Less Stressed Life: Helping You Heal Yourself

#110 Improve Sleep with Temperature with Tara Youngblood

May 05, 2020
Less Stressed Life: Helping You Heal Yourself
#110 Improve Sleep with Temperature with Tara Youngblood
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

"Your body is an engine; you actually put off anywhere between 60-160 watts a night, depending on size, BMI, gender, and metabolism." 

I got the chance to talk to the inventor of ChiliPad™, Tara Youngblood in this week's episode of the Less Stressed Life podcast about temperature regulation as a means of improving sleep and the impact of deep sleep on overall health.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • [09:03] Significance of temperature regulation during sleep
  • [12:21] Tips to improve sleep
  • [16:13[ How to track deep sleep?
  • [21:29[ Importance of cooling the surface of the bed vs. cooling the ambient temperature in the room


Mentioned in this episode: 

Tara Youngblood is a fusion scientist working to further studies on cold therapy and its impact on sleep. She's written and published the leading white paper connecting more than 70 research papers to the effects of temperature on sleep quality and as an expert in sleep science, she is a highly regarded and sought-after international speaker. Tara’s research has led to more than a dozen patent filings, and she is the co-founder, along with her husband Todd, of Kryo, Inc., inventors of the ChiliPad™. Tara is continually seeking new opportunities to improve the quality of life by those most affected with sleep disorders. She and her family sleep soundly at their home in Charlotte, NC.


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spk_0:   0:00
deep sleep is something that's now being attached to an increase of Alzheimer's memory and cognitive loss. Deep sleep is being attached to chronic diseases. If we don't get deep sleep, it's a really big problem.

spk_1:   0:12
Welcome to the less stressed Life podcast, where our only priority is providing those ah ha moments toe uplevel your life, health and happiness. Your host Integrative dietitian nutritionist Krista Bigler, helps health conscious women reduce the stress and confusion around food, fatigue, digestive and skin issues at less stress. Nutrition dot com Now onto the show OK, today in the lustrous life we have Terry Young Blood, who is a fusion scientists working on furthering studies on cold therapy and its impact on sleep. She's written and published the leading white paper connecting more than 70 research papers to the effect of temperature on sleep quality. And as an expert in sleep science. She's highly regarded and sought after as an international speaker. Teri's research has led to more than a dozen patent filings, and she is the co founder, along with her husband, Todd of Cryo Inc. Inventors of chili pad terror is continually seeking new opportunities to improve the quality of life by those affected with sleep disorders. She and her family sleep soundly in their home in Charlotte, North Carolina, which I love that length. Welcome to, uh oh. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So we were chatting a bit off air about her life beforehand, being in physics and science, and now she's over in this other world of sleep temperature. So let's talk about how you got into sleep temperature. How did you become interested in that as a means of like, Oh, is this a viable business? Was this something you were experimenting with at home? You came across some research on Where did this start?

spk_0:   1:39
So the very long story is that Todd's uncle invented the waterbed, and we are chronic product developers. So when the sleep space started, talk about pressure, which let comfort tempera Pedic started talking about pressure. In about 2006. We were like, Well, temperature is much more of an issue for us. We slept at different temperatures and so we looked at different ways in which to affect that change. So we played around with some different ideas and chili pad really came into being in about 2007. But at the time of it, when we launched, it were really thinking about temperature. Is this comfort variable similar to how you adjust the temperature in your house and having a thermostat? And you know, there's micro climate controls in your car. We should definitely have this in your bed, and that makes sense, you know, parallel to that. In 2008 we lost our youngest son, Benjamin, and I spiraled personally into grief and depression, anxiety, pretty horrible mental health issues and sleep. And here we were selling us late. Product and temperature seem to be having great results for people besides me. And so as a physicist, as a scientist, I'm like, Okay, how come they're having great results? How come I'm not what really goes into sleep? How can I use the tools to fix my sleep? There's got to be something that is different here, and it turns out temperature really is magical. And so thousands and thousands of hours of research. If you see my office, there's literally stacks of sleep books everywhere. It's a little bit geeky, for sure, but there's an amazing relationship between temperature light as well, but temperature and sleep is really special. There's actually VL peel neurons in your brain that are triggered by a change of temperature. And it makes sense when you look at evolution that we slept outside and when it got cold outside, it would trigger us to sleep and specifically deep sleep. So that's where the evolution became. This is much more about a sleep optimization product and a project for me, and it wish to trade hoping sleep, especially as someone that spent years being hopeless about sleep and not a good sleeper and Teoh translate what I've learned about temperature into creating sleep. Recipes for people, how toe help them identify what's unique about them and sleep and how they can make sleep work for them.

