Episode 19 - Sleep Hacks with Sean Toomey, Co-Founder of First Responder Sleep Recovery
Sean Toomey, firefighter with Denver Fire Department and Operations Captain for the Clear Creek Fire Authority, co-founded First Responder Sleep Recovery with his wife Jacqueline to empower the health and wellness of those who serve in the fire, police, and emergency services. Sean joins the show to explain how sleep is connected to heart disease, cancer, and other diseases and to provide easy-to-implement hacks to help first responders (and everyone else) achieve better sleep.
Transcript
Peter
Welcome to the Firehouse Roundtable podcast, brought to you by the Ventura Fire. Foundation. My name. Is Peter mackenzie. I'm one of the hosts. I'm retired fire captain with the city of Ventura Fire Department.
Jason
And I'm Jason Kay. I'm an active fire captain also with the Ventura Fire Department.
Peter
And we are excited that you are going to spend some time with us at the kitchen table learning about Firehouse issues that we're trying to bring awareness to.
Jason
Thanks for joining us. As we discussed the issues of being a firefighter both. On and off duty and how it affects us.
Peter
Let's get right.
Jason
Do it.
Peter
All right, today. We have Sean Toomey on the show. Sean, welcome to the show.
Sean
Hey, thanks for having me today.
Peter
This is probably one of the most I think relevant conversations for firefighters about sleep, so I'm looking forward to what you have to say. But why don't you take a minute or two? To tell us who you're. With and kind of give us a. Quick bio. So our listeners know a little bit about you.
Sean
Yeah, certainly. So my name is Sean Toomey. I am a career firefighter with the Denver Fire department here in Colorado. I'm also a volunteer operations captain for small mountain department, just West of the Denver area, and together with my wife, Jacqueline, we founded the first Responder Sleep Recovery Wellness initiative, to kind of take on tackling the concept of. Redefining the fire service culture around sleep and utilizing sleep as sort of a superpower to optimize our health and Wellness as first responders through our careers and long into retire.
Peter
Gotcha. So you know a thing or two about sleep deprivation cause, I mean, I'm assuming Denver's a pretty busy fire department.
Sean
Yeah, we stay pretty busy and you know where this program started was with me working at the third busiest entry company in the city. So when when Jacqueline and I met, I was on an engine that ran a lot of calls, we we were 5500 calls. A year most of those. Those came at night time, and that's kind of where. This was all born from.
Peter
Perfect. Perfect. So you definitely understand the challenges of sleep in the fire service and and is, does your wife have a background in any of this area or what where does her expertise lies?
Jason
Yeah. So.
Sean
You know, Jeff and I met, she had been doing a number of different things, but her primary focus professionally was doing holistic health and Wellness, a lot of which was in the private sector. And it's always been a passion of hers. It took her an eye meeting for her to see what a critical need this had in the first responder community and to her surprise, now that's what she does full time. She's essentially become kind of a guardian Angel of the first responder community, and she's dedicated herself 100% to this initiative. And this initiative alone, she's really. Been a miracle worker for ensuring our health and Wellness.
Peter
Gotcha I want. To get into all that, what briefly describe what when you say initiative, is this a foundation or what? What exactly is the organization that the first responder sleep recovery? What what is it?
Sean
So first responder sleep recovery itself is. Designed around being an in person training or an in service training. So what we do with first responder sleep recovery is we go from organization to organization and we offer this program to whichever organization is bringing us in. And the reason we've called it an initiative is because something we're really careful about. Developing the program was we didn't want to just have a. Wellness talk. But we really put great care into designing a program where we interact with the participants of the program long after we've delivered the initial teaching. And we've really taken steps to take. Tangible and easy to implement tools and then make ourselves available as a resource to see those tools actually getting applied to the first responders lives after we've left. That being said, we are in the process right now of finalizing a foundation as. Well, the addition of self first responder sleep recovery has been something where organizations pay for us to come. Out and teach. But with that, we've of course also identified that there's a number of individuals who have reached out to us and really want access to a deeper dive into their own health and Wellness or more customizable approach to optimizing their health and Wellness, specifically as it pertains to sleep. So we've got conditional state approval now and we're awaiting federal approval for a foundation. And the purpose of that foundation is to further create opportunities for first responders on an individual basis to have access to not only our Wellness programs, but persons that we're partnered with without any kind of a financial obligation on the part of the first responder.
Peter
OK, perfect. So that frames it well, so this is a, it's a, it's a business that you guys are out obviously providing a good service for the. Departments that you work with. And then you're you're kind of starting up a. Little charitable arm. As well, why don't we define maybe for our non fire department listeners like what is the issue? What is the problem? That we're trying to solve for like related to sleep.
Sean
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think in Western society in general, we've got this idea around sleep that it is easily. I think a number of people could say they've heard or used the expression. I'll sleep when I'm. Dead in their lives. And in the. First responder community that's even more prevalent. We are a very. Highly motivated and energetic population on the whole and in the interest of accomplishing more, we've generally looked at sleep as something that is sacrifice. However, in what Jack and I have found through research is that we can reasonably make the argument and point to scientific evidence that supports that sleep is the number one cause of first responder mortality across the board. When you have chronically disrupted poor quality or interrupted sleep. What's going to happen is that in and of itself, independent of all external factors. This plays a direct role on your propensity or your ability to prevent cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, mental health disruptions, including suicidal ideation and action, and even cancer. So what we've set out to do is a quick first responders with tools to maximize the quality of sleep and recovery that they're getting independent of the quantity because given the nature of our Occupy. More quantity sleep is not always something that's attainable, so we have to focus on quality and in focusing on quality of sleep, we can now use sleep. As I said earlier, a superpower to really create prevention to these leading causes of first responder mortality across the board and we could do it in a way. That's absolutely. Tangible and implementable for police officers, firefighters, EMS personnel and even hospital workers.
Peter
So I think that's a kind of a I would imagine for people hearing that for the first time, that's probably a little bit of a shocking statistic that that we're tying sleep to cancer and cardiac and mental health issues. Where are you getting that information from? Are those studies that are done or kind of going to a little bit of the background? Of that how we came to those conclusions.
