We all need sleep to maintain our physical and mental health and perform our best.

So it’s unsurprising that there’s no shortage of content out there about how to improve your sleep.

Unfortunately, so much of it repeats the same things you’ve heard a million times before: keep a consistent sleep/wake schedule, stop drinking caffeine later in the day, keep your room cold and dark, etc.

Those fundamentals matter — and if you’re not doing them yet, they’re worth implementing. But if you’ve already got the basics down and are looking for some lesser-known strategies to enhance your sleep, we’ve got you covered below.

What follows are 45 fresher, research-backed tips for improving your sleep, drawn from Trick Yourself to Sleep: 222 Ways to Fall and Stay Asleep from the Science of Slumber by Kim Jones. Chances are, you’ll find at least a few that will help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up feeling more rested.

Daytime Activities That Can Improve Sleep

While we typically think of what affects sleep largely in terms of what happens at night while in bed, the foundation of good sleep is built during your waking hours.  

1. Process Information and Emotions in the Light of Day

There’s plenty of evidence that stress is a major saboteur of sleep. When your head hits the pillow full of anxious thoughts, drifting off can feel impossible. Additionally, since sleep is the time the brain organizes the day’s information, processes emotions, and works through problems, it stands to reason — though this is just a personal theory rather than a scientifically proven fact — that going to bed with a big backlog of unprocessed inputs forces the brain to work harder overnight, leading to less restful slumber.

To avoid this kind of evening overload, get a jumpstart on your cognitive processing during the day. Don’t wait until your head’s on the pillow to start sorting things out. As you go about your day, take short breaks — five minutes every hour or so — for daydreaming, reflecting, and journaling. Use these pauses to process emotions, mull over dilemmas, and defuse stress.

2. Meditate

Another way to avoid an evening overload of sleep-disrupting stress is to meditate during the day. While we typically think of the mind-calming benefits of meditation in relation to our waking hours, by preventing a build-up of anxiety, the practice also makes it easier to wind down and sleep more soundly at night. Just 20 minutes of daily mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve sleep quality in people with insomnia.

3. Work by a Window

Exposure to natural daylight helps calibrate your circadian rhythm and boosts mood-regulating neurotransmitters, both of which support better sleep. If you’re stuck in an office all day, even sitting near a window can make a difference — research shows that people who do sleep 46 minutes longer each night than those working in windowless spaces. If a window seat isn’t an option, eat lunch outside or use breaks to get more sunlight exposure.

4. Move as Much as Possible Throughout the Day

Physical activity is a well-known aid to sleep, but is seriously underrated. The more you move, the more “sleep pressure” builds up — a drive, fueled by the accumulation of adenosine, that makes it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep at night.

Dedicated exercise is clutch here, of course, but even small bits of activity help build sleep pressure too. So rather than seeing physical activity as an all-or-nothing proposition, look for ways to incorporate movement naturally throughout your day: stand during phone calls, take brief walking breaks every 30 minutes, periodically do a quick set of squats while watching a movie, etc.

5. Exercise Outside When You Can

Research shows that outdoor exercise — even just 30 minutes of walking — helps people fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly than the same amount of indoor activity. Natural light exposure combined with fresh air and physical exertion creates a powerful sleep-promoting combination.

6. Challenge Your Brain

It’s not just physical exercise that builds sleep pressure; mental exertion does as well. Fill your day with reading complex material, learning new skills, solving puzzles, and having meaty conversations, and you’ll sleep better at night.

7. Seek Novel Experiences

You can give your brain the kind of cognitive challenge that builds sleep pressure simply from encountering sheer novelty. When researchers in one study exposed participants to new and stimulating environments, they fell asleep faster and enjoyed more deep sleep than on routine days. If you’ve ever visited a museum, you’ve experienced this phenomenon firsthand; you probably felt surprisingly fatigued, and it wasn’t just from walking around — it was also from your brain taking in so many novel stimuli.

You don’t have to visit a major attraction to score this effect. Even small changes help: take a different route home from work, explore a new neighborhood, or visit an unfamiliar store.

8. Create Microtransitions Between Work and Home

Research has found that people who mentally carry work stress home sleep worse and wake more frequently. To prevent the grind from following you through the front door, build in a “microtransition” — an intentional ritual that helps you shift out of work mode and into domestic life.

Hit the gym on the way home, take a few minutes to meditate in the driveway, or change clothes as soon as you walk inside your abode. Check out this article/podcast for more tips on creating an effective microtransition.

9. Prioritize In-Person Socializing

Perhaps it’s because of the mental-fatigue-inducing cognitive processing involved in having conversations or simply all the feel-good neurochemicals that are released when we connect with others, but face-to-face social interaction is associated with better sleep onset and maintenance. So meet up with friends and loved ones whenever you can to slumber more soundly.

10. Stay On Top of Your To-Do List

Research shows that procrastinators are up to three times more likely to experience sleep problems. Leaving tasks unfinished creates cognitive loose ends that your brain continues processing during the night, while completing even small tasks provides a sense of closure that allows your mind to rest easy.

11. Take a Sundown Stroll

You’ve probably heard that getting morning light regulates your circadian rhythm and improves sleep. But taking a walk when daylight is fading helps too. Researchers have discovered that an evening walk, particularly at dusk, significantly improves sleep quality in insomnia sufferers. Walking at sundown helps synchronize your body clock as natural light fades, preparing your system for sleep.

12. Cultivate Purpose

According to research, people with a strong sense of life purpose enjoy significantly better sleep quality, perhaps because having this sense of direction reduces stress and boosts the kind of psychological resilience that carries over into slumber. To increase your sense of purpose, spend time in reflection, engage in activities that align with your values, and set meaningful goals.

Nutrition and Eating Habits

What you eat — and when you eat it — can have a surprisingly strong effect on how well you sleep.

13. Skip Spicy Foods in the Evening

Research shows that eating spicy foods close to bedtime can negatively affect sleep by raising core body temperature, which interferes with the body’s natural cooling process needed for sleep onset. Capsaicin, the compound responsible for heat in chili peppers, triggers thermogenesis, making it harder to fall asleep and leading to more nighttime awakenings. To avoid these effects, it’s best to enjoy spicy meals earlier in the day.

14. Limit Saturated Fats

High saturated fat consumption is associated with lighter, less restorative sleep and more nighttime awakenings. Focus your diet on heart-healthy unsaturated fats from nuts, seeds, avocados, and olive oil instead of the saturated fats found in processed foods and fried items.

15. Implement a Dinner Curfew

Eating too close to bedtime redirects blood flow to your digestive system rather than allowing your core temperature to drop for sleep. Consider adopting time-restricted eating — confining meals to a 10-hour window (such as 9 AM to 7 PM) — which studies show improves sleep quality and prevents middle-of-the-night digestive disturbances.

16. Boost Your Fiber Intake

Research shows that people who consume low-fiber diets take longer to fall asleep and experience less deep sleep. Prebiotic fiber, which is found in foods like garlic, onions, leeks, and artichokes, seems to be particularly beneficial. In one study, subjects on a prebiotic-rich diet spent more time in restorative non-REM sleep and showed resilience to stress-related sleep disruption.

17. Eat Walnuts as an Evening Snack

Walnuts naturally contain melatonin — the hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles — as well as magnesium and healthy fats, which can aid in relaxation and overall sleep quality. A study found that eating walnuts increased circulating melatonin levels in the body. Eating a small handful of them a few hours before bedtime can help prepare your body for sleep.

18. Make Sure You’re Getting Adequate Potassium

Potassium can improve sleep by reducing nighttime awakenings and helping muscles relax. This effect is especially notable in people with low dietary potassium intake. To boost your levels (though you don’t want to go too high with potassium), consume food sources with significant amounts of the mineral like sweet potatoes, white beans, bananas, and avocados, or take a supplement.  

19. Stay Hydrated

Mild dehydration is a common cause of nighttime awakening, whether from a dry throat or your body stirring to seek water. Maintain consistent hydration throughout the day, tapering off in the evening to minimize bathroom trips. The right balance will keep you comfortable through the night without interruptions.

Creating a Sleep-Friendly Environment

The state of your bedroom can go a long way in promoting a good night’s sleep.

20. Wash Your Sheets Weekly

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 73% of people report sleeping more comfortably on clean sheets. Beyond the psychological comfort, regular washing removes accumulated sweat, oils, skin cells, and dust mites that can disrupt sleep. Once-a-week washing is the sweet spot for most sleepers.

21. Declutter Your Bedroom

One study found that people sleeping in cluttered rooms took longer to fall asleep and experienced worse sleep quality. Beyond the practical annoyance of navigating a messy space, visual clutter stimulates your brain and can raise cortisol levels. Your bedroom should be a sanctuary, not a reminder of unfinished business.

22. Get a Bigger Bed

If you share a bed, size matters. The average person moves 60-70 times per night, providing plenty of opportunities to disrupt their partner. The Sleep Council recommends this test to see if your bed is sufficiently large: lie side by side with your partner, arms behind your heads and elbows out — if they touch, your bed is too narrow. Get the largest bed that your budget and room size will allow.

23. Sleep Scandinavian Style

As Dr. Wendy Troxel explained on the podcast, if sleeping in the same bed with your partner disrupts your sleep, it’s perfectly fine, and can actually be beneficial, to get separate beds. But if you’d rather not physically part, take a cue from Scandinavians and try using two single duvets instead of fighting over one shared covering. This approach eliminates the nightly tug-of-war and allows each person to select their preferred warmth level, significantly reducing sleep disruptions from temperature differences and blanket stealing.

If you’d like the top sheet + comforter set up, another option for separating bedding while staying physically close is to get two full or twin-size mattresses/beds, each with their own bedding set, and put them close together.

24. Get an Air Filter

Research indicates that people living in high pollution areas are up to 60% more likely to sleep poorly. If outdoor air quality is a concern, consider using an air purifier in your bedroom. Focus on HEPA filters that remove particulate matter and VOCs, which have been most strongly linked to sleep disruption.

25. Hide the Time

When sleep expert Dr. Merijn Van De Laar came on the podcast, his number one tip for better sleep was not watching the time, noting that “We know from research that if you watch the time, then it takes up to 20 minutes longer to fall asleep again.” Clock-watching during sleepless periods only increases stress about lost sleep and how you’ll function tomorrow. So keep your smartphone in another room, take off your watch before bed, and turn your clock away from view.  

26. Ditch Your Sleep Tracker

While it may seem counterintuitive, ditching a sleep tracker can actually improve sleep — at least for some people.

Those with insomnia often get more rest than they think, and seeing that confirmed by a tracker can ease anxiety and promote better sleep. But for others, tracking creates more stress, triggering what’s known as “orthosomnia” — a fixation on perfect sleep metrics that paradoxically worsens sleep quality. Trackers can also lead to a “nocebo” effect, where you feel tired simply because the data told you that you should.

If your tracker helps you build better habits, great — but if it causes stress or contradicts how you actually feel, it may be time to trust your body over your device.

Bedtime Preparations

From how you spend the hour or two before bed to what you do once you’re in it, certain activities and rituals are especially effective at helping you wind down and prepare your mind and body for restful sleep.

27. Sip, Instead of Chug, Your Last Fluids

If you regularly wake up at night to urinate, try stopping fluid intake about 10 hours after waking. When you do have your last drink of the day, sip it slowly rather than chugging it.

As the day goes on, your body becomes less efficient at processing fluids. Drinking a large amount quickly can spike urine production, and not all of it is eliminated right away; the excess can linger and continue filling your bladder hours later, potentially waking you up while you sleep.

In contrast, drinking slowly allows your bladder to handle liquids in smaller, more manageable amounts — reducing the chance of a backlog that carries into the night.

28. Do the Double Void

If you still find yourself waking up to pee at night despite cutting off fluids hours before bed, try the “double void” technique. First, use the bathroom as usual, then wait about 30 seconds and try again. Alternatively, go once before brushing your teeth and again right before getting into bed. This simple practice helps ensure your bladder is fully emptied, reducing the chances of a nighttime wake-up call.

29. Rock Yourself to Sleep

It’s not just babies who are soothed by gentle rocking. Adults are too. A study showed that adults who napped in a rocking bed fell asleep faster and enjoyed deeper sleep than when the bed remained stationary. The rocking motion helps synchronize brain waves into patterns associated with quality sleep. Rocking beds are actually available on the market, but a more practical implementation of this idea is to sit in a rocking chair to relax for a few minutes before you lie down in a standard stationary bed.

30. Soak Your Hands in Warm Water

You may have heard that taking a warm bath about 90 minutes before bed can improve sleep. The heat draws blood to the skin’s surface, and when you step out, the dilated blood vessels help dissipate core body heat. This drop in core temperature signals the body to produce melatonin and promotes sleepiness.

If you don’t have the time or patience for the rigmarole of a full bath, soaking your hands in warm water for at least five minutes can induce a similar effect. The palms contain specialized blood vessels that are especially effective at radiating heat, aiding in core temperature cooling.

31. Mindfully Do the Dishes

Sleep is improved by having a wind-down routine — knocking off from all mentally or physically taxing tasks at least an hour before bedtime.

But if you must complete one last chore before bed, make it hand-washing dishes. A study found that participants who focused on the sensory experience of dishwashing — like the warmth of the water and the smell of the soap — experienced a 27% reduction in anxiety. This calming effect can help ease the transition into sleep.

32. Read a Physical Book

Reading before bed is a well-known wind-down habit, but its effectiveness is often underrated.

One study found that just six minutes of reading reduced stress levels by 68% — more than listening to music, drinking tea, or playing video games — by lowering heart rate and relaxing muscle tension. Less stress translates into an easier time falling asleep.

Physical books, with their unlit pages, may be especially calming, offering distance from both the temptation to check social media and the cortisol-spiking content it so often delivers.

33. Write a To-Do List

It’s not just completing to-dos during the day that aids sleep, but preparing to tackle future tasks as well. Researchers found that people who spent five minutes writing down upcoming tasks fell asleep approximately ten minutes faster than those who merely documented completed tasks. The more detailed the to-do list, the quicker participants nodded off. This “cognitive offloading” helps free your mind from the responsibility of remembering everything overnight.

34. Address Worries Constructively

Research supports the idea that writing down your worries before bed can help improve sleep. This practice is particularly effective when you write down worries and potential solutions. People who document both their concerns and possible next steps experience less “pre-sleep cognitive arousal” than those who only list their worries, making it easier to fall asleep.

Schedule a 15-minute “worry session” in the early evening (around 6 PM) to document problems and brainstorm concrete next steps, and this will head off bedtime rumination.