spk_1:   4:04
I love what you said there sleep recipes, and there's a lot of story back there that was all very good. I'd love to comment it, all of it, but I want to touch on some of the most recent things you had said through that. I think you said V L P L neurons is that correct or triggered by temperature change. So tell me what happens and what our body does like does this improve or help? Drop? Are resting heart rate. So we're recovering better. What's going on in the body when temperature changes? Trigger this like what physically is happening

spk_0:   4:33
in the body? Yes, it's really intriguing. I did a Ted X talk in December. That's really all about this discovery. It's pretty amazing. I didn't discover the BL it's V L P o neurons. Clifford say Pierre out of Harvard really discovered those in 2003 and then sort of involved his research, so I don't have any claim to that. But how that works is a mechanism in your body is when those neurons which live in your hypothalamus, which is sort of the older part of your brain, not the older in the sense that your brains all the same ages, your body but the older as faras evolutionary wise. It's all of your involuntary, unconscious, driven areas. And when your body senses a change in temperature and there's a bunch of different mechanisms that feed into that, that's a little bit of a separate conversation. But when it's triggered, what happens is it actually releases. Melatonin is the biggest burst, and that's what helps trigger you to feel sleepy. And this was verified in another study by Jerome Segal out of U. C. L. A. Where he tested and followed hunter gatherers and two different tribes one in South America, one in Africa for over a year. And he found that it really was. It sort of matched that it wasn't a change of light that was as heavy and that trigger it was temperature. So for certain populations, temperature as is as big or bigger of a trigger than light. But some populations will find that light is that given take of which one it's going to be. But when your body is triggered by temperature specifically, that's what you get that natural lease of melatonin. That's when that happens naturally in your body. So a lot of people take melatonin to help them fall asleep, but your body can do that. But when you think about our environments today where we set our temperature in our houses to one temperature and despite the time of year to time of day, they're generally all the same temperature. There is no change of temperature that triggers that, so our body is missing that Q to release melatonin, and that's where a lot of people are finding their taking melatonin. But they're replacing a mechanism that actually exists in their body and would do that if they were able to Cuba it correctly.

spk_1:   6:41
So I want to mention that when I'm talking with someone from a nutrition perspective, I'll often say we can affect change or our goal, usually with one of three inputs. Emotional nutritional, which can be quite brought and then physical or environmental, which is really this area. You're speaking up, and all of these can really impact how were producing serotonin and then melatonin ease. Call me neurotransmitters, that sleep hormone. But I have to say, like a lot of people get into bed with a heated blanket because it's cold. In fact, I have someone from Alaska was talking to the other day who said My bet is freezing. So I get in with my heat blanket and sweatshirt on, and she said, and I'm like in a hot sweat when I wake up. We were talking about how it was affecting her skin, and then some people are hot sleepers, right? So when my brother comes to stay at my house. He's like, No, like I don't want anything on me. He's just Some people talk about their partners being an oven. So it seems like I wonder if anyone's listening who's like, Yes, I would love to get into a cold bed like that's not necessarily what is common or normal. So we're talking about triggers. Yes, of what? A catch. Your response to that