Sean
We've pulled research from a variety of different sleep experts across the country. The interesting thing is that I think while a lot of people. Kind of intrinsically known that poor quality sleep wasn't good for you. There is now a mountain of research out there that is supporting that. People like Doctor Matthew Walker, who's one of the leading sleep specialists in the world, has put a tremendous amount of time into putting quantifiable research behind the impact that sleep has on us. And he's done. This through. A substantial, substantial number of the Ivy Leagues. We've coupled this with research from other doctors like Doctor Laura Barger out of Harvard University through research that's been done to the International Association of Fire Chiefs. And there's dozens of research studies that we cite throughout our presentation to point to very specific sleep and health disruption causes.
Peter
Yeah, the reason I bring that up is because. I think a lot of people who aren't informed. About the. What exactly what you're talking about might hear that. And go, oh, you're going to tell me sleep causes cancer or sleep causes heart issues. It doesn't sound right, you know, with your first gut reaction to it. But I mean, the evidence shows that this is what's happening. And just by the very nature of the fire service, you're kind of, you know, on the back foot from the get go like you're you're not going to sleep well. I mean, if you're working for a, you know, a busy fire department anyway, but. I think it's important that people know that these things are tied together. I saw something the other day that was said that having poor sleep. Is like akin to smoking. Like the as far as the health risks that you put yourself at, I don't remember all the details of it, but I thought that was. Pretty shocking as well.
Sean
Ohh absolutely.
Peter
Have you interacted with Doctor Walker before or no? We've tried to get him on the podcast, cause I've I listen to his podcast.
Sean
Yeah, and his podcast is outstanding, but unfortunately we have not had an opportunity to meet him in person or interact with him in person, just utilized his research, doing extensive degree.
Peter
Yeah, his I agree. His podcast is great.
Sean
Is fantastic and and what you said is exactly right. Is a huge part of the issue around trying to. Equip the first responder community with tools to optimize their Wellness is first helping first responders under the understand how significant a problem it is and when we teach the class, that's where the 1st. Probably 50% of our classes focused on is creating the link between sleep and chronic health disruptions. And you know most of us in, especially in the fire service world now most of us have a medical background to some degree and. It's really helpful to see it on paper and say when your sleep is disrupted, this is happening in your body and that's leading to. This problem a great example of that is. Natural killer cells. We have something in our body called natural killer cells and effectively what natural killer cells do is they defend against atypical cellular growth in the body, which can ultimately become cancer.
Peter
And when our.
Sean
Natural killer cell count is high. We may have these atypical cellular growths begin frequently in our own bodies, but because our actual killer cell count is high, those cells are able to go to work. They break down that atypical cellular growth, the system kind of resets and we get. Back to normal. Where that becomes problematic is when that atypical growth can outpace. But the natural killer cells are capable of doing. Well, research has shown that even one night of sleep that's reduced to four hours or less. Can actually deplete your natural killer cell count in your body by as much as 70%. So you can. Deplete your natural killer cell count by 70% in one night. That helps understand things like why do we see cancer rates in police off? Users at a comparable level, as we do in the fire service, even though police officers have a substantially lower exposure to external carcinogens than firefighters do, and sleep is one of those critical factors. Some research will show that persons who work jobs with comparable carcinogenic exposures will not seek cancer rates. At nearly as high a level as police officers and firefighters when they don't work a shift work type schedule.
Peter
Yeah, so my mind went. There was. OK. So we figured out sleep is the enemy with with all these health issues. You know what about all the carcinogens? And I think that was pretty insightful. What you just said is there's other industries that have a similar exposure who aren't seeing the cancer rates and that's pretty easy to draw a conclusion there as well. That's really interesting.
Jason
So I've been listening to you guys talk this whole time and I'll let Peter's really good at the intros and he's really good at your bio and stuff like that. I'm sitting here quietly going I. Can't wait for you to get to the meat and the potatoes of this. And like you said that. Fact you just said. Was was pretty awesome. We've had doctors. Therapists, fire chiefs, spouses, kids. Every single episode we've ever done. That sleep has been brought up and I know that's a struggle not only sleep at work and when you are allowed to sleep for. A a little. Bit of a a time at work. It's hard to get to sleep because there's outside noise, as in other units or get responses and. All that kind. Of stuff. So I'm. Hoping that you're going to get into maybe. How much sleep is the right amount? And then if there's any kinds of sleep hacks? Or can we get to a place where we naps? How long are those supposed to be all that kind of stuff to where we can get these kill ourselves back to where they're supposed to be and we can avoid some of these crazy diseases?
Sean
Oh yeah, absolutely. We can touch on that. Stuff and I think that's what's so. Exciting about the way that Jacqueline has developed this program and how we've been able to deliver this program as our primary focus was. Tangible and realistic tools. Something I had a huge issue with with my department sometimes is we would bring in these experts and they would give us 4 1/2 hours of how we're going to die more uniquely and efficiently than the general population, and then they might leave us with one or two solutions, right? And those one or two solutions are multi $1,000,000 overhauls.
Jason
Right.
Sean
Or complete policy changes at the department level, and that's not always reasonable. And as a. Firefighter on the back step listening to these presentations. It's like. Throw up your hands and great. What can I do about that I don't have. You know, control over the budget. I don't have control over policy. I'm just a backstop. So when we developed the program, we put a particular focus on it being a bottom up approach and that is to say when you take our class, you walk out of the class with these tools in hand, there's no further financial investment. It's not some sort of a major hard to do thing. You have these tools in your toolbox the minute you leave our class and. You can start implementing them. And if individuals start implementing them, these tools are very, very easy to scale. From the firefighter to the crew, to the Firehouse, to ultimately the entire department. As people see how effective they are.
Peter
Let's get into it. What's the number? One thing that we. Can do to to help our sleep.
