And so you can also use it throughout the day if you are looking to boost your performance, whatever, at the gym or something. So that's all available. So I use that for the nose. I use the kind of nasal spray and then mouth tape as well. But I will say, One of our call outs or cautions, especially in this like small sleep community world, is the fact that mouth tape can be so beneficial and yet we want to ideally make sure that everyone is verified that they're not dealing with some sort of sleep disorder and there are over 100 sleep wake disorders that are present.

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And so many people are mouth taping, but they're literally band aiding over the fact that they're dealing with some sort of respiratory based disturbance. So with sleep apnea very commonly, but also things like upper air resistance syndrome and things that could be blocked with the nose. That could just flare up other problems that we'd want to address and then we can properly mouth tape.

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So meaning that if you are dealing with things like sleep apnea and your airways being blocked, there are times where mouth taping can make it worse if we aren't addressing that first. It's not to say that there's not a huge aspect of we want to be able to make sure that we're nasal breathing, like that's our end goal, but sometimes it can take a multi step process to make sure that we're properly breathing through our airway and so.

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So many people are struggling with undiagnosed issues. There lots of theories on why things around vitamin D production, our diets, the facial development of our skull. I mean, there's a lot there, but the fallout is a lot of people don't even know that they have this problem. So it can take a few steps essentially.

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Wow. And so I know I'm not interviewing you, but  it's just, just finally on the, on this lunchtime procedure. Yes. Um, because some of the other procedures that I've heard around, you know, enlarging the nasal passages are not lunchtime procedures and they don't come without risks. Yeah. Exactly. So what we see too is, and I've seen a lot of people have surgeries, they've deviated septum or different issues going on with their ability to breathe through their nose.

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And I've seen a mixed bag in some people having dramatic measurable changes. And it's like life changing for many people. And I'll even see changes in their oaring stats and HRV and certain other things. So now they can breathe. So that can be great. But then there can be situations where, unfortunately, It kind of opens this Pandora's box where now it's not fully addressed or some, in some cases, actually worse.

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I'm not trying to scare people. We want to absolutely work with qualified doctors and what have you, but it is a layered thing. So this, it does appear to be an exciting alternative or something that maybe is in the bag of tricks that you could work with to support nasal breathing. more holistically, people might have heard of things like the nasal balloon procedure.

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If you've seen that, I just have some fears around that one because it is very concerning to me. There's a lot of things left up to chance based on who is, you know, performing this. And it's literally a balloon very close to your brain. And there's a lot of concern. You know Luke's story, don't you? You know Luke's story, right?

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Yes. Yeah, he did that recently, I think. Yeah. Oh, so I spoke at, uh, Dr. John Laurance's, his different events that he hosts in Florida, which are fascinating. It's just a biohacking mecca, lots of different tools and things. And so there are people that swear by this. So this is where it does get layered. Some people will say, no, it's life changing.

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So there are different people. different approaches, but I am curious. I will be documenting my experience with this so I can share how that all looks. Yeah. So stay tuned. I'm doing that along with the tongue tie release. If you're familiar with tongue tie release. So all  kinds of things, but anyway, sorry to kind of really cool.

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You're such a great journalist in that you're one of the few people that Turn the tables. It's so good. It's a negative. Yeah. But it's, you know, I haven't podcasted for so long. You know what it's like. Sometimes, sometimes it's less of a conversation, but sometimes it's less of a conversation and more of a lecture with a guest.

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And I like it to be, I always like it to be a conversation whether, whether I'm being interviewed or whether I'm doing the interviewing. Yeah. Well, I admire that because I want to bring more of that in too, is like, I feel like it's a bit of a dance of like the spotlight effect of how much of the, you know, and and the beautiful organic nature of a conversation too.

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So I think you're masterful at that. Okay. Do we leave? I know you talked about your kind of bag of tricks, your gadgets. Was there anything else you wanted to point to? Or did we cover some of those in your sleep? I think you've covered most of my  bag of tricks. A variety of blue blocking glasses in there as well.

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But I'm not one of those guys who goes out for a night out with blue blocking glasses. I'll just take the hint. I understand. Yes, exactly. We are resilient in that, in that way. Okay. So then the last question would be today, what would you say has made the biggest change to your sleep game or said another way, maybe biggest aha moment in managing your sleep?