spk_0:   7:47
normal is probably the two MIAs far asleep is concerned is probably the enemy of sleep right now. So you know the normal. They say you need to sleep for eight hours. The normal is you need to do this. And the problem is, as a population, we are, you know, almost a 1,000,000,000 different people with different genetic backgrounds, different basis, different health impacts and no temperature. When you think of your thermostat, it's highly affected when you're not feeling well, when you take a certain types of drugs will affect your temperature as a female. Are cycles affect what our temperature is, even throughout the month of what you're looking to have as far as a temperature input. So it becomes a tricky equation to say this is the one temperature you need to sleep at instead. What I've done with my sleep recipe has kind of break it up into three buckets of sleep. So when you think of, like temperature or even input, to think of your bedtime bucket, and in that you can put all the different things that are gonna help you fall asleep now for me that it's getting warm. I like to warm up to go to sleep. Todd, my husband. He would sleep on a slab of ice, I think, if he could, as cold as possible. And so he is that person that wants to climb into coal bed. And we have at chili lots of users that said it as colds. It'll go and they, you know, they sleep really well. It's super cold, but when you go to sleep, there's a psychological conscious element to that temperature relationship where you know, for me, I use a weighted blanket. I want to be warm. I want to feel secure. I want to dampen the anxiety and the stress of the day and temperature and that pressure from the way to blanket. Obviously, I do meditation and gratitude and some other breast parts of that recipe. But when you think about that bedtime from a temperature perspective, it really has to be ruled by what feels good. What's gonna help you fall asleep, Although once I fall asleep, the first thing I do is drop that temperature down to super cold because the next window of opportunity you have multiple cycles of sleep throughout the night. You have REM sleep light, sleep deep sleep, and you do cycle through all of those different types of sleep all night. But what's happening in your circadian rhythm or your body clock is it's trying to drop your core body temperature to the lowest part of the day on around the middle of the night. So when you think about your core that's here, inner organs are actually trying to drop two degrees, which is actually pretty significant drop if you think about it and during that time is the best window of opportunity to get deep sleep. And so, in order for your body to be able to cool down like it needs to, that's where being in the coolest environment it can now the sabotage parts for that our mattresses are made of foam and film absorbs heat and reflects it back. We have great blankets that insulate us from our outside environment. So you put all those together and were mostly baking ourselves all night. And that's why a lot of people wake up in the middle of night, are in the morning and they're roasty hot is because their bodies worked really hard to put off all that heat. And it has nowhere to go because we're dropping in our little sleep cocoons, which feel really good to fall asleep in but aren't so great for achieving great sleep results. And then that last window as the planet's warming up, our bodies want to warm up, and then we would want to come back those two degrees from the second half of the night to the morning. And so we do find people even Todd, who likes it, sleep as cold as an icicle. Well, still want it a little bit warmer to wake up, and that actually clips off your sleep switch so those neurons air then triggered by that warming up to release cortisol and wake you up and help get you started on your day. So the start of the day hormones start to hit. When they're triggered the opposite way you flip off the switch side. I'm no longer asleep. Please let me wake up. I

spk_1:   11:25
think about what this looks like. Sometimes if I try to think about different nights asleep when you're on hotel and you put the ambient room temperature of the wrong way and you wake up cause you're roasting that kind of makes sense. And then in the morning, of course, I don't want to get out of my bed in the window because it's the environment is colder. But that's what I want to be warmer. So you mentioned some barriers would be foam mattresses in certain blankets because we're kind of holding in he. But let's talk about other mechanisms so mattress types could improve this right. So if we're not using a foam mattress or we're using, are there different types of fabrics that also help with us? Do you think?

spk_0:   11:59
Yeah, so some of your latex is some of your more man made materials, you know, we like to think it will loza warm thing, but you know, there's some really wonderful mattresses that are starting to come out personally. A lot of them are expensive, which seems crazy that natural materials should be more expensive than man made foams. But that's, you know, part of the society we live in, I think, but keeping track of what you've got going on. If you can sleep with a little less insulation on top, that can help us. Well, you know, keep in mind that when you buy a mattress, it says it's cooling. It's got gel in it and gels lifetime expectancy of when it offers cooling is about four hours. That's when it hits capacity, and it can no longer absorb any heat. And that's in the middle of the night as well. So it is about as much as you can managing that environment. Some things that will help people is taking a shower before bed to sort of set that. If you feel like you're overheating a lot, some people will find a cold shower before bed, you know, like where you take a regular shower. But last couple minutes or colder will help your body say, Oh yeah, I can and it'll start dropping, so I'm going to get a head start before you get into bed something those things can help mitigate that overheating. But it is. It's a weird problem that we've created in our super comfortable society, where we're not as cold in the middle of the night as we would have if we were out camping or outside sleeping.