Sean
The number one thing, and if there's one take away from anything anybody gets in our class, we always say this is the number one. Thing is, what we have coined as the sleep recovery practice or the first responder sleep recovery practice. And what the sleep recovery practice is, if anybody is familiar with Doctor Huberman, they'll hear him talk about this before. It is a very specific structure of what's known as non sleep deep relaxation. And that is our number. One tool that we can. So if I can break down what's normally a whole lot of information into a quick like 32nd explanation, when we sleep, we go through 5 cycles of sleep. And in those five cycles, there's two that are absolutely critical. It's stage 4, which is Delta brain wave sleep. This is where the vast majority of our physiological repair takes place. And then there's stage five REM sleep. This is best known as dream sleep, and this is when our neurological repair takes place. And this is where we have, like cognitive function. So dopamine receptors are rebalanced. Serotonin levels are regulated. There's growth in areas of the brain like the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, but those two stages of sleep, delta and R.E.M., that's where the magic happens. If you think of it like doing preventative maintenance on a machine, the 1st 3 phases are just shut down, but you're not actually getting into the preventative maintenance until you get stage 4 and stage 5. Now what the first responder sleep recovery practice itself does is it essentially expedites how much time we can spend in that delta brain wave sleep, which is priming us to be able to more efficiently enter REM sleep. Now the way that happens is when you do non sleep deep relaxation, you're staying awake. And overtime that's why we call it a practice as you repeat the process of doing the sleep recovery practice, you can get to. A place where you. Consciously enter into delta brain wave sleep. Now you're kind of preloading your physiological repair, so when you're in normal sleep and you're cycling through the 90 minute 5 sleep. You're more efficiently entering and achieving the amount of REM sleep that's critical for total bonus. That's how we're kind of taking the limited sleep that we have available to us as first responders, and we're maximizing the quality of it by ensuring we're spending as much time in Delta and. Room as possible.
Jason
Is this kind of routine you go into before you go to bed or throughout the day so that your body is ready when you have time to sleep? Or how does that work?
Sean
That's a great question. So the sleep recovery practice is simply an audio recording that you have to listen. To and engage. With so physically you're not doing anything. You're laying in a comfortable position. And like for. Me at the Firehouse. I can put one earbud in so I can still hear the vocal arm and I. Just listen to this recording. But what's happening in the recording and the processes that are being utilized, they're all designed around essentially taking the body out of the stress response. And moving it. Into the rest and digest response at the nervous system level. So first responders, just not just from running crazy calls, but our exposure to artificial light in our atypical work schedule and a number of other variables keep us in this heightened state of fight or. So what we have to do is we have to manually move ourselves out of fight or flight into rest and. Digest and you can do that. Utilizing the sleep recovery practice now because it's an audio recording and it's an audio recording that typically runs between 20 and 45 minutes, it's really easy to use at anytime. So if I wake up in the morning and I'm feeling like I'm dragging, I'm just the the engines aren't starting like I want them to. That's the time that I. Will utilize the sleep recovery practice first thing in the morning, get an extra 20 to 30 minutes of deep relaxation before I get up and start my day. At the Firehouse, more typically, I'll utilize the sleep recovery practice after lunch in lieu of a nap. And then I'll use it again just before I. Go to bed at. The Firehouse. It's really interesting and sort of an anecdotal way based on delta sleep, some research that's been done, in particular research that was done out of the University of Copenhagen. Where they did. Position of mission topography scans on on practitioners of this practice. What they found is. 45 minutes of the sleep recovery practice or what is the root of the sleep recovery practice, was the equivalent to four hours of normal sleep. Wow. So it's like a super nap in a way.
Jason
Tell me about this recording. Is it something that you. Guys made or? Download is it sounds or is it people talking or what does that look?
Sean
So the best way to explain it is. When you listen to it. It sounds very similar to like what you would expect listening to maybe like a meditation practice would sound like where the magic happens is what Jacqueline's done in creating these practices in a way that's specific for first responders, and it combines a couple of things it. And somatic practices, which are practices in the. Body sort of a physical tension release type of practice. And then there's respiratory exercises to change the respiratory demand and start signaling that downshift of the nervous system. There's vasovagal stimulation. And vasovagal stimulation is associated again with shifting into the rest and digest response. And then there's the visualization practices which are working with. How the brain is processing information and shifting that brain wave activity to a slower and more deliberate process so. For the practitioner, it couldn't be more easy. It just sounds like a relaxing recording that you're listening to. It's usually Jacqueline speaking, but where it's complicated is how that process is developed. It's the work that Jacqueline would put into creating those processes.
Jason
So is that something that you guys as? Part of your program.
Sean
Yeah, that's exactly right. So when we go in and teach this for a department, part of what we're doing is giving the members of the department. Unlimited access to these recordings. So in the class itself, when we teach the class, everybody who participates in the class will actually get a live hands on experience of the practice in person with Jacqueline. And then we leave them with access to all of Jacqueline recordings. And then we also leave them with access to other teachers that we've. Either studied under, worked with, or previously vetted to give them access to a voice outside of. Just jackets cause. We don't necessarily want this to be just ours. Like all you have to use. Jacqueline practices. But if you're not resonating with her voice and her style, we also recommend other practitioners that you can listen to for the. Same effect that we know. Are doing the process in the appropriate way.
Peter
Is this something you guys pioneered or is this research that that's already out there that you're just kind of modifying and and introducing to the fire service?
Sean
It's a little bit of both so. You know to get. Into it. The root of this practice is based in actually an ancient yoga practice. It's a type of yoga that's called yoga nidra. Nidra is a Sanskrit word meaning sleep. So yoga, sleep now, yoga. Nidra has been around for thousands of years. It's existed. Long before any of us were here. And I think people who had practiced it always knew the benefits of it. What's amazing is now medical professionals in the last several decades have started to put tangible science behind this practice of yoga nidra and created a method of delivering yoga nidra in a way that works for specific audiences. So we got to give credit to 1. Of jacqueline's. Teachers is an amazing man by the name of Doctor Richard Miller. And Doctor Richard Miller pioneered this practice for the US military through a program called Iris, and Iris was essentially yoga nidra that was developed in a way that was very specific for the military community. And in developing Iris, he was able to put this research behind it that gave validity to the practice because sometimes when people hear yoga, they think new age you're out there.
Jason
Sure, sure.
Sean
What Doctor Miller found through his research is it was ultimately studied at Walter Reed Medical Center. Endorsed by the US Department of Defense and then ultimately endorsed by the US Surgeon General as a Tier 1 pain and trauma treatment program for military veterans. And we've taken that same practice where Doctor Richard Miller packaged it for military veterans. We've taken great time and care to create. A practice that's. Accessible and most beneficial to the first responder.