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Not doing shift work. It's been the biggest change, you know, it's really, and that's such bad advice for anyone who's doing shift work, but that has made a huge difference. Leaving a job where I was sometimes not very early, but more often up very late. That's made a huge difference. All the sorts of mitigation strategies in the world couldn't really.

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sort of couldn't really account for it.  That said, um, all the little things of sort of just dampening down my nervous system over the years, you know, I, I suffered with real sort of chronic fatigue issues around 10 years ago and had, I guess you would say it was burnout really. Yeah. Um, and,  everything that I've done since is based around just working a little bit less, chilling out a little bit more, doing lots of exercise, lots of meditation, all the really boring stuff like getting outside and then slightly more exotic stuff like grounding mats or whatever it might be.

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All of that's helped to dampen down my nervous system, which has helped with sleep as well. Oh, I so relate to that. The reason I started this company is because I went through my own sleep issues and certainly have known myself as someone that trends more anxious and overthinking and ruminating. And I have to really constantly be responsible for that.

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And it's so funny. I just had the, um, creator of the circadian life app. If you're familiar with that one, I'm on the podcast last night and a layer experience. He was over in New Zealand. He was saying the same thing, and it was so resonating about his goals of just slowing down, just slowing down. And I hear you so much on that, the importance of this, and this can be an ongoing muscle to build.

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So, Beautiful. But you know, a lot of the, a lot of the things that make us quite good at the business of this world actually don't work very well when it comes to just chilling out and looking after our health. But I will say that living here in Portugal is a real culture of people don't work that hard.

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And it's quite nice, you know, because in, in, in London, I was at a lovely care work community. Everyone was entrepreneurs and startups and founders and everything else. And they're all working all hours and here. Everyone's sort of clocking off or they're meeting for swim club at nine o'clock in the morning or they're going for lunch or they're having a, I mean, tonight we're all going out with loads, me and loads of my friends and everyone, I think they're meeting in about half an hour's time.

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It's still the middle of the day. Oh my God. I love that. Okay. So you're living the dream. The environment does make a difference still. So, so good. And like what you said too, about the shift work, couldn't agree more. I actually, I don't know if you've, I'm like giving you all kinds of things in the chat.

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The Sleep Fix book, if you haven't seen that, it might relate to, or even if you still know people that are working shift work, because this is actually from an ABC correspondent, she still is working the night shift. And it's partly why she, from a journalistic perspective, put this together. for people that want to keep their shift work position, but still want to be able to sleep at night or well, maybe not at night at the particular times that they're going to be sleeping.

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But so I think you're hitting the nail on the head. This is such a big topic, but also if available to us, the more that we can actually shift our lifestyles to live in alignment with the rhythms of nature. So important. Okay. So having said that, I know people are then going to want to check out all of your buried resources.

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What are the best ways to do that? Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on. And it's, um, Tony writing. com is my website. And I send out a weekly biohacking news newsletter. And there's also the biohacking news podcast as well. So I said, Oh, and then the podcast news, which is amazing. I was so honored to be on there.

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And you're doing some cool stuff where you're getting it out live so people can watch during and, you know, ask questions and, but then check this out on every major platform. Uh, and then all of these books, which I'm the next thing I'm going to be doing is reading the stop scrolling book because I think that could be a great resource for both myself and, uh, the people I work with that are constantly trying to, you know, help support that habit.

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So one of many things that you're putting out that is really needed. So I still appreciate you taking the time sharing your wisdom and more to come. I hope because I just love following what you're doing. So important. Yeah. Thank you, Mollie. Yeah. It's funny to stop scrolling, but actually some every once in a while you'll see an order for a hundred copies.

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And I don't, I don't know where they come from, but I'm pretty sure it's schools struggling with teenagers scrolling now. Right. We're going to give everyone in the school. Totally.  Absolutely. I know. I'm still playing with, like, the concept of having kind of a sleep kit for some of our practitioners. Or not practitioners.

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There are practitioners in there. But for our participants and sending out just some of these hallmark items and, you know, maybe that's something we need to include in there. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for the time. And certainly make sure to check out all of Tony's resources and we'll have more direct links for those in the show notes.

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Thanks, Molly. Thank you.  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. 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.

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Head on over to sleep as a skill. com forward slash  newsletter to sign up.