Dr. Ben Bikman: And then the most important thing I would say and this is where we pity the shift workers and thank them. It would be evening. Do not snack in the evening. Especially one of the things I think that people don't appreciate is as much as they're monitoring their sleep and they're wondering why they have night after night terrible sleep habits. The most common cause of insomnia is elevated body temperature. So they're too hot. And one of the most common causes of being too hot is hyperglycemia. Most people don't appreciate that when your blood glucose levels spike, you you activate your sympathetic nervous system. And of all the times of the day when your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you don't want it to be turned on when you're trying to go to bed, that's when you want the parasympathetic to dominate. So when someone eats that evening snack of spiking their blood sugar, then they go to bed in a hyperglycemic state, they're going to have all of the signs and symptoms of anxiety. They're going to be laying there hot. Their heart is going to be beating hard and fast and they're going to feel that pulse pounding and wonder, "What am I anxious about? Why can't I just sleep?" Well, it's not because you have anxiety. It's because you went to bed hyperglycemic. But unfortunately, that is the one time of day where people are at their weakest. And I'm very sympathetic to that because I feel the same thing. People can walk past treats and junk food all day and and and deny themselves that knowing that it's not good for them. But the moment six o'clock comes around or 7 o'clock then all of a sudden the temptation starts to take on a new form and they can't they indulge and that is the worst time. It would be better for them to indulge in that at lunch for example than it would be at that point of the day. Not only metabolically and in maintaining good insulin sensitivity but not to mention sleep then the compounding consequences of poor sleep just creates this vicious cycle. Um I want to talk about you talked you sort of alluded to this and this has to do with the other contributing factors to insulin resistance and you were talking about this in the context of if you're if you're late night eating it can disrupt your sleep.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. And you know for many reasons you're also you talked about some very interesting stuff that I hadn't really thought about before. But also you're digesting you know when your your systems are all activated thermic effective food. Yeah. You're hot. Exactly. So I mean it makes it makes perfect sense. And um in fact I remember a friend of mine um Dr. Sachin Panda he's done a lot of research on time-restricted eating and he's got this app um my circadian clock where people were you know uploading pictures of their meals and it was timestamped and they were putting comments and like the most one of the most common comments he was getting was um is disrupting sleep. Eating later was disrupting sleep. And finally it was like like he's like we got to look into this. I mean, there's like, you know, dozens of people talking about this and and it's kind of funny when you kind of get that reverse thing that you're looking at when you when you get the data and then something else kind of pops up. Wow. So, eating late at night seems to be disrupting people's sleep and that's that's that's a real thing.

Dr. Ben Bikman: I'm convinced I'm convinced that given that the natural uh temptation and inclination people have to indulge before bed. I'm and and the sleep epidemic, the poor sleep epidemic, I'm convinced that more of it isn't blue light. It isn't evening light exposure or evening activities. It's you're going to bed hyperglycemic and and full. And you're full. And so, like you said, your your stomach, you're bubbling, you're digesting when No, you ought to have you give yourself at least a few hours before from your last meal. Yep. Before you go to bed.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it takes like what five how many hours of digestion that's going on while you're asleep. Um that's the one thing sleep. So you you were talking about these fast causes of insulin resistance, inflammation, the the chronic stress, high cortisol, um, and then the last one—

Dr. Ben Bikman: Insulin, too much insulin.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. Too much insulin. Where does lack of sleep come into that? Because I have seen I've read studies and we were talking a little bit about this before before we, you know, started the podcast. And that is first of all, when I became a new parent and I my sleep was entirely wrecked. I mean, just entirely wrecked. I mean, I aged like 10 years. I wasn't like,

Dr. Ben Bikman: but for a good cause.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But for a good cause. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Um, my my postprandial glucose, which is what I was monitoring at the time with my continuous glucose monitor, was I mean, it was not my normal I mean, I was pre-diabetic. It was unreal. Um, and so I started looking into literature, and this was the most surprising thing. When I when I wanted to wear a CGM, I was more like, how is watermelon going to affect my glucose? I was more interested in the fruit and the, oh, look what a grape did. this is insane and and then and then it was like the disrupted sleep and everything else nothing mattered anymore. I was like this is real like this is the real deal here. Um and I started looking into the literature where sleep you know sleep deprivation after one night like half you're getting four hours of sleep instead of eight you can be insulin resistant the next day and I'm like what?

Dr. Ben Bikman: Oh yeah.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So I'd love to hear about that and how that's contributing to this you know fast cause of insulin.

Dr. Ben Bikman: Yes. Well, everything you just said I am nodding to because I I can relate. Um uh where I when I've worn CGMs, I absolutely see that the single most predictive variable of my glycemia in any given day is how did I sleep? Nothing. And that I've played around with nothing has even come close. So when you get one bad night of sleep, the stress home so it fits under the stress category to put a to make it very succinct. So, of the three primary causes of quick insulin resistance, it's stress when it comes to sleep deprivation. One bad night of sleep will result in a much higher and disrupted rhythm of cortisol. And and so cortisol is will cause insulin resistance in every biological model very quickly. So too will epinephrine. And epinephrine is another stress hormone, sort of the faster stress hormone, the cortisol being a little more delayed. But both of them are higher um with regards to sleep deprivation. And even even epinephrine, even adrenaline can cause insulin resistance in humans. If you do a steady little drip in a human of adrenaline, they're going to be insulin resistant with demonstrably insulin resistant within just an hour or two. To make so that's how sleep deprivation causes uh insulin resistance. And to make matters even worse, what is the most common intervention to try to offset the negative consequences of sleep deprivation? Well, it's more caffeine. Well, more caffeine is going to increase epinephrine even more. Epinephrine causes insulin resistance. So, even the solution to the sleep deprivation ends up inadvertently compounding the metabolic consequences of the sleep deprivation. Now, that's not to say epinephrine uh it's not to say caffeine doesn't have some metabolic benefits. It can when used correctly, like I would say when used in the context of performance. But for someone who's trying to offset the consequences of their sleep deprivation, you may have some increased alertness, yes, but the metabolic consequences of the sleep have now just been added on.