Peter
Quick follow up question. So the goal with doing the practice isn't necessarily to fall asleep, it's to like prime your system for when you do fall asleep, it's better sleep. Is that accurate or no?
Sean
Yeah, that's correct. Because like I said earlier, when we sleep, we naturally go into a 90 minute on average a 90 minute sleep cycle and we're cycling through the five stages of sleep every 90 minutes. Now when you do the sleep recovery practice after you've practiced it for a while, what you can actually do is by staying awake, you can bring yourself down. Into Delta brain wave. And then you can sustain those delta brain waves, that deepest phase of. Sleep for a longer. Period of time rather than naturally cycling through the 90 minute sleep cycle.
Peter
Gotcha. Gotcha.
Sean
You know, with that being said, what is what we like so much about utilizing the sleep recovery practices, there's. No wrong way to. Do it. So we tell people in a perfect world, with practice, you'll stay awake to the safe recovery practice and achieve the greatest.
Jason
That's it.
Sean
But at the same time, if you're sleep deprived and your body needs sleep and you fall asleep doing the sleep recovery practice, you're still doing it 100%. Right. Because it's still a tool. That's giving you some amount of rest and in relaxation. So there's no way to do. It wrong and we don't want anybody. To ever practice. With some of these tools that we utilize. And think like. Oh man, I messed. It all up, I fell asleep. It wasn't even worth it. It's like no if your. Body wants sleep. Take that sleep and welcome it and get it. And the more you practice it, the more you'll move from falling asleep while. Doing it to. Getting into that deep, you know, restorative phase of delta brain waves and just staying there and the benefit of it is absolutely.
Peter
I I struggle with sleep have for a long time very similar to most firefighters. I recently retired a couple of years. Ago, so I'm. Not working shift work anymore and my sleep is getting better. It's still messed up. It's not perfect by any means, but one of the reasons I always thought that I struggled with sleep is because it was impossible to get into any kind of routine when it. Came to sleep like there was no. Bedtime routine that we could follow because for obvious reasons, you're getting woken up in. Three times a night unexpectedly. What advice do you have for firefighters that are not at the station that are at home? Not necessarily retired, but just not at the station that they can do to improve their sleep at home? Because I think everybody brings these sleep issues home with them and clearly you have in my mind maybe more opportunity to do better things with your sleep at home because you're not getting interrupted. But do you have any thoughts or advice on that?
Sean
Certainly I do. Yeah, so. There's there's two key critical things that are really easy to work around, but really easy to neglect if you don't think about them or know that there's something that you can do. First of all, what you said is exactly right. There's a lot of sleep information out there that's not really. Applicable for us because of our atypical schedule. So doing things like having a perfect bedtime in a perfect week time. You know we don't get to do that. But one of the big things you can do is establishing A consistent sleep routine. So even if your bedtime is not exactly the same, having a routine that you go through every time before you go to sleep is really critical. It's it's just like Pavlov's dogs taught us that, you know, people are remarkably programmable to routine. We could do. That with our sleep. So if we have a routine that we're. Going through throughout the evening hours, as we're preparing for bed, even if our bed time is different, that particular routine is going to start signaling to the brain and the body that we're preparing for sleep before we ever. Hit the rack. This routine doesn't have to be all around sleep, but it does have to be consistent. So at the Firehouse, my sleep routine is built around. You know, my night watch duties that are my responsibility as the senior firefighter and at home I have a different routine that I do exactly the same at home. That's signaling my body to prepare for sleep. Now with that, there are things you can incorporate into your routine that are going to maximize your return on investment from that routine, and some of those things would be #1 eliminating sources of blue spectrum light. As far as you can before bed, by the time the sun goes down, another one is initiating some sort of a hot to cold temperature change. When you enter into those deep phases of sleep, your core temperature tends to drop. So by initiating some sort of a hot to cold temperature change, you're signaling your body to start that. Or cool down. Now, this isn't like Wim Hoff. This isn't shockingly cold like an ice bath, but it could be as simple as taking a hot shower before bed and before you get out of the shower. Back it down to a Luke warm to cool temperature. Before you get out. You don't want to shock the system, but. Just cool it a little. And then caffeine curfews, caffeine curfews are huge because a lot of people don't realize that on the conservative end, caffeine has a half life in your. System of about. 7 1/2 hours. So when you have. You know a coffee or a soda or some sort of a caffeinated drink at 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon. It's easy to neglect the impact that's going to have. On your sleep. Six hours later, when it's still actively processing in your system.
Jason
Well, everybody knows how much firefighters love their coffee, so that's huge for I have a I have a bunch of questions for you that you've brought up so.
Sean
Yes, we do. Let's say you talked.
Jason
About the five stages of sleep. Let's say that you're getting woken up every 45 to 60 minutes all night long. Are you ever entering those last couple stages, or are you staying in the in the the stages that aren't, that aren't deep and aren't as healthy for you?
Sean
Without intervention, it is reasonable to say that you're never actually entering into those stages.
Peter
OK.
Sean
And this was a critical mistake I made when Jack and I met, you know, I I always measured my sleep in cumulative hours. So we might get 4 calls after midnight, but they were spaced. Out, you know, an hour. Each call so then I'd come home and Jackie would ask me how my night was. And like I know it wasn't too bad. I got you. Know we were busy last night, but I still got a solid six hours of sleep. Because of those intervals and you know in the world of what everybody knows about sleep, six hours was pretty close to that magic number of eight hours, so. As far as I was concerned. Learned that wasn't too bad. What I didn't realize is exactly what you just brought up is every time your sleep is interrupted, you have to restart that 90 minute cycle before you can get back to Delta and RIM. So theoretically, yeah, if you get interrupted four or five times, you know, once every hour throughout the night. You could get five hours of sleep, but effectively never once enter those critically restorative phases of delta and R.E.M. Unless you're doing some sort of an intervention like the sleep recovery practice, it was really amazing. We just had a firefighter that we worked with. In the northwest just sent us back some sleep data. They got off of their sleep tracker and it was really remarkable to see and they showed us their sleep tracker. Before taking our program and how disrupted their sleep was and how they were getting no delta or no REM sleep and then they showed us a night. Where they had. 7 interruptions of sleep throughout the night. Most of those were calls, and I think one or two of them were another company going. But even with those seven interruptions, every time this firefighter did the sleep recovery practice and what their sleep data reflected was that they actually were able to get approximately 50% of their total sleep was spent in delta and rent, which is what we're looking for ideally. So utilizing this tool enabled them to get more of that delta and R.E.M. Even with those interruptions.