35. Warm Your Neck

Studies have found that warming the back of your neck to about 104°F (40°C) before bed improves both sleep onset and quality. This specific warming helps reduce sympathetic nervous system activity (which creates alertness) while increasing parasympathetic activity (which promotes relaxation). A warm compress or heated neck wrap (plug-in and microwavable options are available) can do the trick.

36. Release Jaw Tension

When you clench your jaw, it sends signals to your brain that you’re under stress, reinforcing anxiety that can make it harder to fall asleep. Instead, aim for a relaxed, slack jaw — like a trout’s. When your mouth is at ease, your brain takes it as a cue to relax the rest of your body, too.

If you’re struggling to release jaw tension, try this: place your thumb under your chin and slowly open your mouth while applying gentle resistance. Hold for a few seconds, then relax. Repeat 5–10 times. You can also massage your temples in small circles with your fingertips to relax the temporalis muscles, which play a key role in jaw movement.

37. Sheathe Your Feet

When you warm your feet, it dilates blood vessels and helps release heat from your core — a key signal your body uses to initiate sleep. Cold feet not only block this process but can also simply be uncomfortable and keep you awake. Research shows that people who wear socks to bed fall asleep faster, sleep longer — by an average of 32 minutes — and wake up less during the night compared to barefoot sleepers. If your feet tend to run cold, try wearing socks to bed or placing a hot water bottle at your feet.

38. Practice Gratitude

You’ve probably heard that regularly writing down what you’re grateful for can boost both physical and mental health — from lowering blood pressure to lifting your mood. But gratitude has sleep benefits, too: by shifting you into a more positive frame of mind, it can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Each night, try jotting down five good things from your day — whether it’s a thoughtful gesture from a colleague or simply snagging a great parking spot.

39. Relax Your Tongue

Your tongue holds more tension than you might think — you may be pressing it against the roof of your mouth right now without realizing it. Like a clenched jaw, a tense tongue can send subtle signals of stress through the body, making it harder to fall asleep.

To release this hidden tension, press your tongue firmly against the roof of your mouth, then let it drop completely as you allow your jaw to hang slightly open. Keep both the front and back of your tongue relaxed, letting it rest heavily in your mouth. This simple act of release can become an effective cue for full-body relaxation.

40. Apply Gentle Warmth to Your Abdomen

Research shows that gently warming the skin — especially around the abdomen — increases neuronal activity in brain regions that regulate sleep. Try placing a warm (not hot) water bottle against your stomach. The key is subtle warming, just slightly above skin temperature, as too much heat will disrupt sleep.

41. Let Your Thoughts (Even If Negative) Come and Go

Thinking stressful or worry-inducing thoughts as you lie in bed can create mental arousal that makes it harder to fall asleep. Paradoxically, actively trying to fight these thoughts can actually backfire — making them more persistent and sleep more elusive; research has shown that people instructed to suppress specific thoughts before bed took longer to fall asleep than those allowed to let their thoughts flow naturally.

Instead of resisting unwanted thoughts, try acknowledging them without judgment, then gently shift your focus to your breath, positive reflections, or calming visualizations.

42. Try Sleep Restriction Therapy

Counterintuitively, spending less time in bed can improve sleep quality. If you’re lying awake for hours, track your actual sleep time and initially restrict your time in bed to just that amount (but no less than five hours). For example, if you average six hours of actual sleep but need to rise at 6 AM, don’t go to bed until midnight. As your sleep efficiency improves, gradually move your bedtime earlier in 15-minute increments.

During the Night

Even if you successfully fall asleep, it’s normal to wake up during the night, and these tips can help you return to sleep more easily.

43. Embrace Stillness When You Wake

If you wake during the night, resist the urge to toss and turn. Movement signals your body to increase alertness and can trigger adrenaline production. Instead, calmly maintain stillness while taking slow breaths, focusing on the sensation of the sheets against your skin or the coolness of air on your face. This mindful stillness often allows sleep to return naturally.

44. Apply Acupressure at Heart 7

Traditional Chinese medicine — and some emerging research — suggests that massaging the Heart 7 acupressure point (also known as the “Spirit Gate”) may help relieve anxiety-induced insomnia. To find it, look at the crease on your wrist directly below the gap between your ring and pinky fingers; you’ll feel a small hollow beside the tendon on the outer edge of your wrist. Using your thumb, gently press and massage this point in a circular motion for about a minute on each wrist. This simple technique may help you fall asleep more easily — and return to sleep if you wake up during the night.

45. Keep Your Eyes Half-Shut During Middle-of-the-Night Bathroom Trips

When nature calls in the middle of the night, avoid turning on bright lights — even brief exposure can suppress melatonin and make it harder to fall back asleep. Before bed, clear a path to the bathroom that’s easy to navigate in the dark, or use a dim nightlight if needed. If your trip to the loo will inevitably expose you to some light, try to keep your eyes partially closed to minimize the impact. The less stimulation your brain receives, the easier it will be to drift back to sleep.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

If you were a kid in the 1950s and you got socked during a playground fight, chances are the remedy for your ensuing black eye would involve a nice T-bone steak. Before ice packs were widely available, chilled meat was the go-to household remedy for treating a black eye because it offered a way to cool the area and decrease swelling without applying raw ice. Nowadays, we’ve got more tools and a bit more knowledge at our disposal when it comes to the treatment of shiners.

Black eyes happen when there is trauma to the area. The color comes from bleeding that occurs under the skin near the eye. In most cases, black eyes aren’t serious. But, they can signal a more significant injury. If you have double vision, blood showing in the white part of your eyeball, vomiting, or dizziness, you should see a doctor right away. Black eyes can be signs of more severe injuries, like skull fractures. But, for commonplace black eyes, here’s what to do to get them healed up as quickly as possible.

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Flu and cold cases are at all-time highs this year. I got the flu two years ago. Never felt sicker in my life. It was awful.

Kate got it too, and felt nigh near to death’s door at times, but she seemed to recover faster than I did and wasn’t moaning and groaning as much as I was. She was in bed for a couple days and then was back to work. Meanwhile, I was holed up in our bonus room upstairs for a week, alternating between Tylenol and Advil to manage the fever and body aches.

Kate has always teased me about being overdramatic about my symptoms whenever I get sick.

But, truth be told, I don’t think I’m exaggerating. I genuinely feel damned awful when I come down with something, and all I want to do is moan and lay in the “sick hole” upstairs for days.

Other couples have noticed a discrepancy between how men and women experience sickness — with men seeming to have more severe symptoms while women can power through the sniffles without missing a beat. So much so that we’ve named how men experience sickness as the “man cold” or the “man flu.”

But is the man cold actually a thing?

Do Men Get Sicker Than Women?

Many people have noticed that guys seem to feel sicker and feel sicker longer than women do when they get the flu or cold. And there are clinical studies that bear these observations out.

According to one study about the differences between men and women when they get the flu, women report more flu symptoms than men, meaning that while a guy might just have a fever and body aches when he gets sick, a woman might have both those symptoms plus cough, headache, runny nose, etc. But men are two times more likely to be hospitalized when they get the flu, which suggests that of the symptoms they do experience, they experience them more severely.

You saw this pattern with COVID-19 during the pandemic. Around the world, severe cases of COVID were predominantly among men, with men’s mortality rates 1.6 times higher than women’s. (It’s worth noting that some of this difference may be due to men generally having poorer health and being more likely to delay seeking medical care when COVID symptoms worsened.)

Surveys have suggested that men take about 1.5-1.7 days longer to recover from the flu than women. But other studies have shown that men recover faster from the flu than women. 

So, based on some studies, men do experience more severe symptoms, for longer. Man flu/cold might be a thing. 

But why would there be sex differences between how men and women experience sickness?

Blame the Man Cold on Testosterone and (Low) Estrogen

It all comes down to sex hormones. At least, that’s what the research suggests.

Testosterone, which men typically have 10-20X more of than women, can be a double-edged sword. While it increases muscle mass and puts hair on your chest, it also suppresses inflammatory cytokines like IL-6, potentially prolonging recovery from the flu by delaying viral clearance.

Testosterone also gives men a larger hypothalamus region, which, among other things, regulates body temperature. Scientists theorize that this enlarged hypothalamus could explain why men often report higher fevers during infections. And because fever drives some of the unpleasant symptoms of the flu or a cold, like chills and body aches, more severe fevers mean a more severe sickness.

Estrogen also plays a role in immune function. It seems to boost it. While men have estrogen, they don’t have anywhere near the same amount as women. Women’s elevated estrogen levels seem to enhance antiviral responses by boosting interferon-γ production, which slows down viral replication in illnesses like the flu. The retardation of viral replication can take the edge off of symptoms in women. What’s interesting is that this female hormonal advantage diminishes after menopause, when estrogen levels go down in women. Postmenopausal women have an immune response that aligns more closely with men’s.

Other studies show that women have additional immunity advantages over men, like stronger innate (first-line defense) and adaptive (targeted) immune responses. This can help clear infections faster.

So, men’s high testosterone makes them more prone to getting sicker longer, while elevated estrogen in women helps blunt the severity of symptoms and helps them recover faster.

Scientists hypothesize that these hormonal differences between men and women are evolutionary in origin and represent a “reproduction-immunity trade-off.” Females evolved to have less testosterone but stronger immunity to protect offspring during pregnancy and breastfeeding; men evolved to have more testosterone, giving them weaker immunity to disease but greater strength and drive for the tasks of hunting and fighting.

Is Man Flu Just in Your Head?

While many scientists think that man flu is real and biologically rooted, others argue it’s psychosomatic. In other words, man flu is all in your head, man.

A study from the University of Glasgow suggests that men are less in touch with their biofeedback signals (which helps in understanding how one’s body feels), which could result in reporting that their symptoms are more severe than they truly are.

Another study suggests that men and women objectively experience the same severity and duration of flu and cold symptoms, but men subjectively rate some of them as more severe and longer-lasting. The study examined how the sexes experienced the common cold and found that while men and women experienced physical symptoms (like nose and ear issues) similarly, men reported emotion-based symptoms, such as mood changes and psychological distress, as being more severe. The researchers of this study concluded that the man cold is just in dudes’ heads.

Why would men subjectively experience more severe cold symptoms? Some researchers theorize that because men are conditioned to be stoic, tough, and productive, and to power through things, when they do experience a sickness, they see it as an opportunity to take a break from these expectations; they amplify the severity of their symptoms to elicit sympathy, get taken care of for once, and justify taking off work.

I’m not sure I buy that, but that’s the argument.

Perhaps it’s the case that, since women historically were responsible for the lion’s share of childcare, which creates urgent obligations (kids still need to be fed and diapered even when their parents are sick), it’s more ingrained in women to bounce back and make sure the family is tended to. Is that difference rooted in evolutionary biology, cultural expectations, or a mixture of both? There’s no conclusive evidence to know.

How to Treat the Man Flu/Cold

Personally, I think the man flu/cold is a thing — an actual biological phenomenon. It’s been interesting to watch how my son Gus’ experience of sickness has changed as he’s moved from boyhood to teenagehood. As a boy, he’d get sick and be down for a day or two. Now that he’s 14, and has testosterone coursing through his veins, he experiences sickness like I do. He feels like garbage, and he’s out for longer. He just wants to go up to the bonus room and be by himself to wallow and moan and groan. Whenever either of us gets a bad cold or flu, we just tell the family, “Well, I’m off to the sick hole. See you when I feel better.”

You treat the man version of the cold or flu just as you would its female counterpart; do the stuff your mom told you to do when you were a kid:

• Drink plenty of fluids. Water is best, but you gotta get some ginger ale in there. It’s a miracle elixir.
• Keep your eating light. Soups and saltine crackers are clutch.
• Avoid caffeinated drinks.
• Get plenty of sleep and rest.
• Alternate between Tylenol and Advil to manage pain and fever.
• Watch The Price is Right and The Young and the Restless.

Most colds and flu bouts take about 4-7 days to clear. You could experience lingering fatigue for up to two weeks.

When you feel the first symptoms of sickness, take an at-home test to see if you’ve got the flu, cold, or COVID. If it’s the flu, get a prescription for xofluza. Taking it within 48 hours of your first flu symptoms can reduce their severity and duration.

While whether the man flu is an actual physiological thing or just in guys’ heads is up for debate, doctors all agree that we shouldn’t label men as whiny when they get sick because it could delay men getting the care they need to get better, which could result in worse outcomes — including death. Be sure to go see a doctor if:

• Your fever reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit or higher or is above 100 for over three days.
• You have difficulty breathing or chest pain.
• Your symptoms get worse after an initial improvement.
• Your symptoms last longer than three weeks without improvement.

Trying to tough out a sickness and continue your normal routine isn’t wise; it will just prolong the sickness and delay your recovery. In keeping your sickness lingering on for longer, you’ll actually lose more productivity in the long run than just completely taking time off and letting yourself heal up. It’s in your best interest, and in the best interest of your family, who wants to see you bounce back as quickly as possible, to hit your rest and recovery hard. At the same time, your household may be hurting without your help, so don’t wallow unnecessarily, and once you’re ready, get back in the saddle.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

For several decades, people’s reported sleep quality has declined. This, despite the fact that specially optimized sheets, mattresses, and sleep trackers have emerged during that time, and despite the fact that the amount of time people are sleeping hasn’t decreased for over fifty years.

In other words, people aren’t sleeping less than they used to, but are less happy about their sleep than ever before.

My guest would say that to improve our experience of sleep, we’d be better off looking past the reams of modern advice out there and back in time — way, way back in time.

Today on the show, Dr. Merijn van de Laar, a recovering insomniac, sleep therapist, and the author of How to Sleep Like a Caveman: Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night’s Rest, will tell us how learning about our prehistoric ancestors’ sleep can help us relax about our own. He explains that the behaviors we think of as sleep problems are actually normal, natural, and even adaptive. We talk about why hunter-gatherers actually sleep less than we think we need to, how their natural wake periods during the night might explain our own sleep patterns, the methods they use to get better sleep, and why our modern efforts to optimize sleep could be making it worse. Merijn shares when it’s okay to use a smartphone before bed, the myth that you have to get eight hours of sleep a night, how to intentionally use sleep deprivation to improve your sleep, and more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

It’s easy to imagine hypothermia as the type of malady that can only affect people who get trapped in disastrous conditions, like being lost in a frozen Alaskan wilderness or falling into an icy river. But it’s something that can happen to you even under far less extreme conditions. 

Imagine a simple day hike, starting at low elevation in sunny weather. As you ascend the mountain, you work up a good sweat in your cotton t-shirt and don’t take breaks to hydrate or eat. At the top, the weather turns, rain or wind settles in, and you twist your ankle. Your cotton shirt is now acting like a refrigerator, and the wind only serves to pull your body temperature down quicker. At first, symptoms are seemingly minor. Shivering and a lack of coordination set in, but with time and more exposure, the symptoms change. Severe confusion, a surprising lack of shivering, and inexplicable feelings of being too warm begin to take over. You may even take clothes off because you feel too hot, which only speeds up the process. A day hike has quickly turned into a very dangerous scenario.

