How do I fix my sleep?

I mean, I was lucky if I was getting five hours at night. But of the five hours, how much of that was quality? Not very much, because my HRV was tanking and also I just had this overwhelming feeling of being burnt out. Some of the signs of your burnt out. Let's just say you've got a job or a career or a project or something that you're absolutely passionate about. All of a sudden you stop loving it. All of a sudden you're like I don't want to do that or oh my God. That's usually a sign that there's something going on and you may be a few degrees away from full on burnout, when the things that you love that used to bring you a lot of joy in life all of a sudden start to become mature and heavy, start to look at what's going on internally because there might be something off.

So make sleep your cherished companion, respected, enjoy it and prioritize it. Number two incorporate regular exercise. I mean I'm sounding like a broken record now, but exercise is your body's wake up call. Using strength training with HIIT training, which is high intensity interval training, keeps things exciting, but remember, overtraining is like spam mail to your body it's unnecessary and usually overwhelming. The European Journal of Applied Physiology backs this up, showing that regular workouts, particularly weightlifting, boosts testosterone as your body's way of flexing its hormonal muscles. So keep it active, but yet balanced. Number three opt for a balanced diet. I mean literally, your plate is your palate for hormonal health. A blend of lean proteins, healthy fats and complex carbohydrates think eggs, avocados, quinoa it's like a symphony for your hormones.

You can shoot me a message. Let me know how it goes for you. I'd love to hear or connect with me on Instagram or the other social platforms I'm on Now. I did have one person ask me how can I tell if my cortisol levels are too high? Well, symptoms of a high cortisol include feeling tired, yet feeling wired.

It affects our mood, motivation and response to fear. When everything is out of balance, cortisol usually is too, and when everything is in balance, well, cortisol is our friend. Let's dive into cortisol's relationship with sleep specifically. Cortisol levels naturally fluctuate throughout the day, peaking in the morning to help us wake up, and it also starts to drop at night to allow us to sleep. The the Sleep Foundation explains that disrupted sleep can lead to elevated cortisol levels, which can cause more sleep problems. It's a vicious cycle. When we don't regulate our cortisol properly, it can lead to chronic stress. The American Psychological Association has found that chronic stress and elevated cortisol levels are linked to various health issues, including anxiety, depression and cardiovascular problems.

While it can help people fall asleep faster, long-term use has been shown to reduce the overall quality of sleep. So that's mainly by decreasing REM sleep. That's that very important stage where we dream and where our brains process emotions. Think about it it's like your brain going through a buffering or a hard reset while you sleep. So you wake up feeling fresh, energized and lit up, ready to tackle whatever you need to tackle that day. Well, if you're not getting quality REM sleep, you're going to have that grogginess, that slowness right. And they found that sometimes and some people especially with excessive use of THC this REM sleep is deeply affected. So you might feel like you're sleeping better after using THC Could actually be missing out on some critical sleep cycles Like eating junk food. You know it fills you up, but it doesn't really nourish you.

You've got to make sure you get enough rest, like really recoverative rest. You know the kind of rest that we wake up from feels like I just had a power nap and a hammock on the beat. Is that what you experience every morning? Poor sleep can wreak havoc on your mental and physical health. Stick to a regular sleep schedule and create a restful environment. No more binge-watching late-night shows. Your body will thank you. Believe me, mine is. Take a break Me and Netflix. I actually made my netflix membership lapse, been a member since they went digital streaming online. I think about that. I let it go. I let it go along with a bunch of other streaming subscriptions because all of a sudden it was just like I'm not gonna watch, I'm gonna just remove it tempted to watch it because it was becoming too easy. Now, listen to audiobooks or something meditative, that's it.

So when you shut your eyes and start to sleep and start that recovery, start that REM process. You got powerful messages, positive messages that are fueling you during that recovery time so you can wake up even jazzed and more focused and connected the following day. All right, let's bring this all home. We've been on a bit of a roller coaster today, I know, from staring down those big, scary regrets to grabbing life by the horns with some blue zone wisdom. But let's do a quick recap so you're armed and ready to tackle life without looking back with a what if or a if only. So, number one be real with yourself. Carve out some quiet time each week to ask yourself if you're really doing your thing or just plain follow the leader. My own light bulb moment came with a sandwich in hand. Folks, you want to find what lights you up inside and chase it. Don't wait for the sandwich Now.

You're right, it helps us with that cortisol regulation as well. It's like there's so many boxes that get ticked and yet you would think that more people would just be into this, but it's not the case. Why do you think that is? What do you think the reason is for that, Mark? I used to think it was laziness, but now I think it's a lack of priorities. So I'm in bed by 8.30 every night and I'm up between 4.30 and 5. So I get up, I run the Tim Ferriss 30-30-30 protocol, which is 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes and then 30 minutes of moderate exercise every day. And when people tell me, oh, I can't do this, I can't do that because of that, all right, can we stop with the excuse making and excuse making? Now I'm an empty nester. I have my wife and my our two dogs, but if you have six kids, you can create a morning routine that's going to start your day off right and healthy.

Most men who tell me they are exhausted are not sleep deprived. They are running a stress response that never gets switched off, and the body has quietly downgraded them to save power. FIG. 01 The part nobody photographs. I have had this conversation with more men than I can count. It usually arrives about ten minutes into a first call, in roughly the same words. I'm not unhealthy. I'm just tired. All the time. Then comes the list of things they have already tried. Going to bed earlier. Cutting coffee after noon. A sleep tracker. A blood panel their doctor called unremarkable. Sometimes a second panel, from a private clinic, because the first one felt like it missed something. Here is what I have learned from twenty years on my side of that call. Most of these men are not sleep deprived in the way they think.

Seven hours is the floor, not the target, and "I function fine on six" is usually a claim made by someone who has forgotten what seven feels like. So rule it out properly. Not by feel. Track your actual time asleep for two weeks and look at the average, not the best night. But if you are genuinely getting seven or eight hours and still waking up flattened, more sleep is not your lever. Something is spending the energy before you get to. Your body is not trying to make you miserable. It is doing exactly what it is built to do. The stress response is an energy allocation system. Under threat it moves fuel toward whatever keeps you alive in the next ninety seconds and away from everything that only matters over the next thirty years. Digestion slows. Tissue repair waits.

Ask specifically about thyroid function, ferritin and full iron studies, B12, vitamin D, fasting glucose and HbA1c, and a morning total and free testosterone. Anaemia and hypothyroidism are common, treatable and routinely missed in men, because men present late and get less thorough workups. Sleep apnoea is the other big one and it is dramatically underdiagnosed in men over 40 who snore and have gained weight around the neck. Notice this is step five, not step one. Go looking for a lab explanation first and you will usually find a number slightly outside a reference range, spend eight months and a lot of money chasing it, and never address the reason you are tired. I used to publish a supplement list in articles like this. Tryptophan, ZMA, adaptogens, essential oils.

The 2% Solution. Play it here, with the full transcript on the page. The earliest written record of the two percent framework. The least exercise that actually does something, and the part everyone leaves out. Most men over forty who feel exhausted are not sleep deprived. What is actually going on.

That argument is now the whole premise of the coaching. The specific home programs named in the original have been left out because two of them no longer exist. The 2% Solution. Play it here, with the full transcript on the page. Most men over forty who feel exhausted are not sleep deprived. What is actually going on. What held up from my 2016 column, and the part I oversold. The real timeline, and every number from a sixty-day cohort of twenty-three men.