Jason
So tell me which sleep tracker tracks all the way down to when you're getting delta and. R.E.M. Sleep.
Sean
Pretty much all of them do. In fact, all of them do. I'm not familiar with one that doesn't. It's they're usually quantified on sleep trackers as deep sleep. And R.E.M. Sleep. But deep sleep is going to incorporate those delta brain waves, if that makes sense. I've experimented with a bunch of them. There's all sorts of really good ones out. There I think. That, that firefighter in particular was using the order ring. I have an oral ring. That's probably my favorite. I also have a Garmin that works very. Well, they seem. To be about in the same ballpark. Why weren't both and compare what the data looks like from both devices?
Jason
Hi, I'm Austin Fulk, an engineer with the Ventura City Fire Department. I'm also on the board of the Ventura Fire Foundation, an organization that supports firefighters and their families. The foundation produces this podcast as part of our mission, I worked with the foundation because I was witnessed. To the help that it was able to provide to my family. The foundation needs your help. First, please subscribe and rate this podcast on your podcast platform. This helps us get a higher ranking and more visibility for the show. Second, if you support the podcast. And the foundations work. Please consider donating. Every dollar helps us support firefighters and their families. There is a link in the show notes where you can donate through the website at www.venturafirefoundation.org. Thank you for listening. OK, so my next question is taking some kind of a supplement for sleep. So I've heard contradictory information on melatonin. I'd love to get your take on THC and CBD regardless of whether it's allowed in the Firehouse. And then also let's just start with that.
Sean
I'm really glad you brought up melatonin because melatonin, that's a particularly interesting one. So when we talk about melatonin, what's most important to realize is melatonin is a hormone in our body. And when we start messing with hormones, our body is remarkably sensitive and responsive to them. And the biggest thing about melatonin to understand is melatonin doesn't necessarily help with your ability to fall asleep, but what it helps with. Is your sleep time. Now where this gets really tricky is. The vast majority, if not all, of the over the counter variations of melatonin that are sold are highly overdosed. You need a very, very small minute amount of melatonin to actually affect your sleep timing in a positive manner. And when you go beyond that appropriate dosage, what's going to happen is high doses of melatonin have actually been proven in numerous research studies to cause highly fragmented sleep. So if we're overdosing on melatonin, it's actually having a negative impact on our sleep overall. Typically, the research says that the appropriate dose for melatonin is approximately .3 milligrams. And when we go to the stores, what you're going to see is generally 124 and even higher doses. Of melatonin. So anything. Over that .3 is really disruptive to your sleep. The other thing is it's highly unregulated. There have been other research studies out there. Doctor Huberman has talked about a few on his podcast. They've shown that. If they take a bottle of melatonin off the shelf and they test the dosing in that bottle of melatonin. Even in just. One bottle. The dosing will be highly inconsistent from what it's is labeled on the. So the better thing to understand is how can we use our environment to promote healthy levels of melatonin? So the way our sleep works in real simple terms is our sleep hormones are regulated by the presence and absence of blue spectrum light. There's these incredible cells in our eyes called ganglionic cells, and they recognize the presence and absence of blue spectrum light, and they trigger the release of our sleep and weight hormones. So when we get exposed to light like the sunlight, those ganglionic cells communicate with the suprachiasmatic nucleus and it tells the body release cortisol. This is. Our wake up hormone. Now, as the day goes on, we're going to utilize that cortisol. It's going to start to taper off and as the sun sets and we should. Naturally be. Eliminating that blue spectrum light exposure, those getting donic cells will recognize that they'll switch the function in the brain and we'll start producing. Now the problem that we've run into as a whole in society, but specifically in the first responder community, is our gain. Them excels in our eyes cannot differentiate artificial blue spectrum light from natural blue spectrum light. So all sorts of things that we expose ourselves to at night. Computers, televisions, cell phones, fluorescent lighting, most types of normalized light bulbs, all of those emit loose spectrum lights. So now at 10:00 o'clock at night. When you're sitting in your bed scrolling social media or watching TV, what you're doing is signaling to your body the lights out. Release cortisol shut down melatonin production. You could accomplish better melatonin regulation not through supplementation, but through things like eliminating artificial sources of blue spectrum light. During the evening hours. You can do this just as simply as turning off lights in your environment and creating a darker environment. Or if you really want to go to the extreme, you. Can wear blue blocking glasses. That's what I do in the Firehouse. I've got blue blocking glasses that I wear around the Firehouse when I'm up past sunset. Well, I'm always up past sunset, but when I'm awake, I have those blue spectrum. And then when I have calls, I have a set of blue blocking safety glasses that I can also wear on calls. That's going to minimize that effect of that inadvertent cortisol dump that we get from artificial light exposure.
Jason
That's pretty cool. So I've seen guys have. I've seen guys who have red lights that they read by as opposed to the the white light with the blue spectrum. But there's also some guys who have. A blue light. Does that blue light is that? Is that contradictory to what they're trying to to do by staying out, or is that something?
Sean
So it would a lot of that would depend on how bright the bulb is. The blue spectrum is not just the color of the light, but it's also the kind of frequency that the light is emitted at. So a blue color ball, maybe dimmer. It might not have a significant impact. But it is still. Going to be creating that blue light. Dump red lights are. One of the biggest things we're advocates of is replacing lighting in the Firehouse that you only need at night time with red light because red light emits the lowest level of blue spectrum frequency compared to any other light source. I'm very fortunate in my in my Firehouse, the only lights that turn on when we get a call at. Night are red lights. We've also gone as far as to do things like. We put a. Neat little Amazon product called aluma bubbles. It's a red light that clips to the LED light that clips to. The inside of the. Toilet we use that in our bathrooms because the bathrooms are one of the big culprits. You come back from a call. Not thinking about it, you flip on the lights and the head to use the. And now you just blasted yourself with blue spectrum light. So instead we've replaced it with illuminated toilet bowls that are red light to just cut down that negative impact at homes the same way we have red lights in our bathroom and red lights in our refrigerator because those are big culprits of inadvertent. Blue light exposure that can shut down your melatonin production.