spk_1:   13:22
So you talked about physiologically You know what gets triggered as temperature changes right before bed or kind of at the start of Ed, Are there other benefits of sleeping cold like just better sleep? I mean, do you want to get into I'm curious. Like if someone really goes down this path, what are some things that they may see on the other end?

spk_0:   13:43
Yeah, So I show the slides honestly in my Ted talk because I am all about disrupting this idea that eight hours and is the only way to measure whether or not you got a good sleep or not. We work with the military and other people that just can't always get eight hours sleep. So how do you define what is good quality sleep? And how much time do you really need to get it? That is, you know, absolutely where I feel like that messaging needs to change. So deep sleep is something that's now being attached to an increase of Alzheimer's memory and cognitive loss. Deep sleep is being attached to chronic diseases. If we don't get deep sleep, it's a really big problem. What happens physiologically during deep sleep is everything from repairing DNA. Teoh, your spinal fluid actually goes up over your brain, washing out toxins and those proteins those tau proteins that are part of that Alzheimer's equation. All that gets washed away. You know we're healing. Growth hormone is released. You know, there's so many different aspects of what happens sort of from that healing and recovery part of sleep. During deviously our memories, air filed, there's, ah, whole mechanism that happens. The problem with deep sleep is this deep sleep that you get when you're 20 which is about two hours of your night, or 20% of that eight hours. It diminishes as we age. Other disease factors even eliminate that alcohol eliminates that caffeine can eliminate. That stress can have an impact on whether you get deep sleep, but by the time you're 80 you may only get seven minutes or less, so it's something that is elusive. and sort of naturally falls off a sui have a harder time lowering our core body temperature. And you know, that's really where the magic of temperature goes well beyond that comfort thing. But if you could be cold in the right zone of sleep for deep sleep, you can get two hours. You know, I hate to admit it, but nearing that 50 mark that mid mark and I can still get two hours of deep sleep every night. And that's has an enormous impact on just feeling rested. You know, it's often tied Teoh if you feel rested. If you don't feel tired in the morning. Most of that is has to do with that deep sleep, with surveys of matching quality to what you feel like the next morning. Deep sleep has a really big impact on that. So to

spk_1:   16:02
recap, it's a bit concerning that when we hit 80 we may get eight minutes of deep sleep, and I mean immediately my mind goes to these relatives that are up at like three and four and whatever in the morning and definitely seemed to be able to survive on very low sleep, which doesn't totally, always make sense in the brain. But when you say that, it makes more sense. So you're talking about you're actually seen that you're getting a couple hours of deep sleep, which is similar to a 20 year old. So this is very restorative and regenerative, but obviously you're tracking this. I actually recently added something to track my sleep as well, and it's been really interesting to see when you travel how your recovery time is different, etcetera. So how are you tracking your deep sleep on what are some other experiments that have really affected that