While the risk of developing hypothermia increases significantly as the temperature drops below 32°F, you don’t need to be in freezing temps to get it; hypothermia can set in at any temperature below 50°F if you are exposed to cold conditions for an extended period, especially if you are wet, improperly dressed, or unable to move to generate heat. 

You can prevent hypothermia by wearing synthetic or wool clothes, checking the weather forecast, keeping dry, and staying nourished and hydrated. But if you find yourself on the brink, knowing what to do at that moment could mean the difference between life and death.

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

When it comes to weight management and all-around good metabolic health, we most often think about what to eat. But my guest would say that it’s also crucial to think about when to eat,

Emily Manoogian is a chronobiologist and clinical researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Today on the show, Emily shares how to create an optimal schedule for a healthy metabolism by aligning your eating schedule with your circadian rhythm. She explains when to start eating after waking, when to stop eating before bed, the importance of sticking to a set schedule, and what happens to your metabolism when you don’t follow these timing guidelines. We also talk about how to best distribute your calorie intake throughout the day and how to eat to mitigate the metabolic problems that come with being a shift worker.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• The Salk Institute
• My Circadian Clock app
• AoM Podcast #1,016: Unlock Better Sleep and Health by Harnessing Your Circadian Rhythm

Connect with Emily Manoogian

• Emily on LinkedIn
• Emily on X

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Listen to the episode on a separate page.

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art Manliness podcast. When it comes to weight management, all around good metabolic health, you most often think about what to eat. Well, my guest would say that it’s also crucial to think about when to eat. Emily Manoogian is a chronobiolgist and clinical researcher at the Salk Institute for biological studies. Today in the show, Emily shares how to create an optimal schedule for a healthy metabolism by aligning your eating schedule with your circadian rhythm. She explains when to start eating after waking, when to stop eating before bed, the importance of sticking to a set schedule. What happens to your metabolism if you don’t follow these timing guidelines. We also talk about how to best distribute your calorie intake throughout the day and how to eat to mitigate the metabolic problems that come with being a shift worker. After the show is over, check at our show notes at aom.is/whentoeat.

Alright, Emily Manoogian, welcome to the show.

Emily Manoogian: Thank you for having me.

Brett McKay: So you are a circadian rhythm researcher. You research all the the rhythms that happen in our body from sun up to sun down, and then in between two-hour sleeping. How did you get started in that and what led you to focus on the intersection between our circadian rhythm and eating?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so it started quite a while ago when I was an undergrad in college, and I actually took a class called hormones and behavior with Lance Kriegsfeld at UC Berkeley, and I was instantly enamored. I was just fascinated with the subject that all of these rhythms control everything within our body, and that wasn’t even the biological rhythms class, but it started to touch on rhythms because of seasonal reproduction and animals, and I fell in love with it so much, I bothered him until he let me into his lab. I took his next car of biological rhythms and I was kind of hooked, so then I did my PhD in neuroscience and behavior with Eric Bittman out in UMass Amherst, again with a neuro-endocrine focus, but I really got into hardcore circadian biology at that point. Trying to understand this mutant hamster that could phase shift 12 hours over a night, think like you could go to India and have no jet lag, and so I was trying to understand how this worked.

And it always comes back to the molecular clock, which was really kinda cool, but in that time, I realized I really wanted to use my knowledge of circadian rhythms to apply it to humans and to help other individuals, ’cause the only reason I knew all about this was ’cause I was taking these very specific courses and it really wasn’t public knowledge, and I thought that was kind of crazy, and so I had this amazing opportunity to come to the Salk Institute to work with Satchin Panda who mainly does wet lab and basic science, but had gotten into time-restricted eating through rodent studies and was just about to start clinical work, had just done one study as a pilot and brought me on to get into this whole new field and really understand how timing of eating affects human performance and human health, and I have been doing it ever since.

Brett McKay: A while back ago, we had circadian researcher, Russell Foster on the podcast to discuss circadian rhythms, but something we didn’t dig much into is the relationship between circadian rhythms in our metabolism, and I wanna make that the focus of our conversation ’cause it’s just really fascinating. Can you walk us through the metabolic changes our body goes through during a 24-hour period?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, absolutely, and caveat to this is when you’re talking about metabolism, it’s not like you’re only talking about the stomach or the gut, it’s your whole body works on metabolizing things. You could think as muscle as your biggest metabolic organ in a lot of ways. So it’s really into this whole body system, and the circadian system controls pretty much every organ in your body. So when you’re sleeping, your body is trying to… Hopefully, you’re fasting as well, and we’ll kinda circle back to this, we’ll kinda walk through a day, so when you’re sleeping, hopefully you’re fasting and your body is actually able to break down fats that you’ve built up over time or during the day, and release glucose into your body, because if you’re fasting at night, you’re not taking in new sugars, and your body and your brain still need glucose to work, and so you need some glucose in your body and going through your blood, and so your fat can be broken down. Glucagon is released to try to get that back into your blood.

When you wake up, you actually have this little spike in cortisol just before you wake up and that helps your body wake up for the day, you also get your sharpest rise in blood pressure, and that kind of wakes your body up, and for some people, this can also… You’ll also see a little increase in glucose in the blood just from getting up and started to walk around because your muscles need that glucose, sometimes it can rise just a little bit because of that, then you’re really alert in the morning, your brain is very capable, your body is starting to get going, and your circadian rhythms have also organized, worked with your liver to create enzymes to be able to break down food. So you’re actually very able to break down food and digest a high amount of calories in the morning. So we generally think kind of like an hour to maybe three after you’ve woken up is probably the best time to be able to process a big meal without having giant glucose spikes or any other kind of negative consequences, ’cause your body is really up and moving, and then throughout the day while you’re active, your body is still very able to digest a lot of calories, a lot of different types of macronutrients, and that’s really kind of when you should be eating is when you’re active.

As you get later in the day, again, having your last meal in the early evening or even not too late into the night where you’re getting too close to bed, it’s not too big of a problem, but the issue becomes is when people don’t eat much during the day and then eat this huge meals at night, and you’re really not able to process these really huge meals at night or very late at night, because your body is starting to get ready for rest, meaning it’s not producing all the enzymes you would need to break everything down, it’s not gonna be able to use up all those calories you just ate and a lot of times after dinner, people are sitting down, they’re not really gonna be using a lot of that, and when that happens, that becomes a little bit of a problem for, it just kind of staying in your body, not being fully processed, and then you’re not gonna get to break down those fats at night. The other thing that’s happening at night is melatonin starts to be secreted, and melatonin is really inhibited by light. This is why it happens in the evening. It also is regulated by the circadian system, and melatonin helps you fall asleep.

It also helps coordinate your metabolism by suppressing insulin secretion, so if you’re eating really late at night when your body is tired and it’s dark, you don’t have insulin in your blood to be able to take that glucose out of your blood and pack it away, and so this is why when you eat a lot right before you go to bed, your glucose levels will actually go really high and stay high sometimes for many hours, and that will completely inhibit any fat breakdown or anything like that. So depending on when you eat will kind of change what your body is doing at different times of day, but if you consolidate your food to your active phase, then you can kind of fast and break down fats at night and then use up a lot of the fuel you’re taking in during the day.

Brett McKay: That’s really interesting. I wanna go back to when we’re sleeping, so when we’re asleep, our body primarily uses… It’s breaking down fat. There’s a process where your body can turn fat into glucose, what’s it, glyco… What’s it… There’s a name for it.

Emily Manoogian: Gluconeogenesis.

Brett McKay: Gluconeogenesis. Right.

Emily Manoogian: Yeah.

Brett McKay: But I also know that our body stores glucose in our liver. Does our body…

Emily Manoogian: Yeah.

Brett McKay: Use that glucose supply when we’re asleep?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so you can release glucose from your liver. Absolutely. And one of the problems with getting too much glucose or having high levels or not being able to break things down is over time, you can also get fatty liver disease, and this is really tricky because we know it’s a common problem, but it’s not very often assessed, just because the testing for this is quite invasive and there’s not really much you can do about it, aside from healthier diet and also I would say eating at the right time of day, but research is going on to really determine how effective that is, but you can get this fatty liver disease where if you don’t use up a lot of these sugars that are in your liver, you can develop fat deposits within the liver and over time that makes it so the liver doesn’t function properly.

Brett McKay: I know some people, particularly when they’re pre-diabetic, when they wake up or even before they wake up, they have a huge glucose spike, like it can be 120 when they hadn’t eaten anything in hours, what’s going on with metabolism to cause that?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so when you get into things like pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, it’s not a normal system anymore. It’s not like it’s just higher levels of the same system. That means that the glucose regulation is compromised, and there’s not one way that it can be compromised. In type 2, there’s many different sub-categories, and there’s different mechanisms for why that’s happening, so depending on the individual, I could give you a different answer, but you do see this in some individuals where when they first wake up, especially sometimes when they go for a walk, they’ll see this big jump, and I’ve seen this in individuals with… Women with gestational diabetes, sometimes they were taking their finger pricks and they would go for a walk first, and that would actually cause their glucose to spike, and part of that is your muscles and stuff do need glucose, and so you do naturally get a small amount of glucose increased by just getting up and being active, but in those individuals, it’s kind of oh the system’s over-responding, and this is where you have some type of insulin resistance or you have some type of other issue going on that’s causing the glucose regulation to be maladaptive.

Brett McKay: So when we’re waking up, we have an initial glucose spike, it’s not too much, if you’re healthy, it’s not gonna be huge, but it’s just enough to get your body going, and then the circadian rhythm is also gonna start to bring on the insulin system. So insulin might not be ready for you to eat pancakes and syrup right off the bat, it might take an hour or two before your pancreas is really pumping insulin out so you can start shuttling glucose into your muscles.

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, and part of that is melatonin suppressing insulin, right. So melatonin, we think of it at night, but it peaks like in the middle of your night, and so it’s still pretty high for a while, and so it needs to come down, so things like getting a lot of really bright light in the morning and letting your body wake up for like an hour. That melatonin will then have plenty of time to shut down, your body is ready to eat, which is why we usually recommend waiting at least an hour after you wake up to eat, so your body is able to process that because people think about late night eating being a problem, and I think it really is, but super early eating is also a problem, and I think you see that more in individuals that might have a really early commute and have jobs where they can’t eat on the job. I see teachers doing this a lot, where they’re like, I got to eat breakfast, but they end up eating breakfast like in the dark at 5:00 in the morning. And that’s not healthy either.

Brett McKay: Okay, so we still have some melatonin in our system when we first wake up and that suppresses insulin production, and then as the day progresses, your metabolism is turned on and you start releasing insulin, and then as we get closer to night, melatonin is increasing again, which tells insulin production, alright, it’s time to go to sleep. We don’t need you anymore, and then you’re going back through that sleep process, so how can we put these pieces together and use this information of how our circadian rhythm manages our metabolism to optimize metabolic health?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so when it comes down to it, it’s kind of obvious things when you think about it. It’s allowing your body to fast at night and really eating when you’re active, and that sounds extremely simplified, but that’s kind of what the answer is, right, so how you actually would apply that. So we study a dietary intervention known as time-restricted eating, some people consider it a form of intermittent fasting, unlike other forms of intermittent fasting, it doesn’t require any type of caloric restriction, it can be combined with it, but it’s not required for it.

And really, it’s just eating at the same eating window, so usually an eight or 10-hour eating window, so for example, 9:00 to 7:00 PM, but it should be customized to your schedule, so someone who wakes up at 6:00 AM every day is gonna have a different eating window than someone who wakes up at 9:00 AM every day, it should be adjusted to fit your schedule, and it should be the same eating window every day, and the way we’d say to usually figure that out is think about what your normal sleep times are. Hopefully, you’re at least trying to sleep for eight hours a day, I know a lot of us don’t get that, but that should at least be the goal, and then say, wait at least one hour after you wake up and stop eating at least three hours before you go to bed, that gives you now, a 12-hour window. And then pick the 10 hours that work for you. And usually that’s decided by a family meal and kind of working backwards that way.

 And just that simple thing of saying, I’m gonna eat at the same times, I’m gonna give that cue to my circadian rhythms that when I eat, I’m telling all the clocks within my body what time it is just through nutrient availability and the stimulation that food gives to your brain as well, but now you’re saying, okay, here’s a regular cue, my circadian rhythms can rely on that, and then the really cool thing about the circadian system is it’s anticipatory. It’s not a reactive like you ate, and so now I’m gonna do something. It’s I know you usually eat at this time, so I’m gonna prepare enzymes to be able to break down food for you at that time, and so if you eat at regular times, your body will be more prepared to break down food at that time and process it properly and then getting a regular fast that’s long enough for your body, at least like a 14-hour fast each day, most of that is while you’re asleep, but getting that daily fast is super important, so you can actually break down fats and use up sugars, so you’re not creating this overload of resources that your body can’t handle and over time leads to a lot of issues.

Brett McKay: Yeah, that sounds about what I do with my schedule, so I wake up at 5:30, and then I don’t eat until 7:00 and then…

Emily Manoogian: Perfect.

Brett McKay: Eat during the day, and then our dinner is usually around 6:00, 6:30, and then nothing after that before I go to bed.

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, I think that’s pretty reasonable. That’s like, what, 11, 11 and a half hours. But even with that, I don’t think it’s hurting you in any way, you’re aligning it to your active phase, you’re waiting until you wake up, you’re getting at least probably a three-hour chunk before you go to bed. I think that’s absolutely fine. I think that’s a very reasonable way to eat and you’re aligning that with all the other cues that you’re giving your body, like light and activity and social interaction and stress and exercise, all those other things are aligning, so your body actually knows what time it is, and just the simple act of supporting your circadian rhythms is super helpful for almost every aspect of physiology.

Brett McKay: Okay, so you wanna have your first meal at least an hour after you wake up and then stop eating three to four hours before you go to bed, so you’re aiming for an eight to 10 hour eating window overall, and what this does, it ensures you’re eating when your metabolism is most active and then fasting when it’s less so. And also the other takeaway too is you wanna eat at the same consistent times every day, ’cause that helps your body be prepared to process food, so you mentioned that there are some people who don’t stick to the sort of time-restricted, regular schedule. What happens to our metabolism whenever we eat too soon after waking up and then eat too late before going to bed.