Jason
So it sounds like what you're saying. Is that the white light with the? With the blue spectrum, that's a big deal. So so when you when you get this rush of white light because I know sometimes we argue with facilities guys who are putting in the light sensors to cut down on the usage of the. So as soon as you walk. In you have no choice but. To just get flooded with. This huge amount of of that white light. That makes that makes sense to me too. Another thing, one of the guys. Was talking about in. One of the earlier episodes was the lack of sleep can cause. Low tea. They've talked about that issues. Do you have any research on that?
Sean
Yeah, 100% to put it in super simple terms. There's a precursor to cortisol which activates our fight or flight response, and our bodies are our stress response and the precursor to cortisol is the same precursor that is responsible for the production of testosterone in the body. Now when the body has to go through a prioritization process, cortisol is more critical for our overall survival than it than testosterone is. Testosterone is very important for long term well-being, but acute survival right now we need cortisol. So if we're over producing cortisol by over stimulating our fight or flight response. What's going to happen is we're going to rob that resource. To create more cortisol and that's going to deplete how much we have available for the natural production of testosterone. And that's where testosterone has become low. Low levels of testosterone have become a significantly important problem that we need to take a look at in the fire service. Kind of empowering about that is understanding. If we take steps to manually shift our body from fight or flight back to rest and digest, we can promote healthy and natural testosterone production just through simple sleep practices without having to get into the weeds of. Of artificially supplementing testosterone to correct that problem. Something that was really remarkable for me when you know when Jacqueline first introduced me to this practice, I did it for. I always joke I admittedly kind of went into it with a little bit of an eye roll, but we were still doing our relationship and I wanted to be happy with me. So I was like. Yeah, I'll go try this sleep track this thing out so. It was great. You know, the first time I did it, I was like, damn. This feels incredible. I'll keep trying it. So I kept doing it and at the time nothing else in my lifestyle had changed. I was still at a super busy Firehouse. I was still up all night. I was still living on two to three energy drinks on top of coffee on top of soda every day, had a terrible diet, smoked cigars almost every day at the Firehouse. A lot of that's changed now, but at the time I wasn't doing anything to promote Wellness beyond doing these seek recovery practices. But after a few months of doing these sleep recovery practices, I went in for my annual physical, which included bloods and laps, and what blew my mind is when my results came back. I had. Lower blood pressure, a lower resting heart rate. My cholesterol had improved and probably most shocking, as my testosterone had gone up by about 200 points in the three month period. Just by implementing the sleep recovery practice.
Jason
That's pretty cool. So you touched on tobacco for a second. I don't think we've talked. About that at all. I know it's not tobacco, but a lot of the guys that work. Now are going to those. Is there any sleep issues with that? Is that OK? Go ahead and talk about that.
Sean
Yeah, there certainly is. And that's that nicotine as the primary element in things like. Like the Zen pouches or utilizing actual tobacco products, tobacco is a stimulant, so it's going to disrupt your ability to hit specifically that delta brain wave sleep. Think of it just as it's a it's a chemical version of. If you were to, like, jump on the treadmill and get your heart rate up to 100 or 110. Before you lay down and went. To bed. So it's going. To take much longer for you to get into that really slow. So low demand cardiac output that allows your body to enter into delta sleep so it can be significantly impactful.
Jason
And that's the same with just straight nicotine.
Sean
Yes, it is the tobacco part, you know, is bad for its other reasons. The carcinogens and the other chemicals in it. But yeah, it's as a stimulant. Nicotine is the culprit. So whether it's, you know, smokeless tobacco cigars, Zen pouches and non tobacco supplements, it's the nicotine is the culprit towards really disrupting the quality of stuff that you're getting with it.
Peter
So I think if we're going to be talking about this, we probably should talk about. Alcohol as well, so I. I First off I track my sleep religiously and I use 2 two different trackers and I always find that it's funny they don't track the same and I don't know. I'm going to try that or ring cause. Anyhow, Long story short, if I don't drink alcohol, I get into the deep sleep and the R.E.M. Sleep much better. If I have like 1 drink. Or two drinks. It almost wipes out. The deep sleep completely what? I'm sure there's a reason for that, but can. You speak to that.
Sean
That's absolutely correct and. Where alcohol is really can almost be dangerous is it's really good at what it does. But what it does is not good for sleep. And what I mean by that is alcohol is in the class of sedatives, so it's really remarkable at creating a sedation effect, which a lot of times kind of. Improperly gets utilized to help people who are struggling with sleep latency or the time that it takes them to fall asleep because it will help you fall asleep quickly because it's sedating. The problem is that sedatives have. Consistently shown under every bit of. Research that's been done. On them is they caused highly fragmented sleep. What will happen when you? Use alcohol is it keeps your body up in that very light. Phase of sleep and throughout the night your night's going to be peppered over and over and over again with these very brief micro periods of wakefulness. Brief enough that you probably would never even commit him to memory. So when you wake up, you feel like you slept all night, but you actually. Woke up dozens of times throughout the. Night and whenever that's happening, it's preventing you from getting into Delta and REM sleep. So alcohol absolutely inhibits your ability to achieve delta and R.E.M. Sleep in its entirety. It's it's a sedative, but it is not a safe or. Effective sleep aid.
Peter
I don't think there's any mysteries in like this is how you get good sleep. I or this is how you never get cancer or this is how you keep your heart healthy like you do cardio and weight training. And like, that's never a matter. People don't know what to do. Maybe in some of these sleep practices I I I will say are are new to me. But like you know, most diseases that people die from are preventative, right? So that just tells you that the people. Are making bad choices. But if somebody wants to have some a drink or two and they don't want their sleep to be affected, you know, should. They drink earlier. Because I I don't know how reasonable it is to say for someone, OK, you're never going to drink alcohol. You're never going to take a a rock star. You're never going to do this, this, this. And that and if that. Sounds miserable to some people, right? Like what is a healthy relationship between alcohol and? Sleep look like.