spk_0:   16:47
U S O. I use an or ring? There are, you know, sleep trackers air coming a long way. My first like warning about sleep tracking is to be at a spot where you feel successful in sleep before you start tracking or use it as a baseline. Ah, lot of people get in this rhythm of tracking their sleep, and the first day they look at like, Oh my gosh, I'm terrible at this and they don't have a way where they're going to really experiment and test what's going to improve it. If you're in testing mode and you're looking to improve it and you're working on optimization. You know what tools you're going to try, then you're measuring something. If you're just using it to say yes. I didn't have another good night's sleep. What will happen is your mental state about sleep will continue to deteriorate and studies air. Now, showing that sleep trackers fail is when Now someone feels like I just I'm terrible at this, so I don't care. I'm gonna give up on sleep. I'm not gonna do anything with it. That's where you don't use a sleep tracker. But if you're someone like me, that's kind of geeky or you're really looking to optimize it. You're looking for tracking. Well, if I have a drink of alcohol within three hours of going to sleep, then yes, that takes away my deep sleep. Or if I travel or these air the different metrics and you're really refining your in the process of refining asleep recipe or figuring out what works for you, Absolutely. Use that or ring is the best one I've found. Group is pretty good, you know, You do have to be careful if they're not measuring H R V. They're really not capturing heart rates on finding a resting heart rates the accuracy for deep sleep, especially, it could be really off. So be, you know, careful on how you, you know, pick that tracker. But when you track your information, it can open up a really wide variety of ways to measure your sleep. The other watch out ISS. Sleep is very similar to nutrition and diet, and if you weigh yourself every single day, you may go through a diet and you done intermittent fasting. And you're like hardly ate anything today, and your weight may not reflect that there's a three day window that it can show up. Your H R V or heart rate variability can show that you're gonna be sick a couple days beforehand. So when you see that crash, sometimes it has to do asleep. And sometimes it's because your body knows that it's viruses in its system and you're cold that you're about to get in a couple days physically like from symptoms, is about to show, so you could actually see some of those other health trends. But that's where again, as a layman, make sure you go in with, you know, sort of an open mind and what you would need to continue to sort of refine. So you don't just take that information Say I'm terrible at this. It may not be you. It may be Ah, whole bunch other factors and sort of to take it as a scientist of like, OK, I'm gonna take this information and I'm gonna really data mine it and use it for what is going to help me and discard the stuff that is going to make me feel like I'm not good at this.

spk_1:   19:45
I love what you said there. That's actually what I'm using to track to. And I had that experience recently. We were on a long trip on. One of my kids got sick and it was like, You're not recovering, so you're either going to get sick or you need to take it easy, which that happened. So it was kind of interesting to see how that presents beforehand, because I've actually had people with skin issues. I remember this little girl one time. Her skin was started, break out before she got a physical symptom of a cold. So it's sort of interesting what's happening in your body before it actually presents. You mentioned a different brand actually ended in here it What was

spk_0:   20:17
that? Woop? And it's W H O P. It's one that's used by a lot of athletes. And again, you know, a lot of those air moving towards this measurement of recovery. It's used by athletes. It's got a sort of a training protocol or a does as well, so it trainer can see your data and you're not allowed to see it. So some of those that are used by performance again to eliminate the person from seeing their data and say, I can't perform today cause I obviously didn't get rest, but a trainer can use it on. How do they coach someone through knowing that information? So it is sort of weird balance. A lot of trainers won't let there athletes see their sleep information for that reason, but they'll use it cause it is powerful and figuring out performance and recovery metrics cool. I

spk_1:   21:03
just want to highlight what you also said there. I love how you talked about this, but basically said of mindset, isn't there things They're not gonna be great, which I think is the underpinning of kind of all things related health. At least that's how I view it. If mindset isn't there, then we're probably not gonna make those improvements. So I love that you brought that up and you gave some specifics about, like, don't track of unless you feel like you're already at a pretty good baseline, so you can just optimize it, sort of for a bio hacking at its best, sort of. So when a transition into some of like the nitty gritty of how do you do this? How do you test this, Etcetera. So you talked about bed made materials and how that can affect temperature cooling. But one thing you're mentioning that seems like a challenge is you talk about how it's fine to get into bed warm, but as you get into deep sleep, you need to cool that temperature. So let's help us understand, because if I'm listening to this is a listener, I think about okay, how can I simulate this? And I think Okay, okay. A little bit of cold shower before bed, but you're talking about It's important to cool the surface of the bed versus just calling the ambient temperature. So let's talk about that for a moment.