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so part of this gets back to melatonin again, right, when you eat too soon, you just might not have insulin enough in your system where your glucose levels can get very high. This is also a more common problem in the United States, because a lot of our breakfast and not just the United States, but it tends to be a bigger issue here, a lot of the Western breakfast is very carb-heavy, and there’s also been some really interesting science into food desires at different times of day, and the things that we crave when we’re tired, like late at night or early morning are not healthy foods. We do not crave a salad or just avocados in the morning, we crave a donut or a sugary coffee or something to give ourselves a treat because we had to wake up and we’re so tired, so we try to treat ourselves with these really unhealthy foods, and at those really late times, we’re specifically not able to process them properly, so eating super early in the morning, again, you’re just gonna have higher glucose response, it’s probably gonna stay higher for longer. Same thing at night when you’re eating really late at night, you get that same kind of thing.

What’s really interesting though, and some really beautiful science has come out in the past couple of years from multiple groups now, but Frank Scheer’s group at Harvard did this really nice study where they had participants in the lab and they provided meals to them and they’d either give them dinner at 7:00 PM or to another set of participants, they would give them dinner around 10:00 PM, and it was the same quality of food, but the participants that got it really late, not only had a higher glucose response but they stayed to have elevated glucose responses for hours later into the night.

And what was really interesting is, even though they eventually got back down to normal fasting glucose levels, but the next morning, they gave them a glucose tolerance test, and the ones who had eaten the night before later, they didn’t respond to glucose as well the next morning either. They had a higher response to it and it stayed elevated longer, and there’s some nice work from Australia that came out also recently doing this in-lab model of shift work where they had people do simulated night shifts and either eat a large meal, a small meal, or nothing during the night while they were working, and even though they were active, that eating during the night led to compromised glucose the next morning in both groups that had any kind of food, but it was worse in the larger meal, so it seems like eating really late at night compromises both the glucose at that time and while you’re sleeping, which can also cause you to have a worse quality of sleep, which has its own downstream effects, but it also compromises your glucose the next day and potentially for multiple days after.

So it really does seem to be throwing off the system in a pretty significant manner and this constant disruption to glucose regulation, constant levels of higher glucose that leads to pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes.

Brett McKay: And it sounds like too if you are managing pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, you have to think, maybe what this research suggests not only think about the type of foods you’re eating, but when you eat them can have a big influence as well.

Emily Manoogian: 100%.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve seen first-hand how timing your food intake can change how your body responds to it. So a while back ago, I tried out the continuous glucose monitor, I don’t have pre-diabetes or anything, but I wanted to try it out, and something I saw was when I was doing it, my first meal would be very carb heavy, like a bowl of oatmeal and some yogurt and some blueberries, and my glucose would just spike and would stay spiked for a really long period of time. So something I did is I swapped to a kind of a lower carb meals, it was just like eggs, yeah just basically eggs and like a low carb wrap, and I moved my oatmeal later in the morning, and then like… Yeah, the carb spike went away, and then after I had my oatmeal later in the morning, I didn’t have the same sort of spike as I had when I ate it first thing in the morning.

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, I’ve seen that so many times. And the really great thing about continuous glucose monitors, or I’m probably gonna say it short hand, so they’re also called CGM, is they tell you so much about how you specifically like you as a person, respond to different foods because it’s different for different people, and just like you said the same food can cause a different reaction at different times of day, and being able to wear a continuous glucose monitor is really powerful ’cause you can learn so much about yourself, you might learn just like you said, you can eat a meal, just not first thing, you have to eat it a little later, that same might be true for a donut, or maybe you can’t have it early or maybe you can’t have it late, but in the afternoon, maybe it’s not as bad for your system, or people find out maybe they really have big spikes in response to rice, and you might have someone else eating the exact same meal that doesn’t have that same response, even at the same time. There’s individual differences between people, but usually people have something that gets them, whether it’s rice or pizza or donuts or oatmeal, or whatever it is or sugar in their coffee.

But knowing what your cues are is super important because then you could say, okay, I need to either just really make sure I eat this food at the right time, or maybe I shouldn’t combine these two foods that are both kind of spikes for me, but that kind of personalized information, I think is where this field is really going to really understand, these general rules are nice, but if you are gonna have a piece of cake or a donut or even a bowl of oatmeal, there’s a time of day that’s probably much healthier for you than others.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now, back to the show, there’s a saying eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper, so the idea is you eat more of your calories at the beginning of the day and then start tapering off as you get towards dinner time. Does science back up that adage?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, I think there’s still more to be done in the field, but what we do know of it does seem to be pretty true. I think there’s a little bit of debate if it’s breakfast like a king or… I would argue for some individuals, especially depending on your schedule, maybe lunch like a king would also be fine, but I think it’s pretty well agreed upon now that a majority of your calories should be consumed in the first half of your day, and then your dinner should be probably a lower carb, higher protein, high fiber, but a more modest meal, and I think a lot of the evidence that has come out about breakfast is so important or late night eating is really bad, I think both of those things have been true, but most of it is to avoid this late night binge eating, and I think a lot of times we see in modern society, especially among college students or young adults, or I don’t know, even working parents, people get really busy during the day, they grab something really small for breakfast, they might not have a chance to eat much for lunch and then they go oh barely ate today, and then they come home and they eat some huge amount of food at night and then relax, that is obviously very bad for your system, for all the different reasons you’re starving yourself, your body then over-eats, then you’re just sitting on it, you have these really high levels of glucose, you’re probably having a lot of fat build up, and so those…

The opposite of that is definitely a problem, and I think a lot of evidence has actually really backed up that eating larger meals in the first half of your day, and eating a more modest dinner really does kind of help support the Circadian system and it helps support good metabolic health.

Brett McKay: So you don’t wanna eat too late in the evening before you go to bed because your body is going to sleep. Insulin production is going down. If you eat later in the night, it’s gonna cause blood sugar problems, can possibly potentially lead to weight gain. It can also just disrupt sleep ’cause you’re just… You’ve got this big ball of food in your stomach you’re trying to digest, but people in Europe, a lot of them, they seem to eat later in the evening without any problems, like they eat dinner at 9 o’clock sometimes. What do you think’s going on there?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah. So that gets really interesting. You think of Spain. Everyone thinks of Spain eating super late. I remember the first time I went there, we went out to go eat dinner at like 8:00, and it was completely empty, and I was very confused and no one showed up till 9:00 or 10:00, and that was kind of mindboggling to me and as a circadian researcher, obviously, I was curious about this. A lot of this is they actually have exposure to sun at pretty different times of day, they’re actually pretty delayed, and if you switch the clock on the wall to align with when they actually see light, it’s actually not very late for them, and this becomes an issue in different parts of the world where there’s these really large time zones that span large areas, and there’s… If you look at light availability in different parts of Europe, it might say 6:00 PM on the wall, and in one city it might be completely sunny, and in another city it might be completely dark at the same time of year. And so when we think about circadian rhythms, we think about time like 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM, these are usually their clocks on a wall, and they’re not actually sometimes, but our body is responding to sun more than artificial light.

And so when you have these shifted light availability or sun availability, you typically do get these shifts in behavioral patterns, and Spain is a big one of those, they also typically go to bed a little bit later, they also usually have a siesta in the middle of the day where they get to take a break and maybe a little bit nap, and so they have different overall schedules and so it’s not the same. I ate at 9:00 PM, but I have to go to bed at 10:00 PM to get up to be able to leave super early in the morning. Their schedule is a little bit delayed and their light is also a little bit delayed, which does account for a lot of those differences.

Brett McKay: Okay, so that’s interesting. So there’s no one-size-fits-all prescription for this stuff. It’s like well, you can only eat from this time to this time, it’s gonna depend on one, just the environment you’re in, not only the physical environment, how much sunlight you’re getting, but also the social environment, I can train your circadian rhythm in a certain way, but it can also…

Emily Manoogian: Absolutely.

Brett McKay: Every person has their own unique chronotype, and there’s some people who are night owls, where they wake up later, and then they go to bed later, so those individuals who are night owls might be able to eat later in the evening, 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock, and they’re not gonna go to bed for three or four hours still, and they’re gonna be fine. They probably won’t have any problems.

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, it gets a little complicated right? The problem with night owls, and I tend to be a later person as well, so no shame in saying night owl, I know it can be, people kind of put it in a negative light a lot, and I don’t think that’s fair. The problem is, is that if you’re staying up late, it also means you should be getting up late and still getting a reasonable amount of light, and if you’re getting up super late or going to bed super late and you’re not getting a lot of light, that can lead to its own kind of issues, and if you are eating really late after it’s been dark for a very long time, you still could potentially have some melatonin coming up where that’s not the best situation, and this also gets into if you really are a true late type or not, and there is some interesting science here, so there are circadian mutations that can make you an extreme morning person or an extreme late person. And these are not normal, I like to stay up till midnight or 1:00 or even 2:00. These are like, I cannot fall asleep before 3:00 or 4:00 AM, and I have to wake up at 11:00 or 12:00, or there are people like, I can’t stay awake past 6:00 or 7:00 PM, and I have to wake up by 4:00 AM, like these really intense differences.

Those are known genetic changes, and there probably are some spectrum, and your chronotype can oscillate a bit throughout your life, little kids tend to be earlier risers. When you go through puberty, you tend to delay a bit, and it comes a little bit earlier, and I think there are biological mechanisms for that, but some really cool work has been done looking in different populations around the world, comparing individuals that don’t have electricity that are living off of natural light and fire light versus people living within 100 miles but have full electricity, and they found the people that live without electricity go to bed earlier, like all of them, they go to bed earlier, they wake up earlier, they adjust it with the sun, and there is even a study done in Colorado that showed that if you take individuals and you put them camping where they only have fire light for a week or two weeks, that they all become a little bit earlier. And so we think a lot of the reasons why so many of us are later types is not just because of our chronobiology, but because we get a lot of artificial light after a long day’s work.

Maybe you’re also taking care of kids. And then the kids go to bed and it’s like, oh, I just wanna relax for an hour and watch the show. And maybe you wanna have a snack with it, and then it’s like we get kind of our reliefs in, and so we end up staying up later really through these choices to stimulate ourselves in that way to give ourselves some kind of entertainment or whatnot, or does work or whatever it is, where we end up staying up later than our bodies probably would want to, and so if you take a lot of the stimulus away, people generally tend to shift a little bit earlier, and that’s not always possible to do, but I think trying to listen to your body more than your schedule or clock on the wall is not always the easiest thing to do, but it’s probably much healthier for you.

Brett McKay: You mentioned some research done on shift workers and how the circadian rhythm affects their metabolism there. I know, I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening to this podcast, they might be a shift worker, maybe they’re a first responder, a nurse, doctor, maybe they just work a shift at a factory, it’s at night time. What does the research say about how their irregular sleep schedule affects their metabolism?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so I think shift work is so important to study, and the crazy thing is they’re almost never included in clinical trials, I mean, it’s like 0.0001% of clinical trials are including shift workers even though they probably have the biggest need. And that’s just because shift work itself is so confounding, so like you said, obviously if you’re working in the middle of the night or working very late or very early or having a moving schedule, your sleep is gonna get disrupted. Not being able to sleep adequate amount has also been shown to lead to weight gain, to lead to increased glucose intolerance, higher A1c levels, which is when we talk about hemoglobin A1C is like an estimate of glucose for the past three months, but it’s kind of the gold standard. All those things get worse when you have any form of sleep deprivation, even if you’re still sleeping at night, but it’s really short sleeps.

The other thing that shift or does though is it really changes when you eat. If you’re working a night shift, you’re probably gonna have to eat at night, and that’s kind of your functional time then, right. But even though you’re awake and you’re active, your body is still not processing that food the same way, and I think the best data we have from that is in simulated shift work where people are brought into the lab given standardized meals, and you can see that they don’t process the food the same way. They do have higher glucose responses, they stay higher longer, and then again, it’s not just at that time, it’s not just, oh, at night, my glucose was compromised the next day when you eat your to glucose is also compromised and you’re having poor glucose regulation, and so that’s a really big problem we’re trying to face in our own work. We did a randomized control trial in firefighters in San Diego County that worked 24-hour shifts. We were able to put them on a time-restricted eating diet, this is really mainly a feasibility study, but they were able to do it.

Now, we started with them because it’s probably one of the easier shifts to do that with because they’re working a 24-hour shift, their day is still their day, they’re still mainly up, they might take a nap, but they’re still awake during the day, they eat lunch and dinner together, and so they have pretty regular meals, but they are working the full 24 hours, so they’re getting on calls throughout the night, they’re getting woken up, all these other things are going on, and a lot of times they would get a snack in the middle or people would bring in treats, so they were eating throughout the night, but they found they were able to stop those extra eating throughout the night, they were able to eat within a 10-hour window, and of the participants who did have cardiometabolic disorders, we saw big improvements in HbA1c, so glucose regulation, we saw improvements in diastolic blood pressure, and overall energy levels, people were feeling better.

And so that was really exciting to see, and we even saw in the full group a decrease in very low density lipoprotein, which is kind of a worse version of LDL cholesterol, when you think of that, it’s like the bigger version of it that really leads to these plaques in the heart, and we saw that those were getting smaller and that was really exciting to see, and so I’ve recently been funded to do a new study in nurses and nursing assistants that work night shifts, and we’re trying to see if time-restricted eating is possible within that group.

And we’re also trying to test out if a low glycemic snack at night may still give them some benefits, even if it doesn’t give them the full benefits just out of feasibility alone, because the problem with working with shift work is we know it’s bad for your circadian system, but it’s absolutely necessary. We need first responders, we need all the… There’s some jobs, hopefully, some people don’t have to do, but their most shift work is really out of necessity, and so we can’t change when they get to sleep, we can’t change their light exposure most of the time, but we could potentially change when they eat and so we’re seeing this as a potential window to be able to help this extremely valuable group of people.

Brett McKay: Okay, so it sounds like if you are a shift worker, the goal there is if you’re staying up late at night or throughout the night, is it just to try to eat during a 10 hour window, try not to eat at night, and try to eat your calories during the day when you can?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to really figure out because there’s just not a lot of science there yet. I mean, theoretically, yes. I think the general logic, and based off the in-lab studies, which are only over a few days and very short periods of time, but I think the logic really is that you’re not able to process especially glucose more than other macronutrients. And so I think having low glycemic snacks is probably gonna be better if you have to choose between a hard-boiled egg and a big bowl of pasta, go for the hard-boiled egg or some nuts, something that could give you some energy and satiate you and maybe give you something to nibble on because eating is also a big stimulatory cue for alertness, but yeah, lower glycemic food, smaller portions so far looks like that’s what would be better if you can’t just completely fast at all. If you are able to fast through the night and keep a regular eating time to match with the days where you aren’t working and eating normally during the day and trying to keep to that, I think that’s ideal, and then our hypothesis is that, yeah, really trying to decrease the amount of carbs and decrease the total amount of calories that you’re getting at night would be kind of a good in-between compromise.