Sean
Well, first and foremost, obviously the most healthy thing is understanding. Don't use it as. A sleep aid. If you're somebody who has trouble falling asleep, and you find that if you can just have a beer or a glass of wine or one mixed drink and fall right to sleep, understand the impact that's having. And though it helps you fall asleep quickly, it's. Extremely detrimental to your sleep, so knowledge is the first is the first kind of piece of empowerment is knowing that it's. Not great for. You and then understand processing times a little. On average, we take approximately 90 minutes to process through our body, one alcoholic drink right by the normal standard, that being 12 ounces of beer, 8 ounces of wine, or 1 1/2. Ounces of hard liquor. So in timing it out, just try to pre plan that in advance of your sleep, just like I would say for coffee, I allow myself one caffeinated drink a day. Now it took me a while to get there, but now that's my routine so I can come into the Firehouse and pour myself a cup of coffee and drink that first thing in the morning with my crew when we, you know, when we're doing shift. But I'll skip the afternoon trip to Starbucks or I'll get a non caffeinated drink for the afternoon trip to Starbucks because I know that caffeine is impacting my system 7 1/2 hours later. The same could be true with alcohol. If Jack and I want to go out. And have. A date night. You know, at 6:00 o'clock in the evening. It's not a big deal if we indulge. Every once in a while and have a glass of wine or appear or go to a wedding and have a drink. But don't let it be a consistent tool that you're utilizing for improved sleep latency or relaxation, and understanding that it actually does have a tremendously negative impact on your sleep.
Peter
No, that makes sense. I've heard that before too. I I'm always shocked at how cause I look every morning when I wake up at my tracker on what the relationship is and it's not in my opinion it ain't worth it like. Whatever you're getting, you know, and relaxing for with a couple of beers is like you willing to give up your sleep the whole night for that and coming from the fire service where I did that for 20 some years.
Jason
I don't think. It's worth it. I listen to that Doctor Huberman about sleep, where he talks about. Or alcohol? Excuse me, where he talks about. You know, I think one to two drinks a week is safe. Yeah, that's what he talks about it. It was like, oh, man, that's all. And he, you know, he talks about how bad it is for your whole body overall. And I think the take away from that is you just have to know that going in and instead of instead of. Just being oblivious you choose for yourself. Is important, and the take away I'm getting from this conversation is treat sleep as if it's important. We talk about it all the time, so the better habits we can get into during the day, what we take in our body all day long and then these practices that you're talking about, which are completely new to me as far as doing the getting into the. What did you call it? Staying awake and being more towards your delta sleep.
Sean
Non sleep deep relaxation or the first responder sleep recovery practice.
Jason
So when you talk about that, that's something that's really interesting to me because I know that when. I'm on my days off. I pretty much give give up my first day off to either be completely just grouchy and destroyed and feeling sleepy the whole day. Or you take a nap which takes up your day too. And when we only have a couple, maybe 3 days off a week, that's that's pretty tough. On a 24 hour schedule with family at home, especially the guys with little kids. I did want you to hit on. I asked you, but we kind of talked about melatonin, the THC and the CBD stuff. While we're talking about the little sleep supplementations, how do those affect you? And do you find those as positive or negative?
Sean
That one is. Trickier because you know in the scientific world of time, TBD and THC are still relatively understudied to have a significant conclusion on to how beneficial or detrimental they are to sleep. I will say anecdotally and through some of the research we've seen, it seems to be pointing to the idea that CBD. As a sleep supplement. Is potentially going to be problematic. It might fall into the same category as alcohol, where it has more of a. Sedative effect. But it is disruptive to those later phases of sleep. With that being said, I think there's, you know, tremendous value to CB access in the fire service community on a larger scale. The idea of CBD is in. As an anti-inflammatory and as a pain management thing, could be really tremendous and could come to show that it's going to have amazing benefits for first responders. But the jury is still out on sleep, but our initial findings right now is a concern that. It's going to. Be disruptive to sleep because of the sedation effect.
Jason
Yeah, interesting. I know that those laws are just coming up that the federal law. So we'll see where that ends up landing with the fire and the police service and the. Long run, so my next question is. Where do you guys have your seminars can? I go by myself. Is it online or is it only in person? Is it only for whole fire departments at a time? How do you guys host these things?
Sean
Traditionally, what we do is we host exclusively for fire departments or organizations that are regionally specific. For example, this last year we've been doing a number of recurring sessions with Clark County, Nevada. That one's been really exciting because it hasn't been. It's been through Clark County's Wellness initiatives. So we've been able to bring in. Firefighters, Police officers, hospital workers, ambulance workers, sheriffs, all under one. More often than not, it's something that's offered by a department, so the department would reach out to us. We would contract with them and. Then we would come to. That department and. They'll cycle all of their members through their in their organization, through the training, one day at a time. Now, with that being said, we do periodically offer. Opportunities for individuals to have access to this training in other ways. So I mentioned earlier in the podcast, we're working on establishing a foundation that's going to give more access to individuals who are interested, that don't necessarily have the support or the availability from their department. We'll be hosting one of our first offerings is that actually this coming August where we're taking sixteen first responders to an amazing Wellness Center called the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and Stockbridge, MA and those first responders are going? To get 5 days of a deeply immersive experience. And to these sleep recovery teachings, along with hands on experience and Wellness opportunities beyond our teachings, things like equine. The medical doctor for the Denver Fire department. She's going to come out and. Give a talk. On physiological Wellness and sleep. And then we're going to have a hormone specialist out to talk. About hormone balancing and lifestyle choices that can. Affect your hormone developments. Outside of an opportunity like that, which was scholarship, we also do. One train the trainer. Every year we call it a train, the trainer because you do leave the train, the trainer. Opportunity with the ability to deliver the sleep recovery practice to your organization, but it is also open to responders who are just interested in getting a five day experience of our teachings in an immersive way, even if they choose not to use the train, the trainer certificate beyond the training, but just to experience it. Themselves, all of those trainings are posted and updated on our website. So if anybody wanted to find those there, first responders sleep recovery.com, we post all of our training offerings and our upcoming department trainings on the.