spk_0:   22:05
Yeah, you know, that's really where I try to walk this line. The chili bad does something that in the future interational basilar so they serve a unique purpose, their patented for a reason. There's not too many other ways to do what I'm describing. That's during bedtime. You can make lots of different changes once you're asleep, finding things little effect and optimize your sleep during that time when your unconscious is tricky and difficult. So that is why I feel like it wasn't why we developed the chili pat. But it's definitely where Chile Pat has a very magical marketing niche. And if this sleep optimization, if you want to hack sleep, if you find the value in it, if you want to be able to get those two hours of deep sleep and balance that really well with keeping two hours of ram because the other part is if your body's days cold the whole time, you could actually rob rem sleep, and you are looking for that two hours of each kind of balance in order to get that optimal recovery cause your emotions and memories that are attached in REM sleep recovery is really important as well. You can go a little longer without great REM sleep before you feel more tired, but you're still need that balance. Temperature is just got a really magical spot because you feel like the other thing that can influence at his light. But you're asleep, and it only really helps you trigger falling asleep or waking up. Temperature can talk to you unconsciously while you're asleep, and there's an immense power there in just how it physically works.

spk_1:   23:35
So it's time that doesn't go under your sheets. Basically, like help us imagine it's

spk_0:   23:40
yeah, so it's, you know, your body is an engine you actually put off anywhere between 60 to 160 watts a night, depending on size and B M I and gender and metabolism. There's a bunch of different metrics to go into that thermal modeling. But when you think about yourself is an engine, if you were ah, high performance engine, which as humans we actually are high performance engines, you wouldn't run without a radiator. And what this does is it's basically just tubes. There's no EMFs. As a physicist, I don't wanna have electricity in the bed. So it's just water tubes that flow underneath you that really act like a radiator for your engine that you're putting off heat and it the water basically takes that heat and pulls it off of you and allows you to cool down. So they're really simple mechanism. It's not very complicated from that perspective, and it just helps you either be thermally neutral to cool or warm when you need it, you know it. We've used it with our kids even when they're running a temperature, cause it's just a nice place where they can lay to be cool. Feels really awesome when you're not feeling well to just lay on a cool surface and be able to just kind of curl up into it. If you're running hot or don't feel well and then the same is, you know, on those times were you feeling really cold and you want to warm up. You know, electric blankets and some of those heater pads could be great, but their electricity in the bed and they put off EMFs and no MF's have been tied to cancer. What that does to your body is an awesome so being able to keep that a really nice, clean way to heat and cool. It's a gentle cooling and heating, so we have a lot of people where older people that have burned themselves on some of the heating pads from turning them up too much water is just a gentle our way to do that. You don't get burns from it as well. So either side of high you MTA manager temperature it's water is just a nice, gentle, wayto effectively get you where your body where it needs to go.

spk_1:   25:31
So, Tara, if you could leave people with a gut reaction of like, Oh my gosh, I feel really like temperature affects my sleep and I'd love to dig into this little bit more. What's your advice for them on something they can do today and then working People find chili pattern like,

spk_0:   25:44
Yeah, so there is my Ted X Talk is on the YouTube Tex channel. It's 13 minutes of fairly similar information. I also have a book out on Amazon called Re Program Your sleep so you can download it to your Kindle. There you can go to Chile technology dot com. I have a blawg called pillow talk that you can go and read about more information on this and chili technology, obviously, is another place where, if you want to find out more about the chili powder ruler, you can do that. They're as well

spk_1:   26:13
and will put those links in the show notes. And as always, if you're looking for discount codes for products from shows, they're always at crystal Bigler dot com for it slash shop. Thanks so much for coming on today, Terra.

spk_0:   26:24
Great, Thanks for having me.

spk_1:   26:25
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How VLPO neurons (ventrolateral preoptic) affect sleep?
What's wrong with how we're sleeping in the modern world?
Significance of temperature regulation during sleep
Tips to improve sleep
Impact of deep sleep
How to track deep sleep?
Importance of cooling the surface of the bed vs. cooling the ambient temperature in the room