Brett McKay: Okay, so those are some general ideas, but I guess more research is forthcoming. We’ll have to…

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, yeah.

Brett McKay: Stay tuned for that. You mentioned that time-restricted eating can be seen as a form of intermittent fasting. How does intermittent fasting… I’m talking like extended fast here, how does it affect our circadian rhythm or does it affect our circadian rhythm?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so intermittent fasting is such a vague term. It could mean a lot of different things. I think the most common versions are like a 5:2 diet, where five days a week you do whatever you want and two days a week, you have pretty intense caloric restriction, and then the other would just be like an eight-hour or six-hour diet, which is fairly similar to time-restricted eating, but those usually don’t keep a consistent eating window, which is really not the point, I think, but the idea is usually of interment fasting is to decrease calories as well as getting these longer periods of time where you’re not eating. They can affect the system, I think of them kind of like a cleaning out period of some sort, if you think about nutrient availability as a cue, eating all the time is kind of an abundance of cues, it’s kind of constantly resetting, fasting kind of allows the natural rhythms to tick on their own a little bit more, kinda continue on their own, ’cause if you had no cues, you still have these internal rhythms that would keep a 24-hour day, but food and light are some of the biggest cues you can give your body.

So fasting relieves that cue, and I don’t really think of it as a way of setting the system at all. I think having regular food timings are more important for that aspect of it, but longer term faster, a couple of days or a day or just these low calorie periods can be helpful metabolically for other reasons, not via the circadian system, you can get some increased ketone production, you can relieve some other stress on the system, it’s almost like a rinsing out and if you look at so many different cultures have incorporated fasting over hundreds of years, and a lot of them aren’t complete fast similar to intermittent fasting. A lot of them are not water only, most are not water only, most are, like nuts or dried fruits are sometimes allowed, or bone broth or different things like that, to allow for really small amounts of calorie intake for maintenance, but really just trying to allow the body to probably break down more fats, kind of cleaning out the system of sorts, and those can be helpful occasionally, a lot of people try to practice something like that, like three or four times a year, but I don’t think they think of them as much as a circadian input as they are, maybe you’re looking more at a metabolic fasting, ketone glucose regulation system that obviously the circadian system is involved in, but it’s kind of coming at that system from a different angle.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. Well, let’s do a quick recap. I think we’ve talked about a lot of interesting things here. So I think the big takeaway is your body has a rhythm, and when we eat can influence how our body responds to food we eat depending on the timing of it, so I guess wait about an hour after waking up to eat to let your body kinda wake up, that’s the first takeaway. I think another takeaway, maybe postpone carbs till later in the day, like lunch, maybe use more of your carbs, and then as you get closer to night time, eat your last meal three to four hours before you go to bed and you should be good.

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, I think that’s the easy way of thinking about it, and again, like we just said, it’s all relative to when you sleep, so try not to look at a clock on a wall or say, I have to eat by 5:00 because someone said this. It’s I gotta eat when it’s right for my body to eat, and that might mean little delays or little advances, but I think when you’re thinking about trying to adopt a time-restricted eating or something like that, it’s never about meal-skipping, it’s never about these huge, I’m starving myself, it’s really just about aligning your food to when you’re active, and if you’re not eating till two hours after you wake up, it could probably have carbs in it, it’s more of a don’t wake up and eat a ton of carbs right in the morning and… Yeah, I think late morning or early afternoon is probably a better time for carbs, like you said, but really it’s just aligning when you eat to when you’re active and allowing your body to get a proper fast at night.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Emily, it’s been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

Emily Manoogian: Yeah, so you can follow me on Twitter at @EmilyManoogian. You can also look us up at the Salk Institute website, or we have an app that we run that we use for all of our clinical trials, but it’s also free for the public, it’s a completely non-profit research app, it’s not commercial at all, called My Circadian Clock. You could find us at mycircadianclock.org, and the app is free to use on any iPhone or Android phone, and on our website, we also just have lots of information about circadian rhythms, about time-restricted eating, about healthy lifestyle, so yeah, you can check us out anytime there.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Emily Manoogian, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Emily Manoogian: Thanks so much for having me.

Brett McKay: My guest today is Emily Manoogian. You can learn more about our work at salk.edu, that’s S-A-L-K.edu. Also check our show notes at aom.is/whentoeat where you can find links to resources, we delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of The AOM podcast, make sure to check on our website at artofmanliness.com where you can our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you think of, and if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to AOM Podcast but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

Gunshot wounds can be one of the most devastating injuries a person can endure. Depending on the type of bullet, its trajectory when it hits you, and the location it enters, a bullet can rip apart internal organs, break bones, puncture lungs, and cause severe blood loss from critical arteries. Because gunshot wounds can cause such an array of damage, it would take years of training to understand how to treat them all effectively. But, there are things everyone can do to help buy time for a gunshot victim — primarily in the form of stopping the bleeding, keeping the victim stable, and seeking medical attention as quickly as possible. It also helps to have some prior knowledge of properly making/using a tourniquet, handling a sucking chest wound, treating someone for shock, and administering CPR. 

Consider always carrying a proper first aid kit — complete with pressure bandages, QuikClot, disinfectant, stitches, and nitrile gloves — with you, as it can come in handy not only in situations where you expect to be around firearms, like hunting, but unfortunately in this age of mass shootings, in any time or place. 

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

You know that getting sufficient protein in your diet is essential, as this macronutrient provides the building blocks for muscle, tissue repair, enzyme and hormone production, and overall cell function. Protein supports your overall strength and health, and most people would do well to get at least .8 grams of protein per pound of body weight.

Yet you also know that in our busy, modern, on-the-go world, it can be hard to hit this target.

Enter the ever handy protein bar.

Sure, it’s best to eat whole foods, but it’s not always possible to grill up chicken breasts and tote them around. Protein bars are an easy way to supplement your diet and hit your protein goals each day.

Protein bars used to be poo-pooed by the average joe as being chalky and gross-tasting and by nutritionists as essentially being fortified candy bars. But very few contain much real sugar these days, and their taste and texture has greatly improved; they’ve come a long way in the last couple decades, and now many boast good flavors and nutritional profiles.

But they’re certainly not all created equal.

We’re big fans of protein bars around here and are veritable protein bar connoisseurs. We’ve tried just about all of them.

There’s been plenty of misses.

Quest bars seem to have plenty of fans, but, even as folks who don’t mind the taste of stevia, we found them so awful as to be nearly inedible.

ONE bars used to be our go-to favorite. But then Hershey’s bought the company and introduced a “new and improved taste and texture” that is anything but.

Kirkland bars are cheap, Barebell bars are pretty tasty, but both contain sugar alcohols that can make you gassy and bloated.

Over time we’ve found some good ones too, though (interestingly, nearly all the ones we’ll recommend below were introduced fairly recently, a sign that the market continues to evolve). Our criteria for a good bar involves the intersection of several factors:

• good nutritional profile (high protein and fiber; low sugar)
• relatively “clean” (quality protein source; natural low/no-cal sweeteners; minimal junky ingredients and fillers)
• no sugar alcohols
• good taste
• satiating

Here are four we’ve found meet this criteria and constitute our top picks:

Peak Protein

These are in many ways the pinnacle of protein bars. Eschewing palm oil, sugar alcohols, and artificial sweeteners, Peak Protein bars are made with grass-fed whey, real organic chocolate, monk fruit, and a good amount of fiber and just may be the cleanest and tastiest bars out there. A few downsides though: At almost $3.50 each, these are some of the most expensive bars on the market; you’re always going to pay for premium ingredients. The protein-to-calorie ratio is a little low (290 calories; 20 grams of protein). And while the real chocolate does significantly enhance their taste, it also makes the bars melt-y. They wouldn’t be the best for, say, taking on a hike, and if you live in a hot climate, order directly from their site rather than Amazon and ask them to ship your order with ice. Then put the bars in the fridge when they arrive; they may be even tastier when chilled.

Kind Protein MAX

If you find that whey protein doesn’t agree with you, try these bars, which are made with soy protein. (While there’s some concern out there that soy protein will lower testosterone/raise estrogen, according to AoM podcast guest Alan Aragon, that’s not going to happen unless you’re eating over 60 grams of soy protein a day.) Reasonably priced at $2 each, Kind Protein MAX bars are nutty (the #1 one ingredient is peanuts), sweetened with allulose, and have a taste and texture that’s a bit like a granola bar.

David

Endorsed by health guru Peter Attia, the newest bar on the block has gotten plenty of buzz. Does it live up to the hype? Mostly, with some caveats. First the good: The macronutrient profile is killer. They only have 2 grams of fiber, but with zero sugar and a ton of protein, they’re quite satiating. And the calorie-to-protein ratio is incredible: 150 calories and 28 grams of protein. While people have voiced some concern that a chunk of that protein comes from collagen, which lacks the amino acids for muscle-building, the other protein sources in the bar (milk; whey; egg white) make up for that and give the bar the highest possible 1.0 PDCAAS score, which means it provides 100% or more of the amino acids needed in the diet. The taste of the bars is decent — pretty palatable but not knock-your-socks-off delicious (this may be a pro for folks who don’t like their bars to taste so good they’re tempted to eat more than one).

Some concerns: The bars are expensive; just a hair cheaper than Peak bars. They also contain “esterified propoxylated glycerol” (EPG), which is a modified fat molecule that provides far fewer calories than regular fat because it isn’t fully absorbed by the body (this is part of how the bars keep their calorie count down). While studies have generally shown EPG to be safe, it may create digestive issues for some folks (though we haven’t experienced any ourselves).

MET-Rx Big 100

In some ways, MET-Rx bars don’t meet the criteria we set out for a quality protein bar, as they’re high in sugar and low in fiber. But these older-school bars are worth highlighting for a few reasons. First, they’re one of the few bars these days that aren’t made with non-nutritive sweeteners of any kind, so if you’re trying to avoid those altogether, here you go. Second, they’re relatively cheap — about $2.50, which is good, especially considering their third advantage: they’re big mama-jamas. With 410 calories and 32 grams of protein, they’re a nice option for when you’re looking for something that’s more like a meal than a snack; even without a ton of fiber, they’re still satiating. And they taste good and are nearly always available at gas stations and convenience stores.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

Nietzsche’s maxim, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” isn’t just a sound philosophical principle. It’s also a certifiable physiological phenomenon; toxins and stressors that could be deadly in large doses, actually improve health and resilience in smaller, intermittent ones. The ironic thing, my guest points out, is that it’s the fact that we’re not getting enough of this sublethal stress these days that’s really doing us in.

Paul Taylor is a former British Royal Navy Aircrew Officer, an exercise physiologist, nutritionist, and neuroscientist, and the author of Death by Comfort: How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It. Today on the show, Paul discusses the science of hormesis, how small doses of intermittent stress can make us more resistant to chronic stress, and why you need to embrace what Paul calls “discomfort harvesting.” We talk about some now-familiar topics like fasting and cold and heat exposure with fresh inspiration as to how important they are to practice and how to do them effectively. We discuss how hot a sauna needs to be to get the benefits of heat exposure, Paul’s suggestion for how to make an ice bath on the cheap, what may be the single best type of food to eat to improve your gut’s microbiome, a form of fasting that’s got anti-cancer benefits but is so accessible it won’t even feel like fasting, what supplement to take to mitigate the effects of a bad night’s sleep, and much more. We end our conversation with how to use what Paul calls a “ritual board” to stick with your healthy habits and resist the “soft underbelly” of modern life.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Podcast #708: Overcome the Comfort Crisis
• AoM article/video on the benefits of cold showers
• AoM Podcast #801: The Cold Water Swim Cure
• AoM Podcast #603: The Physical Keys to Human Resilience
• AoM Article: How Saunas Can Help Save Your Body, Mind, and Spirit
• AoM Article: How to Sauna — All the FAQs
• AoM Podcast #585: Inflammation, Saunas, and the New Science of Depression
• AoM Podcast #862: Heal the Body With Extended Fasting
• AoM Podcast #328: The Pros and Cons of Intermittent Fasting
• AoM Podcast #581: The Tiny Habits That Change Everything
• AoM Podcast #425: Action Over Feelings
• The NOVA Food Classification System
• Stanford study on the effect of fiber and fermented food on the microbiome
• Research on creatine as a neurotransmitter and creatine’s effect on brain health (including impact when sleep deprived)

Connect With Paul Taylor

• Paul‘s website
• Paul on IG
• Paul on LinkedIn
• Paul‘s podcast
• Paul‘s mental fitness course for coaches and health professionals

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

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Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness Podcast. Nietzsche’s Maxim, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” isn’t just a sound philosophical principle, it’s also a certifiable physiological phenomenon. Toxins and stressors that could be deadly in large doses actually improve health and resilience than smaller intermittent ones. The ironic thing my guest points out is that it’s the fact that we’re not getting enough of this sub-lethal stress these days that’s really doing us in. Paul Taylor is a former British World Navy aircrew officer and exercise physiologist, nutritionist, and neuroscientist, and the author of Death by Comfort: How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can do About It. Today on the show, Paul discusses the science of hormesis, how small doses of intermittent stress can make us more resistant to chronic stress and why you need to embrace what Paul calls “discomfort harvesting.”

We talk about some now familiar topics like fasting and cold and heat exposure with fresh inspiration as to how important they are to practice and how to do them effectively. We discuss how hot a sauna needs to be to get the benefits of heat exposure, Paul’s suggestion for how to make an ice bath on the cheap, what may be the single best type of food to eat to improve your gut’s microbiome, a form of fasting that’s got anti-cancer benefits but is so accessible it won’t even feel like fasting; what supplement to take to mitigate the effects of a bad night’s sleep, and much more. We in our conversation with how to use what Paul calls a “ritual board” to stick with your healthy habits and resist the soft underbelly of modern life. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/stronger.

All right. Paul Taylor, welcome to the show.

Paul Taylor: Brett, thank you for having me as I’m a longtime listener, so it’s great to be on.

Brett McKay: Well, thanks for listening. So you got a new book out called Death by Comfort: How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It. You have an interesting career because you are a neuroscientist who’s also an exercise physiologist and a nutritionist. So how do you end up combining these three areas in your career?