Peter
Do you have more demand than you can fill? How long have you been doing this? I guess because I feel like people would want this, especially firefighters, to access to it. You know, more than just what you've described.
Sean
So we've been doing this. Since I think we initially started teaching the program. Full time in 2016 is when we started and yeah, it's it's a beautiful thing to see as we have gotten to a place where we. About as busy as we can possibly be traveling and delivering this information to departments, so you know we're actively looking at ways to expand how we give more access to this in a way that still allows for the quality control that we want on this program going out because we don't want to just have other people go out necessarily and teach it. Because we, you know, feel like we really bear a whole lot of responsibility on making sure that we're caring for and holding space for these first responders who go through the training. So we really want to make sure it's delivered and. A really mindful and intentional way, but we are looking at a couple of different opportunities that we'll hope to be unveiling in the next year or so to give more access to this program on a larger scale and that will effectively enable us to focus on our our efforts on more of these Wellness opportunities like we're doing in Massachusetts where we can bring first responders. To us and give them a multi day immersive experience of sleep Wellness versus simply a four or eight hour rapid class because that's where the the magic really happens when you get to sit with these teachings and experience these teachings for days at a time, that's. But it's a really transformative experience.
Peter
Maybe there's an opportunity for our foundations to our foundation to work with you guys in some way, shape or form because this is right in in line with kind of what we're trying to do as far as bringing awareness to issues that firefighters deal with and sleep is, I would say may be at the top. Of the list.
Sean
And yeah, we would love to do that it. Be you know it's a it's a deep passion for us, so we'll find any way that we can to work with anybody who's interested in giving access to this information because it's it's a passion for us and it's so deeply important. I I truly believe it's the missing link to seeing a rapid downturn in some of these negative health statistics that we see in our industry. It's it's a superpower.
Peter
Yeah, for sure. Well, is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners or anything that that we didn't get to cover that's critical to the conversation?
Sean
Yeah, absolutely. You know, if there's one thing I could share, I did mention like we're we're trying to expand our access to this and we're trying to make. Sure that. Any first responder in need is able to access our program without having to spend anything out of pocket. So with that being said, for the first time ever now we. Are beginning to. Crowdfund for that. Effort. So if if anybody wanted to support us, there is a donate page on our website. We're crowdfunding through mightycause.com back slash RTR.
Jason
Any money that's.
Sean
Raised for that is exclusively going towards funding First responder Wellness opportunities for individuals who have reached out to us that are seeking a more. Intensive or customized approach to correcting any kind of negative health impacts that they're currently have. So it's it's a, it's a team effort, it's a brotherhood and sisterhood in our organization, and if anybody feels compelled to support that in a way that means the world to us, to be able to offer those types of. Wellness opportunities for first responders.
Peter
We'll absolutely plug it and put a link on the on the show for sure. So, Sean, I think this is great. What you guys are doing? I I I'm intrigued. I I want I want. To know more, I'd love this to have. The training myself. I'm sure maybe we can work something out in some way, shape or form, but I appreciate you coming. Come on, Jason, any, any parting words before we wrap this?
Jason
No man. I want to get. I want to get this thing wrapped up because I want to get online and get a sleep tracker and go. On to Sean's website and see when the next trainings are gonna be up. And then I'm going to get on and call the Safety committee of our department and try to get them to. To host these guys on our department. Yeah, this is something that, I mean, we talked about this. Constantly at work, I mean all fire departments who are busier are always talking about sleep and recovery and how it leads to cancer and all these things. And it sounds like there's a couple of hacks that Sean and his wife have come up with that we should all kind of be employing. So I'm looking forward to that.
Sean
I'll thank you guys so much. I really appreciate that and.
Peter
Thank you for coming on. We'll make sure all your info is in the in the show notes so people can keep keep tabs. Of what you're doing and much applause. To the the efforts you guys are doing. In regards to this. Topic which I think is is well needed so thanks for coming on the show.
Sean
Now, thank you guys and thank you guys for what you do. I mean, the work that you're doing with the Ventura Fire Foundation seems extremely important. I I want to keep learning more about it, but it's incredible work that you guys are doing as well and I'm really grateful to. Be here and to be able to chat with you yesterday.
Jason
It's a great conversation about sleep. I know we talked about this on pretty much every episode we've ever had. And I'm a huge proponent. Of figure out how to get your sleep right, because I do talk about my first day off is I know that I'm under slept and I'm not going to make great decisions and I'm sure that carries over to. Working, you know 487296. Plus hour shift. And decisions you make on critical calls. So the more that we can get our sleep on duty, whether that's actually sleeping or doing some of these things that he's talking about that are new to me, I mean all that stuff is just really important.
Peter
The thing that I didn't know anything about was what he was calling that that sleep practice, which I'm going to look into. For sure. The fact that you can kind of like prime your body to get into that better sleep quicker. I I've been tracking my sleep for probably over a year now and. It is funny to me what the relationship with like alcohol or you know, working out. Too close to. To bedtime like they all have an effect and it's like the the evidence doesn't lie like the information that the tracker provides. It's pretty clear, but if I can figure out a way to get into that deep sleep quicker, that seems like a win for sure.
Jason
What tracker do? You use right?
Peter
Now I use pillow and auto sleep and they don't. Always agree with each other, which I was. Going to ask Sean about, but we I got distracted, but. Yeah, I am going to. Try that or ring. I think that might be. Beneficial as well are.
Jason
Those apps that you use, or are they?
Peter
Yeah, so I wear. The Apple Watch and. Then it Bluetooth connects to the app on the phone, yeah.
Jason
Oh, gotcha. Gotcha.
Sean
OK cool so.
Jason
First responder sleep recovery.com I'm going to go there and check that out. And then I really am going to talk to some some of the safety committee members at our stations and see if we can get some of those lights changed out to red light. Or just not automatically coming on with the bright white lights. And I may even go crazy a little bit and get some of those blue blocker sunglasses for night time around the station. I don't think that's a bad idea. I mean, anytime we can get to sleep faster or get closer to those deeper cycles of sleep, I'm all about that health and recovery.
Peter
Yeah, for sure for sure. Thanks, Jason.
Jason
It have a. Good week.