Paul Taylor: Well, it all started, I went to university and did a master’s degree in Exercise Science and then I joined the British military. I joined the Navy and I flew helicopters for a number of years. I also went through combat survival and resistance to interrogation training, which started my interest in this area. And then I ended up doing helicopter search and rescue and I did another master’s in nutrition ’cause I didn’t wanna sort of hang around doing nothing on when we were waiting for the call. And I always had the intention of leaving and starting as a physiologist, a nutritionist. So I did that. I moved to Australia, met my wife in Ecuador, actually she’s an Aussie, dragged me kicking and screaming to Australia and I set up as a physiologist, a nutritionist working one-on-one initially. And then I realized that it wasn’t so much about the science, it was about behavior change. And so that’s why I went on and did another, I went back to university and studied neuroscience. I’m now on kind of topping it off with a PhD in Psychology. So I’m kind of what I call… I call myself an integrationist and a pracademic. So I like to take all the geeky academic research and turn it into practical tools and solutions that people can use, and now I do a lot of corporate speaking and translate that science stem for everyday people.

Brett McKay: All right, so let’s talk about your book Death by Comfort. You argue that the comfort revolution that we’ve experienced for the past 100 years is killing us. How has increased conveniences, increased comfort made us sicker?

Paul Taylor: So we need to start with a fundamental principle here. And Professor Frank Booth, legendary exercise physiologist, said that the human genome has not changed for over 45,000 years. And that the current human genome requires and expects us to be highly physically active for normal functioning. And it’s not just that. So if we take the movement piece, we don’t hunt or gather anymore and we know that the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania in East Africa, the Hadza women and girls take double the steps of women and girls in modern societies, Hadza men and boys three to four times the steps. But when it comes to intensity of movement, they do seven to 10 times the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity. And what we now understand is that exercise is a very powerful driver of your gene expression. So when we’re not exercising we lose all those positive changes in gene expression that actually help us to be healthier.

And then we have the convenience of food. Now with the rise of ultra-processed foods particularly in the last 30 or so years… And I know Brett in your country 60% of all calories consumed are ultra-processed foods. Australia’s not far behind. And teenagers, American teenagers, 66%. And these things have lots of additives in them that disrupt our gut microbiome, that make us eat more. And it’s these convenient foods that are actually destroying us. And then the other thing is that we live in thermal neutral environments, where we’ve got heating and cooling and we’re no longer cold or hot. And that actually robs us of these ancient biologically conserved mechanisms that protect us and make us healthier when we’re exposed to intermittent stressors of movement and some nutritional stress, but also the thermal stresses as well. So we’re missing these things that are fundamental to our biology.

Brett McKay: Right, so we’ve reduced stress but in the process it counterintuitively increased chronic stress in a lot of parts of our lives?

Paul Taylor: That’s correct. And there’s a whole heap of research that shows that people who exercise and who are fitter deal with psychological stress better. And we also know that exposing yourself to heat and cold just helps with what I call “stress fitness,” and that’s my PhD is now focusing on stress fitness. But I like to use the analogy of physical fitness. So all of your listeners will understand that there’s a continuum of physical fitness. You can be low fit, moderate high fit, or very fit. But you’ve got to do the work. People who are up high on that continuum, they do the work. And you know as well as anybody, Brett, that if you stop training for a couple of weeks, you slip down that continuum. And this is what’s happening with modern life. We’re not getting those inputs that actually build our stress fitness. And then we see we have all sorts of teenagers, young people and older people who are just not prepared for the inevitable stress that is thrown at them in terms of life.

Brett McKay: And so this all goes down to this idea in science, it’s hormesis. Can you walk us through the science of hormesis? What is that?

Paul Taylor: This is my favorite branch of science, and kind of summed up by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” So hormesis is defined as sub-lethal exposure to stressors or toxins, which at high levels can kill you, but at low to moderate levels, induce stress resistance. And there are over 600 known hormetic stressors. And so exercise is one, cold exposure, heat exposure, but also the sun UV radiation. You get too much of that, you get skin cancer; you don’t get enough, you get low Vitamin D. We know even small doses of nuclear radiation, which we used to think is damaging, now we actually see can enhance longevity in people. So there are a number of stressors, nutritional stressors as well. Polyphenols, these little things, that compounds that you get in certain foods, mostly fruits and vegetables that are small doses of toxin but actually upregulate our protective genes. So we get a net benefit when we expose ourselves to small doses of intermittent stress because it upregulates our protective genes. So cellularly we become more resilient or increase our stress fitness because of exposure to that small dose of stress.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. And this hormesis, it’s the stress, it goes on a u-shaped curve, right? So…

Paul Taylor: That’s right.

Brett McKay: There’s this you reach a point where you’re going up in the stress and it hits a sweet spot, and then if you keep increasing the stress you start having diminishing returns; it starts going down and becomes detrimental.

Paul Taylor: That’s right, and then it becomes detrimental. And we see that from everything. You see that in exercise. Now that’s starting to come out, that the people who are doing the most… And we’re talking here marathon runners, people who do lots of triathlon, these guys sometimes they actually don’t live longer than people who do no exercise. Now, it’s not all of them. So there’s some individual stuff that we don’t understand, but basically all of these hormetic stressors follow that same curve that you just described. And it’s a little bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It can’t be too little, it can’t be too much. It’s got to be just right. And a lot of our upbringing, it’s too little exposure.

Brett McKay: All right, so let’s walk through some ways we can start adding some more good stress in our life, reducing the comfort in our lives a little bit so we don’t have death by comfort. We’ve been talking about exercise. Let’s talk about this. What goes on in our bodies when we expose ourself to the stress of exercise? ‘Cause it is a stressor. You feel good after a good workout, but when you’re doing the workout it’s actually stressor. So what’s going on in our bodies when we exercise?

Paul Taylor: Yeah, yeah. [chuckle] You’ve hit the nail on the head here, Brett. And I spoke to thousands of people over the years about exercise. Some people go, “Yes, I’m into it.” Others go, “I don’t like it because it makes me feel uncomfortable.” And I say to them, “It’s supposed to be bloody uncomfortable.” That is why exercise is good for you because it’s a stressor that activates these stress response genes that actually protect us. And then there’s another wave of gene expression called “metabolic priority genes.” These are hundreds of genes that are upregulated whenever you expose yourself to the stress of exercise. And then we have other genes that improve our mitochondrial function. So it is by exposing ourselves to moderate intermittent amounts of stress in the body, we’re upregulating gene expression.

And what we now know is that exercise releases a whole host of things called “myokines.” Some people call them “exerkines.” These are molecules that are released from your contracting muscle that we now know get into your bloodstream. They not only affect the muscle, but they get into your bloodstream and affect pretty much every single organ and every organ system in the body in a positive manner. And recent research shows that these myokines or exerkines are carried around the body by these things called “exosomes.” And so it gets pretty technical, but I just want people to understand there are massive changes in gene expression and release of these myokines that then tell the organs and the organ systems in your body to improve how they’re actually operating.

Brett McKay: Yeah. One myokine that people might have heard of is BDNF. What is BDNF?

Paul Taylor: So BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And neurotrophic means nerve growth, right? So it helps you to create new brain cells in areas of the brain such as the hippocampus and maybe some other areas, but it also protects the brain cells that you have against damage. And we know there’s a couple of ways that BDNF is released. So there are two myokines that cross the blood-brain barrier. One of them is called “irisin.” And that crosses either from cold exposure or exercise that crosses the blood-brain barrier and triggers the release of BDNF. And then lactate, people know about lactic acid. We used to think that was a waste product. We actually now know that it is fuel for some different cells including our brain cells. And lactate actually crosses the blood-brain barrier and triggers the release of BDNF. And some of your older listeners, Brett, will remember Miracle-Gro in the United States, this stuff that you sprinkle over plants and they would grow like crazy. BDNF is Miracle-Gro for the brain.

Brett McKay: Oh yeah, some other myokines you mentioned in the book, there’s myokines that drive metabolic adoptions such as muscle and bone growth and repair, improved immune function, healthier gut, healthier liver, healthier pancreas. And there’s one myokine IL-6 that has anti-inflammatory effect on the body. So again, the stress of exercise can help reduce inflammation in the long run.

Paul Taylor: Yeah, and this is the thing. So when you exercise there’s a transient increase in inflammation followed by a drop off in inflammation. And often that’s the sort of thing that we see. So you have to look at the long-term benefits of all of these molecules. And the body is just so sophisticated, and we’re still trying to work out exactly what goes on when we expose ourselves to things like the stress of exercise or other different stressors.

Brett McKay: So one thing you do when it comes to physical activity and physical movement, you encourage people to think of their daily activity consisting of three parts: Movement at the workplace, incidental movement, and dedicated. So walk us through these three areas and how can we increase our movement in these three areas?

Paul Taylor: Yeah. So the workplace, I always say to people that if you have a job that involves lots of physical movement, that has got to be worth thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars a year because of the net effect on your health. But lots of us these days have got jobs that involve chronic sitting. And we know that chronic sitting is really, really bad for your health. And so I always encourage people, we know that if you’re sitting for 20-30 minutes plus, there are significant negative changes in your gene expression. So it’s just getting off your bum at least every 30 minutes, I encourage people, and just do some movement. Ideally, the best case scenario, I’ve got kettlebells and clubbells sitting right beside my desk, and every 30 minutes I get up and swing some kettlebells and clubbells around. But if you’re in the workplace, you can just quickly walk them down a couple of flights of stairs.

What that does is it’s gonna create positive gene expression offset the sitting, but it’s also gonna burn up any stress hormones if you’re having a stressful day. Then the other thing I talk to people about the workplace is just look for opportunities to move. And I’ve got a rule that when I’m on the phone I stand up or you can go walking whenever you’re on the phone, and then trying to do things like walking meetings and stuff like that. Just any way that you can add these in. Then when it comes to our incidental stuff, and it is about these little movement snacks and doing, I call them these little “movement snacks,” just one to two minute bursts throughout the day. And I have exercise equipment strategically placed all around my house that acts as a bit of a trigger.

And actually one guy when I did a corporate workshop, it was the second time he’d seen me and he actually said to me, “We have changed our family that when we go into the village for a walk, we actually take the long cut rather than the shortcut.” And I thought, “You know what? That is just brilliant.” How many times have we driven past 30 perfectly serviceable car parks just so we can get as close as possible to our destination? And we’re losing that opportunity to move. And then with exercise, look, I think everybody’s convinced of the benefits of doing more, but for me one of the most important things is to do exercise that you enjoy. That is just really clear from the research that when you find something that you enjoy, you’re much more likely to do it. But also really remember about the benefit of these movement snacks. And researchers call them VILPA, vigorous intensity, lifestyle, physical activity. So these are just little one- to two-minute bursts of physical activity that we do throughout the day that we’re starting to see are really, really beneficial. So it’s not just going to the gym or going for a run; it’s those little movement snacks that are important as well.

Brett McKay: Yeah, you could do movement snacks while you’re watching TV. Yeah.

Paul Taylor: Absolutely. Every time the adverts come on, there’s an opportunity to do movement snacks or just do them while you’re watching stuff. Get an exercise bike and watch your favorite podcast or watch TV while you’re doing some stuff. That’s ideal.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I love the kettlebell. I actually busted out my kettlebell after I read your book and put it someplace in my house that I walked by. I sit down a lot for my job, so I’ve been doing movement snacks with the kettlebell ’cause it’s so easy. It takes up little space and you could do all sorts of things with it.

Paul Taylor: Yeah, they’re just brilliant. I’m a massive fan of kettlebells and clubbells.

Brett McKay: Okay. So move more at work, do more incidental. And the movement at work and the incidental movement, you talk about how a fitness tracker can help with that, right? Counting your steps, seeing your movement, you don’t want to get obsessive about this stuff, but I like the Apple Watch ’cause I can look at it and be like, “Oh, I haven’t really done much today. I’ll get up and take a 20-minute walk.”

Paul Taylor: Brett, I’m exactly the same. I have an Apple Watch and I have my active energy set for 750 calories every single day. And it just, it’s that trigger and it’s just making sure that you’re doing it. And oftentimes, if I’m sitting a lot as well, I’ll look at it and I go, “Oh my God, I just haven’t done stuff.” And it just, it gives you that little prompt to actually go and do stuff. So us neuroscientists will tell you what gets measured gets managed. And I’m a big fan of knowing how much you’re actually moving. That’s really, really key.

Brett McKay: Okay, and with dedicated exercise, pick something you like, just get sweating out of breath frequently throughout the week.

Paul Taylor: That’s it, exactly.

Brett McKay: Okay. Let’s talk about this idea of, you call it “discomfort harvesting.” And we can do that by exposing ourselves to heat and cold. So how can cold showers allow you to do discomfort harvesting?

Paul Taylor: Yeah, so firstly let me define discomfort harvesting. So when psychology, a psychologist will talk a lot about discomfort tolerance, the ability to tolerate discomfort. But I prefer the term “harvesting” because tolerance kind of has the implication that this isn’t that good for me and I just need to kind of tolerate it. Whereas harvesting, you’re actually reaping the benefits. So we know there was a landmark study done in Holland about seven or eight years ago where they took a bunch of workers and randomly assigned them into two groups. And one, they got to have a cold shower at the end of their normal shower for 30, 60, or 90 seconds. And the other group, the control group, just did their normal shower. And they measured their health, their sickness, and their absenteeism. And they found at the end of the year that the cold shower group had a 29% reduction in sickness and absenteeism, which is just massive. Now since that study, there’s been lots of other studies that have shown that there are really huge benefits from exposing yourself to cold water, and it activates something called the “cold shock response.”

So this is an ancient mechanism that as soon as cold water touches your skin, we have neurons just under our skin that send a very quick signal to the brain. And the brain activates this full body response, body-and-brain response to the cold, and it upregulates protective genes. It increases noradrenaline, I think your Americans call it “norepinephrine,” and dopamine in the brain, which are really useful chemicals for motivation and for mood. And we get all of these physiological up-regulations in protective gene expression just from that cold water response. And we know there’s a recent study that showed that if you get into an ice bath at about four degrees, just for 20 seconds, you get a whopping 3% to 500% increase in dopamine and noradrenaline or norepinephrine, which is just huge. And it persists for hours. So it has positive lasting effects on your mood. And we’re now actually seeing people with treatment resistant depression being successfully treated with cold water therapy.

Brett McKay: No, we had a guest on the podcast last year, Dr. Mark Harper, who wrote a book called Chill: The Cold Water Swim Cure. He’s an anesthesiologist, but he swims out in the ocean when it’s freezing. And that led him… He started researching how to prevent hypothermia during surgery, and that led him to research the benefits of cold water exposure and managing the body’s overall stress response. I guess when anesthesiologists put people under, they have to keep the person cold.

Paul Taylor: That’s right.

Brett McKay: It has all this protective benefits. And he started doing the research and the people who do the cold water swimming, they get some of the similar benefits. So yeah, like you said, people who have been able to manage the depression with cold water, exposure decrease inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and things like that, all because of cold water exposure.

Paul Taylor: Yeah, and the reductions in inflammatory markers. We cannot underestimate those benefits because if you look at the vast majority of chronic diseases, inflammation, chronic inflammation is a key driver of that. So that seems to be one of the many benefits of this cold water exposure. And we know that you get activation of heat shock proteins and cold shock proteins and changes in gene expression when you regularly expose yourself to the cold. So it’s about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s what I mean by discomfort harvesting.

Brett McKay: How cold does the cold water need to be to get the benefit? Do we know that?

Paul Taylor: So yeah, actually on my podcast I interviewed Professor Mike Tipton, who is from the UK, would certainly know the guest that you talked about. He’s the world leader in cold exposure, and he reckons that 15 degree water. Now, that’s centigrade. I’m not sure how that translates to Fahrenheit, but 15 degrees centigrade seems to be the trigger for the cold shock response. But I recently saw a research paper where they had people in 20 degree centigrade of water, but they had them in for 20 minutes and they got some benefits. So there seems to be a trade-off between time and temperature. But it’s really, it’s at about that 15 degree centigrade, that seems to be around that area.

Brett McKay: Yeah. So 15, in Fahrenheit that’s 59, about 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Paul Taylor: There you go, boom.

Brett McKay: And then 20, that’s 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Paul Taylor: Yeah. And it’s important for your listeners to understand, Brett, that there is a trade-off between temperature and time. So the colder you go, the less time you need to actually spend in it. So I know some people who get into ice baths and they’re in there for at 10 minutes. There’s really no benefit above being in an ice bath for around a minute. The vast majority of the benefits are gonna kick in, no. There’s not really a benefit to staying in as long as you possibly can other than maybe a bit of psychological toughness.

Brett McKay: Is this something you can do every day or should you do it every other day?

Paul Taylor: We don’t have any data on that. Look, I think the best thing, Sonya Sonnenberg did a research study and she found that the optimal dose was about 11 minutes of exposure over a week. So I think we need to see other research replicating or doing similar studies to her until we can say definitively. But let’s take that as a guide for now.

Brett McKay: Gotcha. See, I do a cold shower before I work out. That’s when I do it. That’s what I like to do.

Paul Taylor: Oh, interesting.

Brett McKay: And yeah, but it’s hard to do cold showers or cold baths in Oklahoma during the summer ’cause the water is just lukewarm ’cause it’s like 115 degrees outside. So now it’s starting to cool off and now we’re starting to enjoy it. Yeah, I can’t… I don’t wanna spend $6000 for one of those ice tubs, whatever.

Paul Taylor: I’ll give you a little hack, Brett.

Brett McKay: Okay. What’s that?

Paul Taylor: Get an old fridge freezer. You know one of those chest freezers?

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Paul Taylor: And put silicone on the inside, so you silicone it up. And then you just plug it in on a timer and fill it up with water and run it three to four hours a day. And you can get it to around three to four degrees, and then you just need to jump in. There you go. Boom. Saved yourself $6000.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

And now back to the show. What’s another discomfort harvesting activity is exposure to heat. Now this is something I do regularly. I’ve got a sauna. I did fork over the money for a sauna. I’ve really enjoyed it. So what happens to our bodies when we are in a sauna or even exercising out in the heat?

Paul Taylor: Yeah. So that increasing core body temperature, again, activates the heat shock proteins, and it’s the heat shock proteins that seem to be the driver of the cellular changes and changes in gene expression. And the other thing that a sauna does is it works as an exercise mimetic. So it seems to mimic the benefits of exercise. So you’ll notice when you’re in an sauna that your heartbeat goes up, your heart rate goes up, your stroke volume goes up. And that’s some of the benefits that we get from low intensity aerobic exercise. And studies out of Finland have shown that people who have regular saunas four to seven times a week live seven years longer than people who don’t. Now, one of the other benefits that you get is around this discomfort tolerance. So with the heat… And I have a sauna as well, I forked out on one, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent. And with that heat, you know that discomfort that you feel when you get really, really hot?

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Paul Taylor: That actually releases dynorphins in the brain. These are kind of like the cousins, the opposite cousins of endorphins. So endorphins are the feel-good chemical, dynorphin is that thing that says, “Brett, this is horribly hot. You need to get outta here.” And it turns out when you activate the dynorphin system reasonably regularly, you actually make your endorphin system more sensitive. So you actually get better feel-good chemicals from other exposures. So that would seem to be another independent effect. But there’s just so many changes from your cardiovascular system and your hormonal system, heat shock proteins that happen when you expose yourself to that heat that we get all of these net benefits.

Brett McKay: Another benefit, we’ve had a guest on the podcast, Charles Raison, he’s a psychiatrist and he wrote a book called The New Mind-Body Science of Depression. And the argument he makes is that one potential cause of depression is inflammation. Not all people who are depressed, but some people who are depressed have increased markers for inflammation in the body. And so what he’s found is if you put these people in a sauna, you have that acute increase in inflammation because you’re sitting in the sauna, it’s a stressor. And then in the long run it reduces overall inflammation and it can help alleviate major depressive symptoms.

Paul Taylor: Yeah, absolutely right. And it’s a little bit like exercising in that you get that transient increase of inflammation and then you get a net reduction afterwards. So yes, absolutely true. And we see that actually a sauna is pretty effective for depression as is cold exposure.

Brett McKay: How hot does a sauna need to be to get the benefit? How long? What’s going on there?

Paul Taylor: Yeah. So look, again we can’t say absolutely definitively, but studies have shown that 80 degrees centigrade again, Brett, you’ll need to do the conversion to Fahrenheit, but at 20 minutes activates heat shock proteins. Now possibly that could be less. This is really about increasing your core body temperature by one degree. And I actually did an N=1 study on my infrared sauna, which only goes up to 70. But infrared, as you may know, Brett, it penetrates deeper into the body, so potentially increases your core body temperature at lower temperatures. I did an an N=1 using a rectal thermometer, which we won’t go into.

Brett McKay: Oh yeah.

Paul Taylor: But saw those benefits. Now that is N=1, but we know that any exposure to significant heat where you caused your body to sweat significantly is going to have those benefits. But if you want the heat shock proteins, it would appear it is around that 80 degrees centigrade but maybe lower for an infrared sauna. And again, it’s a trade-off against time.

Brett McKay: Okay. So 80 degrees centigrade, that’s 176 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s pretty hot.

Paul Taylor: That’s hot. Now, that doesn’t mean… That’s when they saw the increase, but they didn’t in the study look at 70 degrees. So it may be that there could be less than that. And I think that there would be certainly be less than that when you look at an infrared sauna. And actually we’re gonna do some research over here in Australia. I’m collaborating with people over in New Zealand to look into that. So maybe I’ll let you know down the track once we work it out.

Brett McKay: Yeah. So when I do the sauna, I like to go really hot. So I get it to about 180 and then I just do it for 15 minutes, 20 minutes. And then if it’s cold outside, I like to get outside, kind of just be out there in the freezing cold and then get back in.

Paul Taylor: Yeah, the nice benefit of winter. I live in Melbourne in the south of Australia and I have a swimming pool right beside my sauna. And the swimming pool gets bloody cold in winter. So I’ll get from the sauna into the pool, back into the sauna, back into the pool. The only thing I would say, Brett, for people around cold exposure is if you’ve just done resistance training, you don’t want to get into the cold straightaway because it dampens the inflammatory response, and we need that inflammatory response to drive muscle protein turnover. So I will generally do resistance training, get in the sauna. If you get in the sauna right after you’ve done strength training, you get a 3-500% increase in growth hormone. So that’s the one time though that I wouldn’t do the hot-cold, hot-cold. I just want the heat right after the strength training.

Brett McKay: Yeah. That’s why I do my cold showers before my workouts rather than after. Let’s talk about our diets. We kind of mentioned this earlier. How has our modern diet made us sick?

Paul Taylor: Look, this is I think the biggest underappreciated impact on chronic disease, is the massive change in our diet. For all of human history, apart from the blink of an eye, the last 30 to 50 years of human history, we have eaten natural foods that have been alive recently. Now, there is a massive global increase in ultra processed food consumption. And there is a food classification system that came out of a university of Brazil called the NOVA classification that I think is the best ever invented. So it talks about the level of processing that we have, unprocessed foods, I call these low HI foods, low human interference. And I always say to people, look at a piece of food and if you can recognize that it’s been alive recently and minimally interfered with by humans, eat it, it’s fine. Don’t worry about the fat, the carbohydrate, the protein.

But if you’re looking at a piece of food and you’re going, “Mr. Krispy Kreme donut, I don’t remember seeing you running around on four legs,” then it is in your treat food. So I’m not saying never eat it, I talk about the 80-20 rule. And the research that’s come out of NOVA there’s literally around 100 research papers all showing the health risks when we increase ultra processed foods in our diet above around a 20% mark. And you see that 20% mark in countries like France, Spain, and Italy. In America it’s about 60% of calories from ultra processed foods. Worse for kids in Australia, in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, all more than 50%, and Mexico as well. And it is this massive rise in ultra processed foods. So let’s define it. They are foods that go through industrial scale processing and have lots of additives in them. Not just fat, salt and sugar, but preservatives, artificial flavors, emulsifiers that make them feel great in the mouth. And we know that a lot of these chemicals disrupt our gut microbiome, and that we also ate much more of those foods.

A randomized control trial took a bunch of people, half went on an ultra processed food diet, half were on a normal diet, matched for fat, carbohydrate and protein. They did it for 14 days and then they swapped over. And when people were eating ultra processed food, they ate 500 calories a day more. So what we know about these ultra processed foods, there are amazing scientists all around the world working out what’s called the “bliss point” in the brain. These are certain combinations of fat, salt, and sugar, any two of those three that actually hijack our reward systems and give us a massive hit of dopamine and make these foods addictive or more-ish so we eat more of them. And they’re empty calories. So there’s two mechanisms that happen here. One is you’re eating a lot of crap and that is damaging our cells and damaging our whole processes. But we are also crowding out good foods, things like fruits, vegetables, fresh meats, fish, all of those things that are really beneficial for us. So we get more rubbish in and less good stuff in. So it’s a bit of a double whammy.

Brett McKay: Okay. So your guidelines for countering this food ecosystem we find ourselves in, first one is eat a low HI diet. So low human interference diet. And it doesn’t mean to eliminate all those foods, but 80% should come from low HI diets. So whole foods, oatmeal, yogurts, meats, vegetables. If you eat 80% of your diet coming from that, you’re probably gonna be okay?

Paul Taylor: Correct, correct. And don’t worry so much about the fat, the carbohydrate, the protein. Just eat real foods. And you know the clue? Real food does not have ingredients. Real food is ingredients.

Brett McKay: You also talk about another rule is feed both of your brains. What do you mean by that?

Paul Taylor: So yes, the second brain, the enteric nervous system. So this is basically your gut microbiome. And we know that a lot of neurons reside in the gut microbiome. And there’s a two-way connection between the brain and the gut. And we know that basically if you look at most chronic diseases, lots of neurodegenerative diseases, obesity, diabetes, there are disruptions in the gut microbiome. And we get really good evidence that this is causative. When you look at fecal transplants on either animals or humans, where you can take the gut microbiome of an unhealthy mouse or human and transplant it into a healthy one and they actually develop diseases; or vice versa, you can take an unhealthy mouse, generally we do these on animals, and transplant the gut microbiome of a healthy mouse and the disease disappears. So we know there’s pretty good evidence that it’s causative, and we know that there are certain things that are very beneficial for our gut microbiome.

We’ve known for decades that fiber is good because there are a certain class of bugs in your microbiome that munch fiber and they give off these beneficial short-chain fatty acids that are really good for our heart and our brain and the rest of our body. And what we also know is that fermented foods, so there’s a great study come out of Stanford University a couple of years ago, where they took a bunch of people on the SAD diet as it’s called the standard American diet, and half of them they put on a high fiber diet, half of them high fermented foods. And they measured markers of inflammation, and they actually thought that everybody was going to do better. But what they saw is that some people on the high fiber diet did better, some did much worse. They didn’t tolerate the fiber well. Everybody on the fermented foods diet did better. And what it seems to be is that when we eat fermented foods, they send signals to our gut microbiome to actually be healthier and they proliferate the ones that digest the fiber.

So my takeout from that study is if your diet’s not so great, start to add in some fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, Greek yogurts, these sorts of things; some cheeses, miso soup, anything that’s got pickles or vinegar. Add that into your diet first bit by bit, and then start to add in fiber and particularly what we call “resistant starch.” And then you’ll create a much healthier microbiome and at the same time reduce your amount of sugar and processed foods, ’cause they’re the ones that really drive an unhealthy microbiome.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I love kimchi. My mouth’s watering just thinking about it.

Paul Taylor: [laughter] Yeah, there you go.

Brett McKay: It’s so good on your eggs. And then resistant starch, that’s found in things like peas, beans, lentils, whole grains. There’s supplements for resistant starch. I know raw potato starch and Hi-maize is another starch that you can supplement with.

Paul Taylor: And banana [0:37:17.1] ____ and stuff like that. Yeah, they’re supplements. But yeah, you get them in peas, beans, lentils, these sorts of things, and the skin of apples and stuff like that. So it’s just eating lots of fruit, vegetables, peas, beans, pulses, those sorts of things.

Brett McKay: And the other rule is embrace nutritional hormesis. What does nutritional hormesis look like?

Paul Taylor: Yeah, so there’s two aspects to this. One is these hormetic polyphenols. And so things like… A lot of people talk about broccoli being superfood and sulforaphane that’s in it. And people talk about it being an antioxidant. It’s actually not. It’s a small dose of poison that creates an antioxidant effect. And we know that lots of fruits and vegetables have these hormetic polyphenols, little small doses of poison that the plants use as protective mechanisms against insects. But because we are much bigger, they just create a very mild metabolic stress. And that upregulates protective genes, things like superoxide dismutase catalase, glutathione peroxidase, these are things that drive your antioxidant defense system. So by eating small doses of toxins that we find in plants, we get a net beneficial effect.

And then the other hormetic stressor is intermittent fasting. And humans have done intermittent fasting unintentionally since the start of time or since we’ve been around anyway. And it turns out that there are lots of beneficial biological processes that happen when we go without food for a little bit of time. We get a cleaning up of our cells that’s called “autophagy,” and we can then switch over, we develop metabolic flexibility. We switch over from running off glucose to running off ketone bodies that can actually be very, very healthy for us. So there’s a whole heap of different fasting strategies, which we can go through some of them if you like, just at a top level.

Brett McKay: Yeah. What are ones that you like, fasting protocols that you like for a beginner?

Paul Taylor: Yeah. Look, for a beginner I think to dip your toe in the water, Brett, there’s really good benefits, anti-cancer benefits from doing a 13-hour night fast. So nil by mouth other than water. And I used to be a late night snacker. And I saw this research that showed that it reduced the incidence of breast cancer and breast cancer recurrence in females when they did a 13-hour night fast. But they also understood the mechanism from animal studies that basically at night when you’re asleep, your DNA repair enzymes are switched on. And these are little enzymes that run all the way through your body, checking your cells, looking for cancerous and pre-cancerous cells. And when they find them, they execute them. Which is pretty cool stuff, right? But when we eat late at night, we have these peripheral clocks in our liver and our pancreas that sense the nutrients and switch off the master clock, and these DNA repair enzymes don’t happen.

So their research said that basically people who eat late at night significantly increased their cancer risk. So I think starting off with a 13-hour night fast. And when I first did this, I’m thinking, “God, how am I gonna get through the night?” So I ran an experiment. I didn’t eat, and I woke up in the morning, and I wasn’t dead. I’m like, “Who knew?” So [chuckle] you just repeat the experiment, right? And you find that it’s just, it’s habit really, and appetite is not really hunger. And then you can extend that if you like to a 16/8 protocol. I’m sure you’ve had people talk about this. This is where you compress your eating window into an eight-hour window and you fast for 16, but it doesn’t have to be 16. It can be those 12, 13 hours, and anything above that is useful.

And then, and I only suggest this for people who are over 40, is doing an extended fast, like a four- or five-day water fast. Because what seems to happen then is when we do that, we get system-wide autophagy. So what happens basically is that when there’s nothing coming in, the body uses this as a cellular sprinkling, and it just goes around in it and it recycles cancer cells, pre-cancer cells, and these senescent cells. These are cells that are supposed to have died but they haven’t really done it properly, and they kind of hang around in a zombie state and they release inflammation. So you get that whole cleanup metabolically and cellularly when you do those extended fasts. And maybe do that once or twice a year, particularly if you’ve got poor health. That can be really good. And what it also does is it kills off our autoimmune cells first. So there can be a real cleanse cellular from doing that.

But I also want to caution people around this. I did intermittent fasting for quite a while and I lost a bit of weight and I was getting DEXA scans, but I noticed that I was losing a lot of muscle. And so for me, this is a trade-off. And because I’m now in my 50s, I do not wanna lose muscle. I’m metabolically healthy. So I’m looking at, okay, so what are my goals here? Well, I know I’m metabolically healthy and I want to be maintaining at least in probably building muscle before I go into my 60s. So I’ve taken a break for a while from intermittent fasting. So I always say to people, What are your goals? If it is about improving your metabolic health, then fasting, go and knock yourself out. But as you get into your 40s, 50s, and certainly into your 60s, you need to be aware that you’re not eating into your muscle mass. So it becomes a bit of a trade-off then.

Brett McKay: Okay. So we’ve talked about some different ways we can incorporate more good stress in our life. Exercise, move more, cold showers, heat exposure, eating better foods, and some of these foods have hormetic properties, doing some intermittent fasting maybe. Let’s talk about rest and recovery. What role does rest and recovery play in adding good stress to your life?

Paul Taylor: So the way I would start to answer that question is by telling people that most of the gains in athletic performance in the last 10 years and certainly the last five years, haven’t been through training methods; it’s been through recovery. So recovery is really, really important to have an athlete being a sustainable peak performer and not dipping into over-training syndrome. And we know that the links between over-training syndrome and corporate burnout are just so deep. The ideology of those conditions is pretty much identical. So recovery is the one variable that we can all use in order to make sure that we stay in optimal health, particularly if we have stressful lives. And a little tip here, a little kind of a preview, is that recovery is not sitting with your feet up watching Netflix, drinking a bottle of wine or half a dozen beers. That is relaxation. So they’re very, very different.

So I think recovery here is absolutely fundamental. And with recovery, I’m talking about things like exercise, like the cold and heat that we talked about, but also breath work and sleep hygiene and taking regular, I call them “brain booster breaks” throughout the day. Do a little burst of exercise, and then to do one to two minutes of breath work, drink a bit of water. That is like taking your brain out and then plugging it into the wall to get a recharge. And then when we talk about macro recovery, that’s about sleep. And having good sleep hygiene practices are critical because when you’re asleep, that is when your brain cleans out the toxins. The brain actually doesn’t have a lymphatic system. It’s got a glymphatic system that starts with G, and that happens at night. That’s when we clean our brain out of toxins. And we know that sleep is so important for biological repair.

Brett McKay: I don’t know if you know anything about this, but something I’ve been thinking about when it comes to sleep is, I wonder if there’s any hormetic benefit for occasionally having a crappy night’s sleep or even like pulling an occasional all nighter. ‘Cause when I think back to caveman days, I don’t think people really slept very well. They didn’t have good sleep hygiene, right? You’re sleeping outside, around a lot of people, there’s crying babies. I don’t imagine them having the best sleep compared to where, you know, us, we have… We’re in a dark 60 degree room with the Eight mattress and all this stuff.

So I wondered if there is a benefit of sometimes having a crappy night’s sleep. Maybe we’re made to handle the stress and little doses can be good, maybe.

Paul Taylor: Yeah. And look, we don’t know. So these are the things that there are… That hormesis works in mysterious ways. But what I would say is there may be a small benefit, a small hormetic benefit to a little bit of a lack of sleep ’cause we know that there are some physiological changes that potentially could be beneficial. But again, it would be very intermittent if there was and having consistently good sleep, just because there are so many fundamental biological processes that depend on having good sleep. So yes, having a bad night’s sleep every now and then, certainly not as bad as some people might think. And I would caution people again, we talked about Apple Watches earlier on, that research shows that say, Brett, have me and you in the study, and it was engineered that we both have five hours of sleep a night. If they tell you that you had good sleep, and they tell me that I had bad sleep, but we both had the same, and then we do test of cognition, you will do much better than I would.

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Paul Taylor: So a lot of this can be the placebo effect that when you look at your watch and you go, “Oh, I had bad sleep,” you automatically then your mood decreases, your cognitive performance decreases. So just be overly wary about looking at watches because they are guessing. Basically they’re using heart rate and movement to try and guess when you’re asleep and what stage of sleep that you’re actually in. The best indicator is whether or not you wake up feeling refreshed.

Brett McKay: Right. Or even if you don’t wake up feeling refreshed, you could have had like enough sleep for what your body and mind needed. I’ve had those moments where I slept solid seven hours, but I’m just like feeling groggy and not great. And I think, “Oh my gosh, my workout’s gonna suck today. I’m gonna have a bad… ” But I ended up like crushing it in the gym, work was great. I just… Yeah, I never like that word, the opposite of placebo is nocebo.

Paul Taylor: Yes. Correct.

Brett McKay: So you never nocebo yourself. So if you had a bad night’s sleep, just don’t worry about it.

Paul Taylor: That’s right. Just get… And you know a brilliant little hack, Brett? If you have a bad night’s sleep, take some creatine. Because creatine monohydrate… So think of our energy systems. We got ATP-PC, we got the lactic acid and the aerobic energy system. And creatine plays directly into ATP-PC. It’s phosphocreatine. And the research now shows that creatine is really good for the brain. All of your cells use creatine, but I’ve got research papers which I can flick you and you can put them in the show notes, that shows that if you take creatine after a bad night’s sleep, that minimizes the negative effect on brain function.

Brett McKay: That’s cool. I didn’t know that. So you offer some concrete advice on how to put these practices we’ve talked about today into routine action. We were talking about earlier, a lot of the work of a trainer or a coach, it’s behavior modification. So you have to think a lot about this. And one idea that stuck out to me was this idea of the ritual board. What is a ritual board and how can it help someone create healthy habits?

Paul Taylor: Yeah. So a ritual board, I kind of stumbled across this thing. I created it when at the age of 41, I decided to become a professional boxer, which to my wife’s disgust. But I put my goal on the ritual board to be a professional boxer. And I put my Why. So for me, always connecting a goal to a deeply held value is really important. And my Why was authenticity. But then I’m saying, okay, what’s the process that I need to do? And so I put down a whole heap of things that I needed to do. Again, going to a boxing trainer starting three times a week, going up to six; doing my runs, doing my visualization. And then I had a whole heap of little movement snacks on there. And so this is all about the process. So we have goals but then we have a process. What are the habits that we need to do to get it?

And you write these all down on a board. I just use an A41I. I’ve got one right beside my desk. And you have a weekly target for each of those things. Now the key thing is have some hard ones on there. Go and do a workout. Go and do some healthy shopping. And then when you’re highly motivated, do the hard stuff. But you’ve gotta have lots of easy ones there. So put on, I might do a hundred kettlebell swings a week, but you can do them in blocks of 10. So then when you look at your ritual board, you just go, “Hey, I’m just gonna go do 10 kettlebell swings,” and then you tick it off, you write down, “I’ve done 10.” And that creates a feedback.

So what… This is all based on the work of BJ Fogg, Professor BJ Fogg, brilliant guy in terms of behavior change. And you need a trigger to do the behavior and you need a feedback mechanism. And this ritual board acts as both. ‘Cause when I see it sitting beside my desk, it becomes a trigger to do something. And then when you tick it off, that is giving you feedback that actually you are making forwards motion towards your goal. And the big thing I had my epiphany on that was I realized the more I was interacting with it, the more motivated I was getting. And then I’m like, “Oh, you mop it.” The natural rewards for the brain: Food, water, sex, nurturing, and achievement. And so when you achieve something, and especially when you tick it off, that releases a bit of dopamine, and dopamine is the chemical of motivation. So what we now know is that motivation follows action, not the other way around. And lots of people are waiting for the motivation fairy to come along [chuckle] and give them a big doll up of motivation before they get started. The motivation fairy is the ritual board. That’s what I found.

Brett McKay: Yeah, you have a picture of your ritual board in the book, right? So at at the top you’ve got your goal and then the why of that goal. And then you have these rows of these different exercises that you want to do throughout the week. And then each exercise has a numeric goal for the number of times you want to do that exercise during the week. So on yours you have, you got bag work 12 times a week, chin-ups, you’re gonna do 50 reps during the week; sumo squats, 200. And then you have calms for each day of the week where you can write down how many times you did the exercise that day. And the goal is you wanna do enough each day so you hit your weekly goal. So basically with this ritual board, you’re gamifying your goal.

Paul Taylor: Absolutely. And the key thing, Brett, is you gotta have lots of easy ones on there. So you interact with it and have it somewhere where you will see it regularly. So my original one was on my bathroom mirror. I’ve also had times in the kitchen. Now I have it right beside my desk ’cause I spent a fair bit of time at my desk.

Brett McKay: Did you become a professional boxer?

Paul Taylor: I did. And I’ve now retired undefeated, 1 and 0.

Brett McKay: Do you box at all like just sparring, just [0:52:41.0] ____ stuff?

Paul Taylor: I do a bit of but I’m kind of, I was tempted to get back into it, but just there’s so much research about the negative effects of repetitive trauma to the brain. And it doesn’t have to be massive. So it’s something that I love, but I do very, very intermittently. I’ll do plenty of boxing training, but the sparring I’ve kind of backed right off from because I wanna have a healthy brain when I’m in my 80s and 90s.

Brett McKay: Well, that’s cool. You did that when you were 41. That’s really inspiring that even if you’re in midlife, you can still do something big like that.

Paul Taylor: And I think the part of this, Brett, is that we do need to do hard stuff. And so I generally, every decade will go out of my way and do something that is really, really challenging. I’ve also gone to the Amazon and had a three-week trek deep into the Amazon to visit Matis Indians and went through a rite of passage there. So every 10 years or so, I do a really hard challenge just to make… Just really to counter that development of the soft underbelly that we get with modern life.

Brett McKay: What do you got scheduled for your 50s?

Paul Taylor: So my wife has actually thrown one to me, and it’s made me really uncomfortable. And I know, she said to me, “Why does it always have to be physical?” She said, “Why don’t you go and do a five-day or a 10-day silent retreat?” And for an Irish man, we are talkers. That [chuckle] makes me very uncomfortable. So I think that’s gonna be my next one.

Brett McKay: I love that. Well, Paul, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Paul Taylor: So probably my website paultaylor.biz. I also have a podcast, The Paul Taylor Podcast. And Instagram, I’m @paultaylor.biz on Instagram. And then you can find my book. Most of your listeners I think will be in the States, and just on Amazon, Death by Comfort.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Paul Taylor, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Paul Taylor: Thank you very much for having me. And I would like to say just, I have to say this, Brett. I have to give you a thank you from my wife because I listened a few years ago to you interviewing Gregg Krech from the ToDo Institute…

Brett McKay: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Paul Taylor: Right? And I sent it to her and said, “You need to listen to this guy.” ‘Cause my wife’s a coach. And she listened to it, she loved it, and she went and studied with Gregg for a year on Japanese psychology. And she’s been doing that for a couple of years and practicing with our clients and getting brilliant results. So thank you for that. You’ve had a big impact in our household.

Brett McKay: Well, thanks so much for letting me know. That’s great to hear. Gregg, that’s one of my favorite interviews that we’ve done.

Paul Taylor: Oh, he’s awesome. I’ve had him on my podcast twice. I had him on just two weeks ago. He’s just, he’s brilliant.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Paul, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Paul Taylor: Thank you.

Brett McKay: My guest today was Paul Taylor. He’s the author of the book Death by Comfort. It’s available at amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website paultaylor.biz. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/stronger where you can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

An important part of manhood has always been about having the competence to be effective in the world — having the breadth of skills, the savoir-faire, to handle any situation you find yourself in. With that in mind, each Sunday we’ll be republishing one of the illustrated guides from our archives, so you can hone your manly know-how week by week.

Shock occurs when the body’s internal organs aren’t getting enough blood flow. A person can go into shock for a variety of reasons including severe bleeding, vomiting, heart attack, spinal injury, or even certain drug overdoses. The symptoms of shock are fairly broad, but usually include weakness, clammy skin, fast heart rate, quick breathing, sweating, and thirst. If untreated, a person in shock may start to feel confused, lose consciousness, or go into cardiac arrest. That’s why it’s important to treat anyone who may be in shock as quickly as possible.

Keep in mind that when shock occurs as the result of an injury, it may not set in immediately. If you suspect someone is going into shock, call 911 as soon as possible and be prepared to initiate CPR if the person becomes unresponsive or loses consciousness. While you wait for emergency services to arrive, use the above tips to get a handle on the situation.

Like this illustrated guide? Then you’re going to love our book The Illustrated Art of Manliness! Pick up a copy on Amazon